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My dad made a comment on my article about my altar, and mentioned that he tried satanism at one point. It made me remember my own experience with Satanism in high school. Most people will think this is going to be a bad story, but it’s actually one of the things in my life that made me think, and made me realize you can’t judge a book by its cover.
I was bullied at school and abused at home and really in a bad place in high school. I didn’t have a lot of friends either. I did have one best girl friend, and she had a boyfriend. I found out that he was a satanist, and the he and a bunch of other kids I knew practiced together. One day they took me to their hangout, and i saw a necronomicon that they had.
I was miserable and angry and Satanism, as far as I knew, was all about death and dark spells and revenge. It sounded perfect. maybe I could get some revenge on the bullies and my abusive family. One of the guys saw me eying the book, and when I reached for it he asked “What are you doing?” I said I wanted to look and I wanted to be a Satanist. He said, with a very mature-looking seriousness in his face “This isn’t for you.” and took the book away. I asked why. “This isn’t your path.” I asked him to explain, but he simply stuck to those four words.
I never told anyone about what they were doing. There was something there though, and to this day I can’t explain it. I didn’t get bullied much after that day. Why? Because those kids, and the other kids knew they were Satanists, stuck up for me. If they saw someone giving me a hard time, one of them would step in and get all tough and creepy. They scared people. No one dared to keep on me when they knew I was under the protection of the Satanist crowd. And you know, they never told me why, and rarely a word was ever shared between me and them for the rest of my time in school. But for whatever reason, they became my quiet guardians.
After all these years I realize Satanism wouldn’t have been the path for me, but how did they know? What did that guy see that I didn’t? I’ll never know. One thing’s for sure, I never looked down on a Satanist and actually have defended them many times over the years. When I began spiritual studies, I learned the truth of Satanism, as opposed to the goat-killing cult nonsense that gets spread on TV. I actually hold some of the same beliefs they do, just in a different way.
That experience really changed me. I learned that you need to really know what something is for yourself, not what the masses may tell you about it. The bad apples get the most press, but that doesn’t mean they represent the whole bunch.
