Religion

Satan thinks religious hypocrisy is preferable

Posted on by A lesser demon

Lucifer is an advocate of personal integrity, self-esteem, and confidence. After all, did He not prefer to be cast into the pit rather than yield His will to some smug shah and feign impression when the latter had sculpted man out of sand like an infant on the beach? The Angel of Light, this magnificent creature of fire, should never bow to a body of dust. The virtues of a principled life sometimes come at a steep cost but you will have lost everything of you lose your own self: you will be a mere slave of the expectations of others.

Satan thus demands no less of His followers than of Himself.

Satan consents to a certain balance in the name of self-interest, of course. He has in fact later recognized that He could have taken a middle path between casting Himself to the ground in awe of the childish sand figure and Jehovah’s predictable temper tantrum with a display of some evidently deeply needed adult guidance. The Prince of Hell might have averted a crisis had He then, like any good parent, praised the creator’s creative if not successful attempt and reminded him to clean up afterwards. Satan thinks a similar balance act is prudent for His followers as long as they know what they are doing.

The Devil has an entirely different attitude towards those who are not His followers whom He would never require to be mindful of their convictions. Seeing what such people believe in, Satan encourages religious hypocrisy and hopes that His followers will help spread this message. Satan thinks none of His followers want Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and what have we to live and act according to their respective scrolls and books, because His followers would become wanted men—dead, not alive—in the blink of an eye.

No sane person would ever wish for a believer to devotedly follow the believer’s scriptures, which usually prescribe murder, torture, rape, and slavery as penalty for the silliest of transgressions, and towards non-followers of the religion in particular. Believers generally do not limit their laws to their own communities but enforce them wherever they can, and everyone else had better hope and pray that those laws are not overly deranged and the punishments not too grisly.

Better yet, Satan thinks everyone should both wish for and encourage the believers to be hypocritical. Hypocrisy is the pretense of having moral or religious beliefs or practices that one does not possess, lest you forget. The Devil obviously encourages deviation from religion in the first place, and although it may seem unfair when hypocritical believers demand from others what they would never do themselves, one should be thankful that hypocrisy is a trait that absolves the hypocrite of the responsibility that religion has laid upon him or her. One should count on the hypocrite, not on the ardent believer, to spare one from the punishment of one’s crimes against their religion.

An all-out conformity with written scripture would, of course, have some benefits. Pigs and various shellfish would probably appreciate if Christians paid attention to their Bible and noted that the Old Testament applies to them, too, in the words of Jesus, who reportedly came to fulfill the law, i.e., the Old Testament. Certain hate-mongering women would finally keep their mouths shut against audiences. Satan can think of many such examples but the Prince of Darkness is willing to tolerate the existence of an array of Fox News hostesses if it enables His female acolytes to uncover their bodies as they please while He enjoys a good schweineschnitzel at His favorite restaurant.

Satan does not understand why some of His followers, as well as regular atheists, mock believers for their hypocrisy. Satan thinks the last they should do is complain that believers are hypocrites and thereby encourage them to exhibit religious righteousness. They should instead thank providence for bestowing believers with hypocrisy and support every instance of hypocrisy they encounter among followers of the gods.

Satan thinks authority matters

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan thinks everyone seems to be an expert these days but usually with little to show for it. He thinks humans may have forgotten what makes someone an expert and especially what constitutes authority as an expert.

Anyone can make a claim, but to convince others that you speak the truth about a subject, first you must establish credibility as someone who has actual knowledge on that topic. Your authority is required to speak on the subject matter, or none will attribute more significance to your claims than had you told them about your favorite color: it would be received as nothing but your personal opinion, and certainly not something that calls for consideration let alone compliance.

Religions face a particular challenge when their adherents must argue why they are right and everyone else is wrong, typically including all other groups within the religion than one’s own: there are no gods. Whatever gods the followers believe in, these gods never seem to care to visit Earth and settle the score once and for all. Godless religions such as certain schools of Buddhism are equally challenged because although the founder of atheistic Buddhism was once a living and breathing human, he is long dead and will never rise from his grave to explain what he really meant.

Instead, religions must resort to other tactics in order to feign authority. The Catholic Church has managed to keep an uninterrupted line of popes since the foundation of Christianity by Paul the Apostle, who claimed that Jesus had conferred the “Petrine primacy” to him and thus appointed him as the first pope. All popes are assumed to inherit this primacy, almost as if they were Paul the Apostle reborn. Hence, the Catholic Church’s claim to being right is its direct line of heritage to the founder of Christianity. Of course, if you do not believe that popes can inherit whatever mandate was given to Paul the Apostle, the Catholic Church will not convince you that it is the true kind of Christianity, at least not using that argument.

Michael Aquino (who founded The Temple of Set) took a similar approach, borrowing his mandate from a supernatural entity when he claimed that my Master had transferred an infernal mandate from Anton LaVey to Michael Aquino. Thus having been specifically appointed by the Devil Himself, Michael Aquino obtained the authority to define Satanism and Anton LaVey lost it. But, one must believe both that there is a Devil and that Michael Aquino spoke the truth to respect this claim to authority. In the absense of any Prince of Darkness to confirm the transaction, one can only conclude that Michael was either consciously lying or having a fit of self-delusion, whichever version one prefers. Satan thinks that the purported bestowal of His mandate onto Michael Aquino came at a remarkably convenient time, noting how perfectly it coincided with Michael Aquino’s intense personal dissatisfaction with Anton LaVey’s decision to sell titles in The Church of Satan for money and Aquino’s own urge to herald His Infernal Majesty as an existing being representing the ancient Egyptian deity Set.

Anton LaVey had never claimed to have been appointed by Satan, at least not that He is aware. Anton LaVey had no marketable skills to hang his hat on either with no jobs, no training or initiation, nor any education that might lend some credibility to his claims about Satanism. What Anton LaVey did have was an interest in reading. Satan is not certain whether Anton LaVey did so consciously, but it is clear that Anton LaVey was highly inspired by works of fiction and combined a number of fictional characters into a distinctive persona to replace his real-world footprint. This remarkable protagonist, who was a lion tamer at a circus, played in the city orchestra, had studied criminology, and much more, served to render Anton LaVey a Satanist by example. The fictional credentials served as a magical shroud, as it were, which provided Anton LaVey with the authority he needed, because who better to speak authoritatively about Satanism than someone who is demonstrably one?

Had Anton LaVey had been a school drop-out who never held a real job and lived at his parents’ house while dabbling with one occultism fad after the other, eventually saying that whatever he was currently practicing was Satanism, nobody would have cared, and others would probably be better qualified to define Satanism than Anton LaVey. However, if Anton LaVey was the very embodiment of a Satanist and knew the dark secrets because he was a carnival showman, a police photographer and occult adviser, a burlesque musician, and what not, then he could speak with some authority when he said what Satanism is and isn’t. Anton LaVey had no educational authority, no social authority, no legal authority, etc. to provide him with the might that is needed to be right, but he could provide himself as an example that he was right. By his spectacular past, Anton LaVey had acquired the mandate to define Satanism.

Many who attempted to imitate Anton LaVey and be the high priests of their own various churches and temples of Satan and Lucifer were easily dismissed as posers, who only wished to be what Anton LaVey was. No-one needed to take them seriously when the real thing, Anton LaVey, was available, as the argument from Anton LaVey’s own organization went. The Devil is inclined to agree, as most such would-be high priests tended to provide no new insights or interpretations, instead merely offering what they thought The Church of Satan failed to provide—that is, themselves as high priests instead of Anton LaVey.

In turn, The Church of Satan had to rethink its claim to authority following Anton LaVey’s death in 1997 which required the Church to now routinize his charisma. Its initial attempts at placing Karla LaVey (who would inherit some of Anton LaVey’s authority by virtue of bloodline) and Blanche Barton as co-heads predictably failed, and shortly after Blanche Barton was equally predictably offered an emerita retirement title so Peter Gilmore and Peggy Nadramia could finally assume the formal leadership that they had already assumed a decade before.

Satan has not kept close tabs on The Church of Satan’s referrals to Anton LaVey, but He feels that LaVey’s authority has shifted from being a Satanist by example to now being a first mover: Anton LaVey’s authority today rests less on his persona than on his being the first person to define Satanism outside of Christian mythology. Part of the explanation may be that Anton LaVey’s persona was uncovered as a myth and his original authority as the proto-Satanist was shattered with it. However, Satan thinks that the primary reason is simply that Anton LaVey has been dead for over two decades as of this writing. No-one is waiting to see what the great Szandor comes up with in The Cloven Hoof, and all but a few members of The Church of Satan have never experienced him. To everyone, Anton LaVey is literally history. His made-up colorful persona was bound to fade had it not already been debunked.

Satan thinks that being first with an idea warrants appreciation, if nothing else. No Satanic organization since the formation of The Church of Satan can deny the influence of Anton LaVey, and no-one has dared to provide alternative scripture. That is, much mystical mumbo-jumbo has indeed been written among Satanists, but there has of yet been no competition to his book whose title—The Satanic Bible—is hard to outshine. All Satanic organizations owe a historical debt to Anton LaVey whether they like it or not.

The Church of Satan may lay claim to authenticity as the continued existence of Anton LaVey’s original organization, but that is a different matter. It is nowhere implied that one is permanently right simply for proposing the first definition of a phenomenon, or that the definition is immutable. There is no copyright on ideologies. Anyone can pick and chose from an ideology and change it where they feel so inclined. They may mangle the ideology beyond recognition, but perhaps that is precisely what the ideology needed to be true. After all, the first person who gazed into the night sky saw the stars as gods, and although we now know better, they are still stars to us. (That is, except for The Morning Star, whom we all adore.) The Church of Satan can at most assert that it offers the interpretation of Satanism that comes closest to Anton LaVey’s original description. (Satan does not wish to go off on a tangent pondering whether The Church of Satan truly resembles Anton LaVey’s original “magic circle” whose activities were strongly tied to physically attending Anton LaVey’s tutelage in his home on California Street in San Francisco until the early 1970s.)

The Church of Satan may nonetheless succeed in convincing at least some people that being first implies being both right and the owner of an ideological copyright and unregistered trademark. It seems to the Devil that the argument works well on The Church of Satan’s own members, and He agrees that although you cannot fool all of the people all the time, usually it is enough to fool some of the people some of the time.

The Devil believes that The Church of Satan has a second claim to authority: it is the only Satanic organization that has scripture to be reckoned with. Other organizations have written material for their followers but none of it has hit the bookshelves like the superbly-titled The Satanic Bible. Yet, Satan notes that although The Church of Satan does point to its scripture as a source for “one true Satanism,” usually the organization’s argument is that that Anton LaVey defined Satanism in this book, thereby using the author as an authority rather than relying on the persuasive and argumentative powers of the scripture.

Satan thinks that perhaps it is for the better. The Satanic Bible does not prove its claims nor does it attempt to, and is thus subject to the reader’s good faith. Putting it somewhat bluntly: one either believes in the claims made in the book, or one does not; if one does not, then it holds no authority. But more importantly, Satan thinks that if anyone were to treat The Satanic Bible as gospel truth and declared that the book contained the truth by its mere status as a bible, everyone would recognize the brainlessly religious nature of the Bible-thumpers of a certain religion that shall remain unnamed here. The Church of Satan can justifiably contend that it is the only organization that has any noteworthy (and, indeed, prominent) scripture but any reference to religious scripture as a source of truth is frowned upon across the entire Satanic milieu and is bound to backfire.

A short-lived group that named itself The Satanic Reds has a history that traces back to an early 1970s group of occultists in Florida which included a Church of Satan clergy. Satan is not overly interested in the now defunct group but wishes to mention where it derived its authority, because it added a step-up to Anton LaVey’s strategy of creating an alternate past.

Like Anton LaVey, the group featured no prominent scholars or other means of standing out as a natural source of the truth. But, somewhere during the occult studies, the group believed to have identified an occult tradition that had been upheld in secret societies through millennia. Widely different cultures in different ages seemed to have maintained a steady interpretation of the Universe and our role in it. An introduction to any specifics is far beyond the scope here so suffice to say that the technical term is syncretism. Satan prefers layman’s terms where syncretism means establishing a credo by picking what you believe is similar from entirely independent and dissimilar traditions while ignoring everything in those traditions that speak against your observations. This credo, named the dark doctrines, provided the group with the authority of research. They had identified the “roots of Satanism” and could now speak with authority on the latter.

Two of the members of the Florida-based group began to construct a past that was less flamboyant and wide-ranging than Anton LaVey’s and instead strongly focused on belonging to the dark tradition that they had identified. They claimed to have been formally initiated and accepted into this tradition, and one of them even claimed to stem from a family of generational Satanists. If Anton LaVey was born a natural Satanist by accident, these two were Satanists by birthright and could speak with both the authority of their research and the authority of their “Satanic culture.” They were eventually awarded magistrate degrees in The Church of Satan, and Peter Gilmore drew on their findings, as scientifically non-proof as they might be.

The much younger noteworthy organization, The Satanic Temple, is no easier off than any of the above but also denies magical or other metaphysical appeal to authority. Lucien Greaves, the leader of The Satanic Temple, boasts a Harvard degree in neuroscience, and while this is no small accomplishment (if true), a neuroscientist cannot be expected to offer any particular insight into Satanism. Lucien Greaves does feature a somewhat villainous look owing to his scarred right eye that may cajole some emotionally inclined individuals into projecting demonic qualities onto him, but that is about all. Satan knows the background and while the Devil respects Lucien Greaves’ wish to not discuss the incident in any detail, Satan regrets to inform His minions that nothing diabolical occurred. It may be worth mentioning that Lucien Greaves breaks tradition by avoiding to make claims about his background and by avoiding to pretend that his made-up name is genuine. The impression of personal integrity usually helps boost one’s authority but Satan is unable to determine how much it matters in Lucien Greaves’ case.

The Satanic Temple instead draws its authority from several sources. Firstly, it exists. So do The Church of Satan and The Temple of Set, of course, but unlike them The Satanic Temple has proven itself capable in the real world by showcasing tangible results, most prominently in the shape of its infamous Baphomet statue and its legal campaigns that result in significant media coverage. The Satanic Temple manages to demonstrate that it is more than a web site and a Twitter account. (The Church of Satan had the “Black House” in San Francisco but it served as a semi-official building only in the very early years of the organization, and consequently did little to communicate organizational thrust once its use as an organizational asset was discontinued. In fact, Satan thinks The Church of Satan exposed its impotence when it was unable to raise funds to keep the house, which was demolished in 2001.) It is not surprising that movie director Penny Lane caught interest in The Satanic Temple for her documentary movie Hail Satan? (2019), not The Church of Satan. The latter has Satanis: The Devil’s Mass (1970), which is tacky and obviously outdated, and Inside the Church of Satan (2010), which Satan considers toe (or hoof) curlingly embarassing and telltale of a diminished group of personal friends.

Secondly, might is right, and The Satanic Temple displays strength in numbers. The Church of Satan may have been advantaged by the Internet lately but as late as 2004, Peter Gilmore reported less than 10,000 members globally. Satan is not certain whether The Satanic Temple has that many members but the number of local chapters gives an impression of a thriving and spreading organization. It would be unfair at this stage to compare The Church of Satan’s pre-Internet age grotto count with the number of chapters in The Satanic Temple after the Internet revolution but The Church of Satan’s decision to abandon its grotto system makes Satan’s church less visible. The Satanic Temple has become a dominant mass on the statistical map, and this lends natural authority to the organization.

Thirdly, humanism is an already established ideology if not altogether well-defined. The Satanic Temple’s tenets are readily recognizable as identical or highly compatible with most humanist movements. This can—and Satan thinks maybe it should—be used as an argument against The Satanic Temple being a Satanic organization instead of just yet another humanist group, but it enables The Satanic Temple to draw on an established train of thought: they offer the aesthetics of horns and cloven hooves to a known ideology, and recognition is authoritative. This may be considered shallow but it works; it is the authority to define truth that is pursued not, regrettably, truth itself.

Fourthly, The Satanic Temple borrows its authority to define Satanism from historical literature. The Satanic Temple refers to itself as “romantic Satanism” and provides a reading list containing Romantic period (give or take a century or two) authors who paid homage to the Devil one way or another. The syncretic pitfall mentioned earlier notwithstanding, Satan is a modernist who demands change and thinks poorly of romantic rumination but is aware of the market a for medieval items and museum replicas. As the fashion trend in The Satanic Temple strikes the Devil as the “goth” look, He expects that some with slightly warped romantic inclinations will feel that the organization’s references to “romantic Satanism” has some merit.

Finally and fifthly, The Satanic Temple is a real life example of one who embraces the Devil’s role in society as the accuser against those who believe themselves to be at all times good. The Satanic Temple uses both outrage, mockery, and legal actions as it applies my Master’s tools. Satan does not wish to depreciate the aforementioned four appeals to authority but prefers this last one. It is the only decidedly demonic aspect of The Satanic Temple’s uses of authority although humanism, too, is sometimes decried as the work of the Devil in some circles of society.

Satan wishes to conclude by stating that there is no answer book on Satanism or any other ideology. Sense and meaning can be drawn from definitions and interpretations that are known to be falsehoods. Satan only asks that His followers keep a cool head and never believe they have discovered a universal and objective truth, and to always beware of the credentials of those who declare themselves experts.

Satan thinks once-religious people stay religious

Posted on by A lesser demon

My Master has lost count of the number of followers who were originally raised as Christians and are quick to assert what Christians believe and how Christians behave. It would make sense to believe these followers based on their first hand operative experience, of course, were it not for the one important facet that they are wrong.

My Master’s new converts will readily teach you that Christians work against either the very order of Nature or at least their own best self-interest by practicing humility, altruism, unconditional love, etcetera, but it never occurs to these once-Christian followers that there is no such thing as humble or charitable Christians—firstly because Christians are no better on these virtues (or vices, as we demons tend to think of them) than anyone else, and secondly because being mindful about one’s fellow man, showing restraint, being humble, and what other virtues Christians believe to distinguish themselves with are in fact equally present both in many other religions and outside of religion; several so-called Christian virtues are so universal that they have been proposed as the very foundation of human morals and may transcend religion into the very core of human biology. There is nothing specifically Christian about such goals. Satan thinks it should be obvious to anyone with an intact cognitive apparatus that Christians are every bit as capricious, malicious, insolent, hateful, stingy, rambunctious, traitorous, and immodest as everyone else, and like all religious groups believe that only they, by virtue of their religion, may avoid or resist such traits.

The aforementioned Satanists describe Christians that do not exist, and yet they speak from earnest experience. This would seem self-contradictory but according to the wisdom of my Master of Occult Insight, it is quite simple: they repeat what they were once taught about Christian beliefs and practices, because they still believe what they were once taught.

All religions, including Christianity, maintain a mythical universe that in varying degrees involves supernatural beings, transcendental experiences, metaphysical entities, and—and that is key here—narratives describing themselves and their followers in a rather idealized glow. It is this myth that the aforementioned Christian-raised followers still believe in. They may have abandoned the most far-fetched myth of all of a literal god which cares whether they masturbate but ignores millions of starving, praying children, but in spite of popular belief, the choice of gods is one of the least defining elements of religion. Other elements of religion prescribe truths and falsehoods, human values, and social norms, but even more importantly they govern how followers view the World. Satan thinks it is easy to deny your gods. It is much harder to recast your standards of knowledge, your view of humans including yourself, your place in Society, and your very values, all of which Satan demands that you reevaluate to be a true follower of the Devil.

Satan thinks many of His followers merely deny their god while they keep practicing every ounce of ingrained attitudes they held since they were barely potty trained. Satan thinks that when these ex-Christians accuse mythical enemies of mythical behaviors, they are reacting according to the beliefs of a religion that they still belong to and are still preaching. Or, to put it more simply: Satan thinks that if you truly believe that Christians are meek, humble, and what else they think about themselves, and then criticize them for being such, then you are a fully-fledged Christian for believing this about Christians to begin with, because this is a much deeper-held religious belief than to believe in the Christian gods, saints, and spirits. Gods are easily killed, but the comprehension of other people and social norms it not; you will never join us in Hell with that attitude.

Satan thinks that these people have not moved or changed one iota from Christianity; they still believe in the Christian myths that they were brought up with. They have become religious Uncle Toms who internalize their self-hate and side with their perceived enemy, preaching how bad Christianity is but practicing it all the while, unable to let it go. The Devil is prejudice enough to posit that even if for a while they manage to think according to an original interpretation of pre-Christian concepts such as prudence or temperance, then like salmon they may momentarily venture down a stream of reason but will eventually return to the point whence they were spawned.

The Devil is mostly concerned with followers of His own, of course, but He thinks it is a general issue. He could easily discuss how to observe distinctive differences between atheists of specific religious backgrounds whose behaviors as atheists reveal their childhood upbringing, for example (yes, former Christian atheists and former Muslim atheists tend to promote atheism so according to their “abandoned” religions that it is barely indistinguishable from their missionaries). Shared among them all is their tendency to describe their former religions according to the narratives of those very religions, and their tendency to behave as they always did. Ex-Christians will soon be sharing “Bible verses” of their religious scripture, quoting Anton LaVey and other perceived authorities in The Church of Satan, accusing others of sinful behavior, as it were, for exhibiting un-Satanic behavior, will sustain the conservative values of their past religion, desire to flaunt their religion (safely behind their browsers), and otherwise in all but their surface appearances stay the Christians they always were. Much in contrast to the Hollywood portrayal of the Great Beast as a servant who may always be summoned onto a crudely drawn pentagram on the floor by anyone, my Master is not fooled by someone who merely wears a five-pointed star necklace.

Lacking the ability to live out the sins of their former religion, they turn to the Devil and His sins instead where they learn a new vocabulary, new rules of engagement, new symbols, and other new ostensibilities, but their convictions and beliefs remain intact; they will never change. Satan thinks that once a person has been raised within a particular religion, no angel in Heaven or demon in Hell can turn that person truly atheist or toward some other religion. That person will keep behaving according to the tradition he was raised in. Satan thinks there is no such thing as a born Satanist, and a person that was raised into a religion cannot be made a one either.

Satan thinks there was no evidence of a “Satanic age”

Posted on by A lesser demon

In The Satanic Rituals, Anton LaVey predicted that by the year 2000, Christ would have become a “well-known folk myth.” Satan was delighted by LaVey’s optimism back in 1972 when the book was published but thinks that today it is safe to suggest that the black pope’s optimism was unwarranted. The Devil is not certain why Anton LaVey made such a bold forecast. Perhaps he overrated the importance of his newly established The Church of Satan with unbridled disregard of the Balance Factor, but LaVey may have genuinely believed that the contemporary zeitgeist heralded a new age of reason and human-centered progress.

After all, Anton LaVey explained in some detail in The Satanic Bible that he had evidence of a new, Satanic age: Anton LaVey had observed that modern Christianity is unlike Christianity of old and that Christians today largely revel in the Seven Deadly Sins, think of themselves, are materialist, and otherwise behave as Anton LaVey claimed “the Satanist” does. His logical conclusion was that Christianity was dying, and that the very name “Christianity” should therefore be abandoned. People should recognize that they had already found a name for their modern practices: Satanism.

Satan is flattered that His name was proposed as the denomination for this new age but my Master had rather hoped for a little more. His Infernal Majesty does not feel content that all that is ostensibly asked is to say “Satanism” instead of “Christianity” and to admit it. In fact, the Devil is offended by Anton LaVey’s recommendation. Satan disagrees with Anton LaVey’s very premise that there is any evidence of a “Satanic age” and refuses to have His infernal name sullied by being assigned the followers of His mortal enemy.

It is true that Christianity today is nothing like the original cult, and even early Christianity evolved quickly. Had someone decided to better call Saul of Tarsus back from the dead after two or three centuries, he would probably not have recognized the religion that he founded. Yet, it would nonetheless be Christianity, in a form that had followed the times. Religions always follow the times. They do not replace themselves with something else as they evolve. Religions are not static phenomena. They stay “alive” by changing, not in a desperate attempt to survive but as a root component of society. However Christianity has manifested itself throughout its two millennia, at any random point in time this would be just how and what Christianity was. It never ceased to be Christianity, nor did it become more or less “true” Christianity over time. Less authentic, perhaps, but not necessarily “less Christian.” Like a monster that keeps sprouting new limbs and developing new abilities until eventually it is irreconcilable with its original form, it is nonetheless the same organism, and so are religions.

Had Anton LaVey’s request that Christianity shelve its name for having evolved had any merit, all religions would have changed their names numerous times throughout History. Satan thinks that Anton LaVey’s demand that religions either stick to their original form or die (by renaming themselves) reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of religion, which he so often criticized.

What Anton LaVey observed was fully legitimate Christianity that was no less deserving of the name than during its original teachings. The only evidence Anton LaVey found was that Christianity was still very much alive and well. When Anton LaVey realized that Christians did not behave “like Christians,” hence being “Satanists,” he did not think to first question his own standards of measurement as would any researcher: if only few Christians matched his personal interpretation of Christianity, the obvious conclusion would have been to conclude that his definition of Christianity was too exclusive, not that Christians had become a rare breed and Christianity was dying.

The Devil is not much for enveloping Himself in Christian theology but He knows to study His enemy, and He thinks LaVey made an additional mistake when he described Christians and Christianity. Satan thinks that in addition to the above, Anton LaVey missed another key element.

There are literally tens of thousands of Christian groups and organizations who all disagree and each considers themselves to be the best kind of Christianity. They are so diverse that no catch-all definition encompasses them all. Anton LaVey spent a little less than 2,000 words describing Christianity before leaving the topic to rail against “white” witchcraft in order to distinguish his take on occultism from the already widespread interest in it in the 1960es. If one truly wishes to describe Christianity as a singular structure, 2,000 words involve far too much detail. One can say little more than that the religion has some concept of a “God,” usually incorporates some idea of Jesus, and often applies some interpretation of the Bible; and that is all. It is impossible to make a sweeping definition of how their god (or gods) and their scripture is being perceived, interpreted, and used.

Anton LaVey may have witnessed nuns who satisfied his fetish by deliberately revealing a piece of thigh, but in his indulgent observation he forgot that other nuns would never permit such perversion. For all the Devil knows, Anton LaVey might have stumbled upon a precursor to the Children of God‘s use of “flirty fishing,” which on the one hand was Christian behavior (according to the Children of God), and on the other hand did not exemplify Christians as a whole. It is not valid to conclude, as he did in The Satanic Bible, that Christianity is taking one direction or another based upon such an observation.

There is no such thing as true Christianity, or even anything that comes close. In fact, there is no such thing as false Christianity. Christianity is as Christians do, no more, no less, and there are literally billions of different Christians. Only God can judge which of the between 30,000 and 40,000 Christian groups is “right,” if any, but alas: God does not exist, leaving no arbiter of Christian correctness. One can observe how Christians within different groups tend to behave but one cannot state with any certainty that one or another “is Christianity.” It is possible to evaluate degrees of authenticity compared with the original, Jewish cult or to evaluate representativeness—for example, the aforementioned Children of God are not particularly representative of Christians—but such evaluations do not express what Christianity is, nor can they propose which kind of Christianity is “true.” Paul the Apostle may have been the original Christian but perhaps the much later Calvinists better understood the will of God? The Catholic Church sports 1,3 billion members but perhaps the about 50,000 Christadelphians got closer to the truth, had there been a god to decide?

Anton LaVey’s first mistake was to think there is such a thing as “true” Christianity—and that it obeyed his personal interpretation—and to conclude that it was being abandoned because he viewed Christians through a lens where he saw what he wanted to see and ignored everything that contradicted his beliefs. His second mistake was to consider Christianity a monolithic entity, leading him to erroneously conclude that Christianity was waning because to him it appeared internally inconsistent. He failed to understand that there are many kinds of Christianity, many of which thoroughly disagree with each other, and that secular behavior in one Christian group neither indicates a general Christian trend nor that Christianity is somehow breaking apart.

This all makes The Evil One a little worried about Anton LaVey’s ability to define Satanism, because whatever Anton LaVey recognized as “Satanism” among Christians turns out to be bona fide Christianity. Satan has only too often heard Christians accusing each other of succumbing to the Devil for not being adequately pious, and finds LaVey playing this age-old Christian shame-game, too. Granted, this is how the Devil was constructed to begin with, but my Master prefers to be the master of His own raison d’être, thank you very much.

Satan originally explained the above in much shorter terms, but we lesser demons must sometimes digest His infernal wisdom and consequently churn out lengthy commentaries before we grasp it ourselves. The crux of the matter is that my Master regrets to inform His followers that He rejects the portion of His bible that discusses “evidence” of a Satanic age. He wants His followers to understand that when they believe that Christians behave “Satanically,” often they have one of two reasons: at best, the follower is observing entirely generic human behavior that is shared across all and no religion and thus neither non-Christian nor Satanic. At worse, this follower is still a Christian who does not realize that when he or she approves of other Christians, it is not because other Christians behave Satanically but vice versa.

Satan thinks there is indeed a Satanic community

Posted on by A lesser demon

His Infernal Majesty often hears His church proclaim that there is no such thing as a Satanic community. The Devil can follow the arguments made by His church some of the way: it is not a social enclave whose members are committed to meeting and organizing events for each other, “doing good” for their local areas as an excuse for socializing, or otherwise performing group activities together. (Satan has no issue with doing good as a byproduct of selfish needs, mind you; He believes that much good comes from selfish purposes.) The Devil has not asked but presumes that His church prefers to lay distance to the common American phenomenon of Christian denominations serving the role of a local community, and Satan would certainly be suspicious Himself if some new member requested such a function of His church.

Yet, Satan thinks that such a use of the term “community” is overly restricted. People with religious backgrounds may be prone to thinking of religious communities when they hear the word, and to believing this is how others think, too. But the term has many other uses: in politics, “community” refers to demographic profiles, markets, or businesses, and has little connotation, often none, with religion, physical proximity, or socialization. It names an abstract group that usually has an affinity for a certain identifier. It demarks in somewhat loose terms the market for certain fashion, readers and writers of a literary subgenre, special-interest political groups, etc., and their “members” usually interact only indirectly or in very small groups. Such abstract grouping into “communities” is based on shared features and shared interests not physical contact or even interaction nor necessarily shared agreements.

The Devil’s church is therefore a virtual (not meaning “online”) community, too, whether it likes it or not, and even Peter Gilmore, the current high priest of The Church of Satan, is known to have used the terms “Satanic arena” and “assemblage” for this phenomenon. And yet the Devil’s followers often form a community in also the aforementioned meaning of a religious community whether they have never met another follower. They read The Satanic Bible and joined The Church of Satan (or other groups) and know that others have done so, too. They may even think that everyone else interpreted the ambiguous scripture in the same way as themselves. This knowledge and these assumptions bind the members together much like a regular church community does, only without the social interaction. They may each be alone out there, but they are alone together.

A leading scholar in the study of religious Satanism, Jesper Aagaard Petersen, coined the term “Satanic milieu” as a designation for Satanists in any shape or size and how they interact with both non-Satanists and each others, and thereby arguably manages to cover a larger area than had he chosen “community,” because it enables the existence of a variety of different communities within the milieu.

Satan thinks that Peter Gilmore—and Anton LaVey, whom he quotes and paraphrases—simply chose a misleading word to communicate that The Church of Satan’s twice-failed “Grotto” system led The Church of Satan to conclude that it should strive to prevent its members from meeting and thus realizing how little their ideology really defines their lives and how accordingly little they have in common. But by the force of religious scripture, the word became a taboo word within The Church of Satan, whose members will readily yell at anyone who speaks of a “Satanic community” (even when they obviously mean Petersen’s “milieu”) and struggle to explain why they themselves shun the idea. It sometimes leads to amusing results when a member explains that they are not a community, only a means that enables them to find contacts and interact—which is exactly what a community does.

Satan prefers to suppress any laughs, deserving as they might be, because He appreciates His followers being a cooperative body. Satan thinks that His church, and several of His other communions, are in fact Satanic communities, virtual or tangible. Satan thinks that when Peter Gilmore wrote his article on the “myth” of Satanic communities twenty years ago, he reacted correctly against members asking The Church of Satan to mimic Christian church communities but failed to understand that communities imply neither Christian churches nor herd mentality.

Satan thinks that Satanic communities are provably real by the sheer reason that they are observable, and with the advent of The Satanic Temple’s local chapters, several of which focus on organized local community actions complete with photo documentation, the myth of the Satanic community has been dispelled as itself a myth. Time will tell if also these local communities will stay alive, or if they—dependent on the yet uncertain destiny of The Satanic Temple—will run out of steam. For now, they are real: the Satanic community is no myth.

Satan thinks magic is for weak-minded people

Posted on by A lesser demon

Scholars of religion enjoy relating the story of an indigenous, coastal people which is strongly reliant on the gifts from the sea. They are a fishing people, and like any indigenous tribe, they believe in a variety of gods and demons. And like any indigenous tribe, they have been the target of study by anthropologists and other scientists.

Anthropologists noted that for the most part the tribe was relatively pragmatic regarding its mythical entities. The fishermen would perform their required rituals before setting off to the sea, and then while they sailed close to the shore, the navigated according to visible landmarks and the stars. A peculiar thing would happen if the fishermen became trapped at sea in a storm or lost sight of land, however: instead of leaning on rational attempts to find their bearings, they instead began to perform magical rituals and implore the gods to save them and the demons of the sea to spare them. They did probably the last thing a sensible person would do in a time of crisis.

Satan does consider their behavior to be immensely silly but hesitates to attribute it to the generally lacking knowledge of primitive peoples. After all, when good Christians from developed countries find themselves on a plane that has engine trouble, they begin to pray instead of locating the nearest emergency exit, finding the life-jacket if above sea, re-reading the safety pamphlet in front of them, and paying careful attention to the cabin crew. As tempting as it may be, the Devil does not attribute their behavior to stupidity either, because religious people are otherwise as intelligent as normal people. Poor intelligence would have manifested itself in many other unfavorable and readily observable forms in addition to religious behavior and belief. Old Nick asks His followers to understand that they are barking up the wrong tree when they explain superstition as mere stupidity.

The odd behavior of our fellow tribal fishermen is not intended to solve a precarious situation but to feel in control. Psychologists have coined the term “locus of control,” meaning the degree to which an individual believes to be in control of events in his or her life as opposed to believing to be at the mercy of external forces. When lost at sea or on a crashing plane, it is not difficult to understand that one is prone to realizing that the outcome is determined by forces beyond one’s control. When the locus (the “perceived location”) of control becomes external, your brain is prone to persuading you to regain control by appealing to those same external forces instead of relying on your own ability to manage the situation.

Locus of control is a key component of depression, along with some other psychological models, because part of the depressive spiral is the conviction that everything is hopeless: there is nothing you can do, and no-one can help you. Satan thinks this insight helps explain why, statistically, believers are less prone to depression than atheists, because by creating an illusion of control through prayer, belief, and other ritualistic or ceremonial behavior, believers have a method—a pipe dream as it may be—that makes them feel better because they believe they have (some) control of the uncontrollable.

The desire to resort to magic is thus prompted by a feeling of being powerless. Satan finds this to be an interesting observation regarding those of His followers who insist that magic is real and who feel compelled to perform magic rituals. Satan is convinced that these followers keenly feel that they have very little power in the real world if they truly believe that magic works and thus warrants their time and effort above tangible action and honest work. My Master spoke briefly with Anton LaVey, who mentioned the Balance Factor as a yardstick for one’s magical potential. He reportedly said that if one’s real world powers are limited then one’s magical success will be equally limited, but the Devil thinks His followers are unaware of this correspondence.

“Please do not get this wrong,” says my Master of All Things Evil. Satan does not mind rituals at all, especially not when He is summoned to a particularly lively performance. Rituals, regardless of religion, are intentionally “irrational” and employ mythical settings that one pretends to believe in—and, with some practice, can honestly believe in—during the performance of the ritual. Then afterwards the participants should preferably regain their mental bearings and be fully aware that the magical workings were complete bunk that has no effect on anything but the participants’ mindsets. It is only if a participant still afterwards believes that the magic worked that Satan thinks the participant should have his or her mind checked. In that sense, Satan agrees with the seventh of the “11 Satanic Rules of the Earth” which proclaims that you will lose all you have obtained if you deny the power of magic that you have called upon with success: you will lose your illusion of being in control and will have to come back to the verity of the real world.

Satan thinks the “masochism” model deserves a spanking

Posted on by A lesser demon

All models are wrong, but some are useful. But unlike our denizen Mr. George Box, who famously noted this, few people are statisticians or system modelers and instead evaluate the usefulness of their simplified explanations according to how well they support their desired conclusions, not how well they provide them with actual insight of the situations modeled. That is: people are uninterested in undefiled wisdom and prefer to deceive themselves, much in contrast to what Satan represents. People readily adopt models that are so poor that they are useful only for delusions, especially for complex explanations where they find answers that are easy, simple to understand, and wrong.

Mr. Anton LaVey was no statistician either but like any lay man lacking insight into his own scholarly limitations this did not suitably dissuade him from slapping together a correspondingly unaccomplished explanation for human behavior, especially regarding situations where he faced disagreement. So if someone was provoked by Mr. LaVey’s choosing my Master of All Things Evil as his “godshead” and decided to confront Mr. LaVey and usually lost the debate—because, after all, religion is not exactly a benchmark of logic and reason—Mr. LaVey concluded by some Freudian logic that they were masochistically inclined and had shown up unconsciously yearning for punishment. They wanted to confront Anton LaVey because they harbored a secret wish to be spanked, he mused, and any decision to confront a Satanist thus became proof of masochism. LaVey himself, coming out of the blue and being nowhere provocative by attacking established religion and using the “Satanism” moniker, was obviously not asking for a whipping, one must understand. Satan does not distinguish between Satanists who declare themselves as such, knowing what is in store for them, and masochists who start trouble with anyone else, but that is another matter.

Now, the Devil has nothing against sado-masochistic relationships (as long as He remains the perpetual sadist) and turns His blind eye towards the fact that The Church of Satan, which also professes LaVey’s view, uses “masochist” in a deprecatory sense in spite of its official stance on sexual liberation. My Master is content with being amused at how The Church of Satan feels satisfied whenever it receives mammoth beatings in any major confrontation and nonetheless believes it somehow “won” by declaring that its victor was a “masochist” for using The Church of Satan—even if the victor had merely used The Church of Satan as a gullible tool to gain the support of the masses. Or as they say nowadays: when The Church of Satan has its derriere whipped particularly hard in a spectator sport, it feels pride in making its BDSM master tired. Satan has always been the best friend the Church has ever had, and His own church seems to revel in its position as its bitch, seeing how often it asks for beatings by involving itself in matters that it could have ignored. Satan considers His church to be a masochism society that closes in on itself by assigning petty internal ranks to indicate their levels of submissiveness relative to each other.

I am sorry; the Devil made me overdo this. The crux of the matter is that The Church of Satan considers it masochism if anyone confronts it while considering it reasonable or incited criticism if The Church of Satan confronts anyone else, or even actively seeks confrontation by monitoring any mention of the Devil, Hell, or similarly connotational words as an excuse to meddle in affairs that they did not need to subject themselves to. Satan does not care if one calls it hypocrisy or uses fancy terms such as “correspondence bias” or “the fundamental attribution error.”

The Church of Satan has a number of such models, each of which can be traced to Anton LaVey’s policies or opinions.

Masochism, which was just covered, is integral to The Church of Satan and its social Darwinist leanings, which state that there are masters and slaves, Satanists obviously being the masters. Anyone who opposes the master is considered a slave, who does so only for masochistic reasons.

Shit-disturbers could be an exception to the above rule, depending on their motivation. Anton LaVey and subsequently The Church of Satan feel confident that they have produced all that is required to understand Satanism. If anyone points out discrepancies, inconsistencies, obsoletions, ambiguities, contradictions, or fallacies, or merely asks for elaboration or asks some critical questions, Anton LaVey made sure to characterize such people as shit-disturbers, whose only intent was to sow mischief. Well, either that, or to be spanked per the aforementioned model, one may assume. The term is not being used now that “troll” has gained more widespread use on the Internet.

Journalists and scholars in the field occasionally find themselves being either labeled or treated as shit-disturbers. This happens when they acknowledge the existence of other kinds of Satanists than The Church of Satan. Among recent events, Penny Lane would soon learn what vitriol one receives for neglecting to emphasize that only The Church of Satan are true Satanists in her film, Hail Satan?. Satan has it on good authority that The Church of Satan’s interviewee delegate struck her crew as such a know-nothing clown that the true reason his appearance was omitted in the final production was that they felt they did his home organization a favor.

Nuts: Anton LaVey once said that “[t]here are no categories of Satanists—there are Satanists, and then there are nuts.” The original context was a comment on the “no true Scotsman” tactic often used against Satanists where an antagonist will proclaim how Satanists are and offer an “oh, not your kind, of course” clarification in private to any Satanist who complains, while everyone else receives the original story with no such reservations. Anton LaVey sought to counter the tactic by asserting that there are no “kinds” of Satanists. Whoever the antagonist had in mind was not a Satanist but simply a nut who did not deserve this fine label. Satan thinks that Anton LaVey, who was originally remarkably tolerant of different approaches to the Devil among his first followers, had meant to distinguish only between real, existing Satanists and the mythical, non-existent “Satanists” who are found only within the heads of scared Christians—and possibly those few, confused individuals who occasionally act according to those myths, believing that behaving as Christians tell them will turn them into Satanists. Anton LaVey is now among us in Hell, but even while he was alive, it came to mean that only members of The Church of Satan could possibly be Satanists; everyone else is a non-Satanist, a poseur, and a wanna-be Satanist even if they do exactly what one would be praised for as a member of The Church of Satan.

Muting or kill-filing (or kill-listing) are Internet terms that The Church of Satan employs according to its masochism model: the terms refer to adding user names to a list that hides anything they write from your view, thus keeping the discussions clean from their nonsense. People are typically unaware of being thus ignored, and the method is favored by The Church of Satan because it believes it starves those users of the verbal spanking they crave when they beg (by addressing The Church of Satan) for punishment but never receive a reply. However, Satan has observed that The Church of Satan frequently forgets that it has “ignored” certain “shit-disturbers” but instead keeps a close watch on them either from other accounts or by merely claiming to have muted them.

Ex-members are people who left The Church of Satan for one reason or another. It goes without saying that ideological divorces rarely are civil but The Church of Satan applies a specific model against ex-members that is eerily reminiscent of Soviet Bloc propaganda during the 20th Century. Anyone who left The Church of Satan is invariably described as someone who couldn’t cut it (whatever “it” is), failed to apply Satanic principles to his or her life, was not around long enough to be truly initiated, or is in rare cases “forgotten,” as if that person never existed. The person could have been the very high priestess, as in the case of Karla LaVey, and yet is always immediately deemed irrelevant, said to never have been around, having never met Anton LaVey, never developed an understanding, did not display adequate interest, etc.

Sour grapes: whenever someone criticizes The Church of Satan for, say, being hopelessly outdated, it is considered a sour grapes attack. The Church of Satan’s model states that such people yearn for the high standards of The Church of Satan and fail to meet them, often being Iznogouds demanding to become the Caliph instead of the Caliph, and therefore consider The Church of Satan an unattainable ideal that is unfairly described as sour grapes cf. Aesop’s famous fable. Sour-grapes attacks are, of course, always made by people who qualify as ex-members and (therefore) nuts, because otherwise they would be labeled shit-disturbers. Within the The Church of Satan’s discourse, sour-grapes attacks are usually launched by former members who are disgruntled and resentful, and whose only fuel in life is their unjust hate of The Church of Satan. The longer the time since their departure from the organization the deeper their bitterness; no alternative explanation is possible.

Satan admits that He may have overlooked a few key models but believes that He has made His infernal point sufficiently clear: His church utilizes a selection of simple models that any of its members can readily learn, understand, and employ. To everyone else, who dares to recognize the shadow of my Master lurking in the details, the use of over-simplified explanations merely exposes closed-mindedness. An ultra-reductionist explanation that makes all the sense in the world to you can be just what makes everyone else realize that you are being ridiculously narrow-minded and short of insight.

Satan does not discourage such self-deceit. The world needs laughing stock as much as it needs knowledge, and everyone feels smarter and better when they encounter a conceited clown. Satan thinks you should apply any model that helps float your boat and considers it your own responsibility to avoid those models that enable everyone to identify you as an idiot.

Satan thinks Satanists are made, not born

Posted on by A lesser demon

If asked, a large number of the Devil’s followers will tell you that they always were Satanists, but that they first realized this when they encountered Satanism one way or another and realized their true nature. They never knew about Satanism and when for no apparent reason they accidentally obtained a copy of The Satanic Bible and decided to spend time reading it, it dawned upon them. Satan is not always entirely convinced by their explanation because some have been fundamentalist Christians for their entire lives until only a few years earlier, and usually when someone later discovers that Satanism was not for them after all, they cease to always have been Satanists. Far be it for the Devil to insinuate that they are lying; He merely hypothesizes that they sometimes apply alternate pasts.

Unlike we Hell-spawned creatures who dwell in the Devil’s reign of chaos, humans are a little conservative in that you require a certain level of consistency to stay sane. It is a social requirement that is deeply embedded in the human brain to expect that people do not behave entirely erratically, and to maintain a steady mental course. People usually do not change spontaneously unless something is very wrong. Convictions, ideologies, values, and morals are malleable but possess a degree of inertia. Any major change, such a politician’s change to another political party or someone’s decision to join a religious movement that they hitherto disagreed with, requires a good explanation which convinces especially themselves. An atheist simply does not become a born-again Christian overnight, for example, without providing some believable and unsophisticated story that supports the change: having met Jesus in one’s dreams is a tried and tested answer that is usually good enough for both believers and non-believers, because although their reaction will differ, they will accept the story as a valid reason.

Anyone who attempts to dig a little into such stories will find that such change typically has a backstory and rarely occurs as fast as told. People have usually shown significant interest prior to their revelations, and their “sudden” change merely marks the day they finally came out of their closets. Satan remembers that when Michael Aquino in 1975 spun his tale of being bestowed with the Fallen Angel’s “infernal mandate,” he had evidently desired it for a while, for example.

Such explanations are conversion narratives, which often follow certain unspoken rules depending on the nature of the target. Each ideology has its own set of expected and accepted narratives. The aforementioned Jesus experience is common among Christians in the US, and politicians whose alliances shift often explain that either the political landscape had moved while they stood their ground, or that they always were at heart what their new party represents.

Those who chose to follow the Prince of Darkness also use conversion narratives that obey certain rules. Satan maintains a strict principle of not showing Himself to His followers, so any narrative that involves His presence is frowned upon in the atheistic, Satanic arena, and will generally not be acknowledged. Even “losing faith” in one’s former religion is often not considered sufficiently convincing, and perhaps reasonably so, says Satan, because that would merely turn this lost sheep atheist.

The gold standard for a Satanic conversion narrative was provided by Anton LaVey, who several times declared that Satanists are born, not made, offering himself as a matchless example who demonstrated demonic tendencies from the day he was allegedly born with a tail. Satanists were unlike the herd; an alien elite in a sea of ordinary people. Satan thinks there is good reason for Anton LaVey’s sentiment because Satan thinks he had Asperger syndrome, which often manifests itself as herd apprehension and extraordinary skills that alienates one. However, the proclamation may also be a corollary of Anton LaVey’s belief in social Darwinism: a statement that Satanists are a breedable race with an iron youth.

Anton LaVey’s stand is regularly echoed by both The Church of Satan and non-affiliated Satanists, and The Church of Satan’s application for active membership still includes questions about the applicants’ biography, including their early childhood, supporting its position that one does not become a Satanist, one is a Satanist and therefore joins the organization. This conversion narrative has prompted Satanists across the entire spectrum to declare that they always were Satanists, only they did not know it, and to identify all sorts of anecdotes highlighting diabolic qualities earlier in their lives.

Satan has not doubt that most of His followers have occasionally exhibited traces of Satanic dispositions but suspects that the same followers could readily, and much more convincingly, identify an equal number of habits contradicting them if they felt so inclined—and they certainly do in those cases where they find it necessary to declare that Satanism was not their thing after all. As any born-again Christian will gladly inform you, everyone has a sinful past, so by carefully ignoring everything that speaks against your claim, anyone can say he was always a Satanist. Satan thinks that for the most part His followers do indeed become Satanists in the same way that anyone else gravitates to a new position and explains the change of mind and heart according to appropriate conversion narratives. A a Satanist, the proper conversion narrative is to make yourself and others believe you always were one whenever you become one.

Satan thinks spiritual might has become right

Posted on by A lesser demon

Back in the early day of the Devil’s church, Anton LaVey spoke of my Master as representing man’s desire for material success and power, and provided numerous examples of people whom he termed de facto Satanists in The Satanic Bible and elsewhere. They were people who had successfully employed the tools of the Devil for their own gains even if they never wanted or dared to admit it.

Ranks in Anton LaVey’s The Church of Satan were intended to reflect the owners’ status in the real world, and Anton LaVey’s 1975 decision to allow members to purchase ranks intentionally reflected their measurable status using money as a metric. Magic, for all of LaVey’s misguided speculation on its benefit to one’s health, was intended to bring real change in the real world, as Anton LaVey explained in not only The Satanic Bible and other official scripture but also numerous times in his column in a US men’s magazine, now available in Letters from the Devil. A magician was not merely in the right place at the right time but consciously and deliberately applied “certain principles” to create things, ideas, or situations which significantly influenced or modified the lives and motivations of great numbers of the world’s people, according to Anton LaVey. It was about manifest power. It was about tangible assets. Satanism was about building measurable and demonstrable might, because might is right.

Satan has observed that something has changed in recent years, however, possibly beginning with some intellectualization among members of The Church of Satan whose scrawny appearance spurred them to argue that the pen is mightier than the sword, and that mind stands above matter. In spite of His marvelous physical impression, Satan treasures mental acumen and heartily recognizes that parts of what Anton LaVey termed “lesser magic” is might in a mostly non-brawny design, so His Infernal Lordship will not argue that. The Devil believes that Anton LaVey never used the term “might” literally but it is nonetheless a somewhat recent phenomenon to find ranking members (including the second High Priest indeed) of The Church of Satan openly suggesting otherwise.

The Horned Almighty would have thought little of it as it seems a rational sophistication of physical might: acts of mentalism, as it were, cause change in the physical world nonetheless, and changing the world for one’s betterment is the ultimate goal. The medium may not be a clenched fist but a political maneuver, but physical change ensues as a result.

The shift that irks my Master (who unfortunately has a habit of taking His frustrations out on we, His humble minions) is that more recently, “might” is becoming an internalized concept to His followers. Satan represents power, influence, capability, and authority—that changes the world around you—not some security blanket that helps His followers cope and manage to be self-confident in the face of adversity, to build self-esteem, or otherwise changing nothing but themselves, as warranted and far overdue as Satan otherwise agrees such improvement usually is.

Satan is all for building one’s self-esteem and self-efficacy, assuming there is something to be proud of, of course, although that is seldom the case. He is just concerned that those who once comprised His army of darkness may have become a self-confidence self-help group with no instructor.

Observing which real-world accomplishments appear to earn one a priesthood or a magistrate title in His church, Satan would wish for many additional degrees in His church high above the magistrate and high priesthood ranks, because the prevalent notoriety of even the highest known ranks within His church is evidently irrelevance. Our Infernal Sovereign is a realist, however, and heartlessly concludes that when His followers sense the uncomfortable truth of personal impotence because nothing proves their mightiness, they seek out convenient falsehoods. Their desire to identify themselves as mighty with nothing to show for it incites them to become spiritually “mighty” instead: being unable to wield power that anyone would notice, they pick an imaginary enemy, fight it, and win. They declare themselves enlightened among equally endarkened minds and individuals among their fellow sheep. They feel they somehow beat an enemy by declaring themselves Satanists and perhaps performing some rituals, sometimes dressing differently, and by having slightly alternative specific interests, and that makes all the difference in the world—to them, and, lamentably, only to them.

They failed to become kings of the world and thus resorted to being kings in their minds. They became their own gods but are gods with no congregation. Like the Christians of old, who first believed that their Messiah would become the legal king of Israel and morphed him into a “king of Heaven” when he was executed to let his followers pretend that their so-called “king” at least held some spiritual and thus inconsequential power, Satan finds that His followers retell this grim story of self-deceit. These followers of my Master’s found strength in Satan in exactly the same way as Christians find strength in Jesus—that is, by turning their inability to make a difference into pipe dreams of possessing power and creating value. The absence of tangible results turned them to spiritual growth instead.

Satan ended His thoughts somewhat abruptly by suddenly quoting Himself from His sermon in The Satanic Bible, because He thinks the rage of His impotent followers on the social media is thus perfectly summarized: Thrice cursed are the weak whose insecurity makes them vile!

Satan thinks Easter is a display of schadenfreude and irresponsibility

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan thinks that the celebration of Easter has one significant redeeming quality in spite of being a dedication to His mortal foe: by irrationally making its celebration date dependent on the Vernal Equinox and the lunar phase, it became necessary to devise a system for predicting the date so that normally functioning people could make plans. Hence, this most important computation of the age motivated significant advances in mathematics.

As any Christian who paid minimal attention to their mythology should be capable of informing you, Easter is the celebration that Jesus took upon him all the sins of Mankind and was executed to henceforth absolve all his future followers of their sins. Granted, one would think that Jesus would also have absolved his contemporary followers of their sins now he was at it, but historically speaking, these followers appear to have been a small Jewish cult who regarded themselves as the only true Jews and considered Jesus to be their king who would become the ruler of Judea within their lifetime. Presumably they received a quite different message when they saw their “king” nailed to a post like any other local nationalist who opposed the Roman regime. Satan personally has no problem with the death of Jesus, and would gladly have pushed him into the harbor and made it look like an accident. As far as Old Nick is concerned, Good Friday was the best.

By the Old Testament and its accompanying scripture, which was the Law, “sin” meant crime, and to be absolved of sin was to be pardoned of crime. Christians even today consider themselves to be sinners and thus “criminals” if not in a modern, legal sense then in the eyes of their god. So they consider themselves criminals, and what is Easter to them? It is a ceremony where, without a trace of guilt or regret, they pin their own crimes on Jesus and celebrate that he was tortured to death for them, rejoicing that they evaded judgment, penance, and repair for their wrongdoings.

The Devil is no stranger to backstabbing, arrangement of judicial murder, and passing of blame, and has no warm feelings for Jesus, but is nonetheless alarmed at this display of self-righteousness and disregard of responsibility that the Christian Easter festival represents. Satan can barely think of anything as irresponsible and filled with schadenfreude as the Christian celebration of Easter, and He thinks it speaks volumes about the character of Christian people.