The more exoteric a religion is, the more personal of a God it believes in. The more esoteric a religion is, its God is less human-like and thus less petty. All ideas about God being “jealous,” “vengeful,” or even “loving” in any personal sense are sentimental nonsense at best. The theologico-poetical claim that “God is love” may be correct if referring to the importance and depth of love – feelings of compassionate unity – as the innermost depth of being that is God. An occultist’s God is always Absolute, not personal. There can be no thing in creation which would not be of God, and thus God is also behind evil things in the world. There is no escaping this philosophical and theological fact. Just like a human’s perception of right and wrong are inconceivable mysteries for an ant, similar is true of our understanding of simplistic, formal morals in the Absolute. The only clear thing is that there can be no benevolent, omnipotent God, for, in that case, there would be no unjust suffering in the world – like there obviously is.
The very beginning of the sevenfold basics of the Star of Azazel is about the importance of the ABSOLUTE God:
“The First Point. DOCTRINE OF UNITY.
The Divinity is Absolute. Spirit is everywhere beyond and immanent in all material phenomena, as nature’s inner reason and guiding principle. Nature or God cannot be dualistically divided, and the highest God, the highest truth, cannot be understood as a personal being.”
It is not important whether one even wants to see that God – the innermost essence of everything – as self-conscious or not. Occultism, however, believes in all-pervading consciousness as the most fundamental thing in existence, and thus it also believes in consciousness of, in, from and as God. But that is not demanded: many people nowadays see the universe as a conglomerate of blind forces, which is understandable in our age. But the same cannot be said for the personality of God, the innermost being. For in case one projects human-like personal attributes onto God, such a God becomes a sad mimicry of a human being, a petty and false idol. These “jealous,” “vengeful,” or even “loving” Gods seen as the highest form of existence make it impossible to join them to other religions’ and world views’ ideas since the very idea of personality is in lack of the characteristics opposite to that personality. If the formal depiction of the exoterical Jehovah is true, then the formal depiction of Krishna is false, and vice versa, and so on, with all the other monotheistic “one true” gods. Only the occultist understands that all such god-depictions are true in their own context since the “personalities” of these god-images are metaphors for the great spiritual laws of the cosmos.
The worldviews of an atheist and a theist seem to be impossible to mend together, but actually, it is not so. What both of these groups can believe in – if they so choose – are the best qualities in our focus of being. Concerning atheists, the problem is that they cannot accept that such qualities are not human-projected but see them dwelling only in humankind. But so what? As occultists, we think that they are mistaken in this. Instead, humankind is made in and by the model of good qualities that have pre-existed before humanity in celestial intelligences. There has been love, meaning and truthfulness even before the first human-like being walked on planet Earth. But usually, we have no need to press this point, for such a debate is metaphysical instead of practical. Let the atheists believe that morally good characteristics exist only in humankind if they just believe that ethically good characteristics do indeed form the most valuable part of our humanity. It is not of primary importance whether we see the importance of ethics projected into reality solely from humanity or pre-existing that humanity, as long as we believe in the utmost need of that projection.
The bigger problem is the theist’s claim that there is only one true God, theirs, and that other religions and world views are simply wrong. That, too, might not be so dangerous if their God would demand from humanity ethical living foremost: in that case, atheists and theists could meet in harmony, regardless of their theological and cosmological beliefs. But unfortunately, religions have always been so intermingled with politics that what people believe their Gods demand is not ethical living under fundamentally benevolent qualities of love and truthfulness, but instead different bizarre mysteries of irrational faith. Luckily, many people have enough sense to see through such a demand and, in practice, try to behave in an uplifting way instead of trying to convert everyone to their own theological sect or wipe them out with “sacred” violence. Since every sacred book is necessarily a collection of paradoxes, and almost always consists of a lot of books brought together from many different authors of different centuries of culture, both of these groups – religious humanists and religious zealots – are equally able to defend their views by citing various passages from their sacred texts. The problem is never solved: it endures as a dilemma of one’s intelligence, empathy, conscience and choice.
The Star of Azazel accepts members from many different creeds: atheists, agnostics, and theists willing to undersign the above-mentioned idea of God transcending all human-like attributes. While it is obvious that an Absolute God – by definition present everywhere and in everything – is present also in human characteristics, He/She/It can never become separated from the antithesis of such attributes. And from this foundation stems our Satanism, too: while adoring God in His beautiful qualities, we, as Satanists, hate such a God in its ugly qualities. “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked: he covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if not, where, and who is he?” – Book of Job, 3:24. We, human beings, must be better than the non-dividing Absolute, the highest being, who does both good and evil. Or, to say it in the language of a personal God-believing theist: In case God would demand us to do evil, we must be better than such a petty, obviously human-conceived God. A human being, necessarily living in time and separation, must choose, unlike transcendent beings that behold all creation at once.
Why go through this over once again? Hasn’t this all been said in Fosforos? The idea of an Absolute God was indeed discussed in length twenty years ago when the philosophical points of the Star of Azazel were formulated. But in those times, New Age spirituality was almost exclusive to the Right Hand Path, and, thus, different from today’s “Satanic New Age” movement. Nowadays, we have a large number of Satanists and Left Hand Path mystics who believe in a PERSONAL God named Satan. They either lack the intelligence to see the deep philosophical problems of such a claim or, at least as often, do not care. Our time is the time of demands of instant gratification, instant memes and instant theses, which need not make sense but for a split second. With all the possibilities of deep knowledge at our fingertips, what do we choose to do with them?
There is one possible personal, anthropomorphic God: a human being, transcending one’s pettiness and ascending to touch and emanate godhood. Such is the high state of the master, a human being who has become “as a channel of All,” as Laozi put it. “I and Father are one,” can such a perfected being say, for one has truly understood divinity in theory and practice via perfect ethics and perfect spirituality that is magical powerful living – extremely demanding yet possible. But such a perfect master soon becomes a master unseen, going away from the world “which did not know him,” like it must be for a long time still. And such an avataric being will never condemn others who even try to find this upward path, the path of truthfulness and compassion. They will never demand death or conversion of another being, only tolerance and non-violence. These will be demanded. Through such Sons and Daughters is God felt; through them, it becomes personal and has the best human characteristics. But instead of throwing ourselves at the feet of such perfected human beings, we must do our utmost to become like them – to become gods, to become one true God, perfected through the best attributes of humanity.
Salome 
Good points leveling well with the contemporary times. Although we can, to a degree, experience spiritual entities interacting with us almost like another person would or at least express it in that way, there is a need to understand and keep in mind the philosophical basis of these entities. A mind that is tuned and tensioned by theism will have their astral sphere affected by the tension and the demands of their chosen deity. The less philosophical bases one has touched regarding their god, the more obscure and loose the demands may be or become. The more there is understanding towards the philosophy, the more justifiable the demands should be and the more clarity one should be gaining towards the demands leading to this god. Demands in this state of clarity are ofcourse ethics, the connection of which to vital creative powers should not be forgotten. Ethics as a word may seem rather grey if one does not understand its connection to the most vital point in the human composition. A perfect deed does not trap the descending powers under karmic weight, but perhaps lifts even more up than it was bringing down. Thus such a deed of perfection is nearest to the fountain of vitality.
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