The word “community” is taboo in The Church of Satan, whose doctrines state that any Satanic variety of that phenomenon is a myth. High Priest Peter Gilmore has decreed the term verboten because it smacks of leveling differences, averaging skills, and—worst of all—seeing the herd instead of the exalted individual. Such egalitarian imagery is kryptonite to a grandiose narcissist like Gilmore whose self‑worth depends on believing he hovers several rungs above the rest of you, as if by the Peter principle, Peter had become my Master.
Should some hapless mortal utter “community” within earshot of The Church of Satan, the offended faithful will pounce, schooling the miscreant that there is most certainly no Satanic community.
Members of Satan’s The Church of Satan will thus remind you that their steep one-time membership fee does not buy them a place in some community. Instead, they say, it is a favorable price for lifelong access to peer access to other members of the Church, as long as one behaves according to The Church of Satan’s expectations. The Devil obviously applauds such marketing ploys, which demand that you pay once to prove you’re elite, then pay forever in deference.
Striking a word from one’s vocabulary—in this case, “community”—can sometimes introduce comprehension hiccups, but Beelzebub is pleased to note his flock’s flair for euphemisms. Whenever they wish to say “Satanic community,” they are permitted to substitute arena, assemblage, conglomerate, tribe, cabal, collection, universe, or movement, among other words. (However, terms such as “herd” and “congregation” remain taboo.) It is considered good practice to accompany one’s chosen synonym with a reminder to the reader that one has explicitly avoided the dreaded word “community.”
Satan remains untroubled by their lexical gymnastics, because The Perpetual Liar knows the truth. Yet, He chuckles when His churchgoers defend their membership fee with a subscription to peer access, because peer access is the very definition of a community. In most communities such mutual access is free. Only cults invoice you for the privilege of fundamental socialization.
Satan thinks His church gathers in a pretended conclave, swaps admiration like baseball cards, and basks in the warm glow of mutual validation, only to trumpet, with revival-tent favor, that no such gathering exists. They are a tribe bound by a single, unbreakable creed: the louder they deny being a herd, the tighter they huddle.