Those who encounter Satanists online will soon learn that, according to The Church of Satan, every Satanist is entitled to his or her own opinions and actions because Satanism allows such freedom. No two Satanists are alike. One cannot meet one Satanist and then think one has seen them all because seeking to pigeonhole a Satanist is supposedly like attempting to nail custard to a wall. It is only in recent decades that scholars of religion have narrowed down in scholarly terms The Church of Satan’s religion more tightly than for virtually any other cult, but that is mainly because they had formerly not cared. The official stance of The Church of Satan states that anyone who reads Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible and feels that it “resonates” positively with them may think of themselves as Satanists.
Those same people who encounter Satanists from The Church of Satan online will also soon learn that despite its alleged openness and personal freedom, The Church of Satan requires strict conformity. Woe be the Satanist who dares to criticize Anton LaVey or the current high priest, Peter Gilmore. Twice cursed be the Satanist who openly admits that deep flaws, outdated hypotheses and theories, misapplied science, and counterfactual claims and premises abound within the ideology originally introduced by Anton LaVey and later sophomorically pseudo-intellectualized by Peter Gilmore. Thrice cursed be the Satanist whose opinions and values would raise no eyebrows within The Church of Satan (not even the ridiculously trimmed ones of Peter Gilmore) who chooses to affiliate with another Satanic organization or just dares to acknowledge their legitimacy.
Nevertheless, the Prince of Evil agrees with His church that all it takes to become a churchgoer is to acknowledge that The Satanic Bible evokes a feeling of having views confirmed that you never managed to articulate. Some readers will find that Anton LaVey provided them with the pivotal portal to their incomplete identity, validating them with soothing words of power. They are Church of Satan material by its own certification.
Our Horn-Crowned Majesty does not interfere—after all, He is a supernatural entity and real only to us Hell-dwellers—but does not find Himself above (of course) to be opinionated. Satan thinks that The Satanic Bible is one of those books that cater to people who harbor a mortal fear of rejection. The very first page of LaVey’s preface to The Satanic Bible informs its readers that upon reading its pages, they will gain insights otherwise denied to the masses; and what follows are reassurances that if the reader feels alienated from the masses, it is because something is wrong with everyone but the reader. By reading the book, the reader will know something that others do not know, and it makes the reader better than the rest. It makes its readers feel superior in the Game of Life, unaware that this is the most tried and tested method for gathering cult followers.
Yet, all it takes for an outsider to join the club is to also read the book and gain the “knowledge.” It requires an excessive amount of self-deceit to believe that simply upon reading it, one joins a group that possesses a uniqueness reserved only for very special people. Satan thinks it cannot be that hard to read a damn book but, on second thought, has noticed that His disciples are notoriously unbookish, so perhaps they perceive it as an overwhelming barrier to scan anything with more text than a memorable Bible verse. What Satan means is that it is so easy to join this “élite” that it is no accomplishment whatsoever, unless one is phenomenally unable. It is evidence of a profoundly fragile self-esteem to derive a sense of worth by proxy of believing oneself part of a rare breed in the first place, and thinking one may join such a tribe purely by reading a book and not even being required to pass an exam sets the bar lower than the floor paint.
The Satanic baptism is thus simple: read The Satanic Bible, recognize your own innate superiority to the vast majority of humanity and publicly acknowledge how fundamentally you agree with LaVey’s critique of the herd, the masses, the rabble, the ersatz, the locusts, the sheep: learn that they are not Satanists and that alone makes you one. Without this baptism of complete agreement or, presumably, having never heard of the book, you are not a Satanist. (The latter makes Satan think of the indigenous tribes who asked the missionaries why they would tell them about Hell if Hell only applied to those who knew about it.) The criteria are arbitrary, however. Anyone can elevate themselves by declaring that they adhere to a philosophy that scorns the mediocrity of the herd and is thereby better than the herd. Not that this makes it an ineffective baptism, good gracious. The Satanic baptism may seem trivially naïve and uncomplicated from the outside, but from the inside, the newly-minted Satanist has undergone a magical transformation that retroactively transmogrifies his body from a herd member into a clansman of an alien élite.
Satan thinks this is too easy to count as a qualification. With so little obligation, accomplishment, and proficiency, anyone can be a Satanic übermensch. Even Anton LaVey acknowledged that this mass-market book breeds pretentiousness in the inferior because it enables anyone to be a superman. His only solution to that problem was a vague reference to “true” Satanists. LaVey did not clarify who they were, but Satan thinks the inferior ones are easily spotted: they focus very little on the contents of Satanic ideology, and have no marketable skills or personal qualities to speak of. Their identities do not revolve around their own vital existence but around others being non-Satanists. Because they have nothing of substance to show, they feel validated as Satanists only by loudly and persistently defining others as non-Satanists—especially when they encounter people who might just be the real thing compared with whom their shortcomings and mediocrity become as plain as a pikestaff.