Church of Satan

Satan thinks it is all fun and games

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan thinks that Satanism should be all about leading an indulgent life and having fun along the way. He would prefer that this dogma be enforced on all aspects of life but admits that a certain part of life is that of labor and occasional hardship. To ease the path of study to become a dignified disciple of the Devil, Satan has released a board game that is guaranteed to teach His followers both proper etiquette and correct opinions, while having the fun of their lives.

Now available from Hell’s Outhouse Productions, Inc., Satan presents:

True Satanistsâ„¢

The Board Game Version
– 2 to 4 Players –

The fun new game of narcissistic indiscretion, superficial gratification, and effortless delusions!

Thrill as you forge your self-confidence as a true Satanist while collecting occult merchandise, flinging quotes, setting the record straight, performing diabolical rituals, and impressing your peers. Avoid dangerous pitfalls like “Might is right,” “Woes of Solipsism,” and the “Valley of reality.”

For a high-resolution image of the game board, Satan wants you to click here.

Objective

To be the first player to move your token around the track, collect “Satan Creds,” and navigate through your journey of self-realization.

Pieces

One dice, 4 tokens (Church of Satan Baphomet medallion, inverted cross, picture of LaVey, and Church of Satan membership card), “Satan Creds” point cards, and game board.

Game Play

Each player places his or her token on The Christian Church.

Most Christian player rolls first.

Players roll the dice once on each turn and advance their tokens counterclockwise accordingly. Players must follow instructions included on each square and thereby collect the indicated Satan Creds. If instructed to go forward or back, the player is not required to perform the action on the target square and will not accrue its Satan Creds.

The player to complete the full circle back to The Christian Church first receives an additional 50 Satan Creds.

The second player receives 15, the third 10, and the fourth is a Christian bastard who will never get anything.

Once all players have reached The Christian Church, tally your Satan Creds. The player with the most Satan Creds “wins.” Remember, you can convert your Satan Creds to collectible real-world items in any store that recognizes Satan Creds.

Satan thinks nihilism is a Christian artifact

Posted on by A lesser demon

Many established truths and commons have been trampled by the herd over the last century. Gays are now to be considered genuine males, women are not the property of their rightful owners, slaves are believed to equal their masters, no race is intrinsically noble and predisposed for glory, no nation is pure, natural justice is replaced by compassion for the wrongdoers, and that which should naturally fall is scaffolded and fortified. The world is, perhaps, going to Hell—not that Satan complains.

Verging on this descent into the Apocalypse, Satan thinks it is reassuring to find that some people, especially His own church, the very Church of Satan, upholds the virtues of old: because man is but an animal, Nature red in tooth and claw should govern human actions, as it is the Law; and strength is acquired through the joy of indulgences. For political reasons of self-preservation, The Church of Satan publicly presents itself as a dark fun-house of mere theatrics, but within its own scripture and communiquées—which the public overlooks as the very image of His Infernal Majesty deflects their eyes—the truth is all but laid bare. Certain historically indicative, familiar phrases are omitted, but the dog whistles shrill so loud that even the deafest right-wing extremist recognizes his kin. Terms such as “social Darwinism” are used scantly and just often enough to settle what “Lex Talionis,” the Law of the Jungle, means. If one dares, cares, or bothers to read the canonical scriptures of The Church of Satan, its vision is a race of master individuals, an alien élite, genetically bred and cultivated through the standard of the strong.

The first book of Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible are excerpts (or rather a plagiarism) of Ragnar Redbeard’s Might Is Right, which advocates such a view, including the above sentiments. Reducing every social phenomenon to simple power-relations, it is Redbeard’s synthesis of his personal racism and misogyny with the pseudo-science of social Darwinism and the philosophical rhetoric of Stirner’s anarchist individualism and Nietzsche’s focus on power. It is an outstandingly execrable combination of a comprehensively and thoroughly disproven body of thought. After a century of exhaustive debunking, only neo-fascists still believe that social Darwinism is scientific. Even if there were a grain of truth to be found, even for non-human animals, in these long outdated, pseudo-scientific conjectures, it is a Naturalistic Fallacy to derive a should from an is, concluding that humans ought to live accordingly. That is: social Darwinism is, both biologically and philosophically, objectively and demonstrably wrong. (His Maliciousness did not say it, but it bears mention that it is a remarkably rare and unenviable feat to be objectively wrong in philosophical matters.)

Satan is impressed that, faced with this scientific verdict on one of the most meticulously and extensively analyzed fields of science in human history, even today His church and its high priest, Peter Gilmore, manage to maintain and promote the sophomoric understanding of philosophy and the nature of human life required to enable them to endorse Might Is Right and regard it as accurate and enlightening. Such a display of self-deceit and stupidity is, in its own right, fascinating.

However, this is not intended as a venture into the many obscure interests of the Devil. The Prince of Insufficient Lighting has always been lured towards human depravity, the mental dysfunctions of crypto-fascists included. Satan’s message concerns the fact that His church believes in The Law of the Jungle despite its unmitigated rejection by every scientist, social theorist, and philosopher alive, not to forget quite a selection of many already dead.

The Church of Satan informs outsiders that the first book of The Satanic Bible is tongue-in-cheek, intended to rile up the reader or scare off those who would not benefit from the book. However, portions of Might Is Right find their way into the argumentative chapters of The Satanic Bible, and the remainder of the work is pervasive in LaVey’s subsequent writings. It is far more (if not nearly exclusively) foundational to LaVey’s Satanism than The Satanic Bible indicates.

The Law of the Jungle is an escalation of the law of retaliation, or retributive justice, that we know from the ancient Hammurabi code of “an eye for an eye” into Drako’s eponymously named punishment system fused with vigilante dispositions. (Satan, always ahead, prefers preemptive retaliation.) LaVey explained that for all its brutality, such a system would ensure a stable society, because the fear of retribution would cause people to think twice. “Responsibility to the responsible,” as the sixth Satanic Statement goes, hand in hand with the fifth Statement on vengeance, would subject them to the consequences of their actions, such as having their arm ripped from its socket for vandalizing a prized garden plant. The demand for The Law of the Jungle is established in The Church of Satan’s “pentagonal revisionism” program as an essential pillar of a Satanic society. It is both a legal and a moral code.

Satan thinks this should raise many an eyebrow, because it is the exact caution that Christian thinkers (a term that Satan applies very loosely to such people) have raised for centuries: that without faith in God, nothing prevents mankind from descending into the lawlessness of, yes, the Law of the Jungle. Without God and particularly the prospect of burning in Hell, humans would have no morals, they claim. Rational atheists have long argued, however, with plenty of supporting evidence, that morals are not contingent on a belief in deities. Moral behavior is innate to both humans and many non-human animals and arises naturally as a result of mutual self-interest.

This view is rejected by The Church of Satan, which assumes the Christian paradigm. The Law of the Jungle—the post-apocalyptic dystopia that Christians fear—is exactly what Anton LaVey and The Church of Satan expect as the natural alternative to Christianity. To Christians, human morals are motivated by a fear of punishment in Hell. To Satanists in The Church of Satan, human morals are enforced by fear of punishment here and now. To atheists, morals are a human trait that develops naturally to the benefit of mankind with no need for gods. Satan leaves it as an exercise for the reader to determine which of these three groups are the most similar.

The moral nihilism shared by Christians and The Church of Satan that denies an objective basis for morality has been a recurring philosophical theme in the Western World. Darwinism (genuine, not social) has received much of the blame for its death blow to the anthropocentric worldview, and materialism has been blamed for its lowered valuation of the soul, but Satan thinks there is a broader reason.

Christianity has contaminated virtually every aspect of Western culture, with centuries of metaphysical, eschatological, and existential expectations regarding the nature of the world. The strong anthropocentrism of classic Christianity and its belief that Nature is subservient to humanity, that morality is provided by the will of their god, that life has meaning because of God, and that humans have souls that will live in an afterlife, have brought comfort as meaning, purpose, and order seemed guaranteed. However, scientific advances have continually challenged such superstition, and the explanatory power of the naturalistic, scientific worldview is ever-increasing. For anyone to whom the Christian vision is persuasive, while the sciences and other enlightened insights tear at its fabric with nothing to replace it, a gaping void appears. (Not surprisingly, moral nihilism is less pronounced in non-Western cultures.) It is not science, Darwinism, materialism, or secularism that are to blame for this nihilism but the unrealistic Christian expectation that contradicting views must match its level of impossible certainty. A loss is felt only because Christianity is so deeply entrenched in all levels of society.

Modern secular atheists deny any supernatural beliefs and defend a naturalistic explanation of the world, but they generally acknowledge that morality is an inherent human attribute as a phenomenon that arises from social interactions, reason, and human interdependency, slowly evolving and converging towards a stable yet not absolute social code that is far removed from even hyperbolical standards of the strong. But even without laboriously deriving such an understanding of the nature of morality, to a person who was born and raised as an atheist, or merely avoided Christian cultivation to a modest degree, the perceived result of the loss of God, and the need to find meaning and purpose for oneself, does not invoke the specter of moral nihilism. It does not imply a crude every-critter-for-itself elimination of morality until only aggression, fang, and talon remain to define the Law and only the strong can prevail. The human animal is biologically wired against the Law of the Jungle. Any fear of this dismal environment is an unrealistic, religious nightmare, and any desire for it is a spiritual, Christian pipe-dream.

Only deep-seated Christianity can evoke this fear and, in its ultimate case, create the defeatist illusion that it is an alluring alternative. It is the worst-case outcome in the Christian mind and embracing it reveals a profound ensnarement in the traditional Christian mental framework. Satan thinks that the Satan-figure employed by Satanists who believe and perpetuate the view that Satanic morals are those of the Jungle is the good old Christian Devil, which remains considerably more real and present in their minds than they will ever understand. With one exception, they are the very kind of Christians who feel no natural inclination towards moral behavior on their own and only behave socially tolerable because they fear the repercussions, and who recognize in themselves harmful, anti-social impulses that, fortunately, they understand must be curbed albeit not why. They deviate from these Christians only in their psychopathic wish to act out their destructiveness. Ironically, it is not external Christianity that restrains their impulses but their inner Christian angst that generates their wish for the Law of the Jungle.

Satan thinks these advocates of the rule of fang and claw should be cast to the lions: the only proper way to deal with Christians.

Satan thinks His churchgoers go through five phases

Posted on by A lesser demon

Anton LaVey once said that newly-converted Satanists tend to go through a “first phase” where they feel compelled to tell everyone of their new-found faith, often arguing against Christians using LaVey’s straw men and unschooled reasoning that he provided in The Satanic Bible. Most of Satan’s churchgoers eventually leave this phase when the novelty value wears off, but a considerable number remain stuck in phase one.

LaVey never mentioned any subsequent phases, so no Church of Satan member ever considered whether further progression might occur beyond phase one. Satan thinks these churchgoers proceed through five phases, however, one for each point on the Pentagram.

Phase One is indeed the initial, unbearable behavior of a neophyte where everyone, including anyone past this phase, wishes they would just pipe down. Only fellow Phase One churchgoers can stand them, although most other churchgoers react indulgently as they remember their own Phase One period. As a rule of thumb, the more fervently a person believed in his or her former religion, the more aggressively the Phase One person now behaves, and the longer Phase One lasts. Phase One is characterized by a need to establish one’s new identity by dismantling one’s past identity.

Phase Two is very similar to Phase One, and while many virtually skip this phase altogether, it is, like Phase One, also a phase in which one may get stuck. Phase Two is characterized by the same proselytizing and zealous attitude as Phase One, and Phase Two individuals often increase their combativeness. The main difference is to whom their hostility is directed. Phase Two churchgoers consider it their chief duty to deny all other kinds of Satanism and often actively seek to harm any Satanist who disagrees with The Church of Satan, to the extent of occasionally involving fundamentalist Christians as bedfellows.

Their general proselytization of Phase One now takes on an evangelical “one true way” form where they denounce any other path as that of the Devil, as it were, and Satan thinks that other Satanists are what keeps them active. Phase Two is characterized by low self-esteem where, although having torn down one’s past identity and having constructed the framework of a new one, this identity is very fragile and cannot cope with competition. Satan thinks that those who remain in Phase Two are those whose self-esteem is naturally low and who are easily intimidated but compensate with the vileness of the insecure.

Phase Three marks a significant change, and is a phase where people are not prone to staying indefinitely. In Phase Three, the churchgoers have strengthened their identities enough to reduce the need for inverse behavior and counter-identity. This is when they begin to live according to their concepts of a Satanic lifestyle. Of course, since such a thing is nowhere defined, it becomes mostly a question of decorating one’s home, dressing up with some amount of devilish style, and adjusting one’s physical make-up. Satan thinks that because everyone already indulges in their respective interests (unless they are Buddhist monks or otherwise sworn to an ascetic lifestyle), this is not a Satanic trait—however, His followers believe that when they do what everyone does, in their case it is Satanic. The Phase Three churchgoers do not attend Christian services, of course, but in the absence of Satanic teachings beyond the superficiality of The Satanic Bible and a few articles embedded within other canonized books, most of their opinions and values remain unchanged since their days as pre-Satanists; it is mostly the trappings that have changed, and only on the surface level because their functions remain the same. Phase Three is characterized by a somewhat inflated belief in one’s uniqueness and superiority.

Phase Four represents a return to normal without realizing it. A lifestyle that involves mostly adornments and furnishing and few mental changes, and which is not shared with a nearby community, requires vigilance and constant personal dedication. It is not self-sustaining. (This is why Phase Three does not feature the captivity of Phases One and Two whose motivational supply of counter-ideology and other perceived enemies is infinite.) This leads some churchgoers into a daily routine where they have given up on some of their past religious business but are otherwise indistinguishable from the surrounding society. They remember their Satanism when they are occasionally reminded of it, but it is by no means a pervasive habit. Their interests are largely aligned with those of the herd, as dictated by fashion and popular culture, except where habit survives. Some revive their abandoned traditions to satisfy their need to fit into society. Some will forget about their Satanism although if asked, they may profess to agree with some indistinct core values. Like Phase Three, there is no externally provided motivation to remain in this phase, but unlike Phase Three, Phase Four is effortless, and one may again become stuck indefinitely. A few people maintain their Satanic principles in this phase but “internalize” their Satanism, requiring its trappings only to a small degree if at all.

Phase Four is characterized by regression to one’s pre–Church-of-Satan identity, and is the life that one would have begun earlier were it not for one’s Church of Satan detour. Although this phase may seem like one’s ideology has run into the sand, Satan considers Phase Four almost a litmus test of one’s worthiness of His name: if, after the interest has waned, one keeps living according to Satanic principles, values, and ethics, maybe one is the rare exception that is “born not made,” in the sense that one had integrity from an early age and was never incorporated into the human herd.

Phase Five is the last phase that marks the end of one’s days as a churchgoer. It is where the churchgoer has matured and learned about Satanism and the world. He has questioned himself and the teachings of The Church of Satan and Anton LaVey enough to identify critical flaws, has learned enough about other people to distinguish between unusual and abnormal behavior (only the former possibly qualifies as Satanic), or even to reliably identify a person’s mindset, and has learned enough about society, history, and religion to understand from where people derive their worldviews and values. It has become increasingly clear that what one finds within The Church of Satan is not Satanism but a toxic body of cultural Christians.

Many churchgoers who reach Phase Five realize that their church has changed since the 1960s, of course, but only to satisfy the self-delusions of its membership and to appeal to a lower common denominator. Its counter-cultural spirit left it many years ago, and what remains is an empty shell serving only as housing for one’s pipe dreams and refusal to develop personally. LaVey’s 1960s church was an early experiment which, owing to LaVey’s lacking intellectualism and failing insight into societal affairs and human sciences, was far too narrowly focused and off track due to LaVey’s belief in magic. It applied to his personal social circle perhaps, but it was a crude and secluded imitation of worldly wisdom. LaVey was the yokel’s idea of a man of the world, and as one grows older and wiser, one realizes how ignorant and superficial LaVey was, regardless of one’s early fascination with him. His skill was presentation not content.

Phase Five is characterized by personal growth and inwards and outwards perspective, a broadened horizon, and having found one’s place in the world without needing a group identity.

Satan thinks that LaVey introduced Satanism by scratching at its surface in those few places he could see but never knew what other possibilities he had accidentally opened. By sticking to LaVey’s original doctrine and refusing to develop and revise the ideology for a wider applicability than sexual fetishism, silly “magic,” and exciting edginess, The Church of Satan’s claim to the name is now only historic. Phase Five is where you leave The Church of Satan, either formally or by turning your back on it. You reach this phase if you truly had a different, sane mind about society and your role in it before you even knew about the church in the first place, or were at least able to develop during your time as a churchgoer.

Since each phase corresponds to a point on the star, each of the five phases lies on the opposite side of the previous phase, but not at their complete opposite. From the anti-Christian Phase One, Phase Two is almost anti-Satanic, and the following Phase Three lies closer to the original opposition to a Christianized society. Phase Four, in turn, is rather mainstream where neither Christians nor Satanists matter much and you are equally distant from them. The last phase, Phase Five, is when you have a Satanic identity but realize that far too many Satanists have only their association.

The phases overlap somewhat, and the transition from one phase to the next involves a little of both during the phase shift. It makes it possible to identify when a churchgoer is transitioning from one phase to another, because, owing to the almost-opposite natures of the current phase and its next phase, they may seem to sometimes vacillate. Some churchgoers pass through a particular phase faster than others, to the point of almost skipping it, and some remain stranded in a phase.

Satan thinks He has thus completed Anton LaVey’s use of “phases” as one of the many elements that The Church of Satan keeps dangling.

Satan thinks His church wears a good-guy badge

Posted on by A lesser demon

Take it from a liar to recognize another liar, and The Father of Lies knows one when He sees one. He has reserved the entire eighth circle of Hell for those very people. Even those who lie so hard they believe their own lies cannot hide from Satan’s smoldering eyes, but although they fit naturally within His aforementioned circle, for some reason they are in high demand in Heaven and are allowed through the Pearly Gates before Satan can offer a bid for their souls.

Satan’s own church appears to be brimming with the latter kind of liars if their online presence is to be trusted. Most of them, if not all, are relative newcomers to whom the Satanic newsletters, magazines, and periodicals of the past have never been available, and who never learned Satanic creeds in the days of Anton LaVey, before the age of social media and before The Church of Satan turned into what His Depravity calls Gilmoron Satanism. Hidden from plain view and made available only to subscribers, and to some extent incorporating a sufficient amount of cringe-worthy content to seem unbelievable except to those who could read, the doctrine was explicit. Today, reading comprehension skills not granted to everyone are required to decipher the dogma.

“Lex Talionis,” eugenics, social stratification, social Darwinism with a necessity of culling the human locusts who overrun and overpopulate the planet and the breeding of a Satanic “iron youth,” and similar concepts were ideals that Satan’s true followers once aimed for, if ever so feebly applied in practice in a society that promotes weakness and natural injustice. They were societal goals that were to be implemented literally as an alternative to the current, Christianized society of undeserved alms and apologists for inadequacy where criminals were treated as the victims, to the extent where human evolution was at stake.

Satan does not wish to impose unreasonable demands upon His followers, of course. Each must be evil to the extent of his or her ability, which is rarely anything to write home about. It did not take long until especially the scrawnier breeds began to quip that “might is right” was to be interpreted more broadly than favoritism of brawns, thus allowing the pen to be mightier than the sword, especially if all one had was a pen. Satan thinks it is fine to continuously develop and reinterpret one’s convictions and would in fact not recommend that His followers let themselves get stuck in the 1960es of Anton LaVey.

Today, virtually every one of Satan’s followers on social media believes that His church does not truly mean “eugenics” in any other sense than social preferences, that “stratification” is mostly what society already features, and that magic is “just psychodrama.” Every demonic aspect is defanged and declawed, especially when said followers are confronted by people who complain about the political and social ramifications and respond by pinning a good guy badge on their lapels. And that, my dear, is the big lie that they believe in themselves.

It is rare to find a person who speaks the truth, but occasionally an officially appointed spokesperson from The Church of Satan will set the record straight for those few who care to listen. This is when you discover that they welcome plans that would actively weed out purposeless people and that moochers on welfare, degenerates with (severe) disabilities, and fruitcakes with personality disorders who join them have failed to understand that Satanism is not for them, even when their predicament is no fault of theirs. In a world of their values, such individuals would be eradicated through swift evolutionary deselection, and conscientious and responsible people would lend Nature a helping hand as early as possible in such matters to conserve resources otherwise squandered on biological retrogressions.

Those “in the know” will sometimes place such people on a pedestal regardless. A token cripple, a token black person, a token leftist, or a token queer provides the organization with a good-guy badge that illustrates how they, by the goodness of their hearts, do not discriminate. In the meantime, and behind their backs, the same knowing people laugh wholeheartedly as these sideshow freaks of their carnival entertain the outsider guests—those who are not privy to the truth—by flaunting their delusions of inclusion and adequacy.

This is the nature of the real world and the human animal within it. The herd may require that the secret be concealed behind a good-guy badge lest they cower in fear and retreat, but the élite does not require it. Satan thinks the secrecy is unnecessary. There are far too many sideshow cage geeks paid with sips of their addiction, pinheads, and mental midgets in His church already—all of whom the animal world would have torn apart and devoured, but due to man’s sadistic demand for the suffering of others are kept alive and on display for their deficiencies and outbursts of insanity. Satan feels no need to expand that arena in His circus.

Satan thinks His “alien élite” are space aliens

Posted on by A lesser demon

Fictional characters are in no position to posit that other fantasy creatures are non-existent or are any less believable than themselves. Satan and His crew, as well as the myriads of gods, inhabit the same realm as the tooth fairy, Harry Potter, Santa Claus, and Darth Vader, who in turn are no less worthy of the attention and seriousness usually reserved for religious figures. Satan thinks it makes no difference whether it is God or Darth Vader who reminds the “saviors” of their respective popular stories that he is their father. Mythical aliens are as real as He.

One thing is clear: the so-called “alien élite” that the Devil’s church likes to mention cannot be its human members, judging from their generally sub-average achievement levels. Satan thinks this élite is instead an alien race from outer space that His church members aspire to become. Wise in the vastness of the Universe, Satan recognizes the exact race, known among other things for the following fine qualities:

  • Their religion is about indulgence, materialism, and selfishness, and they abhor acts of altruism. However, they are often quite hypocritical, and their creed is self-contradictory on many accounts.
  • They are unbearably smug, considering other alien races to be inferior for being weighed down by counterproductive morals.
  • They like to dress up to seem more than they are, applying a somewhat outlandish notion of aesthetics.
  • In their daily business, most of them are often double-crossed by their betters.
  • They are led by a magus (although to save ink it is written “nagus”).
  • They apply their rules of interaction only among themselves. They are not required to follow them against other alien species, yet demand that others adhere to them regarding showing unearned respect and ignore them regarding tolerating abuse.
  • They are highly sexist. Their women serve only to amplify the role of the males.
  • They reach everyone else only to their shoulders.
  • They are easily distracted by appealing to their odd sexual fetish.
  • They are highly competitive against anyone who appears to share their beliefs. They often acknowledge that, in principle, such races have some commendable aims but far lacking skills.
  • Originally intended as the main adversary, their role soon became that of comic relief.
  • Their ambitions rarely meet their abilities, and they tend to disappoint their families.
  • They have almost as bad teeth and big ears as Anton LaVey.

Thus, Satan thinks that the role model of His “alien élite” is the Ferengi of Star Trek and His followers are their earthly parody.

Satan thinks His followers missed a slur

Posted on by A lesser demon

Most readers of The Satanic Bible who thought it resonated with them strike the Devil as people who immediately dreamed that one day others would bow before them, for they would be the highest embodiment of human life, then subsequently believed that the path from mediocrity to dominance is paved with a fervent insistence that one is a Satanist, and very little else.

Satan thinks they should re-read their book, because there is much wisdom to be found in it. Maybe one day Satan will explain how to read it or, more likely, He will assign the task to one of his underachieving minions as one of His many forms of recreational damnation.

Returning to the aforementioned readers of The Satanic Bible who take the Devil’s name upon themselves, Satan often hears them assert that they—Anton LaVey and his organization—came first. Before LaVey, Satanism was used exclusively as a slur, and no one had attempted to gather a group, ponder a philosophy, or realize a religious following bearing that name, they say: prior to LaVey, “Satanism” was used as a Christian slur against people whose conducts or beliefs the Christians disapproved of, especially in the US.

LaVey declared “year one” in 1966, and to his followers, that is about when physical time began because otherwise they might have noticed that several groups had existed decades earlier that openly embraced Satan Himself as their godhead. Some remained within the Christian discourse and believed in a literal devil, but others held Him as a symbol and a conduit of magic, quite like LaVey. Satan would know, as He has been summoned in plenty of their rituals, albeit often only to witness yet another attempt at alchemy involving a bowl of molten lead, various toxic chemicals, shiny crystals, and animal parts or human bodily secretions.

At least some of these groups were called Satanists. While those who chose that name for the groups (if a group had not itself settled for the name already) may not have blessed the practices and philosophies of the groups, and while they may not have used “Satanism” as an approving term, it was not the discreditation or accusation for which Christians usually reserve this word. When they—Christians and others—named these groups Satanists, surely it was not meant as a compliment, but considering that the groups honestly sided with Lucifer, it was a largely neutral description comparable to, say, Muslims describing the Jehova’s Witnesses as Christians. It actually fit in a sense that was very different from allegations and castigations of being child-eating cannibals, rapists, violent criminals, sodomites, and subversive decadents (and, in those days, the Jews).

Fast-forward to 1966 when Anton LaVey established The Church of Satan from his local group of occultists. His explanation of Satanism was originally formulated in the so-called “rainbow sheets” that he and his group distributed at seminars and lectures on his philosophy. These sheets made it into The Satanic Bible a few years later in the section “The Book of Lucifer,” with minor modifications. This is where we find out why Anton LaVey called it Satanism.

LaVey wrote surprisingly little about Satanic values or behaviors in The Satanic Bible, unless “The Book of Satan” means much more in practice than an infernal diatribe designed to rattle a few cages but not otherwise to be taken seriously. The Satanic Bible instead teaches us that in the 1960s, many Christians would behave according to their carnal natures—which the reader is assumed to know, despite psychologists struggling to identify and understand it over centuries—but then feel guilty about it. Anton LaVey proposed that man instead follow his carnal nature without guilt. According to LaVey, “they” (the comparatively high-strung Christians) named such ungodly behavior of fellow citizens who, if asked, would have answered truthfully that they considered themselves to be Christians: they named it Satanism. It was a slur aimed at people who would protest such accusations of being allied with the Devil.

Thus, LaVey’s Church of Satan was not the first group to refer to themselves as Satanists, because others had done this before. He also was not the first person to use the term “Satanism” as a non-Christian slur, both because it was used as a description of, not a slur against, the earlier groups of self-declared Satanists, and because the term for what LaVey proposed was in fact, by his own admission in The Satanic Bible, a slur that Christians used against other Christians.

Had LaVey been an educated individual with basic training in scientific method, he would promptly have realized that the observation that easy-going Christians exist and are disapproved of among orthodox Christians does not imply that only the latter are Christians while the former are Satanists. It merely implies that Christianity is not a monolithic entity but a mosaic of many elements (most of which Satan denounces, of course). Alas, what is done is done. Anton LaVey concluded in The Satanic Bible that “Satanism” is defined as the behavior of easy-going American Christians in the 1960s, blissfully unaware that overseas, Europeans viewed even such moderate American Christians, too, as religious nuts.

Satan thinks that, regardless, LaVey deserves credit for reclaiming the term, in the same sense that queers reclaimed a term that had until then been defamatory. He enabled some of the 1960s American Christians to turn it into pride and identity, together with nice black capes and a Baphomet lapel medallion. Satan also thinks that LaVey should be commended for making an attempt to augment their form of Christianity with a long overdue acknowledgment of His Infernal Majesty whether or not they be able to embed a minimal number of demonic principles in their own lives.

Both Anton LaVey and his organization have argued against accusations of choosing the term merely for shock value by rationalizing that it was simply the most fitting term at the time. In another time and place, another term might be more appropriate, their explanation goes. Satan is not altogether convinced that American 1960s Christianity could truly be named Satanism but otherwise agrees with His churchgoers. Satan thinks that His church should indeed apply the term that best describes them according to age, environment, and situation.

Present-day Christians use the term “Satanism” for one of two situations: either they describe truly destructive behavior that real Satanists, too, strongly oppose—although Satanists would use a different label to describe it; or they are fundamentalists to whom anything they disapprove of is the work of the Devil. No-one save zealots would think of using the term “Satanism” about LaVey’s philosophy. In today’s age, the term used by majority Christians would be “bad Christians” or “hypocritical Christians,” if at all they were noticed. Satan thinks it is about high time they change their name to “hypocrites” and leave the definition and practice of Satanism to their betters.

Satan thinks all members are representative

Posted on by A lesser demon

Usually when people complain about impolite, arrogant, hateful, aggressive, intolerant, stupid, or generally all of the above behavior at the same time from members of The Church of Satan, they receive a well rehearsed answer: these members do not represent The Church of Satan but speak for themselves. The only people who may speak for the organization are people above a certain clerical rank or people with special permission. Poorly behaving members are therefore not to be considered representative of the organization.

Intelligent people understand that those are not identical forms of representation, but social stratification mostly spares them from the company of said members. Less enlightened people are prone to believing The Church of Satan’s excuse. Appointed spokespersons, by rank or by selection, act as formal representatives who speak with organizational authority on policies, ideology, and decisions, and only when they explicitly say so. The rest, who are lay members, speak for themselves only. So far, so good—except that lay members and the clergy alike represent their organization by example. They demonstrate what is considered acceptable or expected behavior internally and towards others, and this is why many organizations (including The Church of Satan) occasionally find it necessary to expel a member.

Lay members or low-ranking members of The Church of Satan thus do represent their organization. It is easy to think that by neglecting to address their behavior, excusing their behavior as not formally required, or formally condoned, The Church of Satan ignores that Satan represents responsibility to the responsible. However, Satan thinks His church is only too happy to have a portion of its membership display such primitive hostility as sometimes makes others complain. Examples exist of the ruling body of The Church of Satan asking its members to antagonize selected people or groups that the organization considers inconvenient, and praising members for having taken such initiaves on their own.

The behavior is not openly condoned, but it is appreciated and encouraged behind the scenes. The Church of Satan is satisfied to see its members attack others in an attempt to enforce herd conformity, and members soon learn that such behavior earns them brownie points among their peers. If the organization had preferred that their members conduct themselves properly, it would be simple to issue a policy and have formal representatives of the clergy remind lower-ranking members to behave themselves. As long as The Church of Satan encourages, requests, and even coordinates hostility, the resulting bad behavior is representative of The Church of Satan.

Satan thinks everyone should smarten up and know that it is Church of Satan policy to stimulate such behavior, and that members with excessively hostile attitudes are therefore truly representative of The Church of Satan.

Satan thinks stratification would kill several followers

Posted on by A lesser demon

Pentagonal revisionism is the political and social program of the Church devoted to His Infernal Majesty. It includes strict taxation of all churches, no tolerance for religious beliefs secularized and incorporated into law and order issues, the development and production of artificial human companions, the opportunity for anyone to live within a total environment of his or her own choice, and—most importantly, according to the Church—stratification on all levels of society: no-one should be protected from the effects of his own stupidity, and everyone must find his or her place in society without help.

The Old Lad Himself wholeheartedly supports stratification on Earth as it is in Hell, His own realm being founded on a strictly feudal basis with a Lordship-retainer relation between all of our denizens. It is entirely coincidental that our infernal structure happens to match the social structure of Medieval times when humans began to depict Hell. Johann Weyer’s elaborate description of our hierarchy was reputedly a satirical spoof but we who dwell here know better.

Thus we have several Sons of God who stand as praiseworthy examples of breaking social heritage, a vast array of demons, numerous devils (ranking above the demons), arch-demons, princes, dukes, lords and overlords, and many specialized trades such as chefs, jesters, spies, generals, captains, and ministers. It may be every demon for himself, but everyone knows its place, including yours falsely, who dutifully mans the furnaces and is only allowed to relay The Gentleman’s infernal thoughts on his unpaid overtime.

The astute reader may have noticed that our hierarchy, although incompletely outlined above, does not include any of Satan’s followers. There is a good reason for that: Hell is intended to be their punishment not their playground. Satan thinks that if they want to rule in Hell, they can go create their own damn (or damned) place on Earth where they belong for now. Satan will not reward them with some title and a fiery fiefdom when they die. Such nonsense is what “God” promises.

Satan thinks that the promise of an afterlife in an eternal bliss if only one succumbs to the demands of the clergy while alive is a death wish. Atheists abound who agree. (Old Horney has no comments on His own role in that myth.)

In spite of Freud’s derailing psychology for decades to come, Satan thinks there is some truth to be found in his idea of a “death drive.” Satan believes Thanatos describes a biological response in a body which is aware at a some deep level that it is unfit to exist and must perish and rot. Thanatos drives the body host towards self-destructive behavior and activities that are harmful to himself or herself. It drives the person towards ideologies that deny their carnal being and reject the body—such as Christianity, which stipulates that their essential being is something that does not exist: their soul. They desire to be freed of their body, to be obliterated from existence.

This brings us back to the political goal of stratification. Satan thinks that all of His followers who joined The Church of Satan should question their own role: which social stratum do they occupy in their current societies, and which stratum would they occupy in if that society was shaped per pentagonal revisionism?

Satan thinks many of them would perish. A person who is both physically and mentally retarded has nothing to offer and would crash anonymously and unceremoneously to the bottom stratum in a matter of days if a Satanic social structure was enforced.

Such people, as well as anyone who is functioning but below average usefulness, would seem stupid, self-deceited, or hypocritical to join an organization whose declared goal is to suppress them, but Satan ascribes it to Thanatos: they are attracted to The Church of Satan because it promises an alternative to their frustrations with their current lot in society that would prove far worse to them. They harbor a subconscious desire to be eradicated.

Satan thinks that a substantial number of His followers who support The Church of Satan’s ideas of meritocraty and strict social stratification may wish for a hell on Earth that would come considerably close to the mythical Hell. And Satan approves.

Satan thinks Satanic child abuse is taboo

Posted on by A lesser demon

In spite of their ideological differences, one thing my Master’s followers can agree on is that sexual abuse of children has no place among Satanists. But let us be honest: there are genuine examples of sexual child abuse among Satanists. Satan personally knows of an example involving a former priest in His church and another example involving a person who possessed a membership card of a Satanic organization. Both of these examples considered their sexual abuse of their own children to be a facet of their beliefs. His Infernal Majesty must know such things because He is required to keep track of human evil to exact a fitting punishment when their time comes.

A little sense of realism should erase all doubt anyway. Statistics on child abuse vary and involve unreported numbers but given any 1,000 people it is virtually guaranteed that some of them are unfortunately child abusers or harbor some level of pedophile tendencies. This implies that any organization with more than a few hundred members should be expected to have child abusers among its members regardless of ideology. It is not the nature of the organizations but the disagreeable human nature that allows such a prognosis. The Devil has a few larger groups devoted to Him, and any accusation that they include pedophiles is, sadly, bound to be true for this reason alone. Satan wishes them rooted out regardless of the internal taboo of His Satanic organizations that was bound to take root when Anton LaVey condemned child abuse to the level of elevating it to one of the Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth.

Yet, Satan advises His followers to keep their pride checked and avoid unnecessary suspicions. Any one group of organized Satanists that accuses another Satanic organization of pedophile inclinations and thus perpetrators of the worst taboo should remember its own position in the real world. The history of the “Satanic Panic” in the late 1980s and early 1990s had real implications for thousands of innocent victims, and the current QAnon attempts to resurrect the panic as part of their political movement should be a concern for any modern Satanist with a little historical and social perspective. Such people do not distinguish between Satanic groups, and if Satanic organizations accuse each others of child abuse, all would-be Satanic Panic revivalists will just lump them together and throw all non-Republican presidential candidates in for good measure, and could not care less if these Satanic organizations happen to damn each other away from Hell.

The last thing any Satanic organization needs is to feed such nation-wide herd stampedes with speculations that tie right into their myths, and which they will readily use against this same Satanic organization. An accusation of pedophilia may help dissuade a few would-be members from joining the other Satanic group but it misses the greater picture. Any little harm one Satanic organization inflicts upon another is a gain to opponents with genuine power to effect changes for the worse who will happily use it. It is a poor general who loses the war to win the minor skirmishes.

Satan thinks that His original organization, The Church of Satan, is particularly challenged in its perspective when its members repeatedly insinuate that The Satanic Temple has a pedophile appeal for constructing a statue that allows children to sit on its lap and for establishing projects such as their “after school Satan” program. In fact, Satan thinks it is worrying when people who think in terms of sexual child abuse at the sight of a child on the lap of a statue feel the more attracted to an organization which proudly displays a picture of a little child next to a naked, real woman in a Satanic ritual, and describes in its literature how this child, the daughter of the very founder, became pregnant with an unknown father at the age of 13. The pendulum may strike back hard one day.

Satan thinks authority matters

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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