The Devil’s Death: Your Satanic Companion for Grief and Dying

by Shiva Honey

The funeral-industrial-complex is a relic rife with abuse. The modern, Western perspective on death and dying is frequently hyper-medicalized, stigmatized, and filled with outdated concepts and religious overtones. However, death culture is being revived. Increasingly, people are seeking to shed tradition and seek alternatives. As secular practice evolves and expands, many are experiencing a heightened awareness of the importance of ritual liberated from dogmatic constraints. There is an urgent need for novel perspectives, resources, and rituals that don’t rely on antiquated customs that harm ourselves and our world. Award-winning author and Satanic Priestess, Shiva Honey, teamed up with biologist Betty Lee and herbalist Heather Mourer to create a comprehensive guide to support you through loss and end-of-life planning. The Devil’s Death: Your Satanic Companion for Grief and Dying is an unprecedented resource that combines research, story, and ritual to help you confront fears, navigate grief, embolden your agency, and rekindle your relationship with death.

Genres: Satanism, Nonfiction, Religion, Death

240 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2022

About the author

Shiva Honey is a Satanic Priestess and Ordained Minister of The Satanic Temple. She was a founding member of The Satanic Temple Detroit (the first chapter of The Satanic Temple) and The National Council of The Satanic Temple. In addition to being a chief architect of The Unveiling, Snaketivity, and other TST Detroit actions and rituals, she organized a number of national events/campaigns, including bringing the Baphomet statue to Arkansas 2018. In 2021 she was awarded The Satanic Temple's Anatole France Literary Award for Contemporary Literature for her best-selling book The Devil's Tome: A Book of Modern Satanic Ritual which contributed significantly to the understanding of non-theistic ritual and stoked a Satanic ritual movement. Shiva has performed and taught about Satanic ritual throughout the world. Her work has been featured in the film Hail Satan? (2019) and CNN's This is Life with Lisa Ling: The Satanists Next Door (2015) and on Satanic Planet’s self-titled album. In 2021 she released the first ever Satanic ritual deck, The Devil's Deck and announced her new book which will be arrive in 2022 - The Devil’s Death: Your Satanic Companion for Grief and Dying.

Reviews

[Lilith Starr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary, inspiring vision of creating a meaningful end of life plan.

A beautiful merging of practical planning and moving personalized ritual, "The Devil's Death" is the guide to a "good death" we've been waiting for. In these times of sanitized death, sky-high funeral costs, and heavy environmental damage caused by traditional funeral techniques, Shiva Honey's book is a refreshingly honest look at death -- not just death in the existential sense, but OUR death, your death -- my death. With warm personal style and characteristic clarity, Shiva's book invites the reader to start their journey towards their end of life plan -- not with dry, clinical text, but authenticity that inspires in us the same honesty in looking inside. The gorgeous illustrations and striking black-on-black embossed cover lend symbolism to the whole package -- you know you're holding something special.

The book offers practical, valuable advice on planning everything from treatment of your body after death, your funeral or memorial, and even who you designate to care for your after-death experience -- combined with suggested rituals to help you move through this process and truly find your own unique "dying wishes." As a nontheistic Satanist, Shiva writes simple but powerful rituals focusing on the self, on the senses, and personal symbology -- all without the trappings of superstition.

[La Carmina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compassionate guide to the difficult topic of how we inevitably approach death and dying. Shiva takes a unique Satanic approach to the topic, which is a welcome perspective that differs from the typical superstition and industry norms around end of life and burial. Along with practical information on the various aspects one may have to handle in these hard times. A lovely companion to her The Devil's Tome ritual book.

[Salicard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book for planning for end-of-life. I learned a lot and have decided to pursue the death doula certification in my state as a result of reading.

I had hoped for more guidance as far as the grief process, how to handle grief, and how to help others through grief. The book touched on these subjects but it wasn't comprehensive. Maybe I should write my own grief guide. 🤔

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A grounding book around building an awareness and practice in death. The rituals and checklists help quantify and demystify a typically overwhelming matter into an opportunity of growth and self discovery. A companion for secular folks of many kinds that offers an alternative lens towards funeral practices and cultivating space for active conversations about ones death and aftermath.

[Diogenes Grief · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now before all the bible-thumpers (who are all-too-often completely ignorant of their own history) throw fits of condemnation at their ancient, xenophobic, propagandized enemies, you should really understand the context of The Satanic Temple (https://thesatanictemple.com/) and its fundamental tenets:


I: One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
II: The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
III: One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
IV: The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.
V: Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
VI: People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
VII: Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.


This is a nontheistic group highlighting the hypocrisy of Christianity and its enmeshment with politics, and they use the symbolism of Baphomet to illustrate the ideal balance of social order (and make the small-brained tremble in fear, like they’ve done for almost 2,000 years). While I fail to subscribe to any ritual-based practice, I am a card-carrying member and support them in solidarity for true freedom, absolute bodily autonomy, the fair treatment of all people, and a secular worshiping of the Earth and its fragile biology. I wish I could go to their ten-year anniversary in April of 2023, but sadly I cannot wing it (https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/sa...). I can’t think of a more fascinating group of people to hang out with.

Shiva Honey is an ordained minister and a ritual practitioner of The Satanic Temple. This book looks to prepare us for our inevitable death by being prepared, proactive, and advocating for our personal wishes against industries that may not accept one’s personal desires. Honey does a wonderful job explaining the potential obstacles in one’s way. Health care in general, end-of-life care more specifically, the huckster funeral industry, and yes, Catholic institutions gobbling up hospital networks to bend them to the Vatican’s edicts (the very same organism that declared Harry Potter books “devilry”). I have my end-of-life plans ironed out thanks to the VA and the Neptune Society, but the funeral industry in Nevada will be facing some serious criminal changes soon, due to its nepotism, greed, and grift. I’ll have to monitor and edit my plans accordingly. I had never heard of aquamation before, but I’m completely intrigued now. Ultimately, my ashes will be cast into a brick and placed in a memorial reef off the coast of Florida. From the sea all life came; to the sea I shall return.

We all subscribe to rituals in some way. Whether it’s gearing up for football Sunday with foam fingers and beer helmets, kneeling before your deaf gods at the church/temple/mosque, going into credit-card debt for Mammon and feeding the voracious machines of Capitalism, gifting sun-salutations and king pigeon poses to the yawning dawn, living “off the grid” alongside others and preparing for Helter Skelter, or wearing a pristine white t-shirt to a GWAR show, we all embrace rituals in some way. This is the nature of controlling humanity and finding identity, through organized religions and militaries, cults and clubs, office spaces and social circles. The Satanic Temple is no different. Rituals unite the like-minded under a shared mindset and give participants a sense of fellowship and collectivism, which nurtures strength and confidence, leading to purposeful actions (hopefully like feeding the hungry, advocating for the disenfranchised, or eliminating hate and suffering in the world).

I recently made a joke to a friend about how too many people seem like “cave-dwelling sun-worshipers” these days, and he corrected me, showing me that the “cave-dwelling sun-worshipers” were actually much smarter than most people today, able to hunt, travel long distances with light packs, and support their social group through shared responsibilities. The fact that the sun is actually the bringer of light and heat made more sense to the troglodytes; now it’s just a giant nuclear ball ready to cook the Earth due to humankind’s actual willful ignorance as we destructively erode our protective layers of atmosphere. Hail Science!

So on the one hand, this book is a great way to take a step back and see your ultimate death with calmness and clarity; it can also be a nice way to start or reinforce your own private rituals within a satanic framework. For anyone with a budding interest in this dynamic organization, visit their website, sign up for their newsletter, join the conversation, and enter the ranks of those who “publicly confront hate groups, fight for the abolition of corporal punishment in public schools, apply for equal representation when religious installations are placed on public property, provide religious exemption and legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict people's reproductive autonomy, expose harmful pseudo-scientific practitioners in mental health care, organize clubs alongside other religious after-school clubs in schools besieged by proselytizing organizations, and engage in other advocacy in accordance with our tenets”.

Otherwise, I challenge you to do better.

Happy Winter Solstice to all, and it's Festivus for the rest of us \m/

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really thoughtful and highly practical book about how to best prepare for that which is both inevitable and uniquely unclear: grief and dying. Shiva and her collaborators demystify a whole lot of stuff that truly needs to be spoken out loud more often instead of just leaving it for people to stumble upon when timing is truly at its worst. A must buy!

I am a huge fan of Shiva's brand of Satanist writing, weaving in a mixture of non-theist ritual with level-headed guidelines that are not only simple to reproduce but further encourage personal exploration and evolution. She provides just enough structure to keep things manageable while still acknowledging that the only things we can really control in life are our own actions. Really the best of all worlds!

[Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is well written and thoroughly researched. It pretty much is a handbook for death and dying presented in a Satanic framework. There are rituals designed for almost every step of the process and fantastic check-lists for how to plan filof every eventuality. I can see that this book will be an essential resource for dealing with bereavement/death/illness.

[Alonzo Mars · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highly interesting view on not only grief, but coming to terms with your own death.

[Sierra · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and heartfelt take on grief through a Satanic lens. I appreciated the compassion and inclusivity, but some sections felt repetitive and a bit surface-level. While the rituals and reflections were meaningful, I didn’t connect with every part, and the ending left me wanting more depth.