Magic

Satan thinks His followers should get destructive

Posted on by A lesser demon

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that only death and taxes are certain. But times change, and with the advent of LaVeyan Satanism, a third absolute was added to Mr. Franklin’s list: Anton LaVey is always right. No revision of his works is required or even asked for, no misunderstandings are possible, and no criticism is permitted. His writings are to be considered holy, and his words to be gospel. Such is the doctrine of The Church of Satan, although generally denied or phrased differently.

This may strike some as religious fanaticism and founder cultism, but The Church of Satan allows for some pragmaticism. Disagreements with LaVey are tolerable under three conditions that must all be met: firstly, the disagreements must concern minor issues. Secondly, specificity is prohibited; one may admit to “some disagreements” but not which ones. Thirdly, one must leave no doubt that the disagreement is a personal flaw; for example, one is not perfect or is in an unfortunate situation, forcing some level of deviation from the teachings.

It is best to remain discrete, however. Anton LaVey’s introduction to The Satanic Bible explains that one will find truth and fiction in the book, and as The Church of Satan will gladly inform you, a true Satanist can tell the difference, and therefore, so should you, with a thinly veiled implied “unless” concerning your demonic talent. Hence, each time Anton LaVey has uttered an atrociously uninformed opinion or statement or written an outrageously obvious falsehood, one is a poor Satanist for even doubting if it is truth or fiction and should not embarrass oneself by asking. Besides, one should realize that if a statement in the book is true, it is valid content, and if it is fiction, it is also valid content, and thus should not ask at all.

For example, Anton LaVey makes the asinine claims in The Satanic Bible that the Yazidis are a cult of Devil worshipers and that the positions of the moon and the fixed stars cause equinoxes on Earth. A true Satanist who reads it is expected to conclude that these passages were intentional fiction from an author who liked to speak with his tongue in his cheek, not the results of Lavey having uncritically swallowed Christian propaganda and lacking basic education.

It is sometimes impossible to pretend that a section with objectionable or poorly aged content was a designed fantasy. To circumvent doctrinal criticism of these portions, The Church of Satan has popularized the “personal opinion” cop-out in which everything is doctrine except the offending passage, which is assigned a third category playing a role almost identical to the ostensibly intentional fiction. For example, when LaVey repeatedly turns far-right extremist opinions into Satanic dogma in other of his canonized works, The Church of Satan thus avoids ideological accountability by labeling them his personal opinion and, again, instead of discussing what comprises the distinction between ideological tenet and personal sentiment in his writings, claims that a true Satanist knows the difference.

Yet, Satan thinks some of the contents cannot be that easily dismissed as the reader’s failure to comprehend as an adept Satanist. In particular, Anton LaVey uses the word “magic” around a hundred times in The Satanic Bible, and the practice of magic for power is arguably the most consistent theme in the book, competing for first place with LaVey’s personal variant of Christian theology. While largely nebulous in his explanations, LaVey writes sufficiently explicitly and frequently that he believes that magic is the ability to direct “psychic energy”—literally a transmittable force produced by strong “emotional energy”—into the minds of other people and other natural phenomena. Satan has already explained for those readers who lack historical insight into early psychology that this misconstruction has been dismissed as pseudo-science since about the same time as Anton LaVey decided to put this already braindead hypothesis on unwarranted occult life support.

Satan thinks the average reader may have been excused for believing in LaVey’s false conviction during the first or even two decades following the 1969 release of The Satanic Bible. These early readers “knew” that the belief in how magic worked, why it worked, and how to wield it belonged to the truthful sections of The Satanic Bible, whereas most details of the rituals, together with the Enochian calls, remained equally important fiction to be employed to produce the “energy” that fuels the contrastingly truthful magic.

However, the following decades of research decisively reassigned that truth to the realm of fiction. There is no excuse but ignorance to believe in such “magic” today. This left the modern Church of Satan in a pickle: nobody in their right mind living in the twenty-first century would pretend that LaVeyan magic works, but admitting so would contradict Anton LaVey on a principal pillar of his ideology, breaking the indisputable maxim that Anton LaVey is always right.

The Church of Satan solves this catch-22 by resorting to Orwellian double-think, where members are collectively deputized to thought-policing that conflicting beliefs are all simultaneously accepted as truth. In the case of magic, it both works and does not; only one cannot say either. “Magic” thus becomes “just psychodrama” in Peter Gilmore’s introduction to The Satanic Bible, and all readers must agree, despite finding LaVey writing many chapters later that magic is not just psychodrama.

Members of The Church of Satan from the days of Anton LaVey who have attempted to conserve the original doctrines have found themselves becoming “unpersoned.” More recent members who have joined after LaVey’s passing explain that magic works because it is just psychodrama that allegedly changes the minds and attitudes of the practitioners through releasing pent-up emotions, despite the latter reliance on emotional tension remaining the pseudoscientific nucleus of LaVeyan magic. If, for some reason, the “magic” incurs other worldly changes, then that is just a bonus, they say. Hence, although in the realm of science, all magically directed energy has dissipated from the now inert core of LaVeyan magic, the belief persists but is simultaneously denied. The Church of Satan sciencewashes the LaVeyan abracadabra to preserve the pipe dream that Anton LaVey’s original doctrine remains relevant in modern society or ever even worked in his days.

Unimpressed minds might suggest that The Church of Satan unconsciously reacts to the menace of cognitive dissonance, but Satan would never write His followers off as such ignoranuses (i.e., ignorant assholes) who compensate for their mental mediocrity with bogus parapsychological superiority. Satan prefers to think it was a deliberate, strategic choice.

Satan therefore thinks that if His church truthfully believes in its founder’s gospel, it has all the motivation in the world to wield its magic. Instead of finding its devoted members fighting a Sisyphean battle against detractors, non-Satanists, wannabes, pseudo-Satanists, and other people except Christians) who disregard The Church of Satan, the Devil thinks it would be a clean use of magic to smash that illusionary granite obstacle and finally make it to the pinnacle. Satan thinks that whenever churchgoers find themselves frustrated or irritated by people on social media, they should consult The Satanic Bible for the solution: they must retreat to their ritual chambers and perform a destruction ritual. Satan could even tell them which Enochian key to use, as Anton LaVey forgot to disclose such secrets in his book. Once freed of their emotional build-up and (perhaps) destroying their online foes, they would be ready to meet the world with renewed vigor and no longer use their same tired (and poor) arguments on the same social media platforms against the same people. Satan thinks they should perform their rituals and be content that their enemies are thus gone and no more energy be wasted.

Satan thinks that if His followers in The Church of Satan believe that magic is real and works, they should, therefore, apply it and prove themselves right. In fact, Satan thinks that if His church planned and executed a coordinated effort—contingent on acquiring some basic leadership skills—the ensuing mass destruction of its contestants would make a long-lasting impression on its few remaining perceived enemies. Satan can barely imagine the magical influence exerted by the timed effort of thousands (or a few dozen, but it is the thought that counts) of black-clad angry white males riling up anger at imagined enemies in their homes by waving a scimitar and reading a text aloud to put their minds at ease.

His Diabolical Lordship hopes His followers are not intimidated by LaVey’s reminder that a successful destruction ritual should purge one’s thoughts of the enemy and the implication that subsequent rumination means the enemy was the better magician. Hopefully, His followers cannot all be so incompetent that they only worsen matters; even a few rotten magicians should not spoil the entire barrel. Satan thinks that if His followers believe that magic is real, they should perform a destruction ritual and prove it works by leaving everyone alone.

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 crystal magic resonates with stupidity

Posted on by A lesser demon

It is not just rock and metal that is attributed to Satan. Old Nick has found that an additional element from the Earth’s crust is associated with His powers because He often encounters followers who employ crystals in their magic. This practice is alien to Him, not because His preferred element is of course brimstone, but because He abhors stupidity so vehemently that He declared it the cardinal Satanic sin.

The Devil always has immediate access to science because men and women of science have been steadily condemned to Hell by all human religions through all time. He therefore knows better than to believe that crystals have magical properties although He appreciates their aesthetic qualities. Satan has already debunked Anton LaVey’s notion of magic as outdated speculations in the early days of psychology, but geology is another matter and deserves mention.

Crystals can look impressive; the oft-found translucency can seem to contradict their otherwise rock-like features, and their often fractal structure and vivid colors distinguish them from other types of rock. One can forgive a primitive mind for believing crystals might have a coupling with divine powers and thus possess an intrinsic magical capacity: it looks special and beautiful and must consequently have special and desirable qualities that one can utilize.

Satan’s followers reject the existence of gods, devils, and similar mythical creatures and would never claim that the crystals serve as spiritual conduits. Suppose some Satanist believes that there is power to be harnessed via crystals. In that case, this Satanist needs another explanation—and preferably a better one than claiming that crystals have extraordinary capabilities contradicting science simply because they look pretty.

Such Satanists instead look for science, which Satan thinks is generally the best place to look. They learn about a somewhat strange feature that turned early 1900s occultists into rock collectors overnight and had every hippie looking for good vibes in the 1960s: they invariably learn that crystals can vibrate, which makes them a key component in radio equipment. (And what do radios do? They transmit information over long distances, through solid material, invisible to the eye, almost like magic. A layman may have heard about “radio waves” or even electromagnetic fields but without scientific training they, too, remain abstract phenomena.)

To someone whose knowledge of crystal-based radios is limited to operating volume knobs and tuning in on the desired radio station, the actual role of the crystal is unclear, except it somehow causes the radio to work through “vibration,” whatever that means when something is a piece of rock.

The Devil represents undefiled wisdom and fortunately has access to physicists and electrical engineers who can assist Him. According to these damned souls, crystal vibration combines a physical property of certain crystal structures with a human invention and requires some specific, additional components that Satan has yet to spot on any “crystal magic” altar.

You see, a crystal consists of molecules that are all arranged in a specific lattice structure. Some crystal structures exhibit a physical property is known as piezoelectricity which was discovered in the late 1800s. It means that when the crystal is squeezed, the crystal molecules get slightly rotated as the lattice skews. This causes their positively-charged atoms and their negatively-charged atoms to be oriented so that one end of the crystal has a different charge than the opposite end. In other words, the mechanical pressure causes a slight voltage difference across the crystal. You know this effect from the lighters that you “click” to produce a spark when a crystal is struck with a small hammer.

Quartz is the preferred piezoelectric material because it is both inexpensive, insensitive to moisture, and energy-efficient compared with other piezoelectric crystals.

When the pressure is released, the voltage across the crystal returns to zero. How fast this happens depends on the crystal’s size and thickness, quite like a spring (which also does not bounce back into its resting position immediately).

Piezoelectricity also works the other way: by applying a voltage across the crystal, it becomes deformed because the electric field slightly rotates the molecules in the lattice, skewing the lattice. When the voltage is removed, the crystal snaps back into shape and, because of the piezoelectric property, “returns” the voltage, as it were.

This brings us to the aforementioned human invention. When a voltage difference (i.e., electricity) is applied to the opposite ends of the crystal, it deforms. When the voltage is removed, one knows by the size of the crystal how long time it takes before it “returns” the voltage. On receipt of the return voltage, one immediately repeats the electric stimulation of the crystal, which again deforms and responds after the same amount of time as before. Do this indefinitely, and you have created a method to obtain a very accurate clock tick. Such an accurate clock tick is needed for the signal carrier wave frequency in radios, provides the time in quartz watches, as well as ensures deterministic activation of the many hardware units inside of microprocessors. The invention was made in 1917 and is known as a crystal oscillator.

What this all means is that the crystal does not just sit there and vibrate on its own, nor does it have a vibration property that you can somehow tap into. In fact, it behaves like any other solid matter in terms of vibration but is piezoelectric. This makes it an electrically powered clock source, no more and no less. All the necessary properties are well understood by science. It simply deforms when stimulated then moves back into shape. The crystal does not vibrate unless the designer of an electrical circuit continuously stimulates it on each return to its resting state. That is, to vibrate the crystal, one must provide an electrical circuit that provides the crystal with the actual movement energy.

Before anyone objects that brain waves are an electromagnetic field and could thus serve to stimulate the crystal, Satan regrets to say that His scientists claim that both the frequency of the brain waves and their field strength are far too low to exert any influence on a piezoelectric crystal no matter how intently the would-be magician concentrates and gazes at it. One of them, presumably an engineer, suggested that the magician would have better luck gluing the crystal to a loudspeaker and merely play the desired frequency so the crystal would be shaken accordingly.

Would-be sorcerers with little understanding generally make blithering fools of themselves in the eyes of those who know. Astrologists never studied astrophysics. Self-declared wise women who claim to know the secrets of plant-based healing never studied biology or medicine. Parapsychologists never studied psychology. All such individuals manage is to repeat words or expressions from various scientific fields and assign a personal interpretation to them that has no correspondence to the original meaning. They have interpretation, not understanding. They deceive themselves when they believe it is the latter.

Our crystal magicians have heard the short-hand notion of crystal vibration as a source in a piece of (relatively) advanced technology. They adopt the term but the inner workings of the technology are sheer magic to them, and the “vibration” is an equally magic term. If these amateur rock collectors can muster such fascination with a misunderstanding of a particular crystal property, Satan cannot wait to hear what immense forces they might attribute to far more esoteric components such as the field-effect transistor or nonvolatile memory. To those who know about crystal oscillators, however, it is evident that crystal magicians, with their concept of “vibrations,” are dumb as rocks.

Satan thinks magic is for weak-minded people

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks His followers dress funny

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks LaVey stared at goats

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks spiritual might has become right

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks someone should ask His church some questions

Posted on by A lesser demon

My Master never attempts to manipulate the minds of His followers although certainly the worshipers of His opponent in the sky tell many exciting tales to the contrary when they flee from responsibility for their own actions. The Devil prefers to encourage His followers to pursue undefiled knowledge through critical thinking and to ask for clarification when they discover incongruity or inconsistency.

If the Devil were to take the role of an honestly curious and truth-seeking follower of His, first He would study before asking, of course, because there are in fact stupid questions. Then, having become familiar with key literature and having evaluated theory according to premise then theory against practice, presumably some questions would arise. The Prince of Darkness would never pretend to put words in the mouths of His followers, but had the Devil been a simple human being wishing to tread the Left Hand Path, He might have liked to receive answers to a few questions such as the following.

In The Satanic Bible, as well as in several other places, Anton LaVey explained that greater magic works by channeling one’s emotional energy into someone else’s mind, and he defends the necessity of rituals by referring to the Freudian model of pent-up emotions. Satan is intrigued by the justice-serving conception that undeserved “surplus” emotional energy in oneself could imaginably be balanced with a corresponding deficiency in a deserving target, but even at LaVey’s time the pressure-chamber model of emotional build-ups had long since been dismissed, and psychologists today warn that ritually or otherwise letting out the steam, as it were, in some mentalized decompression chamber to get pent-up emotions “out of your system” only reinforces the emotions. As for the ability to implant a thought into someone else’s mind using the powers of one’s own, it was still believed well up into the 1970es in certain scientific communities that one should at least not dismiss the possibility of mind control yet, and various armies spent vast amounts of research hours in the attempt. Today, however, this idea has also been entirely rejected. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked whether they still believe in these explanations of Anton LaVey’s on how and why magic works. Satan also thinks The Church of Satan should be explained whether they truly believe there is some “karmic” repercussion to denying the power of magic as stated in the seventh rule of The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth.

Today’s insights from the scientific study of religions (not to be confused with theology) and religious people contradict Anton LaVey’s explanations of how religion functions in The Satanic Bible, and has quite different things to say about how religious people think and behave. This scientific field barely existed when Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible, but now that better explanations have been found, Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked whether it prefers Anton LaVey’s misunderstandings to science.

In fact, an increasing number of elements in Anton LaVey’s writings have become, and are still becoming, outdated and many core observations are today downright contradicted by scientific advances. Satan thinks that The Church of Satan should be asked why it nonetheless considers any revision of Anton LaVey’s writings to be unnecessary, and perhaps in the same vein why Peter Gilmore’s book was added to the organization’s core scripture when, according to The Church of Satan, Anton LaVey provided everything a Satanist needs to know to understand Satanism.

Unbeknownst to most readers of The Satanic Bible and Anton LaVey’s other books, Mr. LaVey expressed vehement opposition to abortion, which he referred to as “murderous deeds” and “senseless annihilation of our unborn children” which would have “a disastrously demoralizing effect on our society” if it were legalized. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked whether it still supports LaVey’s view on abortion.

The “LaVey Personality Synthesizer” of The Satanic Witch seems heavily inspired by William Sheldon’s somatotyping, which was soon dismissed as pseudo-science along with phrenology. Anton LaVey’s model of the core, demonic, and apparent selves was appropriated from Wilhelm Reich’s almost identical model which has never even been considered valid. The very foundation of The Satanic Witch is thus completely broken, and all of the recommendations for seeking out the mark’s “opposite” personality according to the mark’s position on the “clock” are are ill-founded. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked whether it still believes in the principles of The Satanic Witch and their reason for “working.”

Speaking of The Satanic Witch, its premise was the reality of the pre-1970es Northern America where women were highly dependent on men. Today, women have much simpler options, and with significantly higher pay-off, than modifying their attractiveness as accessories to men. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked if they believe the book is still relevant and, if so, why. Satan also thinks that The Church of Satan should be asked how a witch is supposed to manipulate her “quarry” once having gained its attention using the techniques of The Satanic Witch, because the Devil thinks that presumably that would be the most important part of being a witch.

The Church of Satan claims to be non-political. Nonetheless, Anton LaVey said that “[C]onservative organizations will (and already do) find Satanism far more compatible with their doctrines than they now think it to be,” meaning that The Church of Satan’s values are obviously conservative-leaning. Satan thinks The Church of Satan should be asked to explain how political compatibility with politically conservative organizations can be said to be non-political.

Often when someone identifies an issue in Anton LaVey’s scripture that is negated by modern knowledge, seems far-fetched, never seems to be practiced by The Church of Satan’s members, or is otherwise contradicted, the reply usually is that the Doctor was deliberately speaking with his tounge in his cheek. Satan thinks that since it is clearly not evident even to intelligent people when Anton LaVey was being serious, The Church of Satan should be asked which parts of Anton LaVey’s scripture are considered truths to be accepted and which parts are misleading, or at least be asked for instructions on how to distinguish.

There is little to no indication that Anton LaVey himself believed in the Devil, but he (Anton, not Old Nick) has proclaimed that: “many members of the Church of Satan who are mystically inclined prefer to think of Satan in a very real, anthropomorphic way. Of course we do not discourage this, because we realize that it is very important to many individuals to ritualistically conceptualize a well-wrought picture of their mentor or tutelary divinity.” The Prince of Darkness is sincerely flattered but thinks The Church of Satan should nonetheless be asked whether it still officially accepts, and consequently speaks for, proponents of a Christian world-view in which His existence is real.

The Church of Satan has begun to regularly emphasize that scholars of religion agree that the Church of Satan was the first organization to claim the name. Satan has a good idea of who these scholars might be and thinks that The Church of Satan should be asked to provide sources because they would enable students (who obey the Devil’s demand that they study not worship) to learn what else these scholars have to say about who is and is not a Satanic organization and what Satanism is and is not. Satan finds this particularly interesting because He remembers that The Church of Satan once published a memo to its members forbidding them to speak to the perhaps most knowledgeable scholars on Satanism (whom they referred to as “so-called” researchers, not acknowledging their very real authority as scholars in their field) because during their research they had spoken to other Satanic organizations.

The Prince of Darkness prefers to torment His damned souls according to our shortcomings and tips His hat at Anton LaVey’s similar requirement that members of The Church of Satan be anointed to titles reflecting their real world accomplishments. Satan is certain to find that His church be thus represented among the élite, and could imagine that an intelligent follower would ask His church to mention a handful of Satanists who, following the teachings of His church, have made nation-wide success rather than running a sandwich joint, becoming a stripper, or publishing some paperback with a few thousand readers. The Devil imagines that whoever were awarded the highest degrees in His church would be remarkable world leaders, and would ask His church for a few examples of world-dominating Satanic magistrates who moved the world beyond owning a tattoo parlor or a web shop selling sex toys.

Our Black Monarch could surely think of more questions but has no personal interest in any excuses or answers and expects His church to dismiss any questions inquiring for undefiled wisdom as shit-disturbance.