Church of Azazel > Structure > Who we are and how to join



Church of Azazel



Who we are and how to join



  1. Who we are
  2. Brief history and background
  3. How to join the Church of Azazel
  4. How you can help us build the Church of Azazel


  1. Who we are

    The Church of Azazel is a newly organizing school of thought and practice within theistic Satanism. Our approach to Satanism is both devotional and philosophical. We aim also to do what we can, on a practical level, to counter the growth of Abrahamic fanaticism in the world at large, and to promote a world in which freedom of thought is respected.

    The Church of Azazel has a polytheistic theology, with some crossover with both modern Paganism and the Western occult tradition, plus a few ancient ideas, found in many different cultures, which most modern Pagans overlook. Our beliefs are neither purely "reverse-Christian" nor purely Pagan. Our paradigm is a systematic synthesis of ideas from many different religions, both ancient and modern, unashamedly including some "reverse Christian" themes but by no means limited to them. Our pantheon includes Satan/Azazel, whom we see as a very multi-faceted deity, and a set of five distinct deities whom we call the Rising gods of the modern West: Lilith, Prometheus, Ishtar/Astarte, Pan, and Lucifer-of-Sophia.

    We worship Satan/Azazel. By "worship," we do not mean self-denigration. We mean reverent love, adoration, and awe, directed toward a Being who is manifest in our own innermost selves as well as outside ourselves. (For the occult snobs out there, that's bhakti yoga.) Members of the Church of Azazel should be people who feel drawn to Satan on a deep level.

    We believe that worship (often highly emotional) must be counterbalanced by philosophical thought. By the word "philosophical," we are referring to the art of thinking clearly and deeply - an art we aim to cultivate, both among our own members and in the larger Satanist subculture. We believe that Satan wants us to think for ourselves. To that end, we encourage Satanists to learn informal logic, debating skills, etc., and to think carefully about our worldviews and their foundations.

    We also encourage our members to take practical action, at least in small ways, toward at least one of the following goals: (1) politically opposing the religious right wing, (2) debunking Satanic panics, (3) raising the intellectual level of the Satanist scene, (4) promoting religious tolerance, or (5) countering the growth of the more fanatical and intolerant forms of Christianity and Islam themselves.

    Our core beliefs are stated in the following articles:

    Also important to us is epistemology. Because the realm of the gods is almost completely unknowable to humans, we keep our theology deliberately sparse. We are very conservative about identifying Satan/Azazel with any god in any other culture, and we avoid making any pronouncements at all about what might have happened amongst the gods in the remote prehistoric past. (See The here-and-now principle in theology and On gnosis, sacred texts, channeling, attaining knowledge, and the role of faith.)

    Moreover, we avoid thinking about the gods in cosmic terms. (See Post-Copernican natural theology.) We reject the idea that the cosmos has any overall "meaning" or "purpose"discernable to us humans. It is up to us as individuals and as groups of people to give our lives whatever meaning we want, based on our own deepest passions.

    Unlike LaVey's Church of Satan and some other Satanist groups, the Church of Azazel does not have a socioeconomic agenda. But we do take a stand against the religious right wing and in favor of those social trends, such as feminism (or, at least, moderate feminism) and the gay rights movement, that are most loathed by those kinds of Christians who most strongly push belief in an all-evil Devil. We also oppose Satanic panics. And we reject the silly, noisy "elitism" of so many blatantly un-elite Satanic groups, in favor of a more genuine meritocracy which need not make so much noise about itself.


  2. Brief history and background

    3.

    The Church of Azazel was founded in February 2004 as an online-based group. From August 2004 until April 2005 it functioned as an Internet coven, meaning we all performed individual rituals at agreed-upon common times, on agreed-upon common themes.

    Since then the Church of Azazel has been pretty much dormant most of the time. It will be revived as soon as we attract enough prospective members, either locally in New York City or online, who share the Church of Azazel's paradigm (at least for the most part  -  we don't expect 100% agreement on every point) and who are willing to put effort into helping to build the group. In the meantime, if the Church of Azazel's paradigm strongly interests you, please do stick around and either attend the New York City Satanism Meetup (if you live in or near New York) or participate in the Theistic Satanism forums (if you would like to be part of an Internet congregation of the Church of Azazel). To show your interest, please follow the steps outlined in the section of this page on How to join the Church of Azazel. Following these steps will lead to some worthwhile, intellectually stimulating conversation, if nothing else; and, once there are enough of us, hopefully it will lead to more. (See also How you can help us build the Church of Azazel.)

    Diane Vera, the founder, has been focussing primarily on other Satanism-related projects and will work on building the Church of Azazel again when enough other people show a strong enough interest. Since April 2005, she has created a new website Against Satanic Panics, revamped the Black Goat Cabal website, and added more pages to her main Theistic Satanism site including a collection of pages Against neo-Nazism among Satanists. She has also added more pages to the Church of Azazel site, fleshing out its paradigm (see Our beliefs and principles) and adding a tentative proposed Membership structure and code of conduct.

    Below is a somewhat more detailed history of the Church of Azazel:

    Diane Vera, founder and coordinator of the Church of Azazel, has been active in the public Satanist scene off-and-on since the early 1990's C.E.  She is best known for her articles on Satanism addressed to Pagans, including Satanism and the History of Wicca, and a column in the occult zine Abrasax back in the early-to-mid-1990's, during which time she also co-moderated some of the world's very first Satanic E-lists, hosted on necronomi.com. She left the public Satanist scene in the late 1990's and returned in the fall of 2002 C.E.

    Soon after re-joining the Satanist scene, she created her Theistic Satanism website and forums (Yahoo groups).

    During the summer of 2003 C.E., Diane posted on her Theistic Satanism site a section on Rites of blasphemy, including the renunciation rite. Later, in the fall of 2003, she posted a standard ritual format and a self-initiation rite. She got good feedback on all these rituals from people who tried them.

    In late 2003 C.E., Diane decided to start a group of theistic Satanists who share theological and philosophical views similar to her own. She made a first attempt to launch the Church of Azazel in February 2004, with the help of Marie RavenSoul, then co-moderator of the Theistic Satanism forums.

    Marie RavenSoul had returned to Satanism in August 2003 C.E. after having been away from it for nine years. (Before that, she had been a Satanist for ten years, beginning at age 14.) In late October 2003, she found Diane's Theistic Satanism website. On October 31, she wrote her first post to the Black-Goat Yahoo group, which was than a public forum. Soon thereafter, Marie began participating in some of Diane's other Theistic Satanism email groups as well. On January 3, 2004, she became co-moderator of Diane's Theistic Satanism forums, and soon afterward she became co-moderator of the new Church-of-Azazel forum as well.

    In late August 2004, we began the practice of holding simultaneous rituals at agreed-upon times.

    Until early October 2004, the Church-of-Azazel forum was public. However, the vast majority of the people it attracted were not people who shared our particular paradigm or who even had any interest in it at all. Very annoyingly, many of them insisted on trying to promulgate their own very contrary beliefs in the Church-of-Azazel forum itself rather than in the main Theistic-Satanism forum, our designated place for dialogue amongst different kinds of theistic Satanists.

    In October 2004, we decided to make the Church-of-Azazel forum private and to use the public Theistic Satanism forums as a means of getting to know prospective members. Also at around that time, two other formerly public forums of ours, including Black-Goat, were made semi-private in order to reduce moderation hassles, also using the public Theistic Satanism forums as a means of preliminary screening.

    After the Church-of-Azazel forum became private and many lurkers were deleted, it did not immediately complete the transition to a more focussed forum, due in part to a turnover of co-moderators. By mid-September 2004, Marie RavenSoul had drastically reduced her participation, requiring us to find and train new co-moderators for the Theistic Satanism forums. Fortunately, we did find two other co-moderators, but neither of them shared the Church of Azazel perspective, though they were fine co-moderators of the more general Theistic Satanism forums. In December, Marie left Satanism for a few months and hence also left us as a co-moderator entirely. Since Diane Vera was also quite busy with other things (e.g. a first attempt to put together her forthcoming book, plus trying to settle some quarrels that arose in the course of putting together the book), the Church-of-Azazel forum pretty much stagnated for a while.

    In April 2005, Geifodd, one of the original Church of Azazel members, became a co-moderator of the Theistic Satanism forums. He also became co-administrator of the Church of Azazel and took on the responsibility of interacting with prospective Church of Azazel members in the public Theistic Satanism forums.

    At that point we decided to re-start the Church of Azazel from scratch. Since the vast majority of even the more active members of the Church-of-Azazel forum did not share the Church of Azazel perspective, we asked them all to join the Black-Goat forum, to continue there the more generic theistic Satanist fellowship we had had in the Church-of-Azazel forum.

    In April 2005 we also instituted our participation requirements for the Church-of-Azazel forum and our policy of requiring Church-of-Azazel members to remain members of some of the public Theistic Satanism forums as well.

    In the summer and fall of 2005, the then tiny online membership of the Church of Azazel got into some very unpleasant personal squabbles which made clear the need for both a better-defined membership structure and an explicit code of conduct for members. Diane Vera began drafting these.

    But, during that same time period, other projects seemed more urgent than building a group of likeminded theistic Satanists. Diane's main project was to research and expose a budding new wave of "Satanic ritual abuse" witchhunts. At the beginning of 2006, she launched her Against Satanic Panics website and, for several months afterword, devoted nearly all her free time to building that site. During this time, the Church of Azazel was pretty much completely dormant.

    In the summer of 2006, Geifodd decided to leave the online Satanist scene entirely.

    During the summer of 2006, Diane wrote some articles to flesh out the theology of the Church of Azazel, including The rising gods of the modern West, and also made some related revisions to the rituals on her Theistic Satanism site. In September 2006, she finally finished her drafts of a membership structure and code of conduct, both of which are currently tentative.

    Diane was now, finally, ready for a third try at launching the Church of Azazel, this time both as an Internet-based group and as a local group to meet in person in New York City. But she will do so only when she encounters some sufficiently enthusiastic and actively helpful prospective members, either in the Theistic Satanism forums or at the New York City Satanism Meetup. In the meantime, she continues to work on other Satanism-related projects, such as the anti-Nazi pages that were added to her Theistic Satanism site in November and December 2006.


  3. How to join the Church of Azazel

    Even though the Church of Azazel is currently dormant, please follow the steps below if you are interested. The steps below will lead to some enjoyable, informative, and thought-provoking conversation, if nothing else. Once there are enough of us, hopefully the good conversation will lead to more.

    We do not allow prospective members to join the Church of Azazel itself immediately, but only after a mutual evaluation period of at least two months.

    1. To join our local New York City Congregation, please follow the instructions here.

    2. To join our Internet Congregation, please follow the instructions here.

    Please note that the Church of Azazel sees no need for violent criminal activity in our practices, and we do not welcome those who believe that violent criminal activity, or advocacy of same, should be part of Satanism.

    Also, the Church of Azazel requires that its members be at least 18 years of age (with the sole exceptions of young people whose parents are members of the CoAz or whose parents have given them permission to join). But there is no minimum age for participation in the public Thiestic Satanism forums.

    The Church of Azazel reserves the right to refuse membership applications for any reason we deem necessary.


  4. How you can help us build the Church of Azazel

    If you really love what the Church of Azazel stands for and would like to help it grow into what will eventually become an organization with offline local chapters, here's what you can do:

    • The single most important kind of help we need is more co-moderators for the Theistic Satanism forums, thereby freeing up our time to focus more on other kinds of outreach. Although we do aim to have a real-life organization too, it is now our top priority to have a smoothly-running online operation.

    • We would also appreciate help with various kinds of outreach, both online and in the real world. At the present time, our outreach focusses more on advancing the public visibility of theistic Satanism in general, debunking popular misconceptions about Satanism, etc. than on publicizing the Church of Azazel in particular. If you are interested, please apply to join the Black-Goat forum (after following that forum's preliminary screening requirements) to discuss specific projects and ways you can help.

    We are NOT, at this time, ready even to consider starting offline chapters other than the budding congregation in New York City. Only after we've built a solid core group with a history of collaborating on various projects will we then be ready to deal with the politics of running an organization consisting of multiple offline chapters. In the meantime, if you wish to start an offline group, then by all means do so, but it cannot yet be a local chapter of the Church of Azazel. To meet people in the real world, it is suggested that you attend, promote, and if possible become an organizer of a local Satanism Meetup group.



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