Satanic statements

Satan thinks degrees are hot

Posted on by A lesser demon

His Infernal Majesty is a sucker for ranks, hierarchy, and degrees, and enforces relentless stratification throughout His infernal empire. Degrees boost efficiency, because they relieve everyone of the tedious and uninteresting task of learning about each other. An accurate and carefully awarded degree provides you with everything you need to know about a demon or, in the world above us, a person.

For example, if a person advertises a sixth degree in Scientology, you immediately know that he is a top shelf idiot who has spent a significant sum of money and time becoming delusional. There is no need to speak at length with this individual and learn it the hard way.

It should go without saying that the quality of a degree is contingent on a strict curriculum and objective, unbiased evaluations. Satan has no respect for organizations that award degrees as a token of “esteem” or any similar set of undefined skills. Satan’s church is right to warn against a degree system with no answers in its Satanic Bunco Sheet. Degrees have no merit unless they can be independently verified—secret, unpublished standards, subjective evaluations, or cautions that if you have to ask about a degree, it is because you cannot afford it, are a foolproof litmus cult test. Degrees are meaningful only if they are meaningfully awarded: students who pride themselves of graduating from the school of hard knocks rarely boast notable grades elsewhere and hence seldom impress people with actual educations.

Even a correctly granted degree per the Devil’s requirements holds merit only among those who consider the issuer to be authoritative. Any earned degree is hogwash to people who find the organization ridiculous whether it deserves such an opinion or not.

Either situation—that the organization’s degrees are absurd or useless outside of its membership sphere or that the organization applies arbitrary requirements, or both—explains why some “warlock” in one organization may be readily recognized as a black-belt retard in all walks of life by people outside of the organization (and often because of the degree, cf. the aforementioned Scientologist).

Satan thinks His disciples should be mistrustful of all such degrees. Satan represents rebellion against phony authorities and The Goat-Legged One thinks it behooves His followers to follow suit and question authority; if nothing else then because He says so.

This raises an important point. All disciples of the Prince of Darkness were raised in societies where self-proclaimed élites have manufactured a system in which degrees signal social positions. It compels people to attribute importance to a degree regardless of its significance, worth, or merit. Satan thinks that instead of conforming to herd mentality and automatically credit an awardee with importance, one should apply analytical thinking. Since everyone considers a degree to signal relative importance, degrees reflect a value system: by observing ranking members one can deduce what the real values of an organization are as opposed to its purported values.

A personality-cult–like organization (or one characterized by individuals with narcissistic proneness) often have few other values than unbending loyalty towards the organization and sycophantic praise of those who are superior in degree. It awards degrees to lickspittles and personal friends of the issuers. It is often possible to deduce such values by observing who receives degrees.

In contrast, formal procedures and veracious requirements for degrees usually indicate a system focused on the advancement of bodies of skill. The obvious example is educational institutions. The hierarchy of degrees is typically shallow considering the size of these organizations. (This is true for higher education, too, because although they feature a plethora of degrees, the degrees are identical across different scientific fields in terms of “level.”) Such degrees are often legally protected as a bulwark against counterproductive activity. Satan secretly longs for the day when “witch” is designated as a protected degree, but thus far it has been awarded only by historically inept personnel.

It does not matter for identification purposes whether the degrees make any sense; the institutions and their members think they do and that is enough. Satan thinks that the use of degrees in higher education is generally admirable although degrees in fan-fiction fields such as theology, political science, and economics are mostly self-contained. The key is that degrees expose an organization’s fundamental objectives and that they may tell a different story to the out-group than to the in-group.

Within any group, degrees are important regardless of their merit for entirely different reasons than position, prowess, or progress. They serve as structural elements that keep organizations together.

Firstly, they establish a hierarchy of authority that dissuades early adopters from voicing criticism. This is generally advantageous to any organization. Bodies of knowledge rarely benefit from “input” from insightless newcomers, and power-centric organizations gain little from status seekers. This mechanism is maintained through-up the degree system, ensuring that authority stays in the hands of its rightful owners.

Secondly, they increase efficiency (as mentioned earlier). No single member must investigate who is considered an authority within the organization, because degrees provide this information. All that remains is to choose among the available array of higher-ranking individuals as sage, inspirator, or mentor, depending on organizational terminology.

Thirdly, degrees cement loyalty through multiple means. Growth recognition fosters loyalty in that as long as there is yet a degree to attain, members are compelled to keep advancing and hence staying until they reach the pinnacle degree. (New degrees may be introduced, should too many students become proficient.) Few organizations focusing on personal development can keep their members interested unless their growth is continously acknowledged.

Perhaps a corollary of hierarchy and achievement, a degree makes the owner feel important. Human vanity enjoys any badge of social recognition—especially that of your favorite group—that you may pin on your suit, literally or figuratively. The feeling of being significant by virtue of membership often suffices to keep the sheep at bay. In the same vein, what you have been given can be taken. Your title may be revoked or you may even find yourself disassociated from your organization. This silent threat is highly motivating towards loyalty.

More importantly, degrees are captive. Degrees designate a role, and roles are defined by expectations. Once a degree has been awarded, its new owner adopts a role whose behavior and sense of loyalty is predefined and reinforcing, because otherwise no-one within the organization will recognize the new awardee as such. (The so-called “Stanford prison experiment” by Philip Zimbardo, although critized and contested, illustrates the power of roles.) Both loyalty and values are thus preserved because the new degree owner must imitate the behavior that led him or her to achieve the degree to begin with.

Satan likes degrees but mostly in the sense that He loves to boil the souls of the damned.

Satan thinks none of His laws matter

Posted on by A lesser demon

Old Nick has provided a few lists for those of His followers that are either too lazy or too busy to study proper Satanic etiquette in detail. Yet He finds that neither The 9 Satanic Statements, The 11 Rules of the Earth, nor The 9 Satanic Sins are heeded by His disciples. This baffles The Gentleman, because with so many followers who claim that they were born not made, Satan would expect them to naturally represent the Statements, follow the Rules, and refrain from the Sins even if they had never read them.

They even get confused or offended when they encounter the rare person who exhibits several of the traits that Satan represents, or when someone calls them out on their omissions of traits or their transgressions of the Satanic Rules of the Earth.

Satan is relieved that other religions are filled with hypocrites, because in all other religions virtually any deviation from their requirements is for the better. (His own religion is an exception, of course, because its only flaw is the kind of people it attracts. Satan will not accept hypocrisy within His own ranks.) There are people outside of the Devil’s ranks who consistently obey every rule in His book but the Devil’s followers ostensibly cannot grasp such qualities unless they are accompanied by the Infernal name. And, if so, only if it is the right kind of Satanist, and only if the person withholds such behavior while in their presence lest they get subjected to Satanic reality.

Satan once thought His disciples had turned the “Golden Rule” upside-down: “do to others what you would not have them do to you”—thereby behaving very much how those who preach the Golden Rule conduct themselves in practice. But His followers do not even behave against others according to the Devil’s instructions. God forbid (not to ask you to excuse my French; Satan thinks that God is really the culprit here) that Satan’s followers behave as Satanists or be exposed to any who do.

The disciples of The Evil One make all kinds of excuses: that the Satanic Statements and the Rules of the Earth are helpful suggestions that one may cherry-pick as they benefit oneself. Or that interaction on the internet is somehow not part of the real world so therefore the Rules do not apply. Or that the Statements, Rules, and Sins describe an ideal world (Old Scratch cannot help hearing this as “Paradise”) not the current one.

Satan thinks many of His followers may not have understood what they got themselves into. They desire freedom for themselves but shun the accountability that comes with it. They want privileges but refuse responsibilities. They feel entitled but have not earned the prerogative. They reserve the right to strike but complain at the slightest touch.

Satan thinks they secretly treasure another religion: one that claims that its followers turn the other cheek. One that contends unconditional love. One that relieves them of responsibility because they can blame their behavior on non-existing externalities. One that provides them with the herd that they need. The one that they were raised with.

Satan thinks His church’s Nine Statements got replaced

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devil has not paid much attention lately to the membership procedures of His various churches, temples, synagogues, and whichever other chapels, cloisters, cathedrals, and convents have become dedicated to Him. He remembers that in the days before the Internet someone would locate the P. O. Box address of The Church of Satan in San Francisco, submit a membership application together with a cashier’s check for some $50 or $75, and then after several months would receive a cheapskate membership card and become member number 100261. Satan has not investigated how, say, His temple processes its membership applications but expects it to be similar and maybe with a little more expedient interest in its members. Satan does not issue membership cards Himself; He prefers the tried and tested tradition of branding the damned with hot irons when they enter through the gates of Hell.

The Church of Satan would provide a xeroxed welcome package containing a welcome note, The 11 Satanic Rules of the Earth, The Nine Satanic Statements, an opinion that no other groups can possibly be Satanic, and maybe a few other sheets with information that the Devil’s church considered pertinent to new members.

But a few decades ago Satan thinks something must have gone askew in the printing process, because judging from the behavior of His church and its members, it seems that the headings of The 11 Satanic Rules of the Earth and The Nine Satanic Sins have been switched, making the Sins the new Rules, and vice versa. Satan is not certain where the Nine Satanic Statements went but they appear to have been replaced with the following document:

THE NINE SATANIC STATEMENTS 1. Satan represents pettiness, instead of ignoring that which you need not care about! 2. Satan represents bigoted attitudes, instead of appreciating common goals! 3. Satan represents selective factoids, instead of honest study! 4. Satan represents self-righteousness, instead of giving credit where due! 5. Satan represents envious belittling, instead of doing something yourself! 6. Satan represents kindness to people whom you agree with, instead of respect for your betters! 7. Satan represents man as just another herd animal, never smarter, always more stupid than those who walk to the slaughter on all-fours, who, because he "joined the first organization" has become the most herd-minded of them all! 8. Satan represents committing all of the Satanic sins, as they all lead to smugness! 9. Satan represents your annoying uncle Arnold at the family reunion, because He keeps the discussion going about republican politics every year!

Satan thinks the Ninth Statement is a warning

Posted on by A lesser demon

A religion that preaches redemption from evil needs evil to be redeemed from, and a religion that sentences its stray sheep to Hell needs Hell. My Infernal Lord is therefore not surprised to be integral to Christian mythology, nor has He overlooked the fact that by His many names, countless other religions and ideologies have drawn upon His services to drive their droves into place and will continue to do so.

All it took for Mr. Hitler and his associates to convince their population to persecute the Jews was to draw pictures of them with little horns and claim that they were my master’s people. (My master asks me to mention that He nonetheless does not hold “Adolf,” as He said, entirely responsible for the Holocaust incident, as Mr. Hitler had merely followed up on the proposals of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism.) And a few decades ago, a president in the Western World who shall remain nameless, because we do not wish to speak the names of angels to be, needed only declare the Middle East to be the “axis of evil” and an enemy of his religion in order to launch a full scale war against a competitor to his family business.

Satan thinks the mechanism is a tad more general than being a manipulative, religious tool, however, because He finds it deeply rooted in the human brain. Any group—religious, political, social, or other—defines itself positively and negatively. The terms refer to what the ideology believes to contain and not to contain, and do not signify “good” or “bad” values. For example, atheism rejects the notion of gods, and although atheists consider this to be good (and Old Nick wholeheartedly agrees), it is a negative definition. A positive definition of atheism, had there been any, would describe what atheism adds rather than what it subtracts compared with other groups. The population of the USA would define itself positively (i.e., by what they are) by stating, e.g., that they are inhabitants of Northern America, and negatively (i.e., by what they are not) by assuring that part of their excellence involves not being Canadian.

Positive and negative definitions are often made-up. The positive definitions serve to reassure oneself of validity and greatness, or they are group goals, while negative definitions serve to both demark the limits of a group, and to be “inverse positives” which communicate that the group is the opposite of the negative definition. The Devil dryly notes that from his perspective, the latter is generally a statement of what the group merely wishes it wasn’t, because humans usually are as deplorable as they say they aren’t.

Human beings tend to converge on quite similar positive and negative definitions regardless of group identity, mainly because Man is a social animal and behaves accordingly. Human survival depends on everyone behaving mostly alike, and in societies, which all function mostly the same around the planet. Satan grants that there are trivial differences between groups such as geographically determined traditions regarding food or fashion, differently named gods and varying degrees between believing in literal or abstract deities, or different names for how governments universally enable the ruling class to exploit the less fortunate.

As social animals, humans need to belong to a group but its size is limited by the mental capacity of its members. Everyone outside of the group (which can be geographically far stretched in a highly connected world) is “the others” because the human brain can scope only the individual’s own group. Human identity is derived from their groups through the groups’ self-definitions: that which the group is and is not is what its members are and are not; defiance implies ostracism, which is the worst of all fears because in human evolution group rejection once spelled certain death.

Satan thinks that the stronger the need of an individual to feel the identity bestowed by his or her group, the more prone he or she is to concentrate on negative definitions, emphasizing how other groups are different or, equivalently, how his or her group is entirely unlike them. This is especially true when the groups seem similar, because at a deeply primal level the similarity creates the impression that the other group is a close contender to one’s own group, which might subsequently be overtaken and eliminated and oneself with it. Satan cares little whether the need to underscore one’s group at the expense of others arises from a self-inflated sense of significance which inspires people to contribute high importance to negative definitions, or whether it is the result of a mental capacity falling far below Dunbar’s number that requires less ambiguously defined group boundaries. He thinks that the strong need to defend one’s group is herd mentality regardless of cause, and the only important and perhaps counter-intuitive observation is that herd mentality compels an individual to identify strongly with narrowly and even binarily defined groups (by specific congregation, nationality, etc.) and aggressively dismiss its closer contenders rather than finding common ground. Herd mentality drives Europeans to fear the Middle East more than the Far East, and Western Satanic groups to be more spiteful against each other than even against the soup of Christianity that engulfs them all.

Your humble, and more often humbled and humiliated, narrator had wished to ask its master if the observation is really counter-intuitive, and whether not true individualism as opposed to herd mentality would obviously make someone both shrug off group conflicts and be capable of joining very large communities without feeling obliged to group-think. However, the Horned Almighty routinely punishes dumb questions with another turn on the rack, and yours unfaithful has decided to leave the answer blowing in the hot winds of Hell.

Satan thinks that the Ninth Statement should be taken as a warning not to be yet another friend of the Church through one’s actions and demeanor. When Satan observes one of His followers behaving according to Christian precepts about the Devil’s own, believing to be thus expected, He thinks the follower is a Christian who has no place wearing the Devil’s colors. It helps little if the follower does so knowingly in order to offend his or her haters. That requires no talent; true demonic skill lies in turning the haters’ invested emotions against themselves, perplexing them into dislodging their ideological conviction. Satan thinks that wishing, by one’s actions, to be the best friend the Church has ever had, the best option is: go to church.

And Satan thinks this warning should call for introspection, too, allowing the abyss to gaze back. His followers should avoid the herd mentality need to identify themselves so strongly with their own group that their use of other groups for negative definition turns disagreement into obsession. He recalls that one of his denizens, some Friedrich Nietzsche, once cautioned against becoming the monster you chase, and thinks that His followers, too, should avoid the temptation to allow their enemies—percived or real—a seat on His throne by casting them as the followers’ Devil in order to stay in business.

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 the Fifth Satanic Statement isn’t

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devil confirms that He is not known for turning the other cheek, but although the Fifth Satanic Statement describes this one of the character traits of our Lord of Evil, He fails to understand what makes this statement specifically Satanic. Satan also needs to visit the men’s room but finds no Satanic Statement declaring that He represents relieving the pressure from the inner wall of his bladder instead of perishing according to the legend of Tycho Brahe’s untimely demise; and washing His hands afterwards instead of helping spread disease would seem appropriate to mention as well.

My master suspects that the mention of His reluctance to turn the other cheek was intended for the target readers of The Satanic Bible as an attempt to contrast Him against Christianity. These readers, being mostly indoctrinated Christians, would be inclined to believe that Christianity considers turning the other cheek to be among their values. After all, their story book tells how their god’s son preached this behavior although it disaccordingly relates that he got fairly violent the first time he met with conflict. The Devil gives the fellow some credit, however, firstly because starting the fight, as reportedly he did, he had not yet been smitten on the one cheek, and secondly because turning the other cheek seems like an excellent thing to convince your opponents they should do.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Satan has observed that Christians turn the other cheek no more often than other people. If anything, Satan thinks that there are few as vengeful, bloodthirsty, petty, resentful, merciless, wrathful, and war-hungry as Christians regardless of what they might claim or believe about themselves. Satan thinks it is a crime against reason to lead anyone, and most of all the followers of the Prince of Darkness, to believe in such myths by repeating the Christian lies.

Satan thinks that if anyone believes that His foe represents turning the other cheek, they can kiss His other cheeks.