Gidney, William "Starets" (1972-)

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Gidney, William "Starets" (1972-)

William "Starets" Gidney, born May 24, 1972, is the grotto master of the Nepotism Grotto of the Church of Satan and the editor of an independent Satanist magazine, Mourning Star. He attended the State University of New York and the Indian River Community College in Fort Pierce, Florida, and served a term in the United States Army. He also married Lady Ygraine (Gabrielle Gidney), a witch, and they settled in Port Saint Lucie, Florida.

During the 1980s, both Gidney and his wife had become occultists, and in 1988 he publicly identified himself as a Satanist. He joined the Church of Satan in 1989 and in 1993 he became an agent for the church. However, in that same year he dropped his affiliation with the Church of Satan and he and Lady Ygraine founded the First Occult Church, for which she served as president and he as vice president. As part of his work for the church he edited A Taste from the Cauldron, the church's periodical. The church functioned as an umbrella for a wide variety of occultists including Wiccans, Voudouists, Pagans, and ritual magicians, all of whom functioned in the context of a dominant Satanic philosophy. He headed the church's Order of the Infernal Grotto that explored Satanism in light of both ancient and contemporary Pagan thought.

Through the mid-1990s, Gidney's thought matured, and eventually the First Occult Church was closed and A Taste from the Cauldron discontinued. In 1997 he began a new periodical, Mourning Star, as an independent Satanist magazine. The following year he reaffiliated with the Church of Satan, and in January 1999 Lady Ygraine opened an occult bookstore, Pandora's Box, in Port Saint Lucie that catered to Satanists and other occultists. Pandora's Box closed after two years of operation. In 1999 Gidney also led in the formation of the Nepotism Grotto of the Church of Satan and has since that time served as grotto master.

Gidney has come to see Satanism as a synthesis of social Darwinism, the sociopolitics of the Machiavellian tradition, and Nietzschean philosophical thought that has merged around a religious aesthetic personified in the archetype of the antihero (as understood from a Jungian psychological perspective). Satanism is antiegalitarian and proposes a meritocracy that threatens those who are weak of will and mind. As such, there is nothing secretive about Satanism and nothing that places the practitioner outside the law. Satanists are seen as adversaries of social and intellectual stagnation.

A poet and musician, Gidney has organized the Jesus of Borg rap-metal rock band for which Lady Ygraine provides the vocals. The band's first CD was released in 2000. The band has an Internet site at http://www.geocities.com/jesusofborg/.