Satanic Scholar Christopher J.C. discusses his site (TheSatanicScholar.com) and explores its aim of preserving the Miltonic-Romantic legacy of Lucifer.
Part One of this three-part documentary covers the origins of Romantic Satanism, the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century phenomenon within which Milton’s Satan—the Hell-doomed yet Heaven-defiant archangel of the epic poem Paradise Lost—was celebrated as a Promethean icon of revolutionary virtue. Discussed are the Satanic reflections of the Romantic Era’s most radical intellectuals, poets, and prose writers, namely Godwin, Blake, Hazlitt, and of course Byron and Shelley, who presided over Romanticism’s “Satanic School.” Mirroring the Miltonic mutiny of the angels, these Romantic Satanists channeled the spirit of Milton’s apostate angel and adopted his mythic/poetic celestial revolt for earthly use as a sociopolitical countermyth.
Although seldom given the attention it deserves and far too often overlooked by even occult Satanists, the Miltonic-Romantic-Satanic tradition—spearheaded by English Romanticism’s literary and artistic élite—was the most radical reevaluation of the arch-rebel, and thereby the most intriguing challenge to the status quo in Western history.
(Excerpts from the Romantic Satanists read by Gavin Baddeley, English journalist and author of Lucifer Rising.)