Negative Aspects of Your Name

Symbols and allegories.
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Nefastos
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Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Nefastos »

Uniting the ideas of the Explain your Name and Prisoner of the Role discussions: How do you consider the negative aspects of your name? Are they more like a strength, a neutral challenge, or a hindrance? Or all of these at the same time?

This question is most of all presented to the Star of Azazel members, for in the brotherhood there is an unspoken tradition to choose a brotherhood name that often has some negative implications. (Starting with my own name, Nefastos, which has quite a sinister tone in Latin and Italian.)

Personally I feel that for a Satanist it is extremely important to face one's individual (and to the lesser extent, the cultural) shadow aspect and assimilate it in the best possible way. That confronting, embracing, and then conquering the blackness with love and understanding – and rigorous striving – is the very heart of the work. But at the same time it is horrible, since at the same time we gaze at the abyss, it also gazes at us, and grows within us. It's a real spiritual wrestle, where one is guaranteed to lose if not one's whole being, then at least one's thigh.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
Kenazis
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Kenazis »

Negative aspects would be the all-encompassing nature of the name that can spread the energy and focus too much. Also starting with energy and ending with stagnation and stillness might be seen as negative in some sense (fire to ice).
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Insanus
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Insanus »

The possibility of confusion of spiritual inspiration with mental illness and a lack of grounding element are probably the more negative ones. Simply the focus on inspired transrational states can turn into a meaningless feel-trip if it's not put to any action or in worse case start to justify things with something no one else can see.
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Smaragd
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Smaragd »

Nefastos wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 10:18 am
Personally I feel that for a Satanist it is extremely important to face one's individual (and to the lesser extent, the cultural) shadow aspect and assimilate it in the best possible way. That confronting, embracing, and then conquering the blackness with love and understanding – and rigorous striving – is the very heart of the work.
Receiving the name and sealing it for my use did entail some distress towards the idea of setting myself to behold the light through a coloured crystal, that is, a biased point of view. But every name is a biased point of view and thus carrying a name with pride is like a Luciferian nod to the necessity of the fall, of individual strive, of creation. And as the creative and joyful fire of youth burns within the chest of the Fallen Angel, secretly in league with the one it is seemingly rebelling against, behind the wild nature there is the utmost responsibility one carries with this fire. That responsibility towards the creation is kind of carried within these names. Thus one could see the name practice leading to recognition of one's karmic path (meaning more or less the same thing as one's shadow) shared with the shadow of the name. I wonder if during the last ages before pralaya, almost every word in the body of God will shine so brightly that the previous shadowy nature of the words, as we see them now, would seem so twisted that one would be rather amused thinking people approached these words in such a way?

When I'm talking about words here, I'm at the same time talking about the things they point towards. The idea that words are formulas which at the same time point to, and create the things behind. This leads to a thought about the formulas perhaps changing as the shadows of the words are worked through at large in the development of the humankind. Language is a morphing thing after all, and the archetypal impressions ("words") transcend the spoken words bound to be mere form-ulas as they make their impressions on a dimension of their own.
Nefastos wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 10:18 am How do you consider the negative aspects of your name? Are they more like a strength, a neutral challenge, or a hindrance? Or all of these at the same time?
At first I wrote "all of these at different times", but I noticed that I did not make any difference between the name and myself. There is not much hindrance anymore, the core strenght of the name's meaning is effortless to access at this point - it "shines brightly". I do find it really problematic when people loitering near the Left-Hand Path more or less worship the beings of the shadow without acknowledging the danger which actually reveals the truly meaningful role these beings have. Erase the danger, and you erase half the meaning and all the depth. The call of the depths will thus be left to a superficial stage and the aesthetic fascination remain a surface obsession unable to pierce through to the side of holistic meanings, self-reflection and interpretations. What a joke on the truly living nature of the Fallen Angel. Similarly as vampires, "dugpas" and whatnot can be found to have played meaningful roles inside oneself, so does the negative aspects of one's name find their true position within the practitioner. But mere demonolatric vibing is not enough. Such thing might have it's place, but it doesn't bring clarity if it is left on that level. Reminds me of Eliphas Levi's notion that it is not good for an occultist to live near the cemetery and it's miasma (paraphrasing once again). I take that it means one should not stay too long in a coarse atmosphere, the obsessions towards violence, death, creatures of the night etc. because it is a hindrance for these elements of the Left-Hand Path to find their place in the work. The obsession is just a growing need for these night creatures to find their place in the balanced whole that brings clarity. If the depth of these shadow beings is left unturned, it is a hindrance and it works as an excuse for a lousy and sad demeanor.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Cancer
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Cancer »

Whenever I'm too stressed out or weak-willed and end up smoking, I think of a certain sickness of the respiratory organs, and what wonderful jokes I could make on this forum were I to be diagnosed with it.

More seroiusly though, introverted resentment of more emotionally expressive people, and relatedly, a readiness to be "long-suffering" / help others to see myself as better than them (because that's the only way to not feel worthless). Don't know how easy it is for others to see these qualities in the zodiac sign, but for me the connection is obvious.
Tiden läker inga sår.
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Invitus
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Invitus »

Of Invitus my current fraternity name:

Literal meaning,
1. unwilling
2. reluctant

From the proto- indo-european root weḱ- to wish, to want. With the added Latin prefix. Wishing and wanting are both quite negative. Wishing as a form of procrastination, inaction, and dreaming. Wanting in the context of impure desires, greed, or as a lack of something ie. "left wanting".

Other possible associations:

-inviti, latin, to invite ( in both positive and negative, related to invoke)

- in- (negative prefix) + vita (life, way of life, life-force,reality etc.)

So basically the name is built to be negative, a reminder of things to focus on. Also its thematically and etymologically related to my given name. Making it a personal endeavor. A reflection of the devil. A reminder of struggle. Also serves as a great magical name, being a negation of my, more mundane, self-perceived personality.

Also, in old Swedish and Norse, the word vita or vīta means to know, to prove or to accuse. All in their own right troublesome and somewhat painful. Adding into the name the themes of uncertainty, unconscious and even blindness (Proto-Indo-European weyd- (“see”). The accusing thing I obviously associate with the archetypal Satan. As stated before the name is intentionally dark and "impure" in a sense. Quite soon after finding it I discovered that it had a positive counterpart, and a focus to work towards, to transform the unwillingness, purify intent, strengthen the "Will".

"Tieto lisää tuskaa".
"And so he who looks down at his feet will not know the truth, but he who discerns by the sun which way to go." -Tolstoi
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Aquila
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Aquila »

As Aquila means Eagle there are couple of natural characteristics that I connect to this noble bird. They are the ability of flying which is related to the Air element, and sharp-sightedness. Maybe the latter one is close to the Eye aspect. The Air connection's challenge has been the strong tie to the world of ideas and imagination without bringing them down to anything concrete. The Eye-sight's problem might appear as strongly critical point of view. Together these traits might appear as too high demands. Since my childhood this has been part of my superego which I have inherited from my father and his impossible demandments combined with his lack of teaching skills.

The result often used to be that I had lot of ideas but difficulties working on them because I thought that I have to be close to perfection even before starting. Otherwise I would cause a disappointment - a fear that can be connected to the superegos demands. The step-by-step learning process was something alien to me. Luckily I've had changes to work on these during the last years. I can now allow myself imperfection, time to learn and forgiveness which are better tools in learning and understanding than the strict demands.

One challenge at the moment is that I have noticed that sometimes I am too critical toward other people. Usually in some small details that most people would not even care about. This is naturally the same demanding superego but it's direction has changed. It's something that I try to acknowledge when I'm communicating with others. Luckily there are some uses for such features, too. They just need to be used in the right places.
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Nefastos
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Nefastos »

While I was mostly thinking about these quite obviously problematic names like mine, Insanus, Invitus and Cancer's, you make a good point that any name do have negative aspects that are just less obvious. My annual meeting presentation about the Satan's smaragd (emerald) is just about to be published in Salome's blog, and the eagle also have its overkeen and predatory aspects, like mentioned.

Although it is quite interesting to note how surprisingly positive the eagle symbolism usually is depicted. If we compare, for example, to the Lion (Leo) that is much more controversial symbol for God and also Satan at the same time, Eagle seems to lack this Satanic presentation in most situations. Personally I use astrological Scorpio as the Aquila's lower aspect in symbolism, so there are like two names for the one thing, depending on whether the outcome/aspect is mostly spiritual (Eagle) or material (Scorpion).
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Aquila »

Nefastos wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 9:53 am While I was mostly thinking about these quite obviously problematic names like mine, Insanus, Invitus and Cancer's, you make a good point that any name do have negative aspects that are just less obvious. My annual meeting presentation about the Satan's smaragd (emerald) is just about to be published in Salome's blog, and the eagle also have its overkeen and predatory aspects, like mentioned.

Although it is quite interesting to note how surprisingly positive the eagle symbolism usually is depicted. If we compare, for example, to the Lion (Leo) that is much more controversial symbol for God and also Satan at the same time, Eagle seems to lack this Satanic presentation in most situations. Personally I use astrological Scorpio as the Aquila's lower aspect in symbolism, so there are like two names for the one thing, depending on whether the outcome/aspect is mostly spiritual (Eagle) or material (Scorpion).
That sounds very interesting! I think I need to ponder upon the Scorpio a bit more. It's one of those more difficult and distant astrological symbols to me.

It seems that archetypes or symbols that are often looked as merely positive and inspiring, include some kind of hidden difficult aspects that are easily overlooked. I think it relates with the general problemacy of monotheism as well; one aspect or cultural interpretation of god is so overwhelmingly strong and strictly dogmatic that its actual darker aspects have to be placed upon one or more scapegoats.
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Soror O
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Re: Negative Aspects of Your Name

Post by Soror O »

My name signifies the feminine virtue of nothingness.

If such name would have been taken too early - it would make one go crazy, it would make one drown to the bottomless sea. For to a human, it is hard to be constructively nothing. And it is a feminine thing and keeping to the feminine one has had to crasp the masculine and let it go. Letting go the sword, nothing to hold. Nothing to pierce with, but the power of being pierced by God.

I don't know how this sits with me, for I'm just some looney old woman travelling space with a in a chicken-legged house.
If you want to reborn, let yourself die.
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