Why Satanism?

An answer by Minister Jared Nichols

Baphomet with Children

Unveiling Day is a “celebration of religious plurality and shedding archaic superstition”
- The Satanic Temple -

I was recently approached by a colleague to write up my response to the questions: Why Satanism? From my experience, Satanists tend to be fiercely independent and wildly original individuals from all walks of life, backgrounds, and previous experiences. I expect the answer to this question is going to vary quite a bit depending on who you talk to, which is why I think he is launching this campaign to begin with. That being taken into consideration, I would also expect to see some common, if not unanimous, similarities from all those involved in this project. I have been looking forward not only to participating in this effort but also to seeing all the different responses compiled at the end. For my own response, I am going to approach it from a very personal perspective to hopefully relate to the best of my ability why I choose to align myself with Satanism.

 The more I try to point to one defining moment that I “became a Satanist,” the harder it is to do so. Being a Satanist is something that is a culmination of my past experiences, orthodoxies, and choices, as well as something that is currently changing shape and evolving in my day-to-day life. I might say the moment I “became a Satanist” was one sunny day while riding my bike through the edge of the foothills near the Rocky Mountains. I was listening to the band Ghost on my headphones and meditating on the nature of reality, and specifically my fixation on metaphysics and the supernatural. Suddenly, I had somewhat of an epiphany. I realized that my intense focus on the supernatural was not only distracting me from improving my life and the lives of those around me, but also was causing me a great deal of undue stress and anxiety. I realized I could make the conscious choice not to care if there was an afterlife, gods, spirits, or anything outside of my natural perception. By embracing a non-theistic mindset, I experienced a major shift in perspective since I had, for most of my life, held a very theistic view of the universe and reality. This moment was marked with a great feeling of freedom, and like a weight had been lifted from me. But to say that this one experience was enough to make me want to identify with Satanism would be insufficient. To understand how I arrived here, we have to examine my past more carefully. Most of this article is going to be my life story, so if that does not interest you, you can skip to about page seven, where we arrive at the present. If you have the time and the desire, I strongly encourage you to read the whole article, as I feel this deep dive into my past is necessary to understand why I became a Satanist. Without this context, the philosophy of satanism would likely appear very different to me and may not be a part of my life today.

 I was raised in a very strict Roman Catholic family. Church every Sunday, sometimes during weekdays as well, and always on holy days of obligation. My life was full of constant prayer, the rosary every night, CCD, which is a Catholic Catechism class for children, and being an altar boy. At that time, it would have made my parents overjoyed if one of their children had joined the priesthood, and in some ways, we were being prepared for that. I was even pulled out of school for a few years to be homeschooled with a Christian focus. From as long as I can remember, God was always very real and present to me. I would tell my parents that I could see angels and occasionally demons. I felt that God was constantly having a dialogue with me in my mind. These types of things were met with confirmation and positive attention. I was hailed as somewhat of a spiritual savant and had the privilege of leading some classes at a very early age. I have been told multiple times by multiple people that I have a special connection with God and the spiritual realm. This all seemed very good and positive until I was about 12 or 13 when I developed severe inflammatory bowel disease.

 Having such a close relationship with God, my first reaction to this illness was that it obviously had something to do with my relationship with him. At this age, I started to develop sexually, experimenting with myself and my male friends (I had been told not to do anything with girls but not boys!) I assumed I was being punished for my sexual activity, and according to the Catechism, this tracked. So I tried to cure my illness by going to confession regularly and praying more and more. I hid it from my parents as I was very embarrassed. Eventually, it got so bad that every time I went to the bathroom, it was basically just a large quantity of blood, so after a few weeks of that, I did finally go to my parents because I became scared for my life. Their reaction was appropriate, and they took me to a hospital. The hospital said I was almost in need of a blood transfusion. After going through a colonoscopy (which was very traumatic; I was the kind of kid who couldn’t even swallow a pill) and getting on some medication, my symptoms improved but did not completely go away. The next five to ten years would be filled with numerous procedures, medications, faith healers, a visit to an exorcist, and countless hours crying and praying. Most of the time, I was encouraged to “offer up my suffering to the souls in purgatory”. My pain was treated as holy and necessary despite the visible stress it caused my family. Suffering was some kind of gift I could use to help dead people I have never met. Throughout this time, I developed multiple complications, including a blood clot in my brain, which thankfully was dissolved before causing permanent damage. I also developed significant depression and anxiety, and other mental health symptoms that wouldn’t fully coalesce until later in life.

 One other experience I would like to note that occurred during this time was when my parents eventually found out I had been experimenting sexually with other boys. I was taken out to the middle of a field in the country near our house at night. My dad told me I had to kneel and pray about it, and only when it was resolved could I come home. He left me there, and I was afraid and sad and confused. I prayed for as long as I could and walked home. I understand now he had been keeping an eye on me from nearby, but I felt very alone at the time. This experience will always stick with me. After this, there were constant questions about whether I was gay. To which I said I was not because I was very sexually attracted to girls as well, often sneaking away to look at pornographic magazines with my friends or on the computer. At the time, I didn’t really understand bisexuality as a thing, and since I was generally more attracted to girls than boys, I thought that meant I was straight. But I was under constant scrutiny from then on. If I were to select a female character in a game, they would ask if I wanted to be a girl. Because of this, I didn’t really come to terms with my sexuality until just in the last seven years or so.

In middle school and high school, I was teased a lot for having red hair and being lithe and nerdy. I also missed a lot of school due to my illnesses, so I didn’t see my classmates as much as other kids. I started developing extreme sleep issues as well, where upon waking, I would be unsure of who I was, where I was, and what was going on around me. Lights would burn, voices sounded like gunshots, and it was stimulation overload. This has never been fully understood despite sleep studies, but it sounds like it was most likely a symptom of my dissociative disorder. It may or may not be related to my medical and religious trauma. But because of all of this, I started to feel very “othered”. Like I was a different species or in some way fundamentally different from my peers. I did not know where I fit into the world or how I was supposed to adapt to a lifestyle so difficult for me to maintain. Between my health and the way other kids treated me in general, I knew I had to be incredibly different in some way. I was not sure if that was good or bad, but it was very lonely. Even those kids I bonded with through video games didn’t really understand what my life was like, and I found it hard to relate to them.

 It is hard to say if it was late middle school or early high school that I really started to have doubts that God existed, or at least that he was all good. In middle school, I had immersed myself in Steven King and Anne Rice, and I started to entertain different ideas about the nature of God and our place in the universe. I still felt like God would talk to me in my mind sometimes, and that there had to be a plan or meaning to all my suffering. I was still being treated like somewhat of a religious savant. When a Catholic goes through the sacrament of confirmation, they typically adopt the name of a Saint. I chose my own name and was allowed to be confirmed as such. I even had a priest tell me that if I died from my inflammatory bowel disease, he would petition to have me canonized as a Catholic Saint. This made me feel like I had some great thing to live up to and put a lot of pressure on me. It also greatly inflated my ego. However, I was also dealing with a lot of Catholic guilt. If you were raised Catholic, you know what I mean. We were taught that people are born sinful and that life is a kind of purification. Every animalistic thought or impulse is sinful, and sins run the gamut from venial to mortal. Most of our time was spent finding out what we did wrong and doing penance. If you were suffering in your life, it was either because of your sin or to be given up for the sin of another. This kind of guilt mindset is something that I still struggle with, although it has gotten better in recent years.

 For all but the last year of high school, I was attending a private Catholic high school. About my junior year, I was introduced to the goth scene by some friends, most of whom were from public school. These were people who seemed to have decided that life sucks, things are bad, and so I am just going to go all in on being myself and fuck what everyone thinks. This kind of mindset was completely new to me. I had been raised to believe that you existed at the pleasure of God and the best thing you could accomplish in life was getting yourself, and if you were really ambitious, as many other people as you could, into heaven. Living for yourself was a revolutionary concept to me. And admitting that the world was flawed and unnecessarily painful? That suffering didn’t have a purpose and was just a net negative? This directly contradicted my understanding of everything fitting into God’s plan and suffering being a gift. I started to identify with this culture and lean into it. My drawings and writing started to reflect darker tones and themes of duality. For the first time in my life, I started to feel like there was some element of society that I could see myself fitting into and identifying with, much to the dismay of my parents and the school I was attending.

 Eventually, it got to a point with the school where the principal pulled me into his office and kindly asked me to leave and go to public school. I had been caught smoking cigarettes outside, and my style of dress and general demeanor did not fit into the school’s aesthetic. I was asked to finish my senior year at the public school. This was a difficult transition for me since all I had been used to was Catholic school. I had attended a public middle school, but I was out for quite a bit of that time with my illnesses. I did have some fun at the public school. There were more goth kids there, and it was easier to sneak off and smoke. But I did not really develop any ties in that community or make any new friends on a deep level. I still, in many ways, felt like an outsider. At this time, I considered myself more of an agnostic Christian. I felt like I was walking the line between darkness and the light. I loved black and white imagery and continue exploring dualistic themes in art. Art was one of my favorite classes, and psychology. I enjoyed drawing and writing.

 After high school, I tried to go to college for psychology since I had taken some advanced placement psychology classes in high school and done very well. I always tested well in school. I enjoyed reading the textbooks and other literature. I just missed so much school that it became a problem. The same thing happened in college; I could not make it to classes. After less than a year, I had to drop out of college and return home. I had also just broken up with my girlfriend and was in a very dark place. To make matters worse, my inflammatory bowel disease was acting up, and I could not find a medicine that could fully get it into remission, even very dangerous “black box” warning medications only provided temporary relief. At that time, I had heard marijuana could help with inflammation, so one night while drinking beer with some friends, I decided to try it. After only a few sessions, I had major symptom relief. I was going to the bathroom less, in much less pain, and the bleeding even stopped. This was borderline miraculous to me, and it further shook my worldview. I started to gravitate more towards the stoner culture and the use of psychedelics, specifically, more natural ones. After a year or two of this, I considered myself more of a shaman and identified with eclectic new age paganism.

 This time of drug experimentation was also marked by a lot of family strife. Although my parents were starting to show some signs of opening up their minds to more than just strict Catholic teachings, they were very much against drug use and the choices I was making. There were constant fights; one time, particularly, I remember my mom throwing pillows at me and yelling that I was not her son. Another time, my dad chased me down the street and tackled me on my friend’s stairs when I tried to leave the house. Eventually, I reached a point where I was kicked out of the house, and I lived with a close friend and his family for about a year before getting an apartment with him.

 At this point, I was using weed a bit too much, daily and in large quantities, so as not to have to deal with feeling everything I was feeling in my life. Despite that, I considered things to be mostly good, but was struggling to hold down a job with my illnesses and constant respiratory infections from smoking vast quantities of cigarettes and weed. And many of my close friends at the time were drug dealers and starting to get into harder drugs, something that didn’t interest me. I was in my twenties and really started to want to settle down and build some kind of life for myself. I had been holding out for a long time, thinking I might get back with my ex, but I decided I had to start dating again. Around this time, I met my wife through a previous co-worker. I was very impressed with her; she was smart and lived a more conservative life than I had, but she really met me where I was at and encouraged me to improve my life while never demanding anything from me. I started to rely less on drugs and more on seeing her.

 Eventually, I moved back in with my parents for a short while before getting a place with my girlfriend. Shortly after this, my parents went through a divorce. Following the divorce, they both really relaxed and opened their minds to more ways of living. They are both much more agnostic now. They accept people of all sexual orientations and genders. They don’t really go to church, and they are open to hearing about my religious beliefs and what I do. I am honestly shocked and amazed, as well as immensely proud of how far they have come in terms of acceptance and support. But let me get back to the story.

 After a few years, my wife and I decided to get married, which is a funny little story I will tell her briefly. I was walking home from work one day, and as my normal habit was “talking to god” in my mind, trying to decide if I should propose to her now or wait much longer. I made a deal with God and told him if he wanted me to propose today, that when I get home and check the mail, he should put a hundred dollars in it for me. I thought that was funny and a good way to end our “conversation”. When I arrived home, I checked the mail, and there was a check from my phone company for a hundred twenty dollars and some change for reimbursement of some overcharges. I took this as a sign that I had to get married. It is a funny coincidence, but that is one of the cool things about life: sometimes things line up in ways that our pattern-recognition brain latches onto. Anyway, I am very glad we got married. We just had our tenth anniversary, and my wife is easily the best thing in my life

 A few years later, I was unsure of where my faith stood. I tried attending an Episcopal church to get back in touch with my Christian roots. I have nothing but good things to say about them. They have a very charitable and radical love approach to Christianity. There was no preaching about hellfire, judgment, or glorification of suffering. They also didn’t have weird borderline witchcraft beliefs like the Catholics. One thing specifically I am referencing is the Catholic Scapular. It’s a magical piece of cloth that you get blessed a certain way (depending on the color of it), and then you NEVER take it off, and it’s supposed to ward you from various stuff, such as storms or untimely death. It is also supposed to be impossible for you to go to hell if you have a brown one on. If you are too sinful and are going to die, you will neglect to put it on, or it will levitate off you, or something. I wore mine constantly, impulsively. They would start to stink after several months, and you would have to get a new one. It was immensely freeing the day I finally took it off. I felt so scared and naked. But free at the same time.

 Even though Episcopalianism was much, much more laid back, I still had fear of hell, desire for heaven, and a belief that there was this supernatural world around me that had a direct influence on my life. I even wrote a book trying to prove the existence of God, which was 300 pages and never published. I considered myself something of a modern mystic and felt like I had some great responsibility. This caused me a great deal of distress, especially with my anxiety and depression. I would meet with priests to talk about it, but it did very little to help.

 Eventually, we decided to move to Colorado to find a better life. I was tired of Wisconsin; marijuana was illegal here, and people are not very progressive. My brother was living in Colorado at the time, so we moved to live with him before getting our own apartment. Colorado was incredibly beautiful, and the people there were amazing. I loved it so much. I really felt like I was somewhere where I could be myself, and those around me accepted me. I felt like I had shared values with the community and loved getting out into the mountains. But it was also incredibly expensive. I was working from home as a customer care supervisor, and my wife was a librarian. Around this time is when I had the experience riding my bike, which I started this essay with. We were just barely keeping above water. I started to get sick again and miss work, and we started going into debt. At one point, everything came down to my getting a promotion, which I did not get. And then my job told me that “I quit,” which I in fact never did. We were forced to move home. That was the last straw for me. I had felt that God wanted me to be in Colorado, and being forced to move home completely shattered any remaining faith I had left in a higher power. I was now an atheist.

 So I was back where I started, essentially, in Wisconsin, without a job and now without faith. I had fully embraced several things at this point. One is that God was a myth conjured up in an effort to try to explain things people did not yet understand, and also to control others. Another is my life growing up, “talking to God,” and blending the supernatural into my view of reality has altered the way I perceive the world and myself. A lot of my mental health problems, like my extreme anxiety, depression, and newly diagnosed dissociative disorder, came from my magical thinking, genetic predisposition, and medical and religious trauma, not some great invisible deity. I knew that changing my way of thinking and starting the process of recovery was going to be a long and arduous process, but one I was ready to begin. I also identified that I missed some things from religion. I missed most of all the community of people gathered with shared beliefs and values for a common purpose. I missed some of the theatrics of high mass, such as the incense and the mantras. I also felt a hole in my life had been created that was once filled by my study of psychology and my early forays into Christian leadership. I felt a need to understand not only my thinking process but that of others. I needed a vehicle to practice empathy and ministry in a secular way.

 My first real exposure to Satanism was through Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible. In many ways, I thought this was brilliant. Here is someone saying we can form a religion where there is no god other than the self. This fit in really well with my philosophy of being a goth as a teenager, and the aesthetic he conveyed matched that as well. I liked how he pointed out all the damage that Christianity is capable of doing and how much more we can accomplish by focusing on ourselves and what is real. I thought his concepts of ritual were intriguing, as well as it reminded me of mass, but it was all just a psycho drama created to have a psychological effect rather than a magical one. The way he got into all the details of his ritual practice resonated with what I had been exposed to looking into paganism and shamanism, combined with an inversion of classic Christian themes. This felt both like a great avenue for creative output as well as a way to really create some meaningful moments for myself and others. This excited me greatly, and I started looking into The Church of Satan.

 The more I looked into the Church of Satan, the more I started questioning some of its beliefs. I had recently begun the process of applying for disability, and as someone with chronic conditions, the whole “might is right” and social Darwinism concepts didn’t feel good to me. In general, a lot of the stuff I saw on their messaging boards felt outdated, gatekeeping, and close-minded. But it was through looking into them that I found out about The Satanic Temple.

 Like many people, my introduction to TST was the documentary “Hail Satan?”. I came into it worrying that they were just a bunch of trolls, based on what CoS was saying. The documentary really convinced me that this was a group of diverse people with shared deeply held beliefs that used satire, among other things, as powerful tools for positive change. I was very moved by this and immediately went to see if there was a congregation in my area. At the time, all we had was a candidate group, so I was able to get involved on the ground floor of helping us become a congregation. When we finally became a full-fledged congregation in 2020, it was one of the proudest moments of my life.

 So now that you know how I got here, let me tell you why I am a Satanist. Being an atheist is telling someone what you are not, what you don’t believe in. For me, you lack a lot of things here, mainly a community and a way to commemorate important events and changes. Satanism has these in spades. Community is essential for what I do with The Satanic Temple. Without our community, we could accomplish nothing. A solitary practitioner of any religion or philosophical movement can only really affect their own life. Even some famous people we may think of as being solo practitioners had huge followings, and this is why they were able to make an impact. And ceremony is something that I have seen do such meaningful work in people’s lives. From unbaptisms to weddings, affirmations, and even blasphemy, these events are surrounded by outpourings of emotions, the release of trauma, and further deepening of the bonds of community.

 Being a Satanist taught me that I matter, that my life has meaning. Not because it’s part of some divine unknowable plan, not because the stars lined up a certain way on my birthday, but because it matters to me, it means something to me, and that is greater than anything that could be predetermined by some omnipotent force. This is something that cannot be shaken, nor can it be disproven or taken from me. My life has meaning because I create that meaning for myself. And because I am the author of my own fate, I can choose how to use the power of my life and choose what I consider to be a worthy investment of my time.

 Being a tenet satanist has given me a philosophical framework to ground me and help to process events in my life through the lens of the seven tenets, yet without dogma or superstition. It gives me tools to use as I see fit, to mold to my given situations to help me be successful in my pursuits. The fifth tenet I use often. “Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.” This is my mantra when my mind tries to fall back into magical thinking. When I think I see patterns where none exist, when I think “God” is trying to talk to me or forces beyond my control are influencing me, I ask, “Is there any solid, scientific evidence for this assertion?” With none being found, I disregard that line of thought. Another one I have been using more recently is the first tenet: “ One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.” Again, I turn this inward. I struggle with invasive thoughts, usually negative ones about my self-worth or lack of ability, or even that maybe I shouldn’t be around. As someone who has always felt a great deal of compassion for the world around me, despite its othering me time and time again, I remind myself that I have to feel the same amount of compassion for myself. When my mind tries to tell me that maybe I should just die, I tell myself that I need to be compassionate to myself.

 Satanism informs not only how I view myself but how I view the world around me. Satan is definitely something I do not believe in literally, but the idea of Satan is a powerful symbol and a motivational force in my life. If there could be a creature that stood up to an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent deity and said, no, I matter, others matter, you are a tyrant, and I will crush you or die trying, then the least I could do is say the same in the face of human-created tyranny and oppression. Embodying Satan to me means many things. It means embracing the outsider status and bringing together communities of fellow outsiders so they can be part of something. It means taking action when you see tyranny in the world, be it in a family setting or a global one. It means acting as a “light-bringer”, a Prometheus who brings the powers some thought only reserved for gods to every human being. It means offering the apple of knowledge to the masses, letting them choose for themselves what is good and what is evil. It means shining a light in the darkness for those who are searching for truth and answers, and in some cases, bringing that light directly to bear to counter the shadow of faith and conformity cast by theism.

 I had never been one to involve myself much in work outside myself. It was not really a thing taught in Catholicism. The focus was on getting into heaven, and fighting your sinful nature was a full-time job. I was exposed to charity work a little bit with Episcopalianism, and I loved it. Satanism has really pushed me to make this a part of my daily life. Meaningful acts of compassion, the pursuit of justice, and personal freedom are worthwhile pursuits that now occupy a large portion of my thoughts and actions. I would never have gotten involved in these things without my Satanic community. I see all the good works done by Menstratin’ with Satan drives, food drives, highway clean-ups, blood drives, and countless other actions. It felt at one point like I was very much a victim of fate, of circumstances, of bad genetics, or other things. But now I see how, even despite those things, and sometimes because of how I use those things, I can make a meaningful difference in the world.

 Satanism has also fulfilled my vocational interests in psychology by allowing me to pursue ministry. Becoming a Satanic minister has opened the door to continuing education that deals directly with providing support for people and creating an environment that fosters critical thinking and radical empathy. Being a minister has allowed me to work with people in a capacity that I had given up on when I was not able to attend college. When I went on disability, it was a very difficult decision. I felt like I was giving up my agency and any chance I had to actually operate in the world as an advocate and counselor. But over the past few years, I have realized it was the opposite. It has given me the freedom to pursue those things on my own terms and in my own time without having my worth defined by a paycheck or how many days I can clock in. It allowed me to grow as a person and a professional in ways that I could never have with a traditional career.

 Every day, week, and month, I learn more about the rich tapestry of Satanic thought. From romantic era writers like Anatole France to the father of liberalism, John Locke, to modern-day authors such as Lilith Star and Joseph Laycock. Each day, I see the tenets of my religion in a slightly different way, and I enjoy our monthly “Devil’s Parlor” discussions in our congregation, which often revolve around them. There are so many Satanic ministers writing now, on here and on other sites, that the wealth of ideas seems inexhaustible. The Satanic Temple has regular Hellmouth services that are always great food for thought and never preachy or dogmatic. Everyone is open to having their own opinion and ideas.

Recently, I have begun to see Satan as a warrior as well, leading the charge against the tyranny of heaven. We constantly see Christians showing up to events to protest and make a scene. That is something we can do as well, and was done more in the early days of The Satanic Temple, it seems. I think that counter-protesting, and in some cases protesting certain types of Christian events directly, is a radically Satanic action. I firmly believe in religious plurality and that everyone’s religion deserves equal treatment, and all religions should stay out of politics. However, that is not the reality in this country and much of the world. We are in a war of ideas, and theocracy has encroached into places it should not be. Acts of blasphemy, public demonstrations, and countering apologetics are all incredibly useful tools that need to be explored and employed when appropriate. If the thinking, rational person remains silent, then the conversation is dominated by superstition and supernatural voices that not only want to convert others but also force those who disagree to conform anyway. This is the very essence of injustice, and to do nothing is a gross misuse of our agency.

So now you should have at least a basic understanding of what Satanism means to me and why I choose to identify as a Satanist. I understand that Satanism is not for everyone, and I would never try to convert someone to any religion. Religious affiliation is a highly personal choice which should only be entered into in the full agreement of the will and of the mind. Every Satanist’s back story is different. I know many Satanists who grew up atheist or in various other religions. There is no one set recipe to follow that turns one into a Satanist, but there are definitely things we hold as common ground and shared beliefs. This is just one such story of a person’s journey out of the darkness of faith and into the light of rationality. I hope you found this useful, thought-provoking, or at the very least entertaining. While we don’t try to get people to join us, I think it is important that we share our stories to create empathy between ourselves and the rest of society. I think it is equally important to do this, so those who may be searching for something like this know where to find us. Until next time, Ave Satanas!

Special note: I understand that after reading this, you may feel some way about my parents and how I was raised. I do as well, and for my teen years, this was a great source of rage for me. In my adult life, I have come to understand that my parents were legitimately doing what they thought was in my best interest at the time. This does not change how these things affected my life and the trauma they caused, but it does change the way I perceive my parents’ actions and allows me to empathize with them. I have chosen to forgive them, but my religion does not demand this of me, nor is it the right choice for everyone in a similar situation. I have known people who have had to cut ties with their family for the health of everyone involved, most importantly, their own, and that is completely valid. I currently have a very good relationship with my parents. They are aware I am a Satanic minister, and I share what I do with them. They are supportive and encouraging. They are aware I am bisexual, and I also have a sister who is part of the LGBTQ community, and they are supportive of her as well. They don’t get everything right all the time, but I am immensely impressed by how far they have come as people. Not everyone can say the same; sadly, it seems more often than not, people stay immersed in the same ignorance and closed-mindedness their entire lives. Many people who engage in religious abuse can never see past their beliefs, despite the best efforts of their loved ones. I love my parents and do not want my life’s story to harm them, but I think it was important to share my story so people can understand how I got to where I am, and also so that if someone else is in a similar situation, they may feel less alone.

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This essay was written by Min. Jared Nichols. To hear more from them, please check out their essay below.

Street Epistemology and Tenet Satanism