Month: March 2019

Satan thinks someone should ask His church some questions

Posted on by A lesser demon

My Master never attempts to manipulate the minds of His followers although certainly the worshipers of His opponent in the sky tell many exciting tales to the contrary when they flee from responsibility for their own actions. The Devil prefers to encourage His followers to pursue undefiled knowledge through critical thinking and to ask for clarification when they discover incongruity or inconsistency.

If the Devil were to take the role of an honestly curious and truth-seeking follower of His, first He would study before asking, of course, because there are in fact stupid questions. Then, having become familiar with key literature and having evaluated theory according to premise then theory against practice, presumably some questions would arise. The Prince of Darkness would never pretend to put words in the mouths of His followers, but had the Devil been a simple human being wishing to tread the Left Hand Path, He might have liked to receive answers to a few questions such as the following.

In The Satanic Bible, as well as in several other places, Anton LaVey explained that greater magic works by channeling one’s emotional energy into someone else’s mind, and he defends the necessity of rituals by referring to the Freudian model of pent-up emotions. Satan is intrigued by the justice-serving conception that undeserved “surplus” emotional energy in oneself could imaginably be balanced with a corresponding deficiency in a deserving target, but even at LaVey’s time the pressure-chamber model of emotional build-ups had long since been dismissed, and psychologists today warn that ritually or otherwise letting out the steam, as it were, in some mentalized decompression chamber to get pent-up emotions “out of your system” only reinforces the emotions. As for the ability to implant a thought into someone else’s mind using the powers of one’s own, it was still believed well up into the 1970es in certain scientific communities that one should at least not dismiss the possibility of mind control yet, and various armies spent vast amounts of research hours in the attempt. Today, however, this idea has also been entirely rejected. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked whether they still believe in these explanations of Anton LaVey’s on how and why magic works. Satan also thinks The Church of Satan should be explained whether they truly believe there is some “karmic” repercussion to denying the power of magic as stated in the seventh rule of The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth.

Today’s insights from the scientific study of religions (not to be confused with theology) and religious people contradict Anton LaVey’s explanations of how religion functions in The Satanic Bible, and has quite different things to say about how religious people think and behave. This scientific field barely existed when Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible, but now that better explanations have been found, Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked whether it prefers Anton LaVey’s misunderstandings to science.

In fact, an increasing number of elements in Anton LaVey’s writings have become, and are still becoming, outdated and many core observations are today downright contradicted by scientific advances. Satan thinks that The Church of Satan should be asked why it nonetheless considers any revision of Anton LaVey’s writings to be unnecessary, and perhaps in the same vein why Peter Gilmore’s book was added to the organization’s core scripture when, according to The Church of Satan, Anton LaVey provided everything a Satanist needs to know to understand Satanism.

Unbeknownst to most readers of The Satanic Bible and Anton LaVey’s other books, Mr. LaVey expressed vehement opposition to abortion, which he referred to as “murderous deeds” and “senseless annihilation of our unborn children” which would have “a disastrously demoralizing effect on our society” if it were legalized. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked whether it still supports LaVey’s view on abortion.

The “LaVey Personality Synthesizer” of The Satanic Witch seems heavily inspired by William Sheldon’s somatotyping, which was soon dismissed as pseudo-science along with phrenology. Anton LaVey’s model of the core, demonic, and apparent selves was appropriated from Wilhelm Reich’s almost identical model which has never even been considered valid. The very foundation of The Satanic Witch is thus completely broken, and all of the recommendations for seeking out the mark’s “opposite” personality according to the mark’s position on the “clock” are are ill-founded. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked whether it still believes in the principles of The Satanic Witch and their reason for “working.”

Speaking of The Satanic Witch, its premise was the reality of the pre-1970es Northern America where women were highly dependent on men. Today, women have much simpler options, and with significantly higher pay-off, than modifying their attractiveness as accessories to men. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked if they believe the book is still relevant and, if so, why. Satan also thinks that The Church of Satan should be asked how a witch is supposed to manipulate her “quarry” once having gained its attention using the techniques of The Satanic Witch, because the Devil thinks that presumably that would be the most important part of being a witch.

The Church of Satan claims to be non-political. Nonetheless, Anton LaVey said that “[C]onservative organizations will (and already do) find Satanism far more compatible with their doctrines than they now think it to be,” meaning that The Church of Satan’s values are obviously conservative-leaning. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked to explain how political compatibility with politically conservative organizations can be said to be non-political.

Often when someone identifies an issue in Anton LaVey’s scripture that is negated by modern knowledge, seems far-fetched, never seems to be practiced by The Church of Satan’s members, or is otherwise contradicted, the reply usually is that the Doctor was deliberately speaking with his tounge in his cheek. Satan thinks that since it is clearly not evident even to intelligent people when Anton LaVey was being serious, The Church of Satan should be asked which parts of Anton LaVey’s scripture are considered truths to be accepted and which parts are misleading, or at least be asked for instructions on how to distinguish.

There is little to no indication that Anton LaVey himself believed in the Devil, but he (Anton, not Old Nick) has proclaimed that: “many members of the Church of Satan who are mystically inclined prefer to think of Satan in a very real, anthropomorphic way. Of course we do not discourage this, because we realize that it is very important to many individuals to ritualistically conceptualize a well-wrought picture of their mentor or tutelary divinity.” The Prince of Darkness is sincerely flattered but thinks The Church of Satan should nonetheless be asked whether it still officially accepts, and consequently speaks for, proponents of a Christian world-view in which His existence is real.

The Church of Satan has begun to regularly emphasize that scholars of religion agree that the Church of Satan was the first organization to claim the name. Satan has a good idea of who these scholars might be and thinks that The Church of Satan should be asked to provide sources because they would enable students (who obey the Devil’s demand that they study not worship) to learn what else these scholars have to say about who is and is not a Satanic organization and what Satanism is and is not. Satan finds this particularly interesting because He remembers that The Church of Satan once published a memo to its members forbidding them to speak to the perhaps most knowledgeable scholars on Satanism (whom they referred to as “so-called” researchers, not acknowledging their very real authority as scholars in their field) because during their research they had spoken to other Satanic organizations.

The Prince of Darkness prefers to torment His damned souls according to our shortcomings and tips His hat at Anton LaVey’s similar requirement that members of The Church of Satan be anointed to titles reflecting their real world accomplishments. Satan is certain to find that His church be thus represented among the élite, and could imagine that an intelligent follower would ask His church to mention a handful of Satanists who, following the teachings of His church, have made nation-wide success rather than running a sandwich joint, becoming a stripper, or publishing some paperback with a few thousand readers. The Devil imagines that whoever were awarded the highest degrees in His church would be remarkable world leaders, and would ask His church for a few examples of world-dominating Satanic magistrates who moved the world beyond owning a tattoo parlor or a web shop selling sex toys.

Our Black Monarch could surely think of more questions but has no personal interest in any excuses or answers and expects His church to dismiss any questions inquiring for undefiled wisdom as shit-disturbance.

Satan thinks people are being bullied because they are weird

Posted on by A lesser demon

From an evolutionary perspective, herd confirmity is critical to social animals. In fact, even solitary animals must obey the “social” rules of their species, including rules that mandate getting killed and devoured by a fellow specimen.

If you deviated from the social norms in ancient times, your local peers would quickly inform you of your misstep with angry outbursts and often physical reminders intended to motivate correct behavior. Deviation was not called for; it usually implied life-threatening risks and deadly mistakes affecting the entire social group, and such is usually dealt harshly and swiftly with on an evolutionary scale: evolution requires change and adaptation, favoring those who possess a lucky fit to physical and social environments, but most evolutionary paths are short and dead-ended. Repeat offense tended to be punishable with death, where your socially conscientious group would rend you limb from limb or ostracize you and leave you to the futile odds of surviving on your own. Lex Talionis—the law of the jungle—stipulates that you either conform or die.

By the same token, physical deviance is perceived as a threat, too, for good reason: in Nature, if an animal looks like something is wrong, then usually something is wrong, and the unfortunate individual should immediately be prevented from contributing to the gene pool as a matter of precaution.

Mankind may consider itself to be highly evolved but Satan thinks Man is barely a late-generation ape whose apparent sophistication is skin deep. A long history of evolution and very basic rules of survival govern human behavior to a much larger extent than humans like to think. Such deeply rooted core behavior dominates, so as soon as a human grows old enough to decode primitive social situations, any sight of unnatural (meaning any eccentric or peculiar) behavior will prompt normal human children to use all forms of peer pressure involving chicanery, harrassment, exclusion, bullying, and violence to suppress the aberration. The specific methods usually become more refined and artful as the children grow older and into adults, but typically not much and least among less gifted individuals. Nonconformity is feared by any age group because unnaturalness awakens the primoridal terror of a threat to group survival.

Satan wishes to interject here that it is a common misconception that people who rise to the top broke the rules to get there. They did not; they are in fact highly conformant. Some successful businessman or leader may indeed seem to break all codes of conduct or deviate from classical methods but social expectations ask just that of a powerful individual, and he or she rose to the top only through satisfing the herd’s demand for conformity-enforcing products or opinions. Satan thinks that few things are as conformant as acting “nonconformantly” in accordance with a social role that is defined by the herd. To successfully deviate from the herd, you must deviate in a predefined fashion that everyone accepts.

There are individuals who cannot help being nonconformant, however. They may suffer from mental illnesses or personality disorders that prevent them from understanding or following social rules or even from perceiving the world in a manner that aids their survival. To a varying degree, their irregular behavior threaten the life-sustaining conformity and hence they deserve to be either taught to conform or be properly disposed of, sometimes for perfectly good reason if their deviant behavior is harmful to others. And so from an early onset in life they are bullied until they occupy a harmless role in their society and until they keep a proper distance to normal people. For matters of brevity (and possibly because my Master specifically asked me to avoid any mention of demonic possession in the context of mental illness), your disloyal demon points its dear readers to our esteemed denizen Mr. Foucault’s book: Madness and Civilization for a historical rundown of psychotherapeutic treatment. Focus must remain what Satan thinks, not how humans have historically addressed mental health.

The Devil does not wish to share His opinions on the moral aspects of bullying, nor will He discuss specific forms of deviance. He merely understands that it is innately human to bully outliers, and that being bullied is thus a litmus test for deviance. Some anomaly is easily identifiable—physical disability or deformity is obvious—but adults do not readily recognize that if a child is otherwise being bullied in school, then probably there is something wrong with that child from a normality perspective. Bullies may be forced to stop but Satan thinks that an important step to stop the bullying would be to locate the deviant behavior and its cause because an early diagnosis can change everything for the better for a person.

Satan thinks His followers should use goodwill accounts

Posted on by A lesser demon

In His dealings with His minions and followers, the Devil employs the simple strategy of tit for tat. Satan thinks that treating people exactly as they treat you is a surprisingly effective strategy for convincing them that you are evil incarnate. Moreover, it is a highly effective game-theory mechanism that outperforms virtually all contenders while also being the simplest of them all—although perhaps not as simple the strategy of always turning the other cheek which however suffers the severe drawback of being disastrously inferior to them all.

For the uninitiated, the tit for tat strategy means “equivalent retaliation” (although not desiring to wait for hostile action before taking revenge, the Devil often implements preemptive retaliation instead) where you replicate your opponent’s previous action: if your opponent was helpful, you cooperate whereas if your opponent was uncooperative, then so are you. The strategy becomes highly cooperative once your opponents follow (other) strategies involving cooperation as long as you stick to your tit for tat principles and begin with being cooperative in situations where you must take the initiative. This is not to say that Satan thinks you should strictly bother no-one and destroy them if they bother you. It means you should apply the Balance Factor when you reward or punish and tip the scales of Balance slightly by offering a gift in any initial move.

The simplicity of the tit for tat strategy avoids lengthy records and statistics of past behavior; it suffices to merely recall someone’s last action. But although Satan thinks that most people could easily be replaced with mindless automatons following simple scripts, real life is subject to somewhat more complicated rules than are usually set in game theory competitions. There are variably delayed rewards and punishments, drawbacks to some cooperative or punitive actions (you can only quit so many jobs in a short while until it damages your resume, for example), and people who play tit for tat but whose cooperation is harmful or vice versa, just to name a few issues.

In these modern days of lawyers, bankers, and accountants, Satan thinks His followers should think in terms of book-keeping. Relations with others—employers, spouses, strangers, groups—can be thought of as “transactions” on some checking account using “goodwill” as currency. Satan thinks that one should begin each relationship by opening a goodwill checking account and immediately deposit some amount of goodwill on it. The other party is then free to deposit or withdraw goodwill through his or her actions. You, on the other hand, behave as if your “opponent” (who is your collaborator in a mutual tit for tat arrangement), too, maintains a goodwill account, so make prudent withdrawals and deposits on their accounts as well, according to the tit for tat principle.

The key is to cut your losses and terminate the relationship once your goodwill account is overdrawn. The initial amount that you deposited serves as your initial “gift” to the other party and as a buffer amount that safeguards young relationships from minor misunderstandings. Never make an initial deposit worth more than you can afford to lose: invest too much, and you risk becoming prey to a psychic vampire who keeps drawing on your goodwill while giving very little in return.

Satan thinks He exists

Posted on by A lesser demon

Many of the Devil’s followers insist that there is no Devil, so Old Nick wishes to clear up some confusion about His infernal existence.

As you, dear reader, may already be aware, He prefers to stick to His greatest trick that He does not exist (cf. my fellow denizen Monsieur Charles Baudelaire) in spite of the demand it places on the human mind to explain the world through more complicated means. It was once so simple to know that the world was moved by gods and devils, who could be influenced through incantations, ceremonies, and rituals, but such superstition requires belief in demons and disregard of knowledge. Satan represents undefiled wisdom, and He wants Mankind to think for itself and know the Universe as it manifests itself, not through old wives’ tales of supernatural, usually anthropomorphized creatures with plans of their own.

Satan therefore keeps pretending He does not exist, thus deceiving gullible humans into trusting that the Universe, in its cold, impersonal darkness, contains all the questions and answers Mankind can imagine without requiring the addition of mythical varmint to the equations. This marvelous lie has already coerced humans into obtaining a firm grasp of a wide array of natural laws and principles, and scientists have obtained a reasonable understanding of matter and how the strong, the weak, and the electromagnetic forces and (at least for practical purposes) gravity affect it.

But none of the forces or laws of Nature indicate that, from a human point of view, life unfolds and evolves; they only demand ongoing change in the Universe. They describe change within so limited scopes that one cannot express connections between cause on the microscopic level and effect on the macroscopic level, or vice versa. The laws of Nature say little about the development of life; although humans have now learned how DNA replicates, how organisms reproduce and mutate, how organisms adapt and survive according to changing environments, and how they in turn change their environments, Satan thinks humans will never be capable of explaining which direction life will take except in highly general terms. Nor do the laws of Nature explain human emotions or reactions in spite of a good understanding of biochemistry, some neurological insight, etc.—or, rather, Satan thinks they do but the human brain is far too limited to manage the enormity of information and the countless interactions that come into play. There are not enough atoms on Earth to hold the knowledge required to provide the answers that Mankind seeks.

Natural forces and laws com­bined have an endless effect that seems much larger than their sum total, and there is no well-de­scribed natural law that can express this com­bined effect. Humans can merely state that the natural laws explain that things happen, and how phys­ic­al and chem­ic­al pro­cesses are fol­lowed, but they cannot de­scribe how life or the human per­cep­tion of life unfolds. It is this “su­per­set” of natural laws that defies sci­en­ti­f­ic description. Greater minds can be content with such an explanation, because they can relate well enough to the knowledge that science has gathered today to sense that the laws of the universe combine into a larger whole. They can stare into the eternal darkness in awe as they sense what can never be seen. Most people, however, require symbolic language to effectively communicate this greater whole, enabling people to intuitively grasp its immensity and general mechanisms. Humans have come to possess great un­der­stand­ing of the world around and within them, yet their sense of de­vel­op­ment and life—their desire to act and live, to be and to become—is not covered by this un­der­standing. Humans can still de­scribe such feel­ings only in sym­bol­ic terms.

My Master serves as such a symbol. Satan is change with no guidance, a perpetual pull towards Him, a motivation that follows its own, inner dark light. He represents both unordered dissolution and solidification into a balance that is found as chaos and order throughout Nature. He is the imbalance factor who breaks stasis and causes movement, steadily tipping the otherwise frozen scales of everything into balance only to upset balance elsewhere. He represents a pervasive force of a divine nature, but unlike the powers attributed to the usual gods it is a power that involves “evil” and destruction, and a power that is unconcerned with the well-being or the state of Cosmos. Satan symbolizes the gestalt of all natural laws acting simultaneously—the only way they can function. He is the dark force that pulls everything into Hell, if ever so slowly, as the Universe moves towards its eventual heat death. It is in this sense that Satan thinks that although from an objective point of view He may not exist, the human brain is hardwired to either know He does, by any name, or know less than mindless sheep.