Self-interest

Satan thinks godhood is no ambition

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks egalitarianism has merit

Posted on by A lesser demon

Every religion considers other religions to be the source of devilry, although in the past, pantheistic religions have usually been happy to incorporate inspiring elements from other religions into their own. People and hence their religions tend to become more tolerant towards other religions if resources are scarce and reliance on alien cultures is vital to one’s existence. However, as a general rule, anything that seems wrong in one’s society has always been blamed on others. It does not matter that it had been effective for centuries; if it eventually became undesired, it could be blamed on others and perceived as some kind of demon that they had introduced.

The Devil’s own church, The Church of Satan, has identified its share of demons that it attributes to other religions. One such archdemon is egalitarianism, which Peter Gilmore repeatedly denounces in The Satanic Scriptures and believes is caused by Christianity. He demands instead Social Darwinism and authoritarian eugenics, arguing that they expose the fundamental fallacies of egalitarian doctrine, although he does not explain how. In Peter Gilmore’s mind, the fallacies of egalitarianism are the belief that everything and everyone are, or should be, equal:

Thus, some random splashes on a canvas were considered an equal achievement to the Sistine Chapel; a mud hut was held up as being equivalent to Versailles. A janitor was dubbed the equivalent to a physicist; a novelist was now the peer of one who scrawled graffiti on a bathroom wall. This principle of “discrimination” was applied to all other fields of achievement.

The opposition to egalitarianism is deeply entrenched in both LaVeyan and Gilmoron Satanism, to the degree that the very first point, “on which all the others ultimately rest,” of The Church of Satan’s mostly political program is: “the advocacy … of stratification, which is no less than the elimination of egalitarianism wherever it has taken root.”

Egalitarianism, in The Church of Satan, is meant as a complete leveling of all differences between human beings. Similarly, equality is the presumption that everyone has equal abilities and no differences, and nobody performs to the best of their ability as everything is compressed into conformist homogeneity. Satan can barely fathom how nightmarish the thought of thereby having nothing to brag about must be to a stereotypically complete grandiose narcissist such as Peter Gilmore. From the Devil’s opposite perspective, however, most of His followers would improve considerably if it were possible to average all humans. When we sort their souls for incineration in Hell, we usually classify them as “small combustibles” unless they are toxic waste.

Neither of the two writers appears to be aware that their understanding of egalitarianism is utterly false nor that egalitarian principles have secular origins. These principles were born of the Enlightenment and are now adopted by numerous international laws, treaties, and domestic constitutions and bills of rights despite religious opposition. They cannot be dismissed as the product of a single religion or even several religions in unison. Egalitarianism involves the principle that everyone has a set of immutable rights that should not be infringed upon. They are designed to protect all individuals from social, legal, political, or other abuse. They are minimal standards, not maximal standards, whose goal is to prevent the worst, not enable or prescribe the best.

Human rights are not a leveling tool and have no bearing on ability or skill. They exist to protect the vital existence of every individual, not to artificially foster incompetence or homogenize society, and are constructed on the basis of human equality. In egalitarianism, equality is the claim that all humans are of equal moral worth, not equal ability. Anyone with the ability to write a symphony rivaling Beethoven’s genius is free to do so, and any individual who lacks the ability never will. (Satan thinks that, although holding a degree in musical composition, Peter Gilmore’s closest experience with musical recognition will remain the Salieri syndrome.) The human rights of egalitarianism protect everyone from repression or persecution in pursuit of their respective goals, and do not determine what individuals can do with their natural abilities nor flatten the differences between those abilities. With their fundamental liberties protected by egalitarian principles, individuals become free to pursue any life they feel is rewarding, providing that the rights of others are respected. Egalitarianism is a prerequisite for a functioning meritocracy.

Satan initially thought to Xerox Peter Gilmore a copy of the definition of egalitarianism from any modern dictionary, but the extent and the form of Gilmore’s misunderstanding of the term is all too familiar to His Infernal Majesty, who knows that Gilmore will not be educated. It is how the far-right ultra-conservatives apply the term when (like LaVey and Gilmore) they imagine that their arbitrarily charted group of people has intrinsically higher moral worth than other human beings. The only difference is that LaVey and Gilmore believe the horror stems from left-wing politics emanating from Christianity, whereas the typical far-right advocates against egalitarianism are equally convinced that it is a left-wing plague but believe that Christianity is the cure.

Old Nick considers an exposition on right-wing politics to be outside of the scope of these thoughts and believes it suffices to observe that when egalitarianism is yet another word that The Church of Satan uses incorrectly, in this incident, the primary explanation is not their usual subaverage comprehension skills. The Church of Satan echoes a far-right view that makes sense only when accompanied by a complete ideological framework from that same end of the political spectrum. It is an interpretation tightly knit with several other elements that provide that political position’s view of humans and cannot be separated from those elements.

One does not have to be a master of systemic functional linguistics (which Satan is, of course) to understand that people’s vocabulary reveals much about them, nor that social semiotics tells us that a consistent use of specific misunderstandings serves as a language equivalent of secret handshakes. The Church of Satan reveals and communicates a far-right political platform and attracts members accordingly.

Satan thinks martyrs accomplish nothing

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks nihilism is a Christian artifact

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks stratification would kill several followers

Posted on by A lesser demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satan thinks religious hypocrisy is preferable

Posted on by A lesser demon

Lucifer is an advocate of personal integrity, self-esteem, and confidence. After all, did He not prefer to be cast into the pit rather than yield His will to some smug shah and feign impression when the latter had sculpted man out of sand like an infant on the beach? The Angel of Light, this magnificent creature of fire, should never bow to a body of dust. The virtues of a principled life sometimes come at a steep cost but you will have lost everything of you lose your own self: you will be a mere slave of the expectations of others.

Satan thus demands no less of His followers than of Himself.

Satan consents to a certain balance in the name of self-interest, of course. He has in fact later recognized that He could have taken a middle path between casting Himself to the ground in awe of the childish sand figure and Jehovah’s predictable temper tantrum with a display of some evidently deeply needed adult guidance. The Prince of Hell might have averted a crisis had He then, like any good parent, praised the creator’s creative if not successful attempt and reminded him to clean up afterwards. Satan thinks a similar balance act is prudent for His followers as long as they know what they are doing.

The Devil has an entirely different attitude towards those who are not His followers whom He would never require to be mindful of their convictions. Seeing what such people believe in, Satan encourages religious hypocrisy and hopes that His followers will help spread this message. Satan thinks none of His followers want Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and what have we to live and act according to their respective scrolls and books, because His followers would become wanted men—dead, not alive—in the blink of an eye.

No sane person would ever wish for a believer to devotedly follow the believer’s scriptures, which usually prescribe murder, torture, rape, and slavery as penalty for the silliest of transgressions, and towards non-followers of the religion in particular. Believers generally do not limit their laws to their own communities but enforce them wherever they can, and everyone else had better hope and pray that those laws are not overly deranged and the punishments not too grisly.

Better yet, Satan thinks everyone should both wish for and encourage the believers to be hypocritical. Hypocrisy is the pretense of having moral or religious beliefs or practices that one does not possess, lest you forget. The Devil obviously encourages deviation from religion in the first place, and although it may seem unfair when hypocritical believers demand from others what they would never do themselves, one should be thankful that hypocrisy is a trait that absolves the hypocrite of the responsibility that religion has laid upon him or her. One should count on the hypocrite, not on the ardent believer, to spare one from the punishment of one’s crimes against their religion.

An all-out conformity with written scripture would, of course, have some benefits. Pigs and various shellfish would probably appreciate if Christians paid attention to their Bible and noted that the Old Testament applies to them, too, in the words of Jesus, who reportedly came to fulfill the law, i.e., the Old Testament. Certain hate-mongering women would finally keep their mouths shut against audiences. Satan can think of many such examples but the Prince of Darkness is willing to tolerate the existence of an array of Fox News hostesses if it enables His female acolytes to uncover their bodies as they please while He enjoys a good schweineschnitzel at His favorite restaurant.

Satan does not understand why some of His followers, as well as regular atheists, mock believers for their hypocrisy. Satan thinks the last they should do is complain that believers are hypocrites and thereby encourage them to exhibit religious righteousness. They should instead thank providence for bestowing believers with hypocrisy and support every instance of hypocrisy they encounter among followers of the gods.

Satan thinks people who strive to be nice usually aren’t

Posted on by A lesser demon

For all our awe and admiration of The Infernal Majesty’s insights and intelligence, The Dark Lord has insisted on several occasions that a little barstool psychology can go a long way.

The unfortunate ex-demon whose skepticism prompted it to ask for an example was immediately obliterated for daring to question our Master, but the Devil posthumously humored it and asked us who happened to be present what characterizes a “nice person.” We soon agreed that a nice person was nothing like Satan, and although our Master appreciated our sentiment, He had doubtlessly given it a little more thought than He had let on, and slightly impatiently explained Himself.

Satan thinks that truly nice people generally do not try to meet an ideal of “niceness,” even if they can easily formulate such an ideal or identify historical or mythical individuals who may serve as role models. The key to their nice behavior—being considerate of others, being helpful, etc.—is that they act according to an innate comprehension that humans are better off by working together. They ultimately serve their own interests but as a species not as specimens. Therein, says Satan, lies the difference between self-interest and self-preservation versus egoism, the former benefitting the human race and the latter benefitting oneself but in the very short term only. It is not required to “love one another.” There are some who deserve love, and some who deserve none. Satan thinks that genuine niceness involves a sense of justice that urges you to give and take from each what they naturally deserve.

It is people who are only admirable by obligation that Satan thinks ill of. They are people who have been instructed by word but not through example to be loving, friendly, and helpful as this ostensible acting makes them believe they are better people and have earned the right to feel entitled. They are people who do good not because they feel somehow compelled but from concern with what their neighbors would think. They are people who help others only for the sake of their personal salvation not because of the needs of others. They know right from wrong and good from evil only because they have it memorized. They invariably see themselves as good; even when they observe ill traits within themselves, they believe themselves superior because they consciously combat their true nature.

Satan may prefer deed to creed and thus appreciate that such people play nice after all, but the King of Lies is no fool. He knows that people exercise their true nature whenever their self-discipline is momentarily disengaged. A person who is not innately “good” but merely puts on an act (even if they believe in it themselves) is certain to eventually place a dagger in your back, speak ill of you, cheat on you, or betray you, and they will blame you, my friend, because knowing that they are your morally superior it cannot possibly be their fault; if they behaved poorly, you forced their hand. Satan advises to beware of martyrs in particular, as they think they do ever good but never understand that the perpetual source of their punishments is their own poisonous personality.

Such individuals are a terrible race, but Satan thinks that applied barstool psychology is useful to pinpoint these foul creatures of the human world. It is quite simple according to Satan: barstool psychology stipulates that you speak of your most prominent failures as if you are their conqueror. For example, when John Doe of forty brags about his many sexual conquests, you should bet your money that he is both still a virgin and has a tiny pecker. Extending this principle to moral inclination, expect people who speak of being devoted to a movement that does good to be none the part. If they had no problem being “good,” they would focus on something else. Hence, anyone who subscribes to a doctrine of good should be expected to be lacking in that very department.

It goes without saying that the Devil advises His followers to steer clear of the followers of His mortal foe—Christians, that is—but He thinks the caution should be extended to anyone who was brought up in a Christian home where one was demanded to “do good” for no heart-felt reason. Religions are codifications of group behavior (using symbolic language), and it is reasonable to include sanctions against dissocial behavior within this code, but merely following the code does not assure sanity. Satan thinks that no sane human being needs religion to behave properly, and that religion is in fact partially a sign that people lack this skill. The latter is beyond this discussion, however, as yours truly has a job to do torturing lost souls. Suffice to say that Satan is not fooled by people who declare themselves neither atheists nor Satanists if they grew up in a Christian home: He expects them to be as vile as their parents.

Satan thinks His followers should vote leftist

Posted on by A lesser demon

The Devil has asked your humble demon to emphasize that Satan is entirely unconcerned with politics Himself, firstly because He is the undisputed ruler of Hell and has no intention of changing seats, and secondly because, after all, Hell is for the non-elect. At best, Satan rejects the notion that people get the politicians they deserve, because He finds it improper to hold sensible individuals accountable for herd actions that these individuals played no part in. However, He strongly believes that whenever someone benefits or suffers from the results of the politics that person voted for, it is fully deserved. Colored people who vote for white-supremacy politicans deserve to be victims of racism; major business owners who vote for socialist politicians deserve to have their businesses nationalized; and average-income people who vote for capitalist politicians deserve to be fleeced. No-one should be protected against their own stupidity.

However, the Devil looks after his own, and thinks that His followers should never vote according to any ideology—whether that be nationalist, religious, or otherwise mystical—that requires moral precepts about actions and opinions to be upheld in order to be a good citizen who altruistically votes according to what he or she believes is best for Society. The Devil’s prospective denizens should instead each consider carefully what provides themselves with the greatest benefits, political pipe-dreams be damned, if you will excuse your simple demon the possible inappropriateness of that word. It is this self-interest that prompts the Great Beast to propose that it would behoove most of His followers on the left hand path to keep left in a political context, too. The prospective follower needs not consider himself or herself to be red (red suits will be required to enter the Second Circle of Hell, however), and may in fact feel anything but solidarity with those who are traditionally left-wing, so my Ungodliness has asked me to elaborate.

In all human interactions, Satan believes that might is right. Of course, being an educated and intelligent gentleman, He does not believe in the pseudo-scientific notion that “strong” people, who have won a fight for power, will beget similarly strong children, nor does He believe that the principle that might is right implies that one should accept and succumb to any balance of power. “Might is right” is the realization that power is not merely a question of brawns but instead the phenomenon that right and wrong is defined by those empowered to do so, and that power is the continuous struggle for this position: those who gain power gain whichever rights that power enables. Hence, Satan thinks that those who fight for interests that conflict with those of His followers should never obtain the power to do so. Satan wants to reduce any right defined by the moral, financial, or legal systems of his opponents unless it happens to coincide with those of His followers, and similarly supports any legislation that supports His followers regardless of its formal reason.

Satan has no romantic dreams about humans living as if one with Nature (and, may I interject, He also has some personal issues with this paradisical concept after a certain deity made Paradise forever lost to my Master) and humans have no biologically or divinely imposed obligations towards other animals, human or otherwise. As a species, you human beings behave like any other animal: you exploit the planet’s resources as best as you can. You destroy the very source of your existence, and wishing to change this in order to survive does not make or require you to be a tree-hugger. Satan thinks it is a self-preservation instinct to keep an environmentally-friendly agenda.

And when some group of people is trapped because of conservative initiatives, the Devil objects to their suffering, but not because Satan has any feelings for the victims. He simply understands that such a government has exactly the same sentiments towards any of His followers, any of whom will soon find themselves in hot water once the government sets is eyes upon them. In that case, each of these followers can soon relate to human suffering and human mistreatment, because they will be those very humans. There is not a shred of bleeding-heart liberal feelings in this view; it is egoism, and any egoistic person should know that egoistic goals are often best met through cooperation and effective (if not necessarily earnest) solidarity.

Satan hopes that His followers are self-interested and just want to be well off. Granted, their self-gratification is a multi-dimensional equation with countless compromises that involve both biological, environmental, and parental imperatives, and is under constant development. They will work for their gratification to the extent that their day job is not exceedingly uninteresting or demanding and thus ungratifying. They will sacrifice some of their immediate desires in the interest of their family because it benefits them in the long run. Their actions are characterized by an adaptation to what will provide both short term and long term benefits within certain margins. But His followers have wishes. They want more money, safety on the streets, a society of knowledge and development, food without dangerous additives, the ability to get around, leisure time, etc.

This is where leftism becomes relevant. It is a left-leaning government that will benefit most of the Devil’s followers. What little His best-off followers might cash in on tax reductions for the rich will be paid back with liberal interest added thereunto, either as user charge or lost opportunities. A few hundred tax dollars saved per year is nothing compared to the methodical destruction of educational institutions for the followers who have offspring, their problem soon becoming the problem of His followers—just to name one example. If public transportation is starved or fares increase for drop-off locations father from the destinations, highway congestions will increase with you and your car in the thick of it. A measly few tens of dollars saved on the tax returns is a sorry compensation for major inconveniences.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with various groups of Society is a tactical move which does not require nor imply feelings of solidarity. The Devil asks that you, His followers, cease your infights over minor disagreements and instead ally and resist those who divide and conquer. You may not be an immigrant, a homosexual, a threatened species, a marginalized citizen, an ethnic minority, a child, in need of medical care, or a natural resort. Satan welcomes all of the above but you should realize that most of you are not part of the economy cult which gladly sacrifices any group on the altar of capitalism, and if capitalists are willing to sacrifice the aforementioned groups, then they will sacrifice you, too.

Satan thinks the relationship between you and your employer involves a fundamental disagreement between the ratio of work and compensation. You have opposing financial interests, and it is in your best interest to have a strong trade union that works to secure you against your employer. It would be down-right self-destructive to support an establishment that supports the interests of the employers against the interests of its employees, such as fighting trade unions or by providing discount trade unions whose goal is to make money and not have their members’ interests in mind. Satan could not care less about the success of a trade union, and would never ask His followers to care either, but He thinks His followers have an obvious rational interest in solidarity with trade unions that work to strengthen His followers, regardless of their feelings. A large membership base provides a trade union with the power to fight for whichever is an advantage to its members.

Nature is taking damage, and it will also become costly to compete for the remaining resources. Satan doubts that His followers wish to pay for that, and thinks His followers should prefer to repair the system before it is either too late or has become ruinously expensive. Satan has no romantic dreams of woodland lakes or species that “deserve” to be sustained but thinks any of His followers will benefit from a preservation of the ecosystems.

Satan is by no means recognizably “red,” regardless of what Medieval frescos may otherwise suggest, and does not ask His followers to be socialists either. The Horned One insists that none of this discussion involves “feeling solidary” with one issue or group or another; it only matters to understand that it is beneficial to ally with people who already work for a distribution of power that favors His followers. Satan thinks His followers should not worry if they happen to support people whom they disagree with on a variety of issues as long as those people will fight for a cause that also happens to benefit His followers. It should be of no concern if that makes others think that the follower is a socialist. Hopefully none of Satan’s followers, who refer to themselves as Satanists, are that afraid of being associated with the dreaded “S” (socialist) word.

Satan asks each of His followers to pursue their own self-interest, and that includes the tactical realization that there are more white-belts out there than one can safely wave a stick at. Unison begets power, and the Devil’s followers should unite with whoever provide them with power. Satan thinks it is beneficial to vote leftist whether you feel for it or not.

Satan thinks the strong should take care of the weak

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan would like to remind His ask followers not to treat His sermon as gospel when He declared the strong as blessed and the weak as cursed. The Devil said such only to rattle the cages of the less enlightened of His latent followers in the part of the world where He held said sermon: those who were raised to be Christians and still harbored the illusion that Christianity somehow favors weakness. These followers needed to be forcefully reminded that they should discard such notions immediately. Our Royal Darkness has later confessed that He got somewhat carried away and had rather intended the passage for the considerably smaller number of prospective followers who did indeed require disillusioning but who were also not at the same time stupid.

His Infernal Ruler is keenly aware that the powers that be are always intimately entangled with the dominant religion in any area, and that supremacy rests on a shared ideal among one’s powerful peers that is invariably expressed in religious values. In short, the very followers who read the aforementioned passage in The Satanic Bible should convert to Christianity immediately, and become devoted ones at that in conservative settings, if they desire power, because it is the Christians who are thus blessed.

Yes â€¦ there are examples of people who rise to power, glory, and influence in disregard of the established aristocracy. Your humble harrasser (the titulary terms “tormentor” and “accuser” are reserved for my Master) dares to remind you without consulting its Master that the lifetime of a human is but a moment in the realm of the gods and the devils. Such successful people, or at least their immediate descendants, will soon find themselves part of the religously-bound aristocracy if their power manages to survive a single generation.

Satan thinks that His followers should remember to always think of themselves and maintain perspective. It is easy to feel powerful if you have a mere few subordinates, but losers pose a problem on a larger scale and challenge power. There is detailed and perfect stratification in Hell, as we lesser demons of the realm can painfully testify, but among humans living above our fiery abode, losers do not simply vanish into thin air. They keep demanding nourishment and inhabitation, and whatever else rodents seem to require, regardless of how much wealth and power you amass, and moreso the more you amass on their behalf. Starve them of food or land and they will not simple succumb to oblivion and die and magically disappear. Losers, having nothing to lose, will begin to rob you of both once they are bereft of choice.

The Devil’s followers usually subscribe to one of two solutions: either they barricade themselves and arm themselves to their teeth in a perpetual battle against the desperate hordes, or they keep killing them before they become a nuisance. Both options being virtually impossible and verging towards pipe-dreams, Satan thinks they should consider a third alternative, namely to feed the bastards and provide them with living quarters to pacify their desperation. It would be pricey but nowhere as costly as establishing and maintaining a defensive perimeter, and Satan thinks His followers should consider the value of safety that allows them to walk freely anywhere without fearing assaults.

Satan cautions that support not be left to individualized aid and handouts, however, because as Satanically correct as it might seem (for the uninitiated, it means that whoever wishes to provide charity should be allowed to do so without making it mandatory for everyone), such practice fosters a culture where righteousness is faked through paltry alms. It would support philosophies of altruism and run counter to all Satanic ideals. Satan thinks it is better to institutionalize “alms” at a national level through adequate social welfare so that no human can pretend or believe to be “good” for keeping losers alive. Separation of state from religion is contingent on the state taking responsibility for those civic and human duties that are currently being implemented by religious enterprises.