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Satanists Aren’t Evil!



This always cracks me up when Satanists start whimpering and pouting about being misunderstood. It’s like, fuck man, you worship the fucking Prince of Darkness, grow a fucking pair of balls! This bit of Satanic news out of the UK is downright silly:

Satanists have condemned an attack on an 18th century Daventry church saying vandals who scrawled anti-Christian symbols across the building were “idiots”.

Mark Bickley, a spokesman for the Church of Satan, told the Chronicle & Echo that it denounced criminal acts and the organisation only spread its message within the rules of the law.

He added: “These idiots who cause our name to be dragged into these moronic endeavours have little understanding of Satanism as a religion.

“Aside from the religious aspect, we really have better things to do than spray paint the property of others.”

Do they really? Like what?

He went on to explain that the Church of Satan was simply a group of like-minded people who shared a philosophy and they did not carry out violent rituals or animal sacrifices.

He added: “Satan is a metaphor that represents human nature.

“We oppose Christianity as a philosophy and we believe in the separation of the church and the state.”

So in other words you have a totally toothless religion which is merely based on being against another religion, rather than actually believing in your own stuff? I mean, I know there are Satanists for whom such doesn’t apply, but based on this article, these guys just sound so goddamned whiny. Oh, we’re not eeeevil - we’re just misunderstood! Fuck that, I say: get evil! Live up to your damned name, Satanists.

Without going into the whole history of Satan as a Biblical figure (which is actually very interesting), this might be a good time to take an informal poll among readers. Is Satan merely a metaphor for certain aspects of human nature, or is he somehow externally “real”? If he’s not actually real as a personification, is there such a thing as “evil” that exists on its own as a force in the universe?







10 Reader Responses

  1. rev max Says:
    October 10th, 2005 at 12:10 pm

    you have a totally toothless religion which is merely based on being against another religion, rather than actually believing in your own stuff

    yeah, what an amazingly hollow scam, i’m shocked lavey was able to keep it going for so long, the fact that it survived his death is doubly mind-blowing

  2. hebrides Says:
    October 10th, 2005 at 12:24 pm

    Weird. I just posted in the forums about a theistic satanist here in NYC who just passed out some fliers at a Pagan Day celebration basically all irked about some pagan speakers misrepresenting satanism.

    I don’t know. I’m really of a few different minds on this. It’s like the term “Anarchism” as a political philosophy. When it was chosen in the 19th century my sense of it was as sort of a challenge and a confrontation, given the traditional perception of anarchy (little “a”) as basically mass riots and disorder–mob rule and whatnot. It was supposed to be an inversion of sorts. Trouble is, they were co-opting a term which already had a certain negative cultural meaning, like the image of Satan and satanism (little “s”) as a middle-ages buggaboo and a literary device. So, there’s already an uphill battle to be taken seriously or to get people to “see” your position for what it is for that fact alone.

    I’ve seen some defenses of the term “Satanism” and also of the use of quasi-fascist imagery by LeVayan Satanists froma sort of neo-mallamutti or left-hand path perspective. Basically saying, we will be intentionally off-putting and if you can think for yourself and get passed that to check us out, well, then…good on ‘ya.

    I think there’s something to be said for that position. I think you gotta accept if you’re gonna use a term that has a previously negative cultural cloud around it, that some people are never gonna see beyond it and if you took that into account and it’s part of your gameplan, cool.

    But at some time it must get real frustrating if you just end up getting tons of people who wanna dress like Bela Lugosi and do destructive shit without understanding that that’s just the outward veneer; when, instead of the smart people who see beyond the image that you thought you were gonna entice with your schtick, you get the kids who are just like “evil is cool! I wanna look evil!” Like them anarchists havin’ to yell, “Hey! We’re not bomb throwers!” all the time. I don’t know. It must get tiresome.

  3. hebrides Says:
    October 10th, 2005 at 12:26 pm

    And that’s not to say that LeVay wasn’t essentially a brilliant, self-made conman. He was that, but I think he was also more complex (in both very negative and complex ways) than all that.

  4. channel null Says:
    October 10th, 2005 at 12:54 pm

    And that’s not to say that LeVay wasn’t essentially a brilliant, self-made conman.

    …Who spent his final years living on a friends’ couch and died penniless. His scam worked great for about fifteen years, but it ran out of gas something quick.

    The Church of Satan–I called it a cast party gone wrong–is a joke as far as evil goes. The Temple of Set points out that the CoS philosophy is thoroughly inconsistent. And Satanists like the Order of Nine Angles do encourage human sacrifice and murder, and actually practice the Nazi stompings that they preach. Granted, that’s not a good thing, but at least with them, you know where they stand, as opposed to the CoS mealy-mouthed pseudo-Nazism… LaVey talking about success being based on “genes” is fucking ridiculous, a self-parody, but he was a showman first.

    I’ve seen some defenses of the term “Satanism” and also of the use of quasi-fascist imagery by LeVayan Satanists froma sort of neo-mallamutti or left-hand path perspective. Basically saying, we will be intentionally off-putting and if you can think for yourself and get passed that to check us out, well, then…good on ‘ya.

    Again, I think the Setians have a far more mature approach than the CoS: you join, and you and the ToS test each other out. In the CoS, advancement worked like Scientlogy: drop the cash, get the rank. With the ToS advancement to higher levels only occurs with demonstrated “communication”: it’s not so much elitism-for-elitism’s sake but tries to create a hierachy based on capability, although, granted, the capablity seems to related to talking to a space alien named Set.

  5. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 10th, 2005 at 1:05 pm

    Here’s the link that Hebrides left in the forum section. It’s pretty whiny, I have to say:

    http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/dvera/pagan/not-S/Bonewits-PPD-pamphlet.html

    It comes from somebody named Diane Vera who has a Theistic Satanism site here:

    http://www.theisticsatanism.com/

    Haven’t yet looked too much around her site yet.

  6. sparkwidget Says:
    October 10th, 2005 at 2:07 pm

    Eat some goddamn babies, you posers!

  7. JK Says:
    October 10th, 2005 at 9:33 pm

    Hahaha!

    Must suck being stuck to the other side of the same coin.

  8. Haeresis Says:
    October 11th, 2005 at 1:19 pm

    I like Diane, and I can empathise with her position. I’ve read more than a hundred interviews/news items about pagans in various places, and maybe two of them didn’t feel obliged to assure us all that they ‘aren’t Satanists and don’t sacrifice animals.” For a group so worried about discrimination, that’s pretty hypocritical and kind of obnoxious to boot.

    Without naming names, there are quite a few ’satanic’ groups that annoy the hell out of me…but I know quite a few religious satanists who are very, very bright people. There is some very fine gnostic satanic philosophy out there when you get past the pale faced goatee boys.

  9. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 11th, 2005 at 3:39 pm

    For a group so worried about discrimination, that’s pretty hypocritical and kind of obnoxious to boot.

    You’re absolutely right. That’s a central point to this debate which I was overlooking.

  10. rev max Says:
    October 11th, 2005 at 4:32 pm

    I like this essay

    Satanism and Witchcraft Before Lavey: He didn’t start anything, he ruined it

    He did not bring ANYTHING into the open. He made people that knew things, people who were from real traditions involving Satanism, HIDE MORE. He made it so NO ONE says “Satan” anymore; he made it a suffocating thing that has to be ON GUARD all the time. THAT is what HE REALLY DID…

    It became the official dogma of everyone to immediately launch into the speech: “Satanism is a Christian thing, it’s purely Christian. In order to believe in Satan, you have to believe in the Christian God.” That’s the official speech, more or less. RECOGNIZE IT? THAT is what LaVey did…

    The second stage of LaVey’s poison was his DOCTRINAIRE atheism - always a fucking chore to explain since he had a CHURCH - of SATAN. Yah, atheism, eh? Ha ha. “Lucifer Rising” has enough to say and document about the final stage of the LaVey poison: the fascist Nazi shit all in it. And now what is it? Just a bunch of non-famous people doing “outrageous” things for show? COS Rev. Leyba cutting himself to ribbons and having a Baphomet cut into his back, bleeding all over the stage, and then someone pees on him on stage? OH, LIKE THE INQUISITION? Like the Christian monks that used to flagellate each other? This is NOT Satanism. Oh, does that make Evil Knieval a Satanist too? How about people in the IX-games? Please.



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