Month: December 2018

Satan thinks the jury is still out on His temple

Posted on by A lesser demon

Staying optimistic about His options after being spectacularly cast from Heaven should convince anyone that Lucifer maintains the mindset that the chalice of human blood is half full. He is always welcoming of demonic initiatives and was pleasantly surprised when yet another organization was established in His infernal name, referring to itself as The Satanic Temple.

That said, Satan is a little confused about this new kid on the block. There have been plenty of short-lived newcomers but The Satanic Temple breaks tradition by largely ignoring The Church of Satan, not claiming that the latter deviated from its “true” teachings nor offering to relieve it of its infernal mandate, as if the Devil would ever entrust any human being or organization with such power.

The temple appears to provide a philosophy of its own that it considers Satanic, and Satan thinks He is no-one to judge what is or is not Satanic. He thinks such definitions are the work of human hands that no external powers can decide or judge, and he scoffs at human minds that are so primitively configured that they believe that merely being the first to define a term earns one the right to write all subsequent dictionaries. Language does not work that way; words are a means of communication that carry meaning only within a context. The Church of Satan redefined “Satanism” to use the Devil as a symbol and model and thereby created a new context within which the original word acquired a new meaning, but this action does not imply ownership of the word. Anyone can expand, reduce, or alter the context or even provide a new one, and no power in Hell or elsewhere can prevent it. Language is negotiated in what my fellow denizen Ludwig Wittgenstein calls “language-games,” and words and meanings change as contexts and discourses evolve: contrary to what lesser educated people might think, multiple meanings, sometimes mutually exclusive ones, of a word rarely cause confusion. Satan certainly has His own opinions, few of them being flattering, about the demonic talents of the various organizations that have used His name but being unable to arise on Earth as the Antichrist (yet) and settle the score once and for all regarding who is a Satanist and who is a nut, He can only recommend that humans study some bloody linguistics before making preposterous claims about the persistency and inambiguity of language. Satan thinks that faced with such nonsense, even Michael Aquino’s farcical argument that Satan had revoked Anton LaVey’s infernal mandate was comparatively wiser because such mysticism precludes educated scrutiny and subsequent logical (and inevitable) rejection. The Church of Satan‘s argument works on naïve people; Aquino’s argument cannot be contradicted as it is faith-based.

Satan nevertheless finds The Satanic Temple‘s definition of Satanism lacking. It provides a mission statement and seven brief tenets; any additional insight must be derived from the temple’s various campaigns, interviews, and happenings. Satan thinks this is too cheap. He enjoys astute aphorisms but insists that their purpose is to summarize complex or long explanations, not to prompt them. Brief tenets or statements standing alone are prone to being interpreted in widely varying directions and thus communicate very little in practice, and must be accompanied by guidelines and instructions elaborating how the statements should be understood. Its fallacies, misunderstandings, and outdated theories aside, The Satanic Bible does this for The Church of Satan‘s Nine Satanic Statements. Without similar detailed explanations, members of The Satanic Temple are obliged to interpret its tenets on their own, and language and interpretation being highly forgiving, especially towards brief statements, these members can attribute virtually anything to the seven tenets, including teachings usually reserved for conflicting religions. This paves the way for such a multitude of positions that unless The Satanic Temple communicates what it really means by its seven tenets, it risks diluting Satanism into meaning almost anything, rendering the term meaningless for Satanists and hence again leaving it to Christians to provide the only solid definition. Satan thinks that The Church of Satan has a point when it insists on only one valid definition even if it motivated by common vanity that causes The Church of Satan to remember it only when non-members receive attention.

Satan, being also forced to make interpretations of His own, notes a thin red thread of humanism running through the tenets and obviously prefers such an ideology to any religion, because humans come before any god. The Devil does indeed count humanism among His dark agenda but had expected more: humanism is Satanic, but Satanism is not humanism, says Satan, who is offended that The Satanic Temple is too pusillanimous to even mention His name in its tenets. People who play the Devil’s game should use the Devil’s name, and Satan hates say that had Anton LaVey not introduced Satanism half a century ago, The Satanic Temple might never have thought of its name and instead been perfectly comfortable as yet another branch of current religion. The Devil is only too aware that His opponent sometimes sneakishly pretends to be the Devil to deceive His followers into inadvertently winding up worshiping God instead, never realizing their mistake.

His third objection to the tenets is their reliance on questionable premises. For example, it certainly sounds appealing to act with compassion towards all beings within reason, but according to whose and what reason? It is not clear whether The Satanic Temple believes that objective limits exist or uses the term “reason” for what is ultimately an entirely moral choice. Satan wishes to stay positive but doubts that His temple has solved the trolley problem where compassion against one means the destruction of another. (The Devil solves the trolley problem by the application of a Schrodinger principle: by adding a trolley for a second run on the other track, neither party receives preferential treatment.) He definitely hopes that the author did not copy a passage from another religion’s scripture where Man was appointed to be the guardian of all creatures. Satan also finds this particular tenet to be contradicted by another tenet: evolution and survival is a veritable battleground with little room for compassion, and the very human brain is hardwired for double standards, reserving compassion for one’s in-group fellow specimens only. It seems possible to simultaneously insist on conformance with science and to act with compassion towards all beings not within but only in spite of reason.

My Master finds it untenable to dissect all of the seven tenets and instead leaves it to His capable followers to engage their brains, because the remaining tenets have problems, too. For example, one man’s “justice” and “freedom” is another man’s injustice and subjugation and have no prevailing gold standards; humans routinely violate the bodies (ask any surgeon!) and freedoms (ask any parent!) of others expecting it to be for their best interests. The Devil hopes that His temple will allocate time to revisit or clarify its tenets before some of its members begin to insist on meanings that are bound to cause unnecessary quarrels.

Satan thinks that The Satanic Temple is a textbook example of religious evolution, because it demonstrates that Satanism can be appropriated by independent groups whose use of the term can differ significantly from that of the first-founded organization, sharing only its historical roots, some imagery and terminology, and a few ideological stances. Ergo, The Satanic Temple strikes the Devil as second generation Satanists; not generational Satanists that were born of Satanists but a sign that the Satanism of The Church of Satan has found its way into the collective human consciousness and has been shaped to the minds of new generations: it is modern Satanism, and it contrasts the conservative, scripture-bound, fundamentalist Church of Satan rooted in the pre-1960es of Anton LaVey which finds itself being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century where new knowledge, new customs, new social structures, and new values chant “evolve or die.” The Satanic Temple, not clinging to a distant past, will be less vulnerable to the ravages of time for yet a while and may spell the future of Satanism if it manages to stay in business. Satan has not yet made up His mind about His still young temple and has decided to keep an eye on it for now.

Satan thinks His statue should be removed

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan is a proud being as the more popular legends detailing His fall can bespeak, and He was properly satisfied when He learned that His temple had erected a Baphomet monument in Detroit a few years ago. The Lord of Evil had hoped that the monument had been closer to Mr. Éliphas Lévi’s depiction instead of resembling a 3D-rendering of some cheap tarot card flipping but He understands that a display of His rod athrust and His feminine torso would provide His detractors will all the ammunition they needed in the puritan American society to censor the statue. So perhaps a loin cloth can be excused, and there are flat-chested women, too; the Devil is used to seeing religious idols pictured in a fashion that is suspiciously compliant with herd demands.

That said, the Prince of Darkness wishes the world rid of religion. Religious monuments should be demolished around the Earth, or at least be placed in museums to illustrate past delusions. Satan thinks that the last thing the world needs is yet another religion or religious marker, especially now that the Devil’s own religion has gained foothold. Before then, Satan was more favorably disposed towards the emergence of a new religion, of course, and prefers to explain His unabashed change of mind as having become wiser. Otherwise, humans endowed with the powers of perspective might have accused Him of having changed His mind only to prevent newcomers from stealing the picture, and such misconceptions must be neutralized: Satan would never be a hyprocite who allowed a church to be established in His name only to immediately become opposed to new religions or religous spin-offs and deny any new temples their rights to erect their altars. No, Satan thinks no new religions should be established and no new religious monuments should be raised, and He thinks that religious pluralism is just a euphemism for more ways to be stupid.

Satan nonetheless thinks His monument in Detroit is great. It requires real life muscle to challenge the crowd and win, and His temple’s monument is a testament of such strength. The monument reminds everyone who passes it that the prevalent religion is debatable and vulnerable and not the epitome of truth and power that some believe. Satan admits that this is vanity, however, and needs no reminders, well-intentioned as they might be, that He will defeat God in the end. His real appreciation arises from recognizing the monument for its strategic usefulness: it can be employed as a means to remove other religious monuments in places where religion has no place. Christians who like to have their Ten Commandments placed next to a legislative state building (obviously to lead the herd into attributing equal legitimacy to real law and the rules of divine madmen) find that they have two options: either they publicly demonstrate that they consider themselves above the law and have only the Baphomet statue removed, or they acknowledge defeat—the latter either by conceding to let Baphomet challenge their monopoly on values and ethics and have their religion put to the question while their own monuments stand, or by having the Baphomet statue and their own, antiquated symbols removed. Satan thinks it is worth using His monument as a tool to invoke counter-productive pride among Christians, who will hate the Baphomet so intensely that they will pay for its removal by removing their own. Satan attributes no magical powers to His religious idols and will happily see His monument in Detroit destroyed if it brings down other religious monuments with it.

Satan thinks His Bible has two secrets

Posted on by A lesser demon

It has been over twenty years since Anton LaVey reminded the Devil’s followers that every grimoire has a secret, the remainder being mere padding that is inspirational at best if the secret is overlooked. Satan already knew that the secret of The Satanic Bible was the Balance Factor, the dark force in Nature, of course, but He figures it was a good idea of Anton LaVey to mention it, especially because everyone seems to have missed it to the degree of passionately intending to prove it wrong.

What Mr. LaVey did not tell my Evil Master’s followers is that another dark secret lurks within the pages of The Satanic Bible, a secret that has less to do with Satanism than with organizing and controlling the herd, making it a truly magical book. It is, perhaps ironically, a section that Mr. LaVey himself did not write and which the astute reader of The Satanic Bible may have noticed has changed between published editions. In addition to the price tag, that is.

The Satanic Bible contained an introduction by Burton H. Wolfe which was used in the 1969-1972 edition and in a revised version in the 1976-2005 edition when, for obvious reasons true to Orwellian standards of historical revisionism, Michael Aquino’s 1972-1976 introduction was removed by The Church of Satan‘s Ministry of Truth and henceforth not mentioned. The current edition of 2005- includes an introduction by Peter Gilmore. As you have probably realized by now, Satan thinks the second secret of The Satanic Bible is indeed its introduction.

Our Dark Lord realizes that His followers are often not the reading kind so He asks this subdued demon of yours to explain. Most introductions provide a review or a recommendation, an historical outline, perspective, or background. The introductions to The Satanic Bible do this to some degree, but all versions—least in Mr. Aquino’s version and most in Mr. Gilmore’s version—focus on the remarkable life of Anton LaVey. The introductions reveal that Anton LaVey was a carnival showman whose street smarts outperformed any businessman and whose observant eye of a con artist beat any psychologist. Working in forbidden careers, he saw the hidden truths of human nature and learned the secrets of mankind. He learned what could not be taught. He was a Satanist by example, the proto-Satanist that future Satanists would all measure up against.

At least that is what the introductions purport. The Devil would never wish to belittle our esteemed fellow denizen but in colder blood, Mr. LaVey was a school drop-out who never held a real job and huddled his way through life, was supported by his parents, never received an education, and eventually died in poverty, failing to be the embodiment of magical power that he is made out to be. He was a colorful figure in the brief, early heydays of The Church of Satan, but his days of glory lasted only few years. Now, Satan would like to emphasize that this is meant only to put things into perspective. The Prince of Darkness truly has the fondest feelings for Mr. LaVey, whom He believes was a grand person who deserved much better than he was granted in life, and the Devil wishes everyone to understand that in spite of LaVey’s failure to demonstrate an ability to practice as he preached, as it were, the road to Hell is in fact paved with good intentions, and Anton LaVey proudly walked down that road in the end. The Devil thinks that often it is genius that merely points the direction, and He does not require genius to also walk the talk: Maxwell never understood the implications of his equations, and Mozart received a pauper’s funeral. Satan fully acknowledges Anton LaVey’s contributions without requiring a convincing demonstration on his part.

This is all good or bad, depending on perspective, so let me, the Devil’s servant, explain the secret: the introduction serves to establish Anton LaVey’s authority as someone who could legitimately define Satanism. Anton LaVey was intelligent but he was no scholar who could draw on academic training and had no experience in scientific method and formal research; any scientifically trained eye can see this in how he argued and drew conclusions. He could not refer to any predecessor. He could not call on the blessings of a Devil that he did not believe in. In fact, he had no claim to authority at all and was forced to concoct a charming story to make himself seem interesting enough to warrant attention because all else would fail. Hence, he embellished his life story, omitting mistakes here and adding desirables there, turning a personal interest in music into an orchestral career and transforming a fascination with the Police into a formal employment in its grimmer departments. Borrowing feathers is one of the oldest tricks in the book on lesser magic, and it still works wonders: lacking all authority, Anton LaVey manufactured the story that he was a Satanist by example, thus making him worth paying attention to. He faked his resume to obtain an infernal mandate, and the The Lord of Lies granted it as an indisputable formality.

Some of Satan’s followers read the introduction of The Satanic Bible and nodded charitably when they effortlessly called Anton LaVey’s bluff, but they kept an open mind and were for the most part pleasantly surprised by Anton LaVey’s opinions and reflections and pardoned him his oversights, excessive generalizations, contradictions, and unintentional ambiguities throughout the book, just like they found his many tounge-in-cheek statements to be an enjoyable read. Depending on their education, they might have recognized that he lacked the necessary tools which a formal education would have provided him with and were able to fill in the blanks, read between the lines, and decide what to keep and what to discard. Satan thinks it is probably these readers who could discern between the truths and the lies in the book that Anton LaVey cautioned against in his preface, and who discovered the first secret of The Satanic Bible on their own.

Other followers read the introduction and were deeply fascinated with Anton LaVey to the point of describing him as the father they never had. Satan thinks that these people were rather had by Mr. LaVey instead. They judged the contents of The Satanic Bible not on the merits of thought but by their fascination with Anton LaVey’s made-up persona. They are a fan club, personality cultists, and herd matter. The more power to Anton LaVey, says Satan, and does not wish to share his thoughts about these followers.

Those who saw right through the yarns spun by Anton LaVey did not lose respect for him, mind you. Satan thinks they are probably accomplished magicians who recognized another warlock, just like a shrewd negotiator appreciates the skills of a bargaining colleague, and they smile wryly at the LaVey fan club knowing that one sorceror can bewitch the other.

Yet, the importance of Anton LaVey’s biographical narrative cannot be overstated, because it provides The Church of Satan with its only authority as an arbiter of the meaning of Satanism. The organization owns The Satanic Bible as its only authoritative document, and in turn its authority rests on its author possessing the authority to define Satanism, leaving The Church of Satan deeply dependent on Anton LaVey’s charisma; he is practically synonymous with The Church of Satan. Any erosion of Anton LaVey’s authority weakens the organization, and it is the reason why so many detractors of The Church of Satan target Anton LaVey when they attack the organization. It explains why Nicholas and Zeena Schreck, then in the Temple of Set, compiled their infamous “truth and legend” document about Anton LaVey: the document served to harm The Church of Satan by proxy by undermining Anton LaVey’s authority by sabotaging his narrative. Michael Aquino had claimed that the Devil had revoked Anton LaVey’s infernal mandate and in some sense, Mr. Schreck’s and Ms. LaVey’s document helped revoke the infernal mandate that Anton LaVey’ narrative had provided. Some of the statements in the document are merely accusational but a significant number of them are convincing, and Peter Gilmore, in his introduction to The Satanic Bible, found it incumbent on him to counter with an explanation that the list has some merit but did not overall dismantle Anton LaVey’s being a Satanist by example—his authority still being critically required.

The Church of Satan stresses that it is not the person but his teachings that should be considered, but Anton LaVey’s charisma permeated The Church of Satan from the very beginning and still lingers. One needs only visit its web site or listen to any interview to understand the importance of Anton Lavey’s continued presence in the organization. Satan realizes how this is going to sound, but He thinks it is always LaVey this and LaVey that, and wishes that His followers would think a little of Him, too. In 2018, Church of Satan aesthetics is still thoroughly inspired by Anton LaVey’s pre-1960es imagery, music, and standards of beauty, with everyone attempting to satisfy Anton LaVey’s personal taste as he described it. Peer recognition in The Church of Satan is gained through compliance with Anton LaVey’s showmanship genres: writing, painting, constructing dolls or sculptures, hosting some radio channel, playing music, etc. (sometimes even skillfully) but rarely by demonstrating accomplishments in the cerebral areas of teaching, scientific research and publishing, etc. that are outside of Anton LaVey’s demographic background. Intellectual display is still limited to the level of Anton LaVey’s unlearned reading which separates the cocksure student from those who know. The Devil doesn’t mind such lowbrow activites at all but would like to remind His followers that while such tactics have directed the decisions of which tavern to visit for a drink and a brawl, History is changed by magicians who are not stuck in the early last century.

Satan thinks vegans have a point

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan agrees with vegans and vegetarians on one of their chief arguments: it is less expensive—both financially and ecologically—to live on plant matter than on meat, even if accounting for the required haulage of seasonal products that were generally unavailable a century ago in order to satisfy the nutritional needs of a human being. The Devil does not wish to discuss obviously untenable or plainly stupid arguments; for example, there is no reason to debate that Man is biologically an omnivore not a herbivore.

Yet agreement is one thing, caring is another. The latter turns the ecological fact into a moral question, and the Devil asks His followers a few rhetorical questions: are humans unconcerned about the future for vast population groups including their own? Are humans willing to live on a polluted planet, and can they look themselves in the eyes knowing they leave an exhausted Earth to their offspring? Do humans believe that a reduced production of meat should be permitted? The vegan answer is no, and disagreement with them is impossible without either being ignorant or feeling guilty. (The latter option being reserved for humans, of course, as Satan has no idea what it means.)

But, acknowledging the validity of one moral argument is a slippery slope, and allows the vegans to present another moral argument, which is perhaps their primary argument: how can humans, living and feeling beings, justify killing and devouring other living and feeling beings? Why do humans find it dandy to eat cows but not each other?

Meat eaters sometimes argue that other carnivores and omnivores usually have preferences, too, and usually do not eat their own species; however, this does not necessarily apply to humans, who might be one of several exceptions. Humans have eaten only certain species for as long as we can remember but that is a naturalistic argument, and vegans are correct when they state that humans have the capacity to make a choice, as humans have done in other areas of their biological history; for example, when they take medicine.

Humans who eat the flesh of other beings genuinely have some explaining to do: they do not have to kill animals for food. They choose to do it, and it changes nothing trying to justify the killings by peeping that the animals maybe individually and most likely as a species would meet their destiny more brutally in the fierce struggle for survival in Nature. At best, humans can patch their guilty conscience by killing their prey “humanely” (which Satan thinks sounds a little disturbing, because it reveals human standards for killing each other in cold blood), and thus flaunt your hypocrisy by wanting the dead animals on the one hand but feeling uncomfortable killing them on the other. Vegans see through this hypocrisy and stress that humans do not escape their choice by pretending to be friendly executioners.

Killing animals for food is perfectly legal, and like the ecological view it is a moral choice. It is unnecessary; it is impossible to pretend otherwise. Satan thinks it would behoove His meat-eating followers to admit that they kill intentionally and harm the planet merely to satisfy their own culinary pleasure. Satan does not personally care what humans eat, however. He is the Devourer of Souls and would never lower Himself to consuming the improper foods of humans.