YES, WE KNOW

Greetings: Thank you for your unsolicited email, tweet, direct message, Facebook comment, or Instagram story.

Since you’re here despite nobody sending for you, we have a message that we’d like to share with you too. In brief:

Yes. We know.

We get a lot of messages these days, some of them very insightful, sincere, exciting, informative, encouraging, or constructive. We also got yours.

There’s just not enough time to get back to everybody with a personalized response. But every now and then we at least like to take a few extra moments to stop and say:

Yes. We know. We know already. Thank you so much. But we know.

“We know.”

Yes, we know all about the supposed significance of an upright versus an “inverted” pentagram.

Nineteenth century French occultist Eliphas Levi seemingly conceived of this distinction, writing in one of his High Magic books, “The pentagram is the figure of the human body, having the four limbs and a single point representing the head. A human figure head downwards naturally represents a demon, that is, intellectual subversion, disorder or madness.”

The word “naturally” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that second sentence, but okay. In any event, thank you for telling us again what these symbols allegedly mean, but as you can see, we know.

Yes, we know what St. Peter’s Cross is, and that it’s been used as a symbol of the Catholic papacy for centuries.

Yes, we know that this is supposedly on account of a myth that St. Peter had himself crucified upside down as a gesture of humility. Odds are this story never really happened, if for no other reason than that the Romans weren’t much interested in doing requests while executing you.

Since Protestant churches have long associated the Vatican with the devil, maybe the very fact that the upside down cross served as a Catholic symbol is the reason it some imagined it a mark of Satanism–but that’s just speculation on our part.

Eugene Vintras, a onetime box factory foreman in 19th century France who decided one day he was the messiah, adopted an upside down cross as the symbol of his movement. His more orthodox religious enemies smeared him as a supposed devil worshiper, and so possibly that was the first time anyone tied that symbol to Satan.

But in any case, yes, we know.

Yes, we know that the letters around the “Sigil of Baphomet” are Hebrew for “Leviathan.” Levi fanboy (and sworn enemy of Vintras disciples) Stanislas de Guiata illustrated this figure in his 1897 book The Key To Black Magic–ironically, a book written to condemn Satanism.

And yes, we know that different, incorrect lettering appeared on the art for one of the band Cradle of Filth’s 90s albums. Thank you for bringing it up again, we know.

Yes, we know that the Mark Porter-designed Satanic Temple monument of Baphomet doesn’t have breasts like the original Levi illustration. This did not escape our notice, as we too have eyes. Porter apparently modeled the torso on shirt-hesitant rockstar Iggy Pop.

This really doesn’t have anything to do with us, although since you seem to have a problem with it, it might be worth considering that the presence or absence of breasts are not what make a person–or a statue–feminine or non-feminine.

But in any case, it still doesn’t have anything to do with us, and yes, we know.

We know that you have a very particular idea of how to practice Satanism that you insist we adopt in place of ours.

“Everything you said was wrong, and I think that’s really brave of you.”

Rather than prod us about it, you might instead put in the time, the work, the money, the dedication, and the willingness to learn that it takes to create your own community, your own art, your own media, or your own network, instead of wondering why ours doesn’t improbably resemble your expectations already.

But yes, we know.

Yes, we know that that god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Actually, correction: We don’t know that. But we HAVE heard it before. The good news has reached our ears, no need to get on about it on our account.

Similarly, we know that Jesus died for our sins. If we’d known he was going to make a big thing about it we’d have told him not to go through all of the trouble.

Personally, I suspect that if Jesus existed at all he died not for my sins but for his own politics, and that actually sounds like a much more honest way to be a martyr.

But in any case, yes, we know.

Yes, we know that in Hell we’ll regret all of our wicked sodomite ways, and that no matter what we think, god is going to get us and our little dog too, we read the Chick Tract.

Yes, we know you have JK Rowling’s opinions about trans bathroom access and what you imagine is wrong with the kids these days, in most cases we could have guessed just from your profile picture, in any case fuck off, but we know.

We know you know Joe Biden is a secret shapeshifting Luciferian reptoid and thanks to the messages General Flynn had the birds tell you you’re onto us, we appreciate the update.

We know that you’re writing to invite us to join the Illuminated Brotherhood and that this is an exciting opportunity for us to share some enlightening wire transfer information with you. We’ll add you to the list.

Yes, we know you think we can’t be both Satanists and atheists and that to you that doesn’t make sense and that you employ “lol” as end punctuation. We know.

It’s not that we’re not interested in hearing from people. We’ve learned a lot from correspondence over the years. I expect we’ll learn a lot more in the future.

It’s just that in your case, we know already. Thank you for letting us know again. Actually no thank you, but whatever it takes to conclude this as rapidly as possible.

Because you see, we know already. Yes, we know.

“Yes, I was busy, I’m so glad we’re having this talk now instead.”