#gonna wake up super self conscious tomorrow but were gonna pwoer through it!!!

[sandandlightning]

A dumb question from an old fogie about the newfangled lingo

By which I mean a 30 something who is out of touch with modern Tumblr and the broader pagan/satanic/witchcraft community after sitting in a corner for several years

As an eclectic pagan who has dealt with a lot of gatekeeping, and as a member of the queer community who has dealt with a lot of gatekeeping around labels specifically, I just legitimately don't know if 'satanist' or 'satanic' are accurate descriptors of my current practice, or if theistic satanists would find my using these labels confusing or uncomfortable. I like demonolater, I understand it and feel it fits, but like 90% of people don't know what the fuck that is. Theistic lucifarian? Sure, I love Lucifer, I work with him a lot, I'm polytheistic about it but it fits. But it also seems to be very fringe, like a much smaller bucket. And despite seeming self explanatory often requires a surprising amount of footnotes for people unfamiliar.

Like, I can callyself enby and acespec and so on, but sometimes it's a lot easier to just use the much broader 'queer'. I have no idea if people consider 'satanist' an umbrella in the same way or not, or if there is a proper umbrella for demon/infernal based practice. The biggest reason I hesitate to use the label is that, while I work with Lucifer and other infernal divinities, I don't really work with Satan. I mean, I guess just because I rarely worked with big names like Aset didn't make me less Kemetic?

But again I am not sure if that applies here. Largely because there is so much soup in the theistic vs non theistic satanic community. The other part being that my views on Satan as an entity/aspect are different from many others? I sometimes think of Lucifer in his 'aspect of Satan' and other demons the same way, but I don't want to like... Encroach on the space of theistic satanists who are venerating Satan as a specific entity or as the All. But I am very theistic. Polytheistic still, but just saying 'pagan' no longer feels entirely accurate.

There is definitely a place where the pagan and infernal divinity followers, who I want to group as satanists but am not entirely sure I should, overlap, and it is where I am, but there is def a feeling of leaving out an important part of myself by just saying pagan (the same way bi doesn't feel right compared to pan) and also not wanting to deal with people in pagan circles who would be bothered/offended/concerned by my work with infernal beings. And I am tired of saying theistic lucifarian electric pagan demonolater every time I have to describe myself.

And personal identity crisis aside, I also just wanna ask if I should be tagging some of these posts as theistic satanism or not? I avoided it in the past month simply because I felt weirdly unqualified to use the label, not because I have anything against it. But I couldn't help but notice the names of blogs liking my more recent posts often being Satanist identifying in some way. Hence my reconsideration and curiosity.

The longer I have spent interacting with Tumblr and social spaces again, the more it seems like satanism is, in fact, a fairly broad umbrella that people would be happy to include demonolatry or Lucifarianism under, with nitty gritty details of practice not relevant so long as it generally involves working with infernal divinities or largely infernal pantheon. But uh, my neurodivergence is not super well equipped to parse that kinda thing with only online circles to compare to, and that does not instill me with confidence. So u know fuck it I'm just gonna ask even if I look like an idiot ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ rip the fragile probably non-existent image of my having my shit together haha.

The tldr being:

How broad of an umbrella is 'theistic satanism' in modern colloquial usage? What does or doesn't fall under it?

Would people think it is appropriate to tag any infernal entity work posts as theistic satanism?

Are there other colloquial self identifying labels for infernal work I have just dead ass missed by being bad at the internet?