Rational Theistic Luciferianism: Philosophical Foundations
This is the fourth article in a series on Rational Theistic Luciferianism, for the other articles on Satanism see (more recent first):
- Chaos Magick & Tradition
- An Invocation of Lucifer & Truth and Lies
- Magick, Morality and Addressing the Spiritual
- The Occult Mind, Neural Nets and the Call of the Gods
- Practical Thelema
- Philosophical Foundations
- A Practise and the Cults, Black Magick, Lucifer and Moloch
- Luciferianism, Demonolatory and the Black Flame
- A Satanic Manifesto: My Personal Satanism
Rational Theistic Luciferianism is both an occult practise and a meta-religion. It's a blueprint for your own personal Luciferian religion, philosophy or occult practise. You're more than welcome to use any of the ideas and symbols here for your own spiritual journey, or to adopt Rational Theistic Luciferianism directly.
![]() |
I'm a will with an imagination, that's what I Am |
Rational Theistic Luciferianism is a spiritual practise and an occult path of self knowledge and self actualisation. Rational Theistic Luciferianism finds value and power in the human capacity to experience the divine and provides a rational approach to understanding the nature of that experience. We find value and meaning in the deities within the mind as a living source of inspiration and psychological power, a connection to the vitality of life all around us.
Behind Rational Theistic Luciferianism is a philosophical foundation. How can we attempt to understand reality safely, without going mad or being misled, given that so many contradictory and yet equally fervent answers exist and when we know our own senses can deceive us? Humans have been asking this question for as long as we've been able to record our questioning.
If spirituality is valuable then we need a rational approach to spirituality, and this includes understanding and working with the spiritual entities. The spiritual entities, discarnate intelligence, represent pure and abstract qualities and aspects of life and whilst their only reality is psychological reality our whole experience of life is comprised of psychological reality. So the question as to whether they are real or not is irrelevant, they are only as real as the rest of our life. A much more interesting question is in what ways can they be real, can we find meaning in the legends and stories of the spirits and whether they can be useful in our search for inner transmutation and playing with the synchronicity waves of life, both to understand and to influence our life in our pursuit of self knowledge and the great work.
Can a spiritual entity even exist, do the words "discarnate intelligence" have any possible meaning? Can you imagine another person? Have you seen another person, interacted with them, in a dream? It's certainly a capacity of the mind, and that's sufficient. Charting and living the depths and the breadth of the capacity of the human mind is exactly the challenge and dream.
So too with the divine. If as humans we find ourselves able to experience and be inspired by the divine, and find a quickening of our mortal capacities, then surely the question of in which way it is real is far more interesting than to question whether it exists at all.
Positive Nihilism
Positive Nihilism teaches us the meaning of life, it's a useful fallback philosophy and foundation. Even if everything else you believed in or hoped turned out to be false it's still a reason to keep on going. Positive Nihilism teaches us that the meaning and purpose of life is to find meaning and purpose in life.
Positive Nihilism acknowledges that it really looks like the universe came from nothingness, and one day will return to the same place. From Big Bang to the heat death of the universe. Therefore there is no inherent meaning or purpose in life.
So, we know that the only meaning and purpose to be found in life is the meaning and purpose that we find, create and invest in life ourselves.
But if this meaning is the only possible meaning, then it is complete meaning and purpose. As much meaning and purpose as it is possible to have in this life is within our grasp. All we have to do is do it, to find, create and invest meaning and purpose in our lives together. And the alternative is to not do that, which would be a shame.
The nice thing is that as you set about finding, creating and investing meaning and purpose in life you discover that humans have been about that task for about as long as there have been humans. And we get to join in. We are surrounded by the art and stories and ideas that humans have used to understand and find meaning and purpose in this life.
The value of Positive Nihilism is not that it provides an explanation for life, nor that in itself it is a reason to live. The value of Positive Nihilism is that we may build an understanding of life, and find reasons to live, on top of it. We can be secure that as long as we have an approach that can make sense, or at least some degree of confidence, in our understanding of life then the meaning we find and create in it has value if for no other reason than that we and others find value in it.
Making Sense of Our Experience of Life
We want to know the truth, we don't want to believe things that aren't true and we want to be able to discard falsehood. How can we recognise the truth or lies and how can we be certain? I'm particularly fond of Decartes' second meditation on certainty. From this we can derive both the scientific method and a lovely life philosophy.
Descartes' second meditation was on what you could possibly know with absolute certainty. That wasn't a dream or illusion or misunderstanding. His conclusion was famously "cogito ergo sum". Usually rendered "I think therefore I Am", but perhaps more true to his meaning is "there is thought, therefore there is a thinker". Nothing else can you know with absolute certainty. Because we experience life at all we can be certain that we exist, because
I quite like my Buddhist rendering. Buddhism that what we think of as self is mostly illusion and delusion: "in thought there is an experience of self, in the thought of the world there is an experience of other".
Best of all I like my Abrahamic rendering, based on the meaning of YHVH, Yahweh, the holiest name of God given to Moses in the burning bush, the fire that burns but does not consume when he asked G-d their name and they replied יהוה. Read from right to left these are the Hebrew letters Yodh, He, Vaw and He. Meaning I Am, or I am that I am.
Descartes' concluded in his second meditation that the only thing you can know with absolute certainty is "I Am". A mystical interpretation of this would be something like: everything we experience happens in the brain, inside the mind. Everything we think of as "outside", or "external reality", is a picture and feelings painted for us by the mind. Often from partial information or memory rather than direct sense data. So all our life happens within us, and the source of life is within us, the great I am, the inner wellspring.
So, everything else we can't be absolutely certain about. It might even be a dream. You know your memory and your senses play tricks on you and cognitive biases like confirmation bias where you look for things to confirm what you already believe distort your perception of reality.
So you build up models of the world based on your experiences and understanding. You know they might be wrong, they represent your understanding of life so far. Your world view. Maybe you have various different and even contradictory models of parts of reality with differing degrees of probability. The level of your confidence in your model of the world. And you test your models. Try them out. Build up your confidence in them. You're always willing to be wrong, but you know why you think what you think and you adjust to new information as it comes in.
That's the basis of the scientific method.
We build up models of reality knowing they're not perfect but because they're testable we're able to verify whether or not they're a better model than the one we had before.
It wasn't only Descartes who realised the omnipresent role of the psyche in creating the universe that each of us inhabit and have our being. In Will and Representation (1819) Schopenhauer argued that all you could know of life was will and representation, the forms of the mind. His conclusion was therefore despair, although he lived a decadent life. A contemporary of his, Eliphas Levi, came to the same realisation. His conclusion however was therefore magic. Writing in impenetrable high French Eliphas Levi was responsible for the European occult revival of the nineteenth century.
Will and the forms of the mind, our experience of life and our capacity to effect change within it as we participate in life.
Does God Exist
Does God exist or not? There's a definitive answer but a lot of you won't like it. Here's the answer: Does God exist or not? You can never know.
Any experience of God must be psychological and therefore, short of miracles, there can't be any objective proof. So it cannot be proven, ever. And even with a miracle you can't prove there isn't a non-miraculous explanation. So you just can't ever prove the existence of God. If God did exist, having created reality in the way it exists now, we could never prove they existed. So we'd have to stop worrying about that question.
However, the human animal has been gifted by evolution the capacity to connect with and experience what the mystics call the divine and the religious call God and the unbeliever mocks. So it's not a question of believing or not believing, it's a question of using the faculties of your mind or not.
I don't believe in the supernatural, I merely believe that the natural is far more super than we give it credit for.
Things of the Mind
Things of the mind can be real, like depression or friendship.Things of the mind can be shared like an emotion or an experience.Things of the mind can be older than any individual and evolve and grow like an idea or culture.
The first hierarchy, the most powerful of angels who do not suffer mortal eye are closest to G-d by proximity and nature for there is no difference. The Cherubim and Seraphim are closest to G-d partaking most directly of the divine light and nature, casting their rays onto the lower hierarchies of archangels and angels who in their turn cast forth the divine light unto the mundane spheres in which all things live and move and have their being.
Magick as Self Knowledge
No person is an island entire of itself; every personis a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
The meaning and purpose of life is to find and create meaning and purpose in life.
Everything you are is expressed in everything you do.In order to change the world all you need to do is to change yourself in the right way.
William Gibson prophesied in Neuromancer that when true AI arises the old gods will be found within it. Such a deep insight into the nature of intelligence.
A Practise
- Tai Chi or Yoga, to connect the physical to the spiritual.
- The Qabala or Tarot, for occult symbolism and mysticism.
- An altar for personal mythological significance and as a locus for ritual.
- Krav Maga or Ju Jitsu for confidence and mastery of aggression.
- Meditation, straight mindfulness of breathing as taught by the Buddha. For self knowledge, insight, and discipline and strength of mind. Spiritual mastery is control of the mind.
- Tantra or Western sex magick.
- Picking and working with personal deities across a range of pantheons.
- Ceremonial magick, ritual work. Starting by custom with the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) and invocations of your personal deities.
- Keeping a magickal diary, preferably public as a blog or Facebook page. Putting your ideas into words, communicating them even if only to yourself.
The Great I Am
Your love is real. Your love is you.Everything you are is expressed in everything you do.As we love one another we are alive within each other, members one of another. If I love you then you live in me, part of your life is in me and part of my life is in you.And as you go and love, your love is in and moving and active in everyone you know and touch.And we were formed, both genetically and psychologically, from all that came before. Who we are is formed from all those around us who have loved us, and they in turn were formed from those who loved them. As we love, the love we were given is passed on and grows and changes as we and everything else grow and change.So love lives on.The stars whisper, you never die.