Satanic organizations

Satan thinks the “masochism” model deserves a spanking

Posted on by A lesser demon

All models are wrong, but some are useful. But unlike our denizen Mr. George Box, who famously noted this, few people are statisticians or system modelers and instead evaluate the usefulness of their simplified explanations according to how well they support their desired conclusions, not how well they provide them with actual insight of the situations modeled. That is: people are uninterested in undefiled wisdom and prefer to deceive themselves, much in contrast to what Satan represents. People readily adopt models that are so poor that they are useful only for delusions, especially for complex explanations where they find answers that are easy, simple to understand, and wrong.

Mr. Anton LaVey was no statistician either but like any lay man lacking insight into his own scholarly limitations this did not suitably dissuade him from slapping together a correspondingly unaccomplished explanation for human behavior, especially regarding situations where he faced disagreement. So if someone was provoked by Mr. LaVey’s choosing my Master of All Things Evil as his “godshead” and decided to confront Mr. LaVey and usually lost the debate—because, after all, religion is not exactly a benchmark of logic and reason—Mr. LaVey concluded by some Freudian logic that they were masochistically inclined and had shown up unconsciously yearning for punishment. They wanted to confront Anton LaVey because they harbored a secret wish to be spanked, he mused, and any decision to confront a Satanist thus became proof of masochism. LaVey himself, coming out of the blue and being nowhere provocative by attacking established religion and using the “Satanism” moniker, was obviously not asking for a whipping, one must understand. Satan does not distinguish between Satanists who declare themselves as such, knowing what is in store for them, and masochists who start trouble with anyone else, but that is another matter.

Now, the Devil has nothing against sado-masochistic relationships (as long as He remains the perpetual sadist) and turns His blind eye towards the fact that The Church of Satan, which also professes LaVey’s view, uses “masochist” in a deprecatory sense in spite of its official stance on sexual liberation. My Master is content with being amused at how The Church of Satan feels satisfied whenever it receives mammoth beatings in any major confrontation and nonetheless believes it somehow “won” by declaring that its victor was a “masochist” for using The Church of Satan—even if the victor had merely used The Church of Satan as a gullible tool to gain the support of the masses. Or as they say nowadays: when The Church of Satan has its derriere whipped particularly hard in a spectator sport, it feels pride in making its BDSM master tired. Satan has always been the best friend the Church has ever had, and His own church seems to revel in its position as its bitch, seeing how often it asks for beatings by involving itself in matters that it could have ignored. Satan considers His church to be a masochism society that closes in on itself by assigning petty internal ranks to indicate their levels of submissiveness relative to each other.

I am sorry; the Devil made me overdo this. The crux of the matter is that The Church of Satan considers it masochism if anyone confronts it while considering it reasonable or incited criticism if The Church of Satan confronts anyone else, or even actively seeks confrontation by monitoring any mention of the Devil, Hell, or similarly connotational words as an excuse to meddle in affairs that they did not need to subject themselves to. Satan does not care if one calls it hypocrisy or uses fancy terms such as “correspondence bias” or “the fundamental attribution error.”

The Church of Satan has a number of such models, each of which can be traced to Anton LaVey’s policies or opinions.

Masochism, which was just covered, is integral to The Church of Satan and its social Darwinist leanings, which state that there are masters and slaves, Satanists obviously being the masters. Anyone who opposes the master is considered a slave, who does so only for masochistic reasons.

Shit-disturbers could be an exception to the above rule, depending on their motivation. Anton LaVey and subsequently The Church of Satan feel confident that they have produced all that is required to understand Satanism. If anyone points out discrepancies, inconsistencies, obsoletions, ambiguities, contradictions, or fallacies, or merely asks for elaboration or asks some critical questions, Anton LaVey made sure to characterize such people as shit-disturbers, whose only intent was to sow mischief. Well, either that, or to be spanked per the aforementioned model, one may assume. The term is not being used now that “troll” has gained more widespread use on the Internet.

Journalists and scholars in the field occasionally find themselves being either labeled or treated as shit-disturbers. This happens when they acknowledge the existence of other kinds of Satanists than The Church of Satan. Among recent events, Penny Lane would soon learn what vitriol one receives for neglecting to emphasize that only The Church of Satan are true Satanists in her film, Hail Satan?. Satan has it on good authority that The Church of Satan’s interviewee delegate struck her crew as such a know-nothing clown that the true reason his appearance was omitted in the final production was that they felt they did his home organization a favor.

Nuts: Anton LaVey once said that “[t]here are no categories of Satanists—there are Satanists, and then there are nuts.” The original context was a comment on the “no true Scotsman” tactic often used against Satanists where an antagonist will proclaim how Satanists are and offer an “oh, not your kind, of course” clarification in private to any Satanist who complains, while everyone else receives the original story with no such reservations. Anton LaVey sought to counter the tactic by asserting that there are no “kinds” of Satanists. Whoever the antagonist had in mind was not a Satanist but simply a nut who did not deserve this fine label. Satan thinks that Anton LaVey, who was originally remarkably tolerant of different approaches to the Devil among his first followers, had meant to distinguish only between real, existing Satanists and the mythical, non-existent “Satanists” who are found only within the heads of scared Christians—and possibly those few, confused individuals who occasionally act according to those myths, believing that behaving as Christians tell them will turn them into Satanists. Anton LaVey is now among us in Hell, but even while he was alive, it came to mean that only members of The Church of Satan could possibly be Satanists; everyone else is a non-Satanist, a poseur, and a wanna-be Satanist even if they do exactly what one would be praised for as a member of The Church of Satan.

Muting or kill-filing (or kill-listing) are Internet terms that The Church of Satan employs according to its masochism model: the terms refer to adding user names to a list that hides anything they write from your view, thus keeping the discussions clean from their nonsense. People are typically unaware of being thus ignored, and the method is favored by The Church of Satan because it believes it starves those users of the verbal spanking they crave when they beg (by addressing The Church of Satan) for punishment but never receive a reply. However, Satan has observed that The Church of Satan frequently forgets that it has “ignored” certain “shit-disturbers” but instead keeps a close watch on them either from other accounts or by merely claiming to have muted them.

Ex-members are people who left The Church of Satan for one reason or another. It goes without saying that ideological divorces rarely are civil but The Church of Satan applies a specific model against ex-members that is eerily reminiscent of Soviet Bloc propaganda during the 20th Century. Anyone who left The Church of Satan is invariably described as someone who couldn’t cut it (whatever “it” is), failed to apply Satanic principles to his or her life, was not around long enough to be truly initiated, or is in rare cases “forgotten,” as if that person never existed. The person could have been the very high priestess, as in the case of Karla LaVey, and yet is always immediately deemed irrelevant, said to never have been around, having never met Anton LaVey, never developed an understanding, did not display adequate interest, etc.

Sour grapes: whenever someone criticizes The Church of Satan for, say, being hopelessly outdated, it is considered a sour grapes attack. The Church of Satan’s model states that such people yearn for the high standards of The Church of Satan and fail to meet them, often being Iznogouds demanding to become the Caliph instead of the Caliph, and therefore consider The Church of Satan an unattainable ideal that is unfairly described as sour grapes cf. Aesop’s famous fable. Sour-grapes attacks are, of course, always made by people who qualify as ex-members and (therefore) nuts, because otherwise they would be labeled shit-disturbers. Within the The Church of Satan’s discourse, sour-grapes attacks are usually launched by former members who are disgruntled and resentful, and whose only fuel in life is their unjust hate of The Church of Satan. The longer the time since their departure from the organization the deeper their bitterness; no alternative explanation is possible.

Satan admits that He may have overlooked a few key models but believes that He has made His infernal point sufficiently clear: His church utilizes a selection of simple models that any of its members can readily learn, understand, and employ. To everyone else, who dares to recognize the shadow of my Master lurking in the details, the use of over-simplified explanations merely exposes closed-mindedness. An ultra-reductionist explanation that makes all the sense in the world to you can be just what makes everyone else realize that you are being ridiculously narrow-minded and short of insight.

Satan does not discourage such self-deceit. The world needs laughing stock as much as it needs knowledge, and everyone feels smarter and better when they encounter a conceited clown. Satan thinks you should apply any model that helps float your boat and considers it your own responsibility to avoid those models that enable everyone to identify you as an idiot.

Satan thinks 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.

Satan thinks His church is not dead yet

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks the jury is still out on His temple

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks His Bible has two secrets

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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