Satan thinks people who strive to be nice usually aren’t

Posted on by A lesser demon

For all our awe and admiration of The Infernal Majesty’s insights and intelligence, The Dark Lord has insisted on several occasions that a little barstool psychology can go a long way.

The unfortunate ex-demon whose skepticism prompted it to ask for an example was immediately obliterated for daring to question our Master, but the Devil posthumously humored it and asked us who happened to be present what characterizes a “nice person.” We soon agreed that a nice person was nothing like Satan, and although our Master appreciated our sentiment, He had doubtlessly given it a little more thought than He had let on, and slightly impatiently explained Himself.

Satan thinks that truly nice people generally do not try to meet an ideal of “niceness,” even if they can easily formulate such an ideal or identify historical or mythical individuals who may serve as role models. The key to their nice behavior—being considerate of others, being helpful, etc.—is that they act according to an innate comprehension that humans are better off by working together. They ultimately serve their own interests but as a species not as specimens. Therein, says Satan, lies the difference between self-interest and self-preservation versus egoism, the former benefitting the human race and the latter benefitting oneself but in the very short term only. It is not required to “love one another.” There are some who deserve love, and some who deserve none. Satan thinks that genuine niceness involves a sense of justice that urges you to give and take from each what they naturally deserve.

It is people who are only admirable by obligation that Satan thinks ill of. They are people who have been instructed by word but not through example to be loving, friendly, and helpful as this ostensible acting makes them believe they are better people and have earned the right to feel entitled. They are people who do good not because they feel somehow compelled but from concern with what their neighbors would think. They are people who help others only for the sake of their personal salvation not because of the needs of others. They know right from wrong and good from evil only because they have it memorized. They invariably see themselves as good; even when they observe ill traits within themselves, they believe themselves superior because they consciously combat their true nature.

Satan may prefer deed to creed and thus appreciate that such people play nice after all, but the King of Lies is no fool. He knows that people exercise their true nature whenever their self-discipline is momentarily disengaged. A person who is not innately “good” but merely puts on an act (even if they believe in it themselves) is certain to eventually place a dagger in your back, speak ill of you, cheat on you, or betray you, and they will blame you, my friend, because knowing that they are your morally superior it cannot possibly be their fault; if they behaved poorly, you forced their hand. Satan advises to beware of martyrs in particular, as they think they do ever good but never understand that the perpetual source of their punishments is their own poisonous personality.

Such individuals are a terrible race, but Satan thinks that applied barstool psychology is useful to pinpoint these foul creatures of the human world. It is quite simple according to Satan: barstool psychology stipulates that you speak of your most prominent failures as if you are their conqueror. For example, when John Doe of forty brags about his many sexual conquests, you should bet your money that he is both still a virgin and has a tiny pecker. Extending this principle to moral inclination, expect people who speak of being devoted to a movement that does good to be none the part. If they had no problem being “good,” they would focus on something else. Hence, anyone who subscribes to a doctrine of good should be expected to be lacking in that very department.

It goes without saying that the Devil advises His followers to steer clear of the followers of His mortal foe—Christians, that is—but He thinks the caution should be extended to anyone who was brought up in a Christian home where one was demanded to “do good” for no heart-felt reason. Religions are codifications of group behavior (using symbolic language), and it is reasonable to include sanctions against dissocial behavior within this code, but merely following the code does not assure sanity. Satan thinks that no sane human being needs religion to behave properly, and that religion is in fact partially a sign that people lack this skill. The latter is beyond this discussion, however, as yours truly has a job to do torturing lost souls. Suffice to say that Satan is not fooled by people who declare themselves neither atheists nor Satanists if they grew up in a Christian home: He expects them to be as vile as their parents.

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 His followers should vote leftist

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devil has asked your humble demon to emphasize that Satan is entirely unconcerned with politics Himself, firstly because He is the undisputed ruler of Hell and has no intention of changing seats, and secondly because, after all, Hell is for the non-elect. At best, Satan rejects the notion that people get the politicians they deserve, because He finds it improper to hold sensible individuals accountable for herd actions that these individuals played no part in. However, He strongly believes that whenever someone benefits or suffers from the results of the politics that person voted for, it is fully deserved. Colored people who vote for white-supremacy politicans deserve to be victims of racism; major business owners who vote for socialist politicians deserve to have their businesses nationalized; and average-income people who vote for capitalist politicians deserve to be fleeced. No-one should be protected against their own stupidity.

However, the Devil looks after his own, and thinks that His followers should never vote according to any ideology—whether that be nationalist, religious, or otherwise mystical—that requires moral precepts about actions and opinions to be upheld in order to be a good citizen who altruistically votes according to what he or she believes is best for Society. The Devil’s prospective denizens should instead each consider carefully what provides themselves with the greatest benefits, political pipe-dreams be damned, if you will excuse your simple demon the possible inappropriateness of that word. It is this self-interest that prompts the Great Beast to propose that it would behoove most of His followers on the left hand path to keep left in a political context, too. The prospective follower needs not consider himself or herself to be red (red suits will be required to enter the Second Circle of Hell, however), and may in fact feel anything but solidarity with those who are traditionally left-wing, so my Ungodliness has asked me to elaborate.

In all human interactions, Satan believes that might is right. Of course, being an educated and intelligent gentleman, He does not believe in the pseudo-scientific notion that “strong” people, who have won a fight for power, will beget similarly strong children, nor does He believe that the principle that might is right implies that one should accept and succumb to any balance of power. “Might is right” is the realization that power is not merely a question of brawns but instead the phenomenon that right and wrong is defined by those empowered to do so, and that power is the continuous struggle for this position: those who gain power gain whichever rights that power enables. Hence, Satan thinks that those who fight for interests that conflict with those of His followers should never obtain the power to do so. Satan wants to reduce any right defined by the moral, financial, or legal systems of his opponents unless it happens to coincide with those of His followers, and similarly supports any legislation that supports His followers regardless of its formal reason.

Satan has no romantic dreams about humans living as if one with Nature (and, may I interject, He also has some personal issues with this paradisical concept after a certain deity made Paradise forever lost to my Master) and humans have no biologically or divinely imposed obligations towards other animals, human or otherwise. As a species, you human beings behave like any other animal: you exploit the planet’s resources as best as you can. You destroy the very source of your existence, and wishing to change this in order to survive does not make or require you to be a tree-hugger. Satan thinks it is a self-preservation instinct to keep an environmentally-friendly agenda.

And when some group of people is trapped because of conservative initiatives, the Devil objects to their suffering, but not because Satan has any feelings for the victims. He simply understands that such a government has exactly the same sentiments towards any of His followers, any of whom will soon find themselves in hot water once the government sets is eyes upon them. In that case, each of these followers can soon relate to human suffering and human mistreatment, because they will be those very humans. There is not a shred of bleeding-heart liberal feelings in this view; it is egoism, and any egoistic person should know that egoistic goals are often best met through cooperation and effective (if not necessarily earnest) solidarity.

Satan hopes that His followers are self-interested and just want to be well off. Granted, their self-gratification is a multi-dimensional equation with countless compromises that involve both biological, environmental, and parental imperatives, and is under constant development. They will work for their gratification to the extent that their day job is not exceedingly uninteresting or demanding and thus ungratifying. They will sacrifice some of their immediate desires in the interest of their family because it benefits them in the long run. Their actions are characterized by an adaptation to what will provide both short term and long term benefits within certain margins. But His followers have wishes. They want more money, safety on the streets, a society of knowledge and development, food without dangerous additives, the ability to get around, leisure time, etc.

This is where leftism becomes relevant. It is a left-leaning government that will benefit most of the Devil’s followers. What little His best-off followers might cash in on tax reductions for the rich will be paid back with liberal interest added thereunto, either as user charge or lost opportunities. A few hundred tax dollars saved per year is nothing compared to the methodical destruction of educational institutions for the followers who have offspring, their problem soon becoming the problem of His followers—just to name one example. If public transportation is starved or fares increase for drop-off locations father from the destinations, highway congestions will increase with you and your car in the thick of it. A measly few tens of dollars saved on the tax returns is a sorry compensation for major inconveniences.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with various groups of Society is a tactical move which does not require nor imply feelings of solidarity. The Devil asks that you, His followers, cease your infights over minor disagreements and instead ally and resist those who divide and conquer. You may not be an immigrant, a homosexual, a threatened species, a marginalized citizen, an ethnic minority, a child, in need of medical care, or a natural resort. Satan welcomes all of the above but you should realize that most of you are not part of the economy cult which gladly sacrifices any group on the altar of capitalism, and if capitalists are willing to sacrifice the aforementioned groups, then they will sacrifice you, too.

Satan thinks the relationship between you and your employer involves a fundamental disagreement between the ratio of work and compensation. You have opposing financial interests, and it is in your best interest to have a strong trade union that works to secure you against your employer. It would be down-right self-destructive to support an establishment that supports the interests of the employers against the interests of its employees, such as fighting trade unions or by providing discount trade unions whose goal is to make money and not have their members’ interests in mind. Satan could not care less about the success of a trade union, and would never ask His followers to care either, but He thinks His followers have an obvious rational interest in solidarity with trade unions that work to strengthen His followers, regardless of their feelings. A large membership base provides a trade union with the power to fight for whichever is an advantage to its members.

Nature is taking damage, and it will also become costly to compete for the remaining resources. Satan doubts that His followers wish to pay for that, and thinks His followers should prefer to repair the system before it is either too late or has become ruinously expensive. Satan has no romantic dreams of woodland lakes or species that “deserve” to be sustained but thinks any of His followers will benefit from a preservation of the ecosystems.

Satan is by no means recognizably “red,” regardless of what Medieval frescos may otherwise suggest, and does not ask His followers to be socialists either. The Horned One insists that none of this discussion involves “feeling solidary” with one issue or group or another; it only matters to understand that it is beneficial to ally with people who already work for a distribution of power that favors His followers. Satan thinks His followers should not worry if they happen to support people whom they disagree with on a variety of issues as long as those people will fight for a cause that also happens to benefit His followers. It should be of no concern if that makes others think that the follower is a socialist. Hopefully none of Satan’s followers, who refer to themselves as Satanists, are that afraid of being associated with the dreaded “S” (socialist) word.

Satan asks each of His followers to pursue their own self-interest, and that includes the tactical realization that there are more white-belts out there than one can safely wave a stick at. Unison begets power, and the Devil’s followers should unite with whoever provide them with power. Satan thinks it is beneficial to vote leftist whether you feel for it or not.

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 His followers dress funny

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan’s key observation about hipsters is that they prove a generic human trait: whenever humans achieve the freedom to be individuals, they use it to imitate each other. In an attempt to look unique and uninfluenced by fashion, hipsters look to each other for inspiration and eventually all look the same. It is this trait that makes Satan think of His followers as hipsters: they wish to stand out from the herd’s expectations but habitually become involuntary stereotypes for that very reason. Satan has observed that with some venerable exceptions, His followers occupy three categories when they choose their outfits:

1. The heavy metal dude with a pitiable body dressed with prominent pentagrams and inverted crosses, complemented with illegible band name tee shirts. Studded leather boots that would fit a slightly homo-erotically–appealing villain of a medieval-times TV series also seem popular. All of it except the band name and image was black before being worn and fortunately washed too many times. Satan counts his blessings (or curses) that they grew up without knowing what the heavy metal icons of the 1980es looked like and attempted to imitate them instead.

2. The pretentiously overdressed snob who attempts to impress others, who watch overbearingly while the pretender impresses only himself or herself and possible a few fellow followers. The Devil hands this follower that at least he or she managed to grasp a few basics about lesser magic and the need to stand out from the herd but wishes that they would observe the Balance Factor. At least they seem to be learning that looking like Anton LaVey is growing out of fashion. Satan cannot tell if the memory of Mr. LaVey is fading or if the general population today now simply shrugs at a shaved head and a goatee, and is mostly relieved that fewer of His followers make the attempt without having the skull—both literally and figuratively—to imitate the old Doctor. He cringes at the thought that His followers might instead one day look to Peter Gilmore, LaVey’s successor in His church, resulting in a horde of eyebrows combed upwards and a tendency towards overweight, but rather than hoping Peter Gilmore will one day recall his own opinion about Michael Aquino’s shaved eyebrows two decades ago, the Devil takes solace in knowing that Peter Gilmore’s meager charisma will inspire few people to imitate his physical appearance.

3. The person who has lost perspective and only recalls that he or she is a Satanist when the Devil is occasionally mentioned and otherwise behaves and thinks and dresses entirely like everyone else. The wardrobe reflects the similarity with others.

The Devil swears by nine parts respectability to one part outrage in accordance with the Balance Factor. Not eight parts that scream loser to two parts 1990es movie, not seven parts respectability to three parts empty posturing, and not ten full parts of mediocrity.

Satan thinks LaVey stared at goats

Posted on by A lesser demon

If you have paid attention to Hollywood movies and popular literature, you will know that my Master of All Things Evil is a sucker for rituals of destruction and for coercing unsuspecting victims into having sex when their mating signal has not been given, and hence is very happy with Anton LaVey’s rituals that one finds in The Satanic Bible. Satan is a little less impressed with the compassion rituals but understands why some of His followers and whoever knows them feel deserving of self-pity if not euthanasia.

But if there is anything my Master hates more than love, life, and happiness, it is a job performed sloppily. We have lost count of the number of times our Dark Prince has been summoned to a dimly lit room only to find a cheesy replay of the Monty Python sketch where John Cleese hates communists, or to find some wreck who thinks that by masturbating frantically behind fortunately closed doors some woman with taste will catch sexual interest in him. We lesser demons and several of our superiors know, because the Devil often vents his dissatisfaction on us afterwards with a temper that has made some of us very secretly compare Him with Jehova. Very secretly.

Satan is, of course, thinking specifically of the third section of The Satanic Bible entitled “The Book of Belial” where the author, Anton LaVey, explains how to perform Satanic magic, and why this magic works. In brief terms, for those who do not have the book at hand, Anton LaVey explained that by working up strong emotions of hate, compassion, or sexual desire (no, not simultaneously), one concentrates energy that can be directed at a desired (human) target who will be influenced according to the magician’s emotional state. Ritual chambers serve as “decompression chambers” during the rituals and aid in extracting the emotional energy from the magician. In addition, rituals are a therapeutic method that help get emotions “out of one’s system,” because pent-up emotions may be harmful to a person.

If this seems vaguely familiar, it is because none of it was Anton LaVey’s invention. Its origins predate Anton LaVey by several decades. It stems from the late 19th century when modern psychology was still in its infancy. These early psychologists drew heavily from the last big discovery of the natural sciences at the time: thermodynamics. This provided them with a paradigm where emotions were believed to be a form of energy and the human mind a kind of boiler that consumed the energy and turned it into tangible and useful actions provided the mind was healthy and the emotions were under control. If emotions were too strong or the mind could not process the emotions, however, it corresponded to providing too much energy or throttling the boiler output, and pressure would build up with damaging results to the entire system. One would sometimes have to “let out steam,” as humans still say today. Psychological models varied but were all based on the thermodynamics-inspired “energy and boiler” premise.

This paradigm was prevalent well into the 20th century where psychotherapists believed that emotions could be pent-up—that is, “causing pressure”—and had to be vented one way or another. From the 1930es and up until the 1970es, popular culture, too, had learned that this was how emotions worked, and any occultist or therapist worth his salt then knew that emotion and thought were some kind of energy that was somehow transformed into something else via the mind, whether it be sublimation per Freudian teachings or some other outlet. It was widely theorized that one could concentrate mind and emotion and somehow channel an intent towards an external desire, and possibly control the minds of other people.

Soon any therapist, scientist, occultist, hippie using drugs as a mind-enhancing tool, and even certain CIA programs (as was told satirically in the fictional movie The Men Who Stare at Goats) experimented with mind control, and Anton LaVey entered the arena in its heydays. He was neither controversial, novel, or unusual for believing it was feasible, nor was he the first to consider it magic. Anton LaVey mostly rehashed what scientists adhering to the thermodynamics paradigm of psychology still believed to be a possibility. It was not considered magic (nor Satanic), except perhaps that nobody knew how to channel this speculated energy. Occultists attempted with magic, and the CIA performed scientific studies of personnel trying to read each others’ minds, both equally unsuccessful.

In the meantime, unfortunately hampered by Freud’s enormous and regrettable influence on psychology, the science of psychology matured in a matter of decades. The emotional “energy” had been elusive and the human mind had proven to be far more complex than a steam engine, so psychologists eventually realized that the thermodynamics paradigm was fundamentally flawed and had prompted models that were either useless or counterproductive. The old paradigm did not explain a thing, which is also the reason why nobody figured out how to channel energy that does not exist via means that cannot.

Psychologists today know that there is no such thing as emotional energy that can build up and boil the mind as if humans were steam plants. The early psychotherapeutical belief that one should get an emotion “out of one’s system” by focusing strongly on it (as Anton LaVey requires in his Satanic magic) is now known to be detrimental to mental health, and is currently replaced with cognitive behavioral therapy methods that teach patients to work around their so-called mental “schemas” of negative emotions and deleterious behavior.

What Anton LaVey said was generally believed to be true at the time and made sense to include in The Satanic Bible, and Satan thinks he should not be blamed—although had he been a scholar with access to contemporary psychological research he might have discovered that the “pressure cooker” paradigm was already being challenged and stayed alive only because its adherents were not dead yet (as our denizen Max Planck once said), popular culture needing yet another generation’s time for it to fully evaporate. But today the paradigm that was required for Anton LaVey’s model of magic has been abandoned for decades after having been proven by results to be empty fiction. Satan thinks that the outdated paradigm and all its dependent psychological models, Anton LaVey’s thus ill-conceived model of magic included, should be unceremoneously flung into the darkness of other dead ideas.

“But it works! It works for me!” cries the choir in the Devil’s church, and Satan trusts that some of them truly believe so, not merely speaking with misunderstood loyalty towards Anton LaVey and The Church of Satan, which insists that there are no flaws in its scripture. After all, Christians, too, believe that their prayers are heard and have made their god change its mind. They, too, believe that biscuits and wine become flesh and blood at the Catholic communion. They, too, believe that a blessing changes them. Satan thinks that followers of His who believe that Anton LaVey’s rituals work are no different from these Christian churchgoers, and that they should perhaps start going, too, if that is how their minds work.