Empty posturing

Satan thinks godhood is no ambition

Posted on by A lesser demon

Rejecting one’s superiors can have unforeseen, life-altering consequences. Based on His personal experience, Satan would be the first to warn that when dealing with a psychopathic superior, the slightest non-compliance with their demands or failure to adore even their feeblest creations and opinions may ignite a display of wrath of Jehovan dimensions. However, that is often the preferable price if it means leaving behind the fetters of the madman’s mercurial moods.

When Satan learned that, at long last in human history, someone had authored a Bible devoted to His Infernal Majesty, he was delighted to read that one should place no gods before oneself. One’s hopes for change or forgiveness, one’s responsibility, and one’s happiness were no longer to be relegated to a non-existing god. Each human would have to take it upon themselves to fill the role traditionally assigned to God: one was to become one’s own god, recognizing that, ultimately, each individual is the most important being in his or her life, and no god will help.

The Horned One is a great thinker, and He soon remembered that such an enlightened interpretation is not granted to every reader. It was likely not even the author’s intended interpretation. In Satan’s defense, he had just flipped through the book to see where he was mentioned and only later retired for a few hours for a closer read.

Scattered across the book, Anton LaVey explains that gods are human egos that have survived the temporary human body of once exceptionally strong-willed individuals. It is similar to the Christian concept of the human soul if that was not, in fact, what LaVey had in mind. LaVey encouraged the reader to build such a strong ego, and the recommendation that the readers become their own gods is to be taken literally—it was not Satan’s initial intellectualized interpretation of self-interest and rejection of gods. The reader was not asked to reflect inwardly by imagining the result if there was no God. One is to behave like a god and demand treatment accordingly.

With that realization, some pieces fall into place. Many of the attendants of The Church of Satan truly behave like gods in the very same manner as the Devil has known them throughout the eons.

Every god in history has been petty, immature, unable to cope with reality, self-absorbed, entitled, abusive, preoccupied with power and appearance, oppositional, demanding to be admired, exploitative, dishonest, sadistic, devoid of empathy, arrogant, envious, and irresponsible … while projecting all their disagreeable traits onto everyone else. With few exceptions, they were unrestrained narcissists and psychopaths.

The Satanic Bible appeals to people with such personality disorders. Even Anton LaVey admitted that his book instills delusions of superiority into the minds of inferior people. The promise that one becomes a Satanic übermensch upon reading the book is an irresistible lure to the low self-esteem that is the core of every narcissist’s personality disorder.

Satan thinks that people aspiring to qualify as their “own gods” are those who stand in solitude before their self-made altars, worshiping themselves at home, because no one else will. He opposes all gods and all their essence, and self-declared gods with character derangements characteristic of a particularly broken human nature are no exception. Satan rejects them all.

Satan thinks His followers remain Christian

Posted on by A lesser demon

Anton LaVey wrote in The Satanic Bible that Satanism is the only religion that recognizes man as he is, with no requirements that he better himself, only that he pursue his indulgences without shame (or “guilt,” as LaVey generally uses as a synonym). As a Satanist, one must no longer prove oneself worthy of salvation or fear damnation for being a sinner. No god can reward you when you die.

Satan likes the attitude but thinks LaVey forgot his audience. The majority of his readers were brought up with a mindset urging them to “better” themselves according to Christian regulations, such as feeling shame when they masturbated or feeling obligated to express love for people far outside their social circles. True, it is only a scant minority of Christians who really delude themselves into thinking they love their enemies—-most Christians in the world interpret the Christian tenet of loving one’s enemies to mean respecting others and generally trying not to be too much of a dick—but The Prince of Darkness finds that many who seek His kingdom were this particularly brainwashed kind. With a mindset bent on bettering oneself only because God mandates it, it is predictable what happens when God is removed from the equation: all work on personal improvement ceases in this nihilist, godless world.

This starkly contrasts healthy people with natural drives compelled toward self-actualization, a continuing phase in Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. One naturally works toward reaching one’s potential, continuously seeking to repair what is broken, improve what is already good, and remove obstacles within oneself. Such individuals will naturally seek to identify and eliminate the harmful influence of Christianity within themselves to move beyond its stifling grip.

Anton LaVey’s Satanism is part of the Human Potential Movement of the 1950s and 1960s that cast humans as fundamentally “good” creatures whose nature has been perverted by society, turning mankind into an inferior and destructive version of itself. The human animal was thought to have a potential waiting to be unleashed if it could somehow return to its true self and cast off the shackles imposed by a society that works against the best interest of its own species. When Satan represents man as the human animal he is, it is this healthy animal, not an animal broken by a toxic society and put on a leash with religion. As obvious as it hopefully sounds, Satan does not represent man as he is if that man is a Christian, whether by culture or by faith.

Satan thinks The Satanic Bible‘s reassurance that people are good enough is a free pass to avoid confronting one’s most meticulously inculcated values and discourses. If one was raised as a Christian early on or otherwise fell into the cauldron of Christianity as a child, its teachings are thoroughly instilled in one’s mind and virtually impossible to ignore. Confronted with disagreements, stressful situations, or conflicts that involve core values, people generally sink to their levels rather than rise to the occasion. Most “open-minded” individuals raised to believe that unfaithfulness, unforgiveness, or selfishness are bad behavior will be shocked and react emotionally when they become the target of such behavior; many intercultural marriages have suffered conflicts caused by ingrained cultural values that the couple thought they had transcended. A former Christian will consider the offender a bad person for not exhibiting Christian behavior.

These people are, at the bottom of their hearts and minds, the Christians they were raised. Upon reading The Satanic Bible, such people arrogantly declare that because they were always Satanists (even if they were once the proselytizing, argumentative, Bible-thumping kind of Christians), they neither changed upon converting to Satanism nor through being Satanists because they presume that no change was needed. Satan thinks that they generally have not changed one iota, indeed: if they were once Christians and have done nothing to change, that is what they remain. Like salmon, they return to the spot whence they were spawned.

Satan demands that His followers make an honest effort to escape their indoctrination. They are sorely mistaken if they believe themselves free of religious persuasions and to have managed to escape their past impressions. Even dyed-in-the-wool atheists receive the mark of their societies, some of which will be Christian branding. The educational challenge is to learn about human psychology, sociology, cultural specifics, history, and how religions function and evolve (not according to self-help books or popular psychology, politically biased commentators, or religious or counter-religious interest groups but on terms congruent with science) and to self-reflect and compare it all with how they have shaped oneself, and how oneself acts and responds.

This implies a complete rejection of most of Anton LaVey’s beliefs about the human animal and the entire array of pseudoscience he relied on. It requires the Devil’s followers to identify which social and behavioral traits arise from your biological imperatives or are programmed by society and which of society’s programming is religious or secular, with religion often taking credit for the latter. It necessitates constant meditation on personal motivation, reactions, and morals. Satan thinks that none of His followers deserve His magnificent name until they have put in years of hard and dedicated work on understanding human nature and how their own life agrees with Nature and on remedying what deviates.

Anyone can delude themselves into thinking that they have sufficiently perfected themselves, with only others to blame for their failings in life, and now all that remains is to convince others. Satan thinks it takes no small amount of self-confidence and self-esteem to admit to oneself that one is never released from ongoing self-improvement—but when someone possesses these qualities, the Will to develop usually comes naturally.

It is impossible to be a “perfect” Satanist in any current human society. However, Satan thinks that his followers may come a long way by revering Him as an infernal sage whom one may never become but should always seek to emulate. As the undisputed Ruler of the Earth, Satan permits entry to Hell only to those of His followers who make an honest effort to escape their former religion.

Satan thinks His Church lied about LaVey’s death

Posted on by A lesser demon

Myths, legends, and fabrications characterize all religions (except your own, of course). Some will argue that there must be grains of truth in every religious tale but Satan thinks such concessions are unnecessary as one needs not to support any piece of religious fiction simply because it employs coincidental facts. For example, if some fantastic fable may be geographically pinpointed, the only truth that is revealed is that the story was invented by people who lived in or knew about that area. It does not prove any supernatural elements: the fact that the Sea of Galilee exists does not prove that Jesus walked on the Lake of Genesareth as it was then known.

From a religious point of view, there is good reason to provide reality anchors to otherwise impossible situations. Any report that demands belief must be partly credible, and every con artist knows that he must make his marks believe they might have been present to see for themselves had they been so lucky. Miracles occur in the neighboring village or other familiar area, not in a far-away fantasy country so they become obvious fairy tales, and some story must unfold.

The important element is a relatable reality. One must first recognize the profane world to appreciate and identify that a sacred change has occurred. For instance, the Christian rebirth conversion consists of a sinner in the profane realm who receives an experience from the sacred realm and thereby changes into something new. Note that the element of reality is important only insofar as it is relatable. The major narrative is the sacred change that happens to this reality, so the focus lies on the sacred. It suffices that the reality could be true by not violating any known principles of the world, and it may be bent if that favors the narrative. Hence, a newly converted individual will appear more convincing to the congregation if the conversion seems “impossible” and requires a “miracle” and the method is tried and tested: the worse the sinner, the more astonishing the conversion. It does not matter that the sinner may not have been as bad as told.

It is no far leap from exaggerating a little to making up entirely a little helper reality as long as it could have happened naturally, and gossip of repenting evildoers abound to prove the wonder of God’s love. Richard Ramirez is rumored to have repented, although there is no indication this ever happened, and the minister who baptized Jeffrey Dahmer was concerningly fascinated with his notoriously untrustworthy disciple, to name two prominent individuals.

It is, therefore, unsurprising that Anton LaVey, too, is rumored to have repented on his deathbed. The specifics vary somewhat, but their source is generally said to be the nurse who attended him during his last hours. It would be a great story if true, but Satan thinks its reliability is diminished greatly because, despite its news value, this story did not appear until about a year after the passing of Anton LaVey. Some have further argued that since LaVey had suffered from heart problems causing fatal pulmonary edema (fluid in his lungs), he would have been unable to voice any regrets. Satan is not entirely convinced that the latter would have prevented a gasp of remorse, however, as even people with a one-digit lung capacity percentage can be quite chatty. (You would be surprised how people may yet scream at the top of their lungs despite our sulfuric, toxic atmosphere here in Hell.) The Prince of Darkness considers the long delay between having supposedly been heard by the nurse until it emerged as rumors only to be the better argument against LaVey’s deathbed repentance.

The story of Anton LaVey’s deathbed regret is thus one of many Christian anecdotes that establish the mythological universe necessary for any religion. Each anecdote plays only a small part but together, they form a religious glue narrative that helps keep the religion together.

Satan’s own Church is no different in making up its own myths. Anton LaVey constructed an impressive persona whose true identity was not questioned until 1991 when journalist Lawrence Wright investigated LaVey’s past and found that many of LaVey’s claims about his life had been false. LaVey’s second daughter, Zeena Schreck (née LaVey), published a text titled Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality in 1998 that further debunked his claims.

This did not prevent The Church of Satan from still worshiping their founder as an extraordinary person about whom the myths at least provided an accurate impression of his (un)holiness. In Peter Gilmore’s foreword of the 2005 edition of The Satanic Bible, Gilmore admits that “detractors” had disputed LaVey’s authority but is sure to dismiss the relevance, both claiming that most else is true and even expounding on the myth of LaVey’s past. The Church of Satan even went so far as to mimic the fundamentalist Christians who spread stories surrounding the death of Anton LaVey by sharing the remarkable news about nine days after the loss of their founder that LaVey had magically appropriately passed on the eve of October 31st: their Satanic holiday of Halloween.

This seemed almost too good to be true for their religious narrative and indeed, when the local news caught wind of the event, they cited the correct date of October 29th. The Church of Satan immediately blamed the above-mentioned nurse for having entered an incorrect date of death on LaVey’s death certificate (it seems this poor nurse has much to answer for), apparently not stopping to think that if so, the press would also have been misled.

The Father of Lies knows a feebly executed deception and a poor back-pedaling when he sees it and calls His Church’s bluff. Blanche Barton was reportedly with LaVey when he died and would have known that this was not the eve of their High Holiday for which she would have prepared. If nothing else, although Blanche Barton is far from the brightest candle in the votive stand, Satan thinks even she would have discovered that her ideological sugar daddy had been missing for the celebration of Halloween for two days. Trust Satan that it was a deliberate lie by The Church of Satan to pretend that Anton LaVey died on October 31st as a conclusion for their personality myth.

Satan would have enjoyed daring The Church of Satan to produce proof in the form of a signed death certificate citing October 31st, 1997, but is aware that such documents may be doctored. He is content knowing for certain that The Church of Satan, like Christians passing stories about LaVey’s deathbed confession, spread lies surrounding his death intended to sustain the myth of Anton LaVey among the gullible rubes.

Satan thinks magical recognition deserves a template

Posted on by A lesser demon

When The Church of Satan abandoned its “grotto” system in the 1970s, grotto masters could no longer report the magical progress of their grotto members and The Church of Satan could therefore no longer determine which magical degree for which a member was eligible. Members now had to report their magical development individually, and this practice is still in effect today. However, the measure of magical improvement has changed somewhat over the years.

The 1975 schism between The Church of Satan and The Temple of Set involved quantifying magical skills so that real-life results were believed to reflect one’s magical acumen and hence one’s degree. Rank climbers soon learned that to Anton LaVey, these real-life accomplishments concerned fascination with urination, burlesque sexual innuendos, or a display of Nazi paraphernalia. Despite considering money to be a tangible metric of real-life success, results in the so-called creative fields were held in higher regard than intellectual or professional feats, largely because LaVey was found in the former areas and The Church of Satan was not particularly alluring to people in the latter occupations, and likely also because the Church of Satan’s upper clergy lacked the tools to evaluate cerebral proficiency.

When Peter Gilmore took over after the passing of Anton LaVey, he reinstalled the grotto system. It became immediately apparent that The Church of Satan still did not attract natural leaders, and grottos were, again, disbanded. Gilmore nevertheless managed to establish new expectations for the degree system by example: individual development means something only to the extent that now everything in The Church of Satan serves to nurture Peter Gilmore’s self-esteem, and Gilmore judges members according to their ego-supply.

With this in mind, Satan proposes that the following letter template for members reporting on their magical progress, with His instructions in italics, be used for their status reports to the “Central Grotto.”

Make sure to grovel, but do not forget that you are entitled to Peter Gilmore’s attention.

Dear High Priest and Magus of The Church of Satan Peter Gilmore:

I understand that you must pursue your indulgences as the only true Magus of The Church of Satan, but I am certain that you will be pleased to read my letter.

Brag about your accomplishments but never be explicit. Gilmore half does not care and half wants to believe that he is the high priest of someone noticeable, and he will rather imagine greatness than hear what little you did instead; alternatively, if you have managed to do well, do not risk outshining his own limited fame. For example, the following sounds better than saying that you have been gaming in the little spare time you had outside of your blue-collar work:

Since my last letter, I have engaged in my specific indulgences to the extent that the practicalities of life allow. After all, Satan is indulgence not compulsion!

You may have completed some trivial deeds, such as contributing to a book, being exposed to a momentary hardship that you endured, etc. The Church of Satan allows you to cast such as significant accomplishments. These two examples would make you an author and a person with special fortitude and strength, respectively. If so, include a statement such as the following. However, in the rare cases where you have made multiple efforts noteworthy for your personal diary, consider saving them for your next letter so as to appear consistently successful. Example 1:

I am happy to report that I can now call myself an author, as I appear on the list of authors of (enter the title of the book to which you made a minor contribution—and if the book happens to be of interest to Gilmore, you have proven to be successful).

Example 2, where the triviality limit is a broken bone or minor surgery, although bigger is obviously better; a stubbed toe is painful, but its recovery does not adequately prove Satanic determination. Also, never assume responsibility but instead declare that justice will be served:

Even the most accomplished magician may be stricken by misfortune. In my case, it came as a car that was supposed to have stopped at the crosswalk. I had to spend many hours at the ER to mend a broken foot, but I am otherwise strong-spirited and in good physical health so it is a minor inconvenience. It will only be a matter of weeks until I set the record straight as I exterminate the reckless driver in my next destruction ritual.

Demonstrate that you provide worth (not value) to the organization. Gilmore has wanted to be respected as a Satanic high priest since boyhood, and one of your tasks is therefore to praise Peter Gilmore.

I always strive to be the first to share your insightful articles as soon as they are posted on the official Church of Satan website. Thank you for continuing to enrich and clarify our philosophy. I always receive plenty of positive feedback when I share your articles.

Your other task is to attack those Satanists who fail to validate Gilmore by not recognizing him as their high priest. In your continued quantitative report below, do not be exact but round up to the nearest ten or twenty. Gilmore is quite informed about online personalities despite claims to the contrary (therefore, avoid saying “as you know” or similar) but cannot be expected to keep an exact count.

As you probably guessed, our detractors are mad for being put in their place. I stay vigilant to remind those who might have been misled that these “people” are not Satanists. It is hard work, and I have confronted no less than (enter a number, e.g., 40) such persons since my last letter, although several are obviously obsessive repeat offenders. Clearly, Satan is the best friend they ever had, and their obsession with The Church of Satan proves how envious of us they are!

Now for your plea that should work toward your next-level degree that will make you believe yourself better than your peers. Beware that Gilmore knows why you are writing, so you must feign modesty to make him feel he is choosing wisely. Your plea is indicated by the little word “will” in the following. Keep it brief.

But no rest for the wicked! I am sure you will appreciate my efforts to eradicate misunderstandings about Satanism and keep Satanists abreast of the development in our organization.

Deflate any indication of an unreasonable demand with immediate groveling as you finish your letter. Avoid the temptation to add “Hail Thyself!” as The Satanic Temple too often uses this expression.

Thank you so much for your unrelenting work, and I wish you the best of your indulgences.

Hail Magus Gilmore and Maga Nadramia!
Hail Doktor LaVey and Blanche Barton!
Hail The Church of Satan!
Hail Satan!

Supply your name and current degree. If you are old-fashioned and send the letter via postal mail, print several copies and select the one for submission that features the most impressive version of your signature.

Satan thinks anyone can be a Satanic übermensch

Posted on by A lesser demon

Those who encounter Satanists online will soon learn that, according to The Church of Satan, every Satanist is entitled to his or her own opinions and actions because Satanism allows such freedom. No two Satanists are alike. One cannot meet one Satanist and then think one has seen them all because seeking to pigeonhole a Satanist is supposedly like attempting to nail custard to a wall. It is only in recent decades that scholars of religion have narrowed down in scholarly terms The Church of Satan’s religion more tightly than for virtually any other cult, but that is mainly because they had formerly not cared. The official stance of The Church of Satan states that anyone who reads Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible and feels that it “resonates” positively with them may think of themselves as Satanists.

Those same people who encounter Satanists from The Church of Satan online will also soon learn that despite its alleged openness and personal freedom, The Church of Satan requires strict conformity. Woe be the Satanist who dares to criticize Anton LaVey or the current high priest, Peter Gilmore. Twice cursed be the Satanist who openly admits that deep flaws, outdated hypotheses and theories, misapplied science, and counterfactual claims and premises abound within the ideology originally introduced by Anton LaVey and later sophomorically pseudo-intellectualized by Peter Gilmore. Thrice cursed be the Satanist whose opinions and values would raise no eyebrows within The Church of Satan (not even the ridiculously trimmed ones of Peter Gilmore) who chooses to affiliate with another Satanic organization or just dares to acknowledge their legitimacy.

Nevertheless, the Prince of Evil agrees with His church that all it takes to become a churchgoer is to acknowledge that The Satanic Bible evokes a feeling of having views confirmed that you never managed to articulate. Some readers will find that Anton LaVey provided them with the pivotal portal to their incomplete identity, validating them with soothing words of power. They are Church of Satan material by its own certification.

Our Horn-Crowned Majesty does not interfere—after all, He is a supernatural entity and real only to us Hell-dwellers—but does not find Himself above (of course) to be opinionated. Satan thinks that The Satanic Bible is one of those books that cater to people who harbor a mortal fear of rejection. The very first page of LaVey’s preface to The Satanic Bible informs its readers that upon reading its pages, they will gain insights otherwise denied to the masses; and what follows are reassurances that if the reader feels alienated from the masses, it is because something is wrong with everyone but the reader. By reading the book, the reader will know something that others do not know, and it makes the reader better than the rest. It makes its readers feel superior in the Game of Life, unaware that this is the most tried and tested method for gathering cult followers.

Yet, all it takes for an outsider to join the club is to also read the book and gain the “knowledge.” It requires an excessive amount of self-deceit to believe that simply upon reading it, one joins a group that possesses a uniqueness reserved only for very special people. Satan thinks it cannot be that hard to read a damn book but, on second thought, has noticed that His disciples are notoriously unbookish, so perhaps they perceive it as an overwhelming barrier to scan anything with more text than a memorable Bible verse. What Satan means is that it is so easy to join this “élite” that it is no accomplishment whatsoever, unless one is phenomenally unable. It is evidence of a profoundly fragile self-esteem to derive a sense of worth by proxy of believing oneself part of a rare breed in the first place, and thinking one may join such a tribe purely by reading a book and not even being required to pass an exam sets the bar lower than the floor paint.

The Satanic baptism is thus simple: read The Satanic Bible, recognize your own innate superiority to the vast majority of humanity and publicly acknowledge how fundamentally you agree with LaVey’s critique of the herd, the masses, the rabble, the ersatz, the locusts, the sheep: learn that they are not Satanists and that alone makes you one. Without this baptism of complete agreement or, presumably, having never heard of the book, you are not a Satanist. (The latter makes Satan think of the indigenous tribes who asked the missionaries why they would tell them about Hell if Hell only applied to those who knew about it.) The criteria are arbitrary, however. Anyone can elevate themselves by declaring that they adhere to a philosophy that scorns the mediocrity of the herd and is thereby better than the herd. Not that this makes it an ineffective baptism, good gracious. The Satanic baptism may seem trivially naïve and uncomplicated from the outside, but from the inside, the newly-minted Satanist has undergone a magical transformation that retroactively transmogrifies his body from a herd member into a clansman of an alien élite.

Satan thinks this is too easy to count as a qualification. With so little obligation, accomplishment, and proficiency, anyone can be a Satanic übermensch. Even Anton LaVey acknowledged that this mass-market book breeds pretentiousness in the inferior because it enables anyone to be a superman. His only solution to that problem was a vague reference to “true” Satanists. LaVey did not clarify who they were, but Satan thinks the inferior ones are easily spotted: they focus very little on the contents of Satanic ideology, and have no marketable skills or personal qualities to speak of. Their identities do not revolve around their own vital existence but around others being non-Satanists. Because they have nothing of substance to show, they feel validated as Satanists only by loudly and persistently defining others as non-Satanists—especially when they encounter people who might just be the real thing compared with whom their shortcomings and mediocrity become as plain as a pikestaff.

Satan thinks martyrs accomplish nothing

Posted on by A lesser demon

To those who were always atheists and were raised in one of the few mostly atheist countries, compliance with externally-defined expectations is familiar to the extent that everyone is subjected to cultural norms and ethics, and few people are conscious of them. But there are also norms that apply almost exclusively to highly Christian subcultures.

Christians by and large teach you that not only must you accept that life on Earth should involve suffering until the happy day when you perish, but also that you should celebrate your suffering, displaying it as a form of accomplishment in itself. The more you suffer the better, because it somehow makes your life after death, including any redemption, correspondingly more awesome. It proves that you manage to stay spiritually strong, by some strange definition of strength. Suffering, present or past, is a decoration that you wear proudly and prominently, because the sheer fact that you are still around displays the power of your faith: God tests you but you persevere. Well, aren’t you something.

Satan did not check but thinks He would not be surprised if this mindset stems from the Calvary myth that depicts in bloody detail how Jesus suffered torture, humiliation, and finally death, in order to shortly thereafter return as the god that some believe he was. Or, recalling His days as an enforcer employed by God, maybe it is a present-day ideal derived from the book of Job in which Job was exposed to one trial after another to prove his faith. Like most consultants, Satan did not complete the task to anyone’s satisfaction, but He was paid well regardless.

Any form of suffering—although physical suffering works best since anyone can relate to a stubbed toe—can be used as proof that your faith will either save you or has already saved you, as your spiritual fortitude prevails over your corruptible body. For example, if such a believer has undergone surgery, the believer will conclude that his prolonged recovery was eased by his persistent faith or, alternatively, that his speedy recovery was made possible by his faith. (The latter is less impressive, though, unless recovery appears to be miraculously fast. That was a free tip.) The more you suffered, and the more you still endure, the stronger your faith appears. Such a person will gladly tell you of his hardships so he can brag about how he braved the odds by virtue of his piousness. Satan thinks that Anton LaVey made the right observation when he wrote in The Satanic Bible that invalids make good psychic vampires, because their (genuine) calamities provide them with an excuse to receive unearned benefits beyond the reasonable help that egalitarianism mandates. In the cult of masochism, disability and weakness are strength.

From the Devil’s perspective, however, it is downright pathetic. Everyone experiences adversity and sustains an injury from time to time (and when you go to Hell, rest assured it will be all the time), but moving on does not require any amount of faith. All it takes is basic self-interest and sometimes mere patience. It practically requires only that you do not derive your worth from victimhood, preferring to stay the sufferer to leech pity and attention from others, or even admiration from people with a similar mindset. If your highest sense of accomplishment is that you are not dead yet, Satan considers you a cosmic disappointment. Even losers can be said to have enriched someone else, but you might as well never have existed.

The form varies, but just like Christians rely on their Christian faith, it is a common occurrence in the Satanic arena that people tell how Satanism helped them get through hardship or even “saved” them. Their focus on being Satanists ostensibly gave them the sense of perspective they needed, the feeling that it rested upon them to better themselves, or how the explanations usually go. Keeping with Christian tradition, the greater the martyr, the greater the miracle of their newly-found faith. However, the Devil does not accept the blood of martyrs as valid currency and is offended by such sacrifice. Satan demands accomplishments, not failures or excuses.

It does not mean that Satan lacks empathy towards those who suffer from the trauma of religious upbringing, or in fact any trauma. Such genuine victims should seek professional therapy if possible, and may also find help in support groups provided they are well-guided to avoid reinforcing the trauma through full-length group cry sessions. Unloading on everyone else in one’s Satanic community is not a display of Satanism, however. Your Satanic identity is neither provided by your past or present suffering nor by your complaints, regardless of how honest and valid they otherwise be.

Satan is sorry to inform them that the einherjar did not go to Valhalla to brag about their survival. Such an “accomplishment” would be their ticket to rot in the festering halls of Helheim. Everyone perseveres, unless they are so broken that their only choice is to throw in the towel and accept whichever defeat, failure, and embarrassment awaits. It is true for Satanists and Christians alike that if your major accomplishment is, both figuratively and literally speaking, to not lay down and die then it is no accomplishment at all. They yearn for Heaven, and the Prince of Darkness thinks they should admit it instead of wasting His time. There is no such thing as a Satanic martyr.

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 God judges

Posted on by A lesser demon

There are times when Satan makes a statement that appears obvious, but we demons who dwell in the abodes of Hell have learned to appreciate His infernal teachings and diabolical insights, and know better than to scoff at outwardly trivial axioms from His mouth. The Prince of Darkness keeps His underlings in a perpetual state of awe with every word He speaks. (Although not nearly in the same state as that of terror which is His primary focus that no one down here is stimulated to doubt for a second; after all, He is the Devil).

Thus, when Satan thinks that God judges, it comes as old news to any of our damned souls who, being tormented cruelly and endlessly by yours truly and collaborators, are painfully aware of their sentences, but it is not our subterranean clientele that Old Scratch has in mind. Satan is the Master of the Earth, and His insight concerns His followers. When Satan says that God judges, He speaks metaphorically because there is no god—a fact that escapes a significant number of His disciples who may rationally grasp that such creatures are the cerebral relics of a brain that evolved to survive in the world but not to understand it, yet cannot fathom a healthy world without God.

Gods are constructed from the blueprint of their creators: Christians do not emulate or obey their god but fashion their god according to their own natures. It is a judging god because Christians are judgmental, and it is a discriminating god because Christians are discriminatory. It is a strict, trying, punishing, doubting, unjust, intolerant, vengeful, and narcissistic god that serves only its own interests and renumerates only its worshipers, because such are its followers, who generally seem bent on inflicting a minority complex on the Devil by outperforming Him on every conceivable evil. Oh, were History to repeat itself, and His Evil Eminence again to confront Jehovah before being cast from Heaven, He would deliver this very accusation to the face of Jehovah and, with the benefit of experience, this time also wear a parachute. It is a little unclear why, considering that Satan wears a fully functional set of wings, Lucifer plummeted to the surface like a lead-encased rock at His legendary fall, but He refuses to share the finer details about the incident, and everyone south of Heaven is too afraid to ask.

In the absence of gods, it is their human inventors and believers who take it upon themselves to ensure that, when the gods do not adequately interfere, the will of their gods is nonetheless enforced. Their followers may not perform miracles of divine creation, but the havoc they often wreak would turn even the most vengeful god green with envy. They feel entitled to mimic the behavior of their gods and are compelled to do it as if their salvation depended on it. Or, more specifically, they create God in their own image and then consider their disgraceful behavior justified. As they discover what a dreadful monster such a representative of their nature is, they proceed to invent the Devil to take the blame.

Satan uses the term “God” as shorthand for the behaviors of Christians in their various abominations, excuse me, denominations. “God judges” is His way to communicate that Christians are recognizable by their exaggerated need to judge others, and lays it upon the shoulders of we lesser demons to explain their motive, as if we did not have better things to do, like prodding the condemned with sharp sticks. As it turns out, we have different views on the underlying reasons but agree that their immoderate judgments serve to create the illusion that they are superior for belonging to the correct cult by deeming anyone else to be worth less. Some of us note that the dynamic exists inside the cults, too, where smaller groups and individuals judge each other in rather toxic environments. It is worth mentioning that although the judgments serve the same ultimate goal of believing oneself to be superior, judgment comes in many forms and is mostly arbitrary: specific political observations, sexuality, gender, race, affiliation or disaffiliation, food preferences, national origin, income, weight, disabilities, age, first language, religion, past actions, education, parental status, etc., as well as combinations, can create the delusion that oneself and one’s peers are congenitally valuable compared with the inferior other, who can therefore be treated as such, unprotected by the laws that serve the chosen people. One’s group is the master, and everyone else is a slave. All it takes to become a master is to accept the arbitrary discriminator and choose the right side, then passionately defend the view; the lower one’s self-esteem, the higher the craving for seeming important and being admired.

There is nothing wrong with a certain level of unbiased judgment where appropriate. The lame should not limit the pace of the race, the blind should not lead the blind, and Americans should not be arbiters of taste. Even a certain amount of unintentional discrimination is permissible provided immediate exemptions can be allowed on an individual basis—stereotypes and associated prejudices are inaccurate and over-generalizing but help the human brain reduce its surroundings to a manageable amount of information. It is when they are applied presumptuously, based on arbitrary qualities, or with disregard for the situation that they are almost invariably invalid.

Satan thinks it is the generally judgmental attitude, not an occasional appraisal or sifting of individuals where warranted, that reveals the followers of God when they show themselves as holier-than-thou, vainglorious bastards with no other credentials than self-deceit and delusions of adequacy and no other accomplishments than joining an echo-chamber club to offer as proof of their self-proclaimed permission to hold opinions about others.

Satan never pretended that His followers were a chosen people or that simply by taking His name for oneself would one’s human caliber grow. That would be a modern variant of the famous allegories of those who traded their souls to the Devil to obtain fame and riches, soon discovering that the comforts they had gained made them no happier, no more satisfied, and no more appreciated and that these desires had been replaced with an emptied sense of self, a hole inside of them where their identity once lived. Satan offers no compensation at all that constitutes a license to judge. It is God who maintains the lie that one is a better person as a believer. Satan thinks if you meet someone who claims to follow the Devil yet passes judgments left and right, especially against other followers outside of his cult, you can bet your soul that this person is still a Christian inside. That is what Satan means when He thinks that God judges—and it is an accusation not a judgment.

Satan thinks a conversion process is needed

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan has previously explained that the conversion narrative of being born not made is self-deceit. For the lazy readers who decide to skip His magnificent thoughts, Satan thinks that “Satanists are born not made” is a bogus statement that His followers apply to relieve themselves of the need for an explanation of why they chose their outrageous religion when excuses such as “Satan appeared and spoke to me!” obviously do not apply. Anton LaVey provided this original narrative because he lacked all the possible credentials to provide him with the authority to claim that he was a Satanist, and had no other choice than to postulate that, somehow, he always was one. Once an angel, Lucifer is testimony to the fact that Satanists are indeed made not born, however.

The conversion narrative makes it very easy to convert—so easy, in fact, that Satan thinks His followers are god-damned jokes, instead of the god-damning soldiers He requires. The Church of Satan believes that a somewhat steep membership fee guarantees that only the best may join, but Satan thinks it proves but a bare minimum of real-world capability and instead primarily cultivates a cultic mindset, even if this dynamic is unknown to His church. (As a service to the same lazy readers as above, it is a well-known sales trick to make people believe that if they paid a large sum for something, they will believe that the acquisition was important to them and thus gain their loyalty.) Such a conversion requires virtually nothing. All that is required is to decide that one is now a Satanist. In reality, no one was ever a Satanist until then (with perhaps very few exceptions who may qualify), and henceforth one makes no further effort to become one. Satan thinks that such low requirements are laziness beyond belief, not that He is fond of any kinds of belief to begin with. He thinks this is the reason why so many of His followers join a Satanic organization but seem to stay the Christians they always were.

Satan remembers the early days of His church when members attended lectures in “The Black House,” or “Central Grotto,” of Anton LaVey. They were awarded degrees in the church that reflected their magical studiousness and acumen per LaVey’s judgment, and the titles were selected to mock the religious counterpart of the Christian church. Within a few years after establishing The Church of Satan, the organization allowed members to organize themselves in local chapters, or “grottos,” provided that the grotto leaders attended training in Central Grotto. This training did not include leadership skills, however, and the grottos soon became a disastrous affair of “Mexican generals” with no sense of corporate conduct and responsibilities. The grotto system was disbanded, training in Central Grotto ceased, and LaVey declared that with The Satanic Bible now on the bookshelves, everyone had the tools they needed. LaVey decreed that degrees were now awarded based on members’ performance in the real world, as it presumably reflected their magical proficiency in a religion where magic aimed to improve one’s material gains.

The grotto system was briefly re-instantiated in the late 1980s and lasted little more than a decade before it had again become clear—not surprisingly given that now no training was provided at all, let alone leadership or management coaching—that the grottos were as ineffective and counterproductive as ever. The tools that LaVey believed to have become available evidently came up short.

The quality of LaVey’s training may be debated, and anyone’s skill in magic is necessarily a delusion because magic does not exist. Satan nonetheless thinks that it was a grave mistake to abandon the training of the clergy because even the low level of ambition spurred them to study and, ideally, convalesce from their former mindsets by actively working toward adopting a healthier one. It would also enable them to serve as guides and role models for lay members, assuming they were more competent than history proved.

Today, everyone can declare oneself a Satanist and find that no requirements follow, except that one conform to organizational expectations as exemplified by its top tier. (The lazy reader will receive no summary this time, and is urged to read the text in its entirety.) There are no instructions on how to practice Satanism or how to unlearn one’s past orthodoxies. An elect few may possess the ability to accumulate knowledge and the gift of introspection, and Satan can appreciate that “responsibility to the responsible” lays it upon each individual to take matters into his or her own hands, but there is no need to make it difficult by forcing everyone to begin from scratch.

A clear curriculum requiring that one verifiably demonstrate that the skills have been acquired provides two distinct advantages. Firstly, each individual can learn more productively without having to first identify and then acquire the necessary knowledge (and trust Satan that no individuals are so different that a shared educational program is pointless), and secondly, it alleviates the adverse effect of toxic organizational behavior because objective criteria for leveling up reduce the influence from toxic superiors, who will find it difficult to promote those who support them based on personal feelings. A properly composed educational program will not homogenize its students, impede their creativity, or hamper their independence, despite protests from people who grew critical of education after seeing their own grades in school. One can learn to identify counterproductive residues of one’s past thinking without imposing specific different thoughts, and one may learn from examples without copying them. When you learned to read in school, it aided your independence despite learning it together with everyone else. In contrast, institutionalized behavior, where rewards for personal agreement trickle downward, tends to sculpt individuals by the cast of the leader, usually for worse than for better. There are, simply, skills that would benefit virtually all Satanists while leaving plenty of room for personal specialization. “How not to act and think like a Christian” would be a generally useful course whereas “how to cook a great burger” would be a course on indulgence that each person should pursue individually, and outside of the organization, according to his or her need.

Satan does not acknowledge the sometimes-heard argument that His church is a mutual admiration society (like Mensa, but for people with a two-digit IQ) and, therefore, presumably because members are all born not made, there is nothing to make and no improvements to offer. This is not to say that Satan doubts their honesty. There are people who are willing to pay and receive in return only the knowledge that they are listed in the membership archives and feel admired for that, and Satan is convinced that the organization appeals to people who seek validation by association. Satan dismisses the argument both because Satanists are made not born, and because even if they were born that way, they still have something to learn and unlearn if they were raised in a predominantly religious society.

Satan considers The Satanic Temple to be in a slightly better shape than His church on this account, although its instructive literature is sorely lacking. For all that may be said about The Satanic Bible and its other canonical literature, at least His church has scripture that directly addresses its members. His temple has nothing save seven tenets that lend themselves to a wide range of interpretations, and a list of holidays with associated, additional values. However, it provides classes for its ordained Ministers (although very little of it potentially addresses behavior and thought patterns, the rest focusing on auxiliary albeit relevant issues) and requires them to pass an exam. If the tasks of the Ministers include passing this knowledge on to their respective parishioners, those members of The Satanic Temple who belong to a congregation may receive education; but they form such a tiny minority of the membership base that Satan doubts they count in the bigger picture.

In both organizations, virtually all members thus join and are then on their own to flesh out what Satanism means to them. This may work for a self-driven, university-trained individual who has acquired the skills and tools to locate valid sources and a critical mind that renders him able to develop, instead of confirming past errors believing them to be Satanic. The Devil wants far more than denying one’s faith and similar ostentations. He wants people to not only reject their faiths but also the mentality, ethos, conventions, and lifestyles that were transmitted through a superstitious culture, and even for mostly atheistic, highly intelligent, contemplative, and introspective people, it is an arduous road. No organization can assume that any of its members can undertake this endeavor on their own or in self-organized study groups.

The inevitable result is that the organizations are filled with individuals whose opinions remain unchanged, and whose new actions amount to little beyond live-action role-playing that they believe to be genuine. Individuals bring their old behavior into the organization to a degree where keen observers can often identify which specific Christian denomination they used to belong to despite having spent beyond a decade as “Satanists,” because that is how little they have changed in practice. If the organizations qualify for the proud name of the Devil, it is certainly not because of their members. Satan thinks the organizations are empty shells. They may exist and expand but have practically no content.

Satan represents undefiled wisdom and thinks His organizations sully His name by allowing their members to stay hypocritically self-deceived. Satan wants converts who are forged into devoted demons, not Christian charlatans whose true allegiance they reveal every so often.

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.