Month: January 2019

Satan thinks His followers have silly names

Posted on by A lesser demon

My fellow denizen Mr. LaVey recommended changing one’s name as needed as an application of lesser magic, and provided a list of useful names in The Satanic Witch. The Devil’s followers have certainly taken it to heart, and the Devil marvels at the enthusiasm of His followers who are so intent on selecting impressive names that awkward (or perhaps ironic) moments occur when nobody believes its authenticity once a person uses his or her given name because it sounds somehow noteworthy. Satan tips His hat at Anton LaVey’s recognition of the manipulative power of a well-chosen name but thinks His followers should perhaps consider their goals and their cultures, and also their own character, a little better.

Mr. LaVey lived in a culture where authors and artists habitally use pen names and aliases, and few people in the United States would bat an eye if they learned that someone prefers another name. Americans take mostly favorably to people altering their lives or dispositions and will readily allow a person the benefit of doubt. The same person might receive undesired reactions elsewhere, however; Europeans, who generally demand a broader spectrum of impressive features than the relative superficiality of a name, are often slower to trust first impressions than Americans and would consider him or her a clown. What may impress a Midwestern redneck could be the very thing that enables a Norwegian to recognize a self-inflated buffoon when he sees one … or worse, because the European mind is historically accustomed to thinking in terms of swift disposal rather than respect when confronted with a person named “Ruthless” or similar.

Even so, names are strongly determined by short-lived fashion, and the names that Anton LaVey listed in his decades-old book convey different sentiments today. Their application in lesser magic no longer applies, and any modern witch worth her salt would be wise to study the herd’s fashion statements and learn some new names. That is, the names made sense when the book was released, but unless our witch genuinely wishes to remind her quarry of his or her grandparents’ generation by selecting among outmoded names, the list of names is now just silly. Satan actually thinks the entire book has become outdated, because few of the many indicators of a person’s position on the “LaVey personality synthesizer” are still observable; the very principle of the synthesizer is based on pseudo-scientific bunk; and women no longer must rely on manipulating men in order to get ahead.

If the primary goal of the prospective witch or warlock is to ingratiate herself or himself with other followers of Satan, recognition as a witch being more important than magical acumen, the name should obviously appeal to the Devil’s other followers. This is straight-forward thanks to Anton LaVey, whose mandate derived entirely from his being the proto-Satanist (i.e., his authority rested on him being a Satanist by example) and hence role model: a witch yearning for peer recognition needs only appeal to LaVey’s fascinations, because they are compulsively imitated by his idolizers. To apply lesser magic, this observation spells—if you will excuse the pun—a combination of a burlesque attitude with some excess body fat, some slightly morbid pastimes, and a name that resurrects either Jayne Mansfield or Marylin Monroe. Everyone outside of Satanism thinks that the 1940es are History, and burlesque shows with them, however, and are utterly unimpressed and thus immune against such sneaky witchcraft.

The Devil begs His followers to learn that the Balance Factor makes everyone know intuitively that the choice of a pompous name is typically counterbalanced with correspondingly personal shallowness. The Devil had made up a few ludicrously exaggerated examples to illustrate His point and conscientiously did a web search to avoid accidentally targeting real people, only to find proof that, regrettably, reality exceeds His imagination. Satan thinks there are just too many Marylins, Daimons, Luci-somethings, Dracos, Wolves, Sades, Ravens, Mansfields, Liliths, cliché novel characters (oh, another Dorian Gray?), and any variety of names inferring violence. Satan believes that such contrived names only highlight that kings always beget kings and slaves always beget slaves, and that no name makes the king.

Satan thinks nobody says it like it is

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Lord of Lies appreciates honest communication but finds that whenever someone “says it like it is,” it is never like that.

People who “say it like it is” use simple words that are each readily understood, but the statements in which the words are used carry little or no meaning on their own. Often they are unclear, ambiguous, or incoherent and riddled with non sequiturs and random thought-associations, and make no sense to an educated or intelligent person, who attempts to analyze and understand the statements. Such statements make sense only if the audience fills in the blanks and finishes the sentences as the statements trail off with no ending.

Less gifted people overlook the inherent inconsistencies and missing internal logic, however. They are provided with fuzzy implications and hazy connotations only and then reach their own conclusions—believing it was the speaker who offered them this conclusion, too. If they are assured that “you know who I’m talking about,” they imagine the speaker describes whoever they think it is, and if the speaker knowingly assures them that he offers a solution without mentioning which one, they each believe that the speaker is talking about the solution they are thinking of.  They introduce their own bias into the incomplete statements believing it to stem from the speaker.

By thus leaving it to the audience to fill in the blanks with their own ideas, explanations, and desired solutions, the audience is bound to agree with the speaker because they are their own ideas. From an analytical point of view the speaker said nothing at all, but it sounds as if the speaker “says it like it is” because all they hear is their own voice.

Everyone is prone to such confirmation bias, especially if feelings are involved, as is usually the case when someone delights in hearing something being “said like it is.” Feelings are the language of the “primitive” part of the human brain which is concerned mostly with survival. It thinks fast but is careless and error-prone, as opposed to the later evolutionary layer of the brain which adds rational thinking and the capability of weighing pros versus cons and outlining plans, at the expense of speed. All other things being equal, the capacity of afterthought and critical thinking enabled by intelligence and education helps reduce the tendency to add confirmation bias; or as Satan prefers to phrase it: confirmation bias is wholesale among stupid people.

All of the above is true for written documents, too. No book is known with certainty to provide sufficient information, and no text is exempt from interpretation. All communication, written or otherwise, is a two-way street. There is no book that “says it like it is” or provides “bedrock” that is not subject to the reader’s adding his or her bias wherever the reader fails to understand the author’s intent, regardless of cause or blame. Satan wishes to skip any detailed examples, however, because He feels at risk of insinuating that His followers are stupid for believing that, say, The Satanic Bible clearly outlines “it” in a way that anyone should be able to understand, or that His followers in His temple are stupid for believing that seven vague tenets suffice.

At the end of the day, the Devil knows that whenever you think that someone “says it like it is,” it is just you who are being stupid.

Satan thinks sex is overrated

Posted on by A lesser demon

Man is just another animal and is subject to the same laws of Nature as any other animal. Evolution rewards those best fit for survival—whether they be physically strong or capable of outsmarting their contestants—by allowing these specimens to produce offspring. The laws of Nature affect individual species differently and become manifest as widely varying strategies for survival. The human animal belongs to a group of species whose evolutionary strategy tends to moderately favor attempts to prevent other males in the flock from mating with a female, both through social competition and at a biological level by means of sperm cell competition and a penis whose shape has evolved to eject the semen of other males.

Primitive Man did not know this, and the Devil wryly notes that Man for the most part still is and doesn’t. Social rules had somehow evolved to demand that women become the property of specific males; that was just how it was and always had been as far as humans were concerned. The human brain did not evolve in order to understand Nature but to survive in it, and is thus incentivized to formulate guidelines for survival in terms that the brain can easily process, not in terms of what makes actual sense: the language of the brain is symbols not facts; it is religious. Religious answers are simple, easy to understand, and wrong, but from an evolutionary perspective “right” is not called for. The brain does not seek natural explanations for phenomena that appear axiomatic, such as social structures, when “that’s what the gods demand” suffices. Early law and order was religious, and although Satan hates to admit it, He thinks that probably it was the best early Man could accomplish in the absense of genuine insight.

Satan can relate to the desire to keep one’s piece of (pointed) tail nearby for easy access to sex, but He suspects that there may be another, bitter motivation to keep one’s conquest out of the reach of challengers: pain, infertility, birth defects, and death. The human animal had a relatively long lifespan even in ancient times and was thus considerably harmed by diseases that have less impact on shorter-lived species. For example, a cancer developing over the span of a few years is inconsequential to a rat, which breeds and dies of natural causes before the disease becomes disabilitating, but may be deadly to a human being. Humans knew nothing about the biological causes of the diseases that struck them; they just knew that they were bad and hence evil. They could only struggle to learn preventive behavioral heuristics and on rare occasions identify natural antidotes but more often potions and rituals with adversarial effect or none at all: they were believed to ward off evil and once having done that, little could be done save wait and see how much damage the demons had done to their hosts.

A few heuristics were effective, however. Sexually transmitted diseases are easily prevented through sexual abstinence, either entirely or by keeping the number of sexual partners low. In fact, if the Devil had wished to prevent the spread of STDs, He would have recommended a strategy of abstinence, too. Such a thought would never cross His mind, however, as it runs counter to His demand for perversion and debauchery; besides, in Hell, we are exposed to all curses imaginable, and a full array STDs are but a minor welcome package which is routinely handed out to the newly damned souls when we pass the gates into our infernal empire. It makes perfect sense to Satan that primitive Man would recommend a ban on widespread sexual activity as a means to keep the demons of STD at bay and encode such a ban into their social, and hence religious, laws: sexual abstinence would be required by the gods, and sinners who broke the law would soon find themselves tormented by evil spirits as it began to hurt when they urinated. Satan likes the idea that He has thus been partly instrumental in the evolutionary establishment of the aforementioned social rules, sexist or not.

Satan imagines that the STD view may explain the aversion to homosexual activity in some religions, too. Homosexuality does not jeopardize the social structure by creating illegitimate children and would seem an obvious outlet for recreational sex, and has indeed been practiced in some societies for that very reason. Unrestricted recreational sex increases the risk of contracting an STD, however, and it is fair to assume that some societies eventually concluded that homosexuality was an agent of genital inflammation, and hence an abomination worthy of the flames of Hell.

The Devil contemplates that religious bans on sexual activity might once have been a necessary evil and not the attempt to control a population via feelings of guilt that some critics of religion suggest—although the ancient emergency solution cum religious rule eventually proved remarkably effective at that. Religion may once have played an important role in containing STD outbreaks, but today mankind masters birth control and contraceptives, and recreational sex poses virtually no risk as long as condoms are used. Most STDs are easily treated and medicine renders even the deadly HIV virus harmless and impotent. Science once again obsoletes religion, and today there is no excuse against the recreational sex that most humans long for except conservative, religious sentiments.

The Devil no longer looms over the lovers’ bed. Sex needs no longer be accompanied with fear of the gods and shame for breaking the divine rules. Satan thinks that true emancipation from the religious yoke involves recreational sex with no worries. He finds no reason to be associated with sexual activity or sexual identity, including “deviant” forms such as LGBT and whichever alphabet soup gets appended. Old Nick can fully sympathize with the queer or transgender boy who seeks comfort under His scaled wings, but the Devil thinks that such a need reveals inculcated shame that the fellow should first work to ignore. Anyone is welcome among His followers but Satan hopes for deeper reasons than belonging to a sexual minority or thinking that Marquis de Sade is kinky. Satan wants people to be comfortable with their particular sexuality and refuse to let the herd define it, be that through social prejudice against certain sexualities or by following a fad such as the sudden bisexual female trend in the early 21st century where women inspired by Hollywood-managed lipstick-bisexual artists declared themselves bisexual in droves. Sexual curiosity, inspiration, and experimentation is fine, compulsion less so.

“Look,” says Satan, “humans think wearing lace and leather and slapping their partner’s butt would make me raise an eyebrow, but come on. Anglerfish sex involves the male partner attaching himself onto the female and fusing into her, feeding on her as a parasite until he releases his sperm. Flatworms are hermaphrodites and will fight in order to choose their sex during mating. Snails stab each other during sex. Female praying mantis and female black widow spiders are notorious for their tendency to kill and eat their mates. Now there’s some grounds for invoking my name.” Satan thinks humans should realize that their mating habits are utterly uninteresting, and He sometimes wonders how humans are capable of mating at all considering their inability to find a comfortable sex position.

Satan thinks that as long as His followers identify themselves with Him merely because of their sexuality, they probably have a long journey ahead of them before they escape the clutches of religion.

Satan thinks religious diets are jail food

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devil prefers to think that He fails to understand why humans fuss about dietary habits, but He does have some hypotheses.

Some foods are risky. Pigs often carry diseases and require stricter cooking techniques than, e.g., poultry. Ancient Man knew nothing of microbes but must have been mindful of the potentially lethal consequences of eating under-cooked or raw meat from certain animals. So, when mankind invented their gods, perhaps they threw in a divine ban on pork as a reminder to avoid it. Satan finds this explanation insufficient, however. It makes sense for swine (my Horned Master unfortunately did not clarify whether he meant the animal or the religious people) but is hardly true for many other dietary restrictions imposed by the various gods around the globe, and the Devil is inclined to dismiss this hypothesis except for a limited number of particular foods in specific historical areas.

Satan suspects more sinister reasons. He believes the gods never intended to serve Man (again, Satan sounded ominously ambiguous saying this) by offering sound advice but instead attempted to feather their own nests. My Master understands that gods use every trick in the book to retain their followers, and intricate rituals with complicated table manners and recipes requiring special attention to ingredients require both host and patron to concentrate on their faith. The more complicated the more the followers are forced to think about their divine lords.

The trick of eating different foods also provides the ability to distinguish oneself from other groups. For example, to stand out from the shellfish-eating, primitive pagans of the other tribe, is is easier to remove oyster from the menu than to stop being an equally primitive screwhead.

Lastly, leading its followers to believe that certain foods are yucky, or “unclean,” surely won the inventor a cosmic patent for its effectiveness as an unclimbable fence around the followers. Human taste develops during their lifetimes, but usually keep within the limits of learned acceptable categories of food. Humans that were raised to feel aversion to, say, fish, will usually stay off seafood. The divine subterfuge is to select food that is consumed in nearby religions, because this will keep one’s own followers from leaking into neighboring groups, who eat disgusting things.

The human adaptability to strange situations teaches followers to consider unreasonable and nonsensical rules to be normal, and they will argue their necessity and pass them on to their offspring, never realizing that they are held hostage. Satan thinks religion is best defined as an institutionalized Stockholm syndrome.