The return of the Luciferian Research Society

Yesterday, Jeremy Crow from the Assembly of Light Bearers (formerly known as the Greater Church of Lucifer) announced on Facebook the re-opening of the Luciferian Research Society, which has long been sidelined by its own dormancy and out-dated interface. Crow says here:

I’m pleased to announce the Grand Reopening of the Luciferian Research Society! You can check it out at https://www.luciferianresearch.org/ Founded back in 2008, the LRS is an independent social networking platform designed specifically for occultists, esoteric artists and philosophers. It’s a place of our own dedicated to getting people from all branches of the occult to connect with one another, collaborate on projects and to share wisdom. The LRS is not an Order. It is an equal playing field structured more like an artist’s guild with no hierarchy, degrees or titles. The LRS doesn’t present ads to members and doesn’t sell your private data to third parties.

Yesterday we launched a major upgrade to the site. The most notable change is a massively improved mobile interface. The previous version was practically unusable on a mobile device unless you switched to Desktop view. The new mobile experience is now up to modern standards. If you weren’t familiar with the LRS before, it is a full service platform that allows members to post blogs that can be viewed by the public, engage in members-only forum discussions, share photos and videos, create and participate in members polls. In addition, we have discussion groups focused on topics such as Tarot, Lucid Dreaming, Sex Magick, Music, Eastern Practices, Runes, Sumerian/Babylonian Mythology, Martial Arts, Setian Philosophy, Goetia, etc… which are generally open to all members.

We also have more specific groups that focus on the work of particular Esoteric Orders, many of which serve as the official forums of these organizations. For example, we have multiple groups for members of The Order of Phosphoros, the Assembly of Light Bearers, The Ziggurat of Enki, Ordo Luciferi, Torches of Lvcifer, Herald of the Dawn, etc… Some of these are open to all interested LRS members and others are private, requiring approval to join. There are other miscellaneous groups devoted to connecting new members, for those who speak a specific language or who live in a particular country, for discussing conferences, to promote your writing or your business, to discuss what you’re currently reading, and members are free to create new groups if they see a need.

In addition, each member has their own customizable profile page, members can send private emails and instant messages to one another as well as site-wide and group chats. Members can post their own status updates, leave longer messages on the community “chalkboard” and post events to the public calendar. We are also developing something we call “Learning Paths” which suggest various resources (books, websites, blog posts, forum threads, groups, videos, etc…) for those interested in a particular path. For instance, one is being developed for new members of the LRS in general and another for those who aspire to contribute to the development of their local esoteric community. Other learning paths are being compiled for those who may have a particular affinity for Luciferianism, Satanism, LHP Paganism, etc… New features can also be added to the site if there is enough interest.

To promote the new and improved LRS all new and existing members will receive one free month of membership to fully explore the platform and engage with the content and other members. Existing members will immediately receive their free month. New members who register before the new moon on July 20th will receive their free month starting from the day of their membership approval. After your free month is over anyone who wants to continue accessing the member’s areas and services will be required to pay a modest membership fee of just $1 US per month or you can choose to pay for a full year up front for just $10.

Hope to see you there!

And when you check the Luciferian Research Society web page, you will indeed notice a major aesthetic change. It looks more contemporary, though without succumbing to the awful “new media” aesthetic that too many contemporary websites employ (see Ozy Media for example). There is still a page under construction entitled “Learning Paths”, but other than that it seems that everything is in place and in an up-to-date format. It also seems that the website has changed from being free of charge to having a membership fee, albeit a rather generous one. Will the Luciferian Research Society prove to be a relevant, active and vibrant nexus for Luciferian activity? Only time will tell, but if Crow is correct and there has been an upsurge of interest in the project within the last year or so, it seems possible that perhaps there will be enough investment in the project to at least keep things interesting.

I do not have any intentions to join the LRS forum at this time. However, I will likely follow the website in the hopes of keeping an eye on the Luciferian movement as it stands, perhaps in the vain hope of finally seeing if the Global United Nightside Movement is actually going somewhere.

What Jeremy Crow shows us about YouTube’s crusade against offense

I think I’ve said in the past that YouTube is headed in a noticeably censorious direction, getting rid of content they deem offensive to either themselves or prospective advertisers, based on very arbitrary conceptions of hateful content. And recently, it appears that I was proven right, again. Jeremy Crow, a prominent Luciferian occultists and one of the founders of the Assembly of Light Bearers (formerly Greater Church of Lucifer), has announced that a number of his videos have been shadow-banned by YouTube.

As Crow himself explains:

About a month ago several of my videos were “shadow banned” by YouTube/Google. If you aren’t aware, this is something that has affected an insane number of YouTubers. This form of censorship doesn’t outright remove the video from the platform, but greatly diminishes it’s possible viewership and eliminates any potential revenue earned from it. A shadow banned video will never show up in search results, the trending page or related video suggestions. Often it won’t even serve up the video to people subscribed to the channel! The primary ways you can find a shadow banned video is by having the direct link or by browsing the uploaded videos on a specific channel. In addition, these videos are excluded from the advertising revenue share. In other words, you’re going to get way less views and will earn no money off the video.

So why is Crow being targeted for shadow-banning by YouTube? Well, looking at the examples of shadow-banned videos given on his Steemit article (which will be linked at the bottom of this post), you may have noticed that all of them except one deal with the subjects of Luciferianism and Satanism. He explains that YouTube’s criteria for what is deemed non-advertiser-friendly includes political content (though strangely enough The Young Turks or CNN don’t seem all that affected), profanity, unpopular religions and apparently having a disheveled/unattractive appearance.

Now I actually touched on this subject last year, when writing about the changes to YouTube’s content policies at the time, and I gave out a list quoted from YouTube’s policy guidelines on what is deemed non-advertiser friendly.

Content that is considered “not advertiser-friendly” includes, but is not limited to:

• Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor
• Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
• Inappropriate language, including vulgar harassment, swearing and vulgar language
• Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use, and abuse of such items
• Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown.

It might not be a stretch of the imagination to suggest that Jeremy Crow’s discussions of Satanism, Luciferianism and the occult would be filed under controversial subjects, but even so, I find it baffling to me how Jeremy Crows videos would be considered offensive. Last time I checked, the only people who might be offended are Christians, Jews or Muslims, and even then I don’t recall them having seen fit to mass report Satanist or Luciferian YouTube content. And setting aside the issues of “hate speech”, I’m not entirely sure what the threat is to YouTube’s bottom line. I notice in the article that Crow doesn’t mention a statement from YouTube on the issue, which if you’re shadow-banned you probably wouldn’t get anyway since you’re being banned without you knowing it. What this suggests to me is that YouTube flagged Luciferian videos for arbitrary reasons, without explanation.

Two things are certain in my eyes. Firstly, this is to me further proof of the utterly nonsensical and farcical nature of the parameters of hate speech. I have seen a number of YouTubers report videos being demonetized for absurd reasons, including a someone who uploaded a review of Sonic Adventure 2 it got demonetized for “controversial subject matter”. And a couple of months ago, YouTube introduced the limited state feature, which bans certain videos from receiving likes, shares, comments or revenue not necessarily for violating YouTube’s content policy, but for “offensive” content. It is done self-evidently to suppress wrongthink, but its supporters claim that it is supposed to be done to suppress extremist and radicalizing content. I have gone through lists of videos put under the limited state, in fact I have also seen a Twitter account that logs videos put under the limited state. You’ll find videos that can accurately be described as white nationalist or fascist propaganda, or videos that posit arguments for those systems, but you know what you won’t find on those lists? ISIS propaganda videos. And hey, if YouTube wanted to suppress videos advocating for totalitarian and violent political systems, you’d figure there’d be videos advocating for communism on these lists. But apparently not. The parameters for extremism are one-sided, driven by the ideological bias held by Google, which was documented in detail by former Google engineer James Damore in his essay. And when it isn’t, it’s just downright idiotic all round.

Second, if Jeremy Crow’s videos discussing Luciferianism and Satanism were shadowbanned, then it leaves me wondering just how many other occultists, particularly Left Hand Path occultists, have been shadowbanned. What about Michael W. Ford or E A Koetting, both of them prominent occultists in Left Hand Path systems who talk about largely similar subject matter to Jeremy Crow? Or Styxhexenhammer666, another occultist, albeit for more well known and popular because of his political commentary than for his occult videos? For all I know, Jeremy Crow may indeed be the only case of a Luciferian occultist getting shadow-banned, but if they’ve shadow-banned him, then why not others?

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Link to Jeremy Crow’s Steemit article: https://steemit.com/occult/@jeremycrow/jeremy-crow-s-luciferian-videos-banned-by-youtube

The New Luciferian Era

The concept of a New Luciferian Era is a concept often associated with the Greater Church of Lucifer and its brand of Luciferianism. In December 21st 2012, it was believed that the world was supposed to end based on a misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar (in the Mayan calendar, our date of December 21st 2012 actually refers to the end of a cosmological cycle, which is basically a lot like the end of a year rather than the end of the world). According to the Greater Church of Lucifer, the world did end on that day in a figurative sense. The world that was built on the old order based on the religions and ideologies that demand conformity so to speak. The occultist Jeremy Crow certainly felt this way, and that the promise of a New Luciferian Era was at hand, which inspired him perform a working of creation magick on the exact date. He and his partner the declared the manifestation of Year Zero of the New Luciferian Era, much like Anton LaVey proclaiming 1966 as Year One of the Age of Satan on that fateful Walpurgis Night.

Funny thing about the Age of Satan, so far I feel we have yet to see it truly manifest in the way it was supposed to. The old order of Christianity still fought to keep its hold on the masses and managed to do so long after the founding of the Church of Satan and not long after LaVey’s death. If anything, Christianity’s hold on the minds of the masses of America in particular was only strengthened through their usual deceitful tactics including the whole “Satanic ritual abuse” scare, and their intercourse with politics in the years following 9/11. Satanism is still something that has been pushed into the dark and relegated to the realm of the underground. The only people taking Satanism out of seclusion who aren’t metal musician are The Satanic Temple, and it’s debatable whether they’re doing a good job or whether they doing nothing but presenting secular humanism with a Satanic package and billing. Ultimately, the age of Satan has not yet come to pass. With the New Luciferian Era, I’m honestly surprised that even got started. To the credit of the Greater Church of Lucifer, we are in a period in which organized religion is losing its influence over the people for the most part, but this should mean a lot more than the loss of the influence of monotheistic faiths. That’s the problem I have: it only seems interested in combating the monotheistic faiths that have influenced the West. To create an era for the world, you have to think about more than that. I don’t believe that we have already entered into a new era, only that we are beginning to set it into mention.

My other problem with the concept is that it seems to hinge on the ideas of the Mayan calendar, and the idea of aeonic energies, and the idea of astrological ages, all of which I have no interest in or affinity for. The problem is that all the ages that have ever pertained to belief and ideas were not determined by the movement of energies or time. It has always been determined by the movement of people, and expanding of the influence of ideas (which can only be achieved through people expressing and acting on thoughts). And it is ultimately only individual effort that makes this possible. Which leads to the other problem. I don’t fully trust that this New Luciferian Era isn’t an attempt to direct collective action and belief. I can only hope that all it means is an age of unbridled freedom of thought, expression, and desires, and the triumph of liberty over oppression. If that’s the intention, then I would be more than happy to help this age move forward.