Church of Azazel > Beliefs & principles > 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.

    Our ritual practices center around devotional worship of Satan/Azazel. By "worship," we do not mean self-denigration. We mean reverent love, adoration, awe. (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 aim for a balance between worship (often highly emotional) and 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.

    Our core beliefs are stated in the following articles:

    See also our Recommended practices for new and prospective members.

    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 to give our lives whatever meaning we want, based on our own deepest passions.

    At the present time, the Church of Azazel exists only online. We plan eventually to build offline covens/grottos/whatever once we find enough interested people in any given region. This is not likely to happen soon, because the Church of Azazel's leaders are now giving higher priority to other related projects (e.g. the Black Goat Cabal) which aim to advance the public visibility of the theistic Satanist scene as a whole rather than just our own particular form of Satanism. In the meantime, the Church-of-Azazel forum serves as a place of online fellowship for those who share our own approach to Satanism (or a compatible approach) and whom we have gotten to know via our public Theistic Satanism forums.

    We are now organized very informally, with no degree system and no clergy or people with fancy titles. This may change later, if/when we get big enough to have a need for formal clergy.

    We aim not only to build our own organization but also to do what we can to raise the intellectual level of the Satanist subculture as a whole.


  2. Brief history and background

    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 helped Rev. AAX launch the Cathedral of the Black Goat, which was originally intended as a group for traditional / theistic Satanists of all law-abiding kinds. Diane Vera, one of the charter members of the CoBG's Council of Six, created the original CoBG website and the Black-Goat email group in November 2002 C.E. She also created her own separate Theistic Satanism website and email groups.

    In May 2003 C.E. the Cathedral of the Black Goat divided into two distinct groups: (1) a reorganized Cathedral of the Black Goat, based in Texas, with the new aims, and (2) the Black Goat Cabal, which continued to bring together a variety of different kinds of traditional / theistic Satanists. The Black Goat Cabal, led by Diane Vera, originally defined itself as a network for traditional / theistic Satanist leaders and spokespeople and later re-defined its purposes to include outreach to the larger alternative religion subculture.

    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 eight 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 email group. Soon thereafter, she 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. Very annoyingly, many of them insisted on trying to promulgate their own 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 and still are 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. putting 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.

    Finally, 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.


  3. How to join the Church of Azazel

    We do not allow prsopective members to join immediately, but only after a mutual evaluation period of at least two months.

    If the Church of Azazel interests you, please join one or more (preferably at least two) of the public Theistic Satanism forums founded by Diane Vera, including the main Theistic-Satanism forum. Note that these forums are for discussion of all kinds of theistic Satanism, not just the Church of Azazel. So, if you are interested in the Church of Azazel in particular, please mention this in your introductory post.

    Please read the Recommended practices for new and prospective members of the Church of Azazel. While getting to know us in the Theistic Satanism forums, you should also begin your intellectual and emotional preparation for the two rituals we recommend for new members. Please keep us informed about your studies. Tell us what you've been reading lately and what you think of it, and feel free to ask questions. If and whenever you feel ready to perform either of the two rituals, please give us feedback (either in one of the Theistic Satanism forums or in private email to Diane Vera) on how it went for you. (However, you are NOT required to perform these rituals as a prerequisite to joining the Church of Azazel. Feel free to take your time preparing for them.)

    Also, it would be appreciated very much if you could compose and post, in one or more of our public forums. one or more devotional prayers which voice your own personal feelings toward Satan. (We recommend that you copyright your work informally but legally, as follows: (1) Somewhere in your post, include the word "Copyright", followed by the copyright symbol ("©"), followed by the year, followed by your name or a pen name, followed by "All rights reserved." (2) Send a printout to yourself via certified postal mail. (3) When you receive it back in the mail, don't open it. Keep it sealed until such time as you may need to open it in court to prove that you wrote a given work on or before a particular date.)

    If you already practice magick of any kind, or are studying it, discussion of magic(k)al technique is welcome too, if you wish to talk about it.

    After two months of posting regularly (at least three or four posts per week) in at least one and preferably at least two of the public Theistic Satanism forums, you may then request membership in the online Church of Azazel itself by applying to join our private members-only forum Church-of-Azazel.

    In addition to the required participation in our public Theistic Satanism forums, we also recommend (but do not require) that prospective members of the Church of Azazel participate in one or more of the following semi-private Theistic Satanism forums too, after satisfying their preliminary screening requirements:  (1) If you are new to theistic Satanism, please join Theistic-Satanism-questions. (2) If you are from a conservative Christian background or are otherwise deeply familiar with fundamentalist or traditionalist Christianity, please join Theistic-Satanists-ex-hard-Xian. (3) To discuss ways to advance the public visibility of theistic Satanism, both in the alternative religion scene and in the world at large, please join Black-Goat. (NOTE: Please do NOT attempt to join any of these semi-private forums without FIRST following these forums' screening requirements.) If you live surrounded by pesky Christians or other pesky Abrahamics, we also recommend that you join the public Counter-Evangelism forum.

    It is also recommended, though not required, that prospective Church of Azazel members join one or more of the semi-private Theistic Satanism forums, in addition to the public Theistic Satanism forums. But please do NOT apply to join the semi-private forums without first satisfying their screening requirements.

    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 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 to have offline chapters. 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 coven, 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.



Back to: