Mr. Scratch <scratch@gladstone.uoregon.edu>:
>...the BF has traditionally been viewed in a negative sense, as a 
>distortion and twisting of nature.  

[...]

My work with the Black Flame actually agrees with yours, as a BTW; though
I don't see the Black Flame as anything more than a part of consciousness
that is little explored. LaVey's aesthetic tastes indicate that he worked
with the current we are talking about also; films like "The Cabinet of Dr
Caligari" or "Metropolis" are dead giveaways, as is the law of the
trapezoid.

One could make the argument that the black flame is a symbol of the local
neg-entropy of life itself.

ix@io.com (Lupo LeBoucher)
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One of the things that attracted many Satanists to the CoS (and still
attracts them to Satanism in general) is the Miltonian image of Satan as
the intelligent, prideful, questioning, independent rebel angel, who
would not take orders and would not shut up and play ignorant.  It is one
of the halmarks of the best people that Satanism has to offer that they
have these things in common.  They do not accept things of faith, they
question authority.  They are not ruled over, they do not submit.

These attributes are embodied in the Setian ideal of independent
intelligence.  It is our attempt to account for man's drive to not only
master himself but to master his environment.  Ours is an attempt to
explain why the human willpower is such that it places us at a terrific
advantage in regards to the rest of the animal kingdom, and hints at what
other possibilities are in store for us. This is the driving element of
the Black Flame, which has impact on us both as individuals, and in our
race's reach for absolute godhood.  If this embodiment of isolate
intelligence is a genuine phenomenon, then the source of this "gift"
might be considered the "principle of Isolate Intelligence".

Mr. Scratch <scratch@gladstone.uoregon.edu>
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