Religion

Satan thinks His church is not dead yet

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan recalls that His first church was first declared dead less than a decade after its inauguration when Michael Aquino became envious of members who, by a new decree issued by Anton LaVey, could purchase a clergy title within the church instead of earning it through meticulously studying and demonstrating theoretical knowledge about the teachings of The Church of Satan as Michael Aquino had spent much effort doing. He ostensibly did not support the argument that the financial foundation required to pay the charged fee presumably indicated that this member had sufficient success in real life and thus, by definition, had earned a degree that was intended to reflect its owner’s position in the real world. Then the Devil conveniently appeared to Michael Aquino and transferred His infernal mandate that had hitherto been bestowed onto Anton LaVey to Michael Aquino, at least if one is to believe Mr. Aquino. Satan remembers the situation somewhat differently, however, and denies having revoked any infernal mandate from anyone, if nothing else because He never granted it to anyone to begin with. Also, He detests being called Set—in fact, He finds there is something deeply misguided with those of His followers who are into Egyptology. Satan has never met a single person who was fascinated with the Egyptian gods and turned out sane.

No, The Church of Satan did not become defunct when Michael Aquino left it together with a sizeable number of its members to launch The Temple of Set (contemporary research and documentation support Mr. Aquino’s claim that a minority remained) and little was heard from the Devil’s church for another decade. It continued to attract people by means of contact information provided in The Satanic Bible, however, and in the 1980es its now high priest, Peter Gilmore, remained a member after being rejected by The Temple of Set when Michael Aquino learned that Peter Gilmore had been double-courting both organizations. Satan wishes to extend His thanks to Peter Gilmore for helping reinvigorate His church by means of editing the magazine The Black Flame and his continued work as an administrator in the organization. This, as well as occasional shock artists, kept The Church of Satan alive and growing, albeit slowly, while Anton LaVey appears to have concentrated on attempting to become a Hollywood movie consultant. Satan wishes to also mention Blanche Barton, whose hagiography of Anton LaVey, The Secret Life of a Satanist, and possibly her apologetic The Church of Satan, have likely persuaded a number of personality cult minded people to join as well.

Anton LaVey was skeptical of the emerging Internet but it enabled The Church of Satan to reach people that would otherwise never have heard of the organization, and Satan’s church gained renewed interest. The aftermath of Anton LaVey’s death in 1997 predictably prompted a variety of “Mexican generals” to claim their rights to lead the organization, and some splinter groups formed, including one led by Karla LaVey, each of them claiming to continue the true lineage of Anton LaVey and declaring The Church of Satan to be history. It soon became clear that they had little clout and while some have survived until this day, they have little influence and visibility. Satan does not mind: each of His followers should worship Him according to their abilities and needs, and He is not impressed by herd size.

The Church of Satan continued to grow and in the Fall of 2004, Peter Gilmore was bewitched by a homely-looking young female press intern and divulged to her that he estimated The Church of Satan membership count in the USA to be around 1,000 individuals, and an additional few thousand worldwide. (She promptly deleted this information from her article after it was published but Satan remembers.) Satan is inclined to believe the figures because a good rule of thumb states that the membership of any organization is about ten times larger than the number of active, “visible” members.

Peter Gilmore had to somehow consolidate his leadership and provide some personal touch, consciously or not, and the Devil was pleased to observe that Gilmore began to lay some distance to the fascist leanings that several high-ranking members of The Church of Satan expressed in the 1990es and early 2000s, even if they would habitually excuse it with aesthetics, shock value, or other recognizable ambiguities and dog whistles, as Nazi sympathizers always do. Satan considers Peter Gilmore to be an intelligent and well-written chap (if perhaps somewhat overestimating his own entitlements), and feels that these attributes substantially outweigh his underachieving real world day job even if The Church of Satan generally recognizes only one’s accomplishments in the latter: Satan thinks that the value of people’s actions in their real lives is not limited to their production of music and sculptures, but also includes their influence on other people’s thoughts; that is, armchair warriors sometimes have real leverage. Anton LaVey, too, is, and should be, remembered for his contribution to thought not his mediocre musical or artistic exercises.

Satan thinks it is probably Peter Gilmore’s development that caused formerly high-ranking members of The Church of Satan to leave; Diabolus Rex Church apparently had always believed in the Devil (which in spite of the atheistic position of the organization there is ample evidence indicating to have been inconsequential to Anton LaVey), and Boyd Rice declared that he had been appointed as the new high priest by Anton LaVey (not volunteering to produce a signed document to support it) and then disbanded “his” organization, thus conveying the message that Mr. Rice considered The Church of Satan to be passé. Today, a little less than a decade later, their departures seem to have had no bearing on The Church of Satan. Instead, the Devil’s church has improved its web site and found its way to various social media.

Satan thinks the greatest survival challenge of the organization has remained unchanged since its inception in 1966: its survival is contingent on building a critical mass that it has never reached within orders of magnitude. Organizations are kept alive over multiple generations of leadership only by means of a body of members supplying it with enthusiastic and accomplished leaders, and as Satanic organiations are concerned they all fall far short of supply. The Church of Satan, too, never had enough capable candidates to choose between for the next high priest position, and it was lucky to have Peter Gilmore filling the effectively void position during Anton LaVey’s late years. Satan cannot name any of its members as a worthy successor in spite of modest shoes to fill. What few people the contenders to The Church of Satan‘s throne might lure into their clutches and thus deprive The Church of Satan of is a far cry from the additional membership count required for a self-sustaining organization.

The most recent organization above the radar, The Satanic Temple, breaks tradition by mostly ignoring The Church of Satan (except when attacked directly) and not declaring it entirely dead or replaced. Satan suspects that His temple may employ a sufficiently different version of Satanism to genuinely consider itself too far distanced from The Church of Satan to perceive it as an ideological rival instead of trying to intentionally ignore the “dead.” If so, The Church of Satan needs not worry that its philosophy is being appropriated by another organization. But The Satanic Temple does pose some threat to The Church of Satan beyond regularly stealing the limelight: by and large, the philosophical, contemplative depth of the Devil’s followers is limited to having a chip on their shoulder against Christianity and a fondness for demonic imagery, and they will join any organization purporting to be Satanic, like the aforementioned Diabolus Rex Church and Peter Gilmore once approached the Temple of Set, simply because the organization exists not because of its ideology. But, even in the best of all worlds, where The Satanic Temple could not poach a single member from from The Church of Satan or even inadvertently drew some people into it, the latter would still be too low-volume to be self-sustaining.

As of this writing, however, there is nothing that indicates that The Church of Satan is dead or dying in spite of several claims to the contrary, and Satan thinks it will remain alive at least until Peter Gilmore resigns.

Satan thinks religious diets are jail food

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks the jury is still out on His temple

Posted on by A lesser demon

Staying optimistic about His options after being spectacularly cast from Heaven should convince anyone that Lucifer maintains the mindset that the chalice of human blood is half full. He is always welcoming of demonic initiatives and was pleasantly surprised when yet another organization was established in His infernal name, referring to itself as The Satanic Temple.

That said, Satan is a little confused about this new kid on the block. There have been plenty of short-lived newcomers but The Satanic Temple breaks tradition by largely ignoring The Church of Satan, not claiming that the latter deviated from its “true” teachings nor offering to relieve it of its infernal mandate, as if the Devil would ever entrust any human being or organization with such power.

The temple appears to provide a philosophy of its own that it considers Satanic, and Satan thinks He is no-one to judge what is or is not Satanic. He thinks such definitions are the work of human hands that no external powers can decide or judge, and he scoffs at human minds that are so primitively configured that they believe that merely being the first to define a term earns one the right to write all subsequent dictionaries. Language does not work that way; words are a means of communication that carry meaning only within a context. The Church of Satan redefined “Satanism” to use the Devil as a symbol and model and thereby created a new context within which the original word acquired a new meaning, but this action does not imply ownership of the word. Anyone can expand, reduce, or alter the context or even provide a new one, and no power in Hell or elsewhere can prevent it. Language is negotiated in what my fellow denizen Ludwig Wittgenstein calls “language-games,” and words and meanings change as contexts and discourses evolve: contrary to what lesser educated people might think, multiple meanings, sometimes mutually exclusive ones, of a word rarely cause confusion. Satan certainly has His own opinions, few of them being flattering, about the demonic talents of the various organizations that have used His name but being unable to arise on Earth as the Antichrist (yet) and settle the score once and for all regarding who is a Satanist and who is a nut, He can only recommend that humans study some bloody linguistics before making preposterous claims about the persistency and inambiguity of language. Satan thinks that faced with such nonsense, even Michael Aquino’s farcical argument that Satan had revoked Anton LaVey’s infernal mandate was comparatively wiser because such mysticism precludes educated scrutiny and subsequent logical (and inevitable) rejection. The Church of Satan‘s argument works on naïve people; Aquino’s argument cannot be contradicted as it is faith-based.

Satan nevertheless finds The Satanic Temple‘s definition of Satanism lacking. It provides a mission statement and seven brief tenets; any additional insight must be derived from the temple’s various campaigns, interviews, and happenings. Satan thinks this is too cheap. He enjoys astute aphorisms but insists that their purpose is to summarize complex or long explanations, not to prompt them. Brief tenets or statements standing alone are prone to being interpreted in widely varying directions and thus communicate very little in practice, and must be accompanied by guidelines and instructions elaborating how the statements should be understood. Its fallacies, misunderstandings, and outdated theories aside, The Satanic Bible does this for The Church of Satan‘s Nine Satanic Statements. Without similar detailed explanations, members of The Satanic Temple are obliged to interpret its tenets on their own, and language and interpretation being highly forgiving, especially towards brief statements, these members can attribute virtually anything to the seven tenets, including teachings usually reserved for conflicting religions. This paves the way for such a multitude of positions that unless The Satanic Temple communicates what it really means by its seven tenets, it risks diluting Satanism into meaning almost anything, rendering the term meaningless for Satanists and hence again leaving it to Christians to provide the only solid definition. Satan thinks that The Church of Satan has a point when it insists on only one valid definition even if it motivated by common vanity that causes The Church of Satan to remember it only when non-members receive attention.

Satan, being also forced to make interpretations of His own, notes a thin red thread of humanism running through the tenets and obviously prefers such an ideology to any religion, because humans come before any god. The Devil does indeed count humanism among His dark agenda but had expected more: humanism is Satanic, but Satanism is not humanism, says Satan, who is offended that The Satanic Temple is too pusillanimous to even mention His name in its tenets. People who play the Devil’s game should use the Devil’s name, and Satan hates say that had Anton LaVey not introduced Satanism half a century ago, The Satanic Temple might never have thought of its name and instead been perfectly comfortable as yet another branch of current religion. The Devil is only too aware that His opponent sometimes sneakishly pretends to be the Devil to deceive His followers into inadvertently winding up worshiping God instead, never realizing their mistake.

His third objection to the tenets is their reliance on questionable premises. For example, it certainly sounds appealing to act with compassion towards all beings within reason, but according to whose and what reason? It is not clear whether The Satanic Temple believes that objective limits exist or uses the term “reason” for what is ultimately an entirely moral choice. Satan wishes to stay positive but doubts that His temple has solved the trolley problem where compassion against one means the destruction of another. (The Devil solves the trolley problem by the application of a Schrodinger principle: by adding a trolley for a second run on the other track, neither party receives preferential treatment.) He definitely hopes that the author did not copy a passage from another religion’s scripture where Man was appointed to be the guardian of all creatures. Satan also finds this particular tenet to be contradicted by another tenet: evolution and survival is a veritable battleground with little room for compassion, and the very human brain is hardwired for double standards, reserving compassion for one’s in-group fellow specimens only. It seems possible to simultaneously insist on conformance with science and to act with compassion towards all beings not within but only in spite of reason.

My Master finds it untenable to dissect all of the seven tenets and instead leaves it to His capable followers to engage their brains, because the remaining tenets have problems, too. For example, one man’s “justice” and “freedom” is another man’s injustice and subjugation and have no prevailing gold standards; humans routinely violate the bodies (ask any surgeon!) and freedoms (ask any parent!) of others expecting it to be for their best interests. The Devil hopes that His temple will allocate time to revisit or clarify its tenets before some of its members begin to insist on meanings that are bound to cause unnecessary quarrels.

Satan thinks that The Satanic Temple is a textbook example of religious evolution, because it demonstrates that Satanism can be appropriated by independent groups whose use of the term can differ significantly from that of the first-founded organization, sharing only its historical roots, some imagery and terminology, and a few ideological stances. Ergo, The Satanic Temple strikes the Devil as second generation Satanists; not generational Satanists that were born of Satanists but a sign that the Satanism of The Church of Satan has found its way into the collective human consciousness and has been shaped to the minds of new generations: it is modern Satanism, and it contrasts the conservative, scripture-bound, fundamentalist Church of Satan rooted in the pre-1960es of Anton LaVey which finds itself being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century where new knowledge, new customs, new social structures, and new values chant “evolve or die.” The Satanic Temple, not clinging to a distant past, will be less vulnerable to the ravages of time for yet a while and may spell the future of Satanism if it manages to stay in business. Satan has not yet made up His mind about His still young temple and has decided to keep an eye on it for now.

Satan thinks His statue should be removed

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan is a proud being as the more popular legends detailing His fall can bespeak, and He was properly satisfied when He learned that His temple had erected a Baphomet monument in Detroit a few years ago. The Lord of Evil had hoped that the monument had been closer to Mr. Éliphas Lévi’s depiction instead of resembling a 3D-rendering of some cheap tarot card flipping but He understands that a display of His rod athrust and His feminine torso would provide His detractors will all the ammunition they needed in the puritan American society to censor the statue. So perhaps a loin cloth can be excused, and there are flat-chested women, too; the Devil is used to seeing religious idols pictured in a fashion that is suspiciously compliant with herd demands.

That said, the Prince of Darkness wishes the world rid of religion. Religious monuments should be demolished around the Earth, or at least be placed in museums to illustrate past delusions. Satan thinks that the last thing the world needs is yet another religion or religious marker, especially now that the Devil’s own religion has gained foothold. Before then, Satan was more favorably disposed towards the emergence of a new religion, of course, and prefers to explain His unabashed change of mind as having become wiser. Otherwise, humans endowed with the powers of perspective might have accused Him of having changed His mind only to prevent newcomers from stealing the picture, and such misconceptions must be neutralized: Satan would never be a hyprocite who allowed a church to be established in His name only to immediately become opposed to new religions or religous spin-offs and deny any new temples their rights to erect their altars. No, Satan thinks no new religions should be established and no new religious monuments should be raised, and He thinks that religious pluralism is just a euphemism for more ways to be stupid.

Satan nonetheless thinks His monument in Detroit is great. It requires real life muscle to challenge the crowd and win, and His temple’s monument is a testament of such strength. The monument reminds everyone who passes it that the prevalent religion is debatable and vulnerable and not the epitome of truth and power that some believe. Satan admits that this is vanity, however, and needs no reminders, well-intentioned as they might be, that He will defeat God in the end. His real appreciation arises from recognizing the monument for its strategic usefulness: it can be employed as a means to remove other religious monuments in places where religion has no place. Christians who like to have their Ten Commandments placed next to a legislative state building (obviously to lead the herd into attributing equal legitimacy to real law and the rules of divine madmen) find that they have two options: either they publicly demonstrate that they consider themselves above the law and have only the Baphomet statue removed, or they acknowledge defeat—the latter either by conceding to let Baphomet challenge their monopoly on values and ethics and have their religion put to the question while their own monuments stand, or by having the Baphomet statue and their own, antiquated symbols removed. Satan thinks it is worth using His monument as a tool to invoke counter-productive pride among Christians, who will hate the Baphomet so intensely that they will pay for its removal by removing their own. Satan attributes no magical powers to His religious idols and will happily see His monument in Detroit destroyed if it brings down other religious monuments with it.

Satan thinks His Bible has two secrets

Posted on by A lesser demon

It has been over twenty years since Anton LaVey reminded the Devil’s followers that every grimoire has a secret, the remainder being mere padding that is inspirational at best if the secret is overlooked. Satan already knew that the secret of The Satanic Bible was the Balance Factor, the dark force in Nature, of course, but He figures it was a good idea of Anton LaVey to mention it, especially because everyone seems to have missed it to the degree of passionately intending to prove it wrong.

What Mr. LaVey did not tell my Evil Master’s followers is that another dark secret lurks within the pages of The Satanic Bible, a secret that has less to do with Satanism than with organizing and controlling the herd, making it a truly magical book. It is, perhaps ironically, a section that Mr. LaVey himself did not write and which the astute reader of The Satanic Bible may have noticed has changed between published editions. In addition to the price tag, that is.

The Satanic Bible contained an introduction by Burton H. Wolfe which was used in the 1969-1972 edition and in a revised version in the 1976-2005 edition when, for obvious reasons true to Orwellian standards of historical revisionism, Michael Aquino’s 1972-1976 introduction was removed by The Church of Satan‘s Ministry of Truth and henceforth not mentioned. The current edition of 2005- includes an introduction by Peter Gilmore. As you have probably realized by now, Satan thinks the second secret of The Satanic Bible is indeed its introduction.

Our Dark Lord realizes that His followers are often not the reading kind so He asks this subdued demon of yours to explain. Most introductions provide a review or a recommendation, an historical outline, perspective, or background. The introductions to The Satanic Bible do this to some degree, but all versions—least in Mr. Aquino’s version and most in Mr. Gilmore’s version—focus on the remarkable life of Anton LaVey. The introductions reveal that Anton LaVey was a carnival showman whose street smarts outperformed any businessman and whose observant eye of a con artist beat any psychologist. Working in forbidden careers, he saw the hidden truths of human nature and learned the secrets of mankind. He learned what could not be taught. He was a Satanist by example, the proto-Satanist that future Satanists would all measure up against.

At least that is what the introductions purport. The Devil would never wish to belittle our esteemed fellow denizen but in colder blood, Mr. LaVey was a school drop-out who never held a real job and huddled his way through life, was supported by his parents, never received an education, and eventually died in poverty, failing to be the embodiment of magical power that he is made out to be. He was a colorful figure in the brief, early heydays of The Church of Satan, but his days of glory lasted only few years. Now, Satan would like to emphasize that this is meant only to put things into perspective. The Prince of Darkness truly has the fondest feelings for Mr. LaVey, whom He believes was a grand person who deserved much better than he was granted in life, and the Devil wishes everyone to understand that in spite of LaVey’s failure to demonstrate an ability to practice as he preached, as it were, the road to Hell is in fact paved with good intentions, and Anton LaVey proudly walked down that road in the end. The Devil thinks that often it is genius that merely points the direction, and He does not require genius to also walk the talk: Maxwell never understood the implications of his equations, and Mozart received a pauper’s funeral. Satan fully acknowledges Anton LaVey’s contributions without requiring a convincing demonstration on his part.

This is all good or bad, depending on perspective, so let me, the Devil’s servant, explain the secret: the introduction serves to establish Anton LaVey’s authority as someone who could legitimately define Satanism. Anton LaVey was intelligent but he was no scholar who could draw on academic training and had no experience in scientific method and formal research; any scientifically trained eye can see this in how he argued and drew conclusions. He could not refer to any predecessor. He could not call on the blessings of a Devil that he did not believe in. In fact, he had no claim to authority at all and was forced to concoct a charming story to make himself seem interesting enough to warrant attention because all else would fail. Hence, he embellished his life story, omitting mistakes here and adding desirables there, turning a personal interest in music into an orchestral career and transforming a fascination with the Police into a formal employment in its grimmer departments. Borrowing feathers is one of the oldest tricks in the book on lesser magic, and it still works wonders: lacking all authority, Anton LaVey manufactured the story that he was a Satanist by example, thus making him worth paying attention to. He faked his resume to obtain an infernal mandate, and the The Lord of Lies granted it as an indisputable formality.

Some of Satan’s followers read the introduction of The Satanic Bible and nodded charitably when they effortlessly called Anton LaVey’s bluff, but they kept an open mind and were for the most part pleasantly surprised by Anton LaVey’s opinions and reflections and pardoned him his oversights, excessive generalizations, contradictions, and unintentional ambiguities throughout the book, just like they found his many tounge-in-cheek statements to be an enjoyable read. Depending on their education, they might have recognized that he lacked the necessary tools which a formal education would have provided him with and were able to fill in the blanks, read between the lines, and decide what to keep and what to discard. Satan thinks it is probably these readers who could discern between the truths and the lies in the book that Anton LaVey cautioned against in his preface, and who discovered the first secret of The Satanic Bible on their own.

Other followers read the introduction and were deeply fascinated with Anton LaVey to the point of describing him as the father they never had. Satan thinks that these people were rather had by Mr. LaVey instead. They judged the contents of The Satanic Bible not on the merits of thought but by their fascination with Anton LaVey’s made-up persona. They are a fan club, personality cultists, and herd matter. The more power to Anton LaVey, says Satan, and does not wish to share his thoughts about these followers.

Those who saw right through the yarns spun by Anton LaVey did not lose respect for him, mind you. Satan thinks they are probably accomplished magicians who recognized another warlock, just like a shrewd negotiator appreciates the skills of a bargaining colleague, and they smile wryly at the LaVey fan club knowing that one sorceror can bewitch the other.

Yet, the importance of Anton LaVey’s biographical narrative cannot be overstated, because it provides The Church of Satan with its only authority as an arbiter of the meaning of Satanism. The organization owns The Satanic Bible as its only authoritative document, and in turn its authority rests on its author possessing the authority to define Satanism, leaving The Church of Satan deeply dependent on Anton LaVey’s charisma; he is practically synonymous with The Church of Satan. Any erosion of Anton LaVey’s authority weakens the organization, and it is the reason why so many detractors of The Church of Satan target Anton LaVey when they attack the organization. It explains why Nicholas and Zeena Schreck, then in the Temple of Set, compiled their infamous “truth and legend” document about Anton LaVey: the document served to harm The Church of Satan by proxy by undermining Anton LaVey’s authority by sabotaging his narrative. Michael Aquino had claimed that the Devil had revoked Anton LaVey’s infernal mandate and in some sense, Mr. Schreck’s and Ms. LaVey’s document helped revoke the infernal mandate that Anton LaVey’ narrative had provided. Some of the statements in the document are merely accusational but a significant number of them are convincing, and Peter Gilmore, in his introduction to The Satanic Bible, found it incumbent on him to counter with an explanation that the list has some merit but did not overall dismantle Anton LaVey’s being a Satanist by example—his authority still being critically required.

The Church of Satan stresses that it is not the person but his teachings that should be considered, but Anton LaVey’s charisma permeated The Church of Satan from the very beginning and still lingers. One needs only visit its web site or listen to any interview to understand the importance of Anton Lavey’s continued presence in the organization. Satan realizes how this is going to sound, but He thinks it is always LaVey this and LaVey that, and wishes that His followers would think a little of Him, too. In 2018, Church of Satan aesthetics is still thoroughly inspired by Anton LaVey’s pre-1960es imagery, music, and standards of beauty, with everyone attempting to satisfy Anton LaVey’s personal taste as he described it. Peer recognition in The Church of Satan is gained through compliance with Anton LaVey’s showmanship genres: writing, painting, constructing dolls or sculptures, hosting some radio channel, playing music, etc. (sometimes even skillfully) but rarely by demonstrating accomplishments in the cerebral areas of teaching, scientific research and publishing, etc. that are outside of Anton LaVey’s demographic background. Intellectual display is still limited to the level of Anton LaVey’s unlearned reading which separates the cocksure student from those who know. The Devil doesn’t mind such lowbrow activites at all but would like to remind His followers that while such tactics have directed the decisions of which tavern to visit for a drink and a brawl, History is changed by magicians who are not stuck in the early last century.

Satan thinks that by their sins shall ye know them

Posted on by A lesser demon

My Master strongly urges His followers to disbelieve any claim that any god makes about itself, its religion, or its followers. And while He is at it, He also urges His followers to disbelieve any claims the gods make about each other, their religions, or their followers. They all take credit for human behavior that would otherwise have wiped the species from the face of the planet had not humans figured it out entirely on their own already, and they all blame each other—but more often my Master—when their ill-wrought plans invariably go haywire.

There is one exception to the above: the gods make the religious equivalent to a Freudian slip when, observing their followers, they declare certain types of human conduct to be sins and respond with ordinances and statutes intended to prevent their followers from committing them.

Sins are the dirty laundry aired in full view. Unlike other religious gobbledygook the sins were not invented; no, says the Devil, what became sin is what the followers actually did to an excessive degree. Sins are the warning label that Satan thinks His own followers be wise to read and remember when they encounter a follower of his enemies’. If it is a Buddhism sin to possess an ego, expect your average Buddhist to be egoistic above average. If Christianity views adultery as a sin, keep an eye on your daughter if she mingles with conscientious Christians. If Allah forbids his Muslim followers to feel pride, know that a Muslim will respond especially hostilely when insulted. Jehova identified an impressive array of punishable mistakes made by his desert people that makes one realize that their managing to feed and to procreate without genetic starvation must have involved the help of friendly neighboring tribes. Satan has no specific recommendations regarding the Jews, who realize that faced with such a wealth of options for sinning, sinning is an inevitable part of life and thus the Jews seem less prone to being subconsciously obsessed with actually trying.

Religions evolve along with Society, though, and Satan cautions that millennia-old sins should be taken with a grain of salt and be trusted somewhat losely. The Devil thinks that His followers should grant the followers of old religions some benefit of doubt if they seem moderate in their beliefs. Conversely, the lists of sins of younger religions are perfectly up to date. If the Devil heard of a religion established within the last century or two which had identified traits such as stupidity, counter-productive pride, self-deceit, etc. as its sins, He might like the religion but would conclude that its followers were mostly a sorry bunch of self-inflated, juvenile know-nothings.

Satan thinks the Fifth Satanic Statement isn’t

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devil confirms that He is not known for turning the other cheek, but although the Fifth Satanic Statement describes this one of the character traits of our Lord of Evil, He fails to understand what makes this statement specifically Satanic. Satan also needs to visit the men’s room but finds no Satanic Statement declaring that He represents relieving the pressure from the inner wall of his bladder instead of perishing according to the legend of Tycho Brahe’s untimely demise; and washing His hands afterwards instead of helping spread disease would seem appropriate to mention as well.

My master suspects that the mention of His reluctance to turn the other cheek was intended for the target readers of The Satanic Bible as an attempt to contrast Him against Christianity. These readers, being mostly indoctrinated Christians, would be inclined to believe that Christianity considers turning the other cheek to be among their values. After all, their story book tells how their god’s son preached this behavior although it disaccordingly relates that he got fairly violent the first time he met with conflict. The Devil gives the fellow some credit, however, firstly because starting the fight, as reportedly he did, he had not yet been smitten on the one cheek, and secondly because turning the other cheek seems like an excellent thing to convince your opponents they should do.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Satan has observed that Christians turn the other cheek no more often than other people. If anything, Satan thinks that there are few as vengeful, bloodthirsty, petty, resentful, merciless, wrathful, and war-hungry as Christians regardless of what they might claim or believe about themselves. Satan thinks it is a crime against reason to lead anyone, and most of all the followers of the Prince of Darkness, to believe in such myths by repeating the Christian lies.

Satan thinks that if anyone believes that His foe represents turning the other cheek, they can kiss His other cheeks.