Month: November 2018

Satan thinks that by their sins shall ye know them

Posted on by A lesser demon

My Master strongly urges His followers to disbelieve any claim that any god makes about itself, its religion, or its followers. And while He is at it, He also urges His followers to disbelieve any claims the gods make about each other, their religions, or their followers. They all take credit for human behavior that would otherwise have wiped the species from the face of the planet had not humans figured it out entirely on their own already, and they all blame each other—but more often my Master—when their ill-wrought plans invariably go haywire.

There is one exception to the above: the gods make the religious equivalent to a Freudian slip when, observing their followers, they declare certain types of human conduct to be sins and respond with ordinances and statutes intended to prevent their followers from committing them.

Sins are the dirty laundry aired in full view. Unlike other religious gobbledygook the sins were not invented; no, says the Devil, what became sin is what the followers actually did to an excessive degree. Sins are the warning label that Satan thinks His own followers be wise to read and remember when they encounter a follower of his enemies’. If it is a Buddhism sin to possess an ego, expect your average Buddhist to be egoistic above average. If Christianity views adultery as a sin, keep an eye on your daughter if she mingles with conscientious Christians. If Allah forbids his Muslim followers to feel pride, know that a Muslim will respond especially hostilely when insulted. Jehova identified an impressive array of punishable mistakes made by his desert people that makes one realize that their managing to feed and to procreate without genetic starvation must have involved the help of friendly neighboring tribes. Satan has no specific recommendations regarding the Jews, who realize that faced with such a wealth of options for sinning, sinning is an inevitable part of life and thus the Jews seem less prone to being subconsciously obsessed with actually trying.

Religions evolve along with Society, though, and Satan cautions that millennia-old sins should be taken with a grain of salt and be trusted somewhat losely. The Devil thinks that His followers should grant the followers of old religions some benefit of doubt if they seem moderate in their beliefs. Conversely, the lists of sins of younger religions are perfectly up to date. If the Devil heard of a religion established within the last century or two which had identified traits such as stupidity, counter-productive pride, self-deceit, etc. as its sins, He might like the religion but would conclude that its followers were mostly a sorry bunch of self-inflated, juvenile know-nothings.

Satan thinks the Fifth Satanic Statement isn’t

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devil confirms that He is not known for turning the other cheek, but although the Fifth Satanic Statement describes this one of the character traits of our Lord of Evil, He fails to understand what makes this statement specifically Satanic. Satan also needs to visit the men’s room but finds no Satanic Statement declaring that He represents relieving the pressure from the inner wall of his bladder instead of perishing according to the legend of Tycho Brahe’s untimely demise; and washing His hands afterwards instead of helping spread disease would seem appropriate to mention as well.

My master suspects that the mention of His reluctance to turn the other cheek was intended for the target readers of The Satanic Bible as an attempt to contrast Him against Christianity. These readers, being mostly indoctrinated Christians, would be inclined to believe that Christianity considers turning the other cheek to be among their values. After all, their story book tells how their god’s son preached this behavior although it disaccordingly relates that he got fairly violent the first time he met with conflict. The Devil gives the fellow some credit, however, firstly because starting the fight, as reportedly he did, he had not yet been smitten on the one cheek, and secondly because turning the other cheek seems like an excellent thing to convince your opponents they should do.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Satan has observed that Christians turn the other cheek no more often than other people. If anything, Satan thinks that there are few as vengeful, bloodthirsty, petty, resentful, merciless, wrathful, and war-hungry as Christians regardless of what they might claim or believe about themselves. Satan thinks it is a crime against reason to lead anyone, and most of all the followers of the Prince of Darkness, to believe in such myths by repeating the Christian lies.

Satan thinks that if anyone believes that His foe represents turning the other cheek, they can kiss His other cheeks.

Satan thinks that Anton LaVey has Asperger’s syndrome

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan disapproves of psychology and its attempts to explain human behavior. He has successfully possessed mankind since the dawn of time, and that should adequately explain human behavior, thank you very much.

He is especially angry with the Freudian disaster which led His esteemed denizen Anton LaVey to both waste much time and to mislead His followers into performing rituals that, if anything, had the opposite effect of their goals. The pressure-cooker model of explanation of pent-up emotions that required release lest they destroy their host was shamelessly stolen from the Devil’s realm of thermodynamics with not a single mention of His infernal name in spite of His being the very force of entropy. The only demon ever to be summoned in the Freudian tradition of LaVey’s rituals would be your mother.

But, the Devil is a pragmatist and finds that communication is key. Resorting to the phraseology of psychology may be a better means of communication than through spasms, froth, and back-masked speech in a growling voice, even if He feels that He deprives Himself of due credit.

Using psychological terms, Satan thinks that his denizen Anton LaVey has Asperger’s syndrome. It is part of the autism spectrum disorder and is characterized by people with the syndrome appearing to function somewhat better than other autists, and generally possessing a superior intelligence. Autists are sometimes found to have savant, or magical or demonic, talent, as He prefers to phrase it, and among the herd, such fine qualities are undesired and considered a diagnosis.

As readers of Blanche Barton’s entirely truthful and in no manner exaggerated biography of Mr. LaVey may remember, she introduces him as remarkably skilled and mentally superior to others, whom he usually chose to avoid, as someone with highly specific interests, and as someone who had difficulties understanding and abiding by social norms. We lesser devils have noted that he speaks with a somewhat narrative voice and often takes on the persona of a character from a movie or a novel. We keep some distance from him, however, half in respect and half because his inability to take proper care of himself would require us to ignore the effects of poor personal hygiene.

The Devil is aware that Mr. LaVey feels a closer relationship with animals than most humans do, and suspects that it is a feature of LaVey’s condition, because Satan has noticed that His autistic denizens exhibit a peculiarly animalesque behavioral bent compared with His legions of “normal” sinners. Their social impairment (as those normal individuals regard any deviation from herd compliance) lead them to interact in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of those who walk on all-fours, and Satan ponders whether perchance autists occupy an evolutionary position somewhere in-between man and other animals. The Devil represents all humans as just another animal species, anyway, and reminds His denizens that His is the hand that wounds and heals.

On a sadder note, even here, in his right element of brimstone and flames, Anton LaVey’s condition exposes him to the same frustrations as any above-ground autist, who wholeheartedly agrees with Jean-Paul Sartre that Hell is other people: autists do not suffer from autism; they suffer from other people, and often develop depressions. Satan is sad to watch LaVey thus suffering fits of depression that can last weeks or months but He is the Accuser, not a psychiatrist.

It is unnecessary to minutely derive LaVey’s entire biography and evaluate it according to the diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum disorder here. The long story short is that Satan has determined that the diagnosis matches, and that psychologial mumbo-jumbo is unnecessary because the good old word “demonic” suffices.

Satan thinks His followers should boast some more

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan does not recall demanding the same display of humility from His followers that His opposing gods invariably seem to require of theirs, even if the latter generally ignore the requirement and consider themselves intrinsically superior simply because their gods are better.

My master of all things evil is many things but unfortunately is not omnipresent and must instead rely on reports from His lesser demons and followers. We are, regrettably, not being driven to overwork ourselves informing our infernal master of the excellence of His followers, and He is quite surprised at the low level of bragging he receives from them, too. He would have imagined His alien elite to both stand out from the herd and to loudly flaunt their accomplishments or skills, but rarely sees or hears mention of neither.

The Devil acknowledges that human beings usually repond with humility in recognition of the vast pool of knowledge yet to be gained and mastered once undefiled knowledge has been inflicted upon them, thus transferring them outside the criteria of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but their attendance in His churches and temples nonetheless strikes Him as staggeringly low. All He hears is the fanfaronade of shock value focusing amateur musicians, would-be artists, want-to-be photographers, and won’t-be authors, and perhaps a few nondescript web designers who use their self-taught HTML hacking skills to provide yet another web page telling the “truth” about Satanism as a subconscious approach to developing their own understanding of the subject. The Devil appreciates such web sites, of course, but has stopped reading them as they all seem curiously alike to Him, as if no new thoughts have been manufactured for decades.

Our Dark Majesty cannot help but suspect that perhaps the routinization of the charisma of His denizen Anton LaVey, who had no education, plays a role in this. LaVey’s claim to authority, which consequently became his organization’s claim to authority, was his—in part fabricated, but our King of Lies would never hold that against him—life of carnival performance, thus making feats of entertainment rather than mental agility or academic performance their measure of demonic worth.

Never accepting defeat even if cast into the deepest of pits, the Devil believes, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that a good deal of His followers are found in the fields vital to the construction of artificial human companions, both directly in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, and mathematics, and somewhat indirectly in psychology, sociology, philosophy, and anthropology. These fields have more exact definitions and requirements to quality than the aforementioned arts (a term which Satan uses somewhat benignly about His followers’ works) and deal particularly harshly with empty posturing, so Satan has no doubt that their enthusiastic announcements be somewhat curbed. His Unholiness would, however, be very pleased to find an occasional scholar or highly intelligent individual among His followers and asks them to please brag a little and mention His name as a token of respect.

Satan thinks that gun control is a good idea

Posted on by A lesser demon

His Infernal Majesty prefers to think of his followers as responsible people who should accordingly be granted an appropriate level of responsibility. People have the right to defend themselves against assaults on themselves, their property, or their loved ones, and the Devil fondly considers his followers to be particularly deserving of both their right to exercise it and to retaliate preemptively if need be. As such, He favors their right to own and use any array of their weapons of choice.

This leads our Dark Lord to favor a relaxation of the control of deadly weapons to the point of allowing unlicensed personal ownership of weapons of mass destruction, including a wide variety of warfare material banned by the Geneva Conventions, for His devoted followers. After all, Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, and His followers being just that will know when and how to employ their arsenals, and when to (seemingly!) turn the other cheek.

The Prince of Darkness recognizes that the world is packed with people who wouldn’t exhibit the slightest sense of accountability even at gunpoint, however, and concedes that he is literally outgunned by hordes of immensely irresponsible individuals. He understands that guns should be kept out of the hands of the vast majority of irresponsible humans who incidentally, or perhaps only too predictably, are also mostly followers of His mortal foe. The Devil thinks that until His followers comprise a sweeping majority of the population, ownership of weapons should be strictly restricted and carefully controlled, and the herd should be subjected to control above trust, and razzia above control.

Satan is worried that some of His followers might be projecting their reactions, responses, and sensibilities onto people far less attuned than themselves—especially because those of His followers that oppose gun control match the demography of the aforementioned religious followers of His foe almost to a tee.

Satan thinks you should hear His thoughts

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devel prefers to keep His diabolical thoughts to himself, in part because they happen to be oriented towards his earthly pleasures such as food, regarding which Satan believes that one should not impose one’s culinary preferences or specialties onto others lest they become religious dietary restrictions on items such as shellfish or pork.

He has begun to consider the option that perhaps a thought or two should be shared with his minions, however, and may ask a lesser and mostly unknown demon in His infernal realm to write an occasional remark or two here.