The Satan in Satanoltry

The Satan of Satanolatry may not be the Satan you think he is. He is not a red-faced man with a pitchfork, nor is he a conniving little trickster whispering bad things in your ear. In fact, he isn't a man at all nor is he male. I only use 'he' as a convenience in writing the same way I conveniently use proper grammar so that you can conveniently read what I'm writing!

Satanolatry's Satan is everything that is, the whole universe and more, the entire kit and caboodle. He is, what Hermeticists call, The All. Everything you see, everything you know, everyone you know - is Satan.

So, why call him Satan? Why not just call him what he is - The All. We could, it would be valid but it is also valid to use the name Satan. The name Satan denoted an adversarial force and since Satan is the universe what could be more adversarial than that? Our mortal bodies, despite being part of The All, are constantly being one step away from demise. Every force has the potential to kill us, we are at odds with our environment, our lives will only end in death. Yet we fight to live, we have a deep instinct to survive. For our brief moral existence we live, we learn and we succumb to death. The Great Adversary will claim us and if we have learned enough and lived enough then we will have done what we were meant to do - which is to know ourselves.

Just like how muscle tissue breaks down against resistance only to grow back stronger, so does our lives. The Adversary is that resistance, the force that makes that which is truly worth having difficult to attain. Satan is the reminder not to lay down and give up but rather to keep on living and to keep on reaching for our highest goals.

What opposes also encourages. Satan does not beat us into submission with unbeatable odds. The simple fact that we can overcome the challenges we face is encouragement enough to overcome these challenges.

It is by being adversarial that Satan completes his finest creation. He created us in his image, with the capacity to know him and then challenges us to do so.

That is why Satanolatry is the worship of Satan.