In high school I was a nerd with nerd friends and after school and on weekends we hung out at big box book stores. I had run across The Satanic Bible (1969) on a few occasions and found myself curious about it. The bands I listened to at the time used Satanic imagery and praised Satan in their lyrics but I thought it unlikely that any of them were real Satan worshipers; it seemed to be more a matter of theatricality and religious criticism which, as a former Christian who flirted with neo-Paganism, I was entirely happy to endorse. But LaVey’s black book with the Baphomet on the cover seemed to signal an authentic worship of Satan, and I found the notion nonsensical and silly, but also intriguing. Although I had rejected Christianity, I nevertheless accepted their symbology as being something essential rather than something deliberately administered, and so I ignored the book for a good while, but there was a growing curiosity as well. How could someone rationalize the worship of Satan? The curiosity eventually overtook the incredulousness and I purchased a copy (and the idea of being seen reading The Satanic Bible by other students was definitely a contributing factor).

I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed to find that LaVey was no Satan-worshipper at all. Rather, his Satanism took the form of an atheist religious stance combined with a particular reading of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand along with Satanic aesthetics and symbolism. Not being at all familiar with LaVey’s philosophical roots, I found it an interesting read but not one that I took at all seriously. I was still an idealistic youth and decided it simply wasn’t for me.

Some twenty years later, new ideas drawn from my readings of Bataille, Nietzsche, and Hegel, along with influences from the music I was listening to at the time (primarily dissonant Satanic black metal but also a great deal of sacred classical music) and my research into various religious texts coalesced into a new conception of religion that I could only describe as a Satanism. My familiarity with LaVey was undoubtedly an influence and I may not have conceived these new ideas in Satanic terms at all were it not for my having previously encountered his works. Nevertheless, while there are many similarities in our thought, we ultimately came to different conclusions for different reasons and I think that calling myself a LaVeyan Satanist would be a misrepresentation of both my thought and his.

I write this with some hesitation because I don’t want to alienate my core audience. I’m not willing to compromise my ideas for the sake of clicks, but I still believe that I have a great deal in common with LaVeyan Satanists and it’s only fair that I acknowledge that. The promotion of a codified Satanic religion is a remarkable and significant thing that should not be discounted. I believe that my work has been relevant to LaVeyan thought and I would like for it to continue to be so, and I would like to remain allied with those who share similar ideas and interests. I intend to be as critical of LaVeyan Satanism as I am of any religion, but my concerns are more with the core text rather than with LaVeyan Satanists themselves, who I think have mostly taken LaVey’s ideas and ran with them rather than adhering to them as doctrine (however much it seems as though that was what LaVey himself would have preferred).

By way of getting a good look at LaVeyan Satanism and why I reject it, let’s look into the core ideas that shape the religion. According to an article by James L. Lewis in the Marburg Journal of Religion (2001), LaVey himself said that his philosophy was “just Ayn Rand’s philosophy with ceremony and ritual added.” Rand’s influence (as well as Nietzsche’s, about whom more later) appears clearly throughout LaVey’s work. She was a Russian-American novelist whose works outlined a philosophical position that she described as objectivism, which was oriented primarily around rational egoism, a philosophical position which rejects largely-Christian moral norms and altruism in favor of pure self-interest. I don’t think highly of Ayn Rand or her work but I also don’t want to give her ideas shorter shrift than they deserve. This is not the place for a full explication of Rand’s ideas, but neither do I recommend anyone subject themselves to a full reading of Atlas Shrugged (1957). For those unfamiliar, my suggestion is to do a google search for “This is John Galt speaking.” Some of the results will include the full text of a lengthy speech by that novel’s protagonist that gives a broad survey of Rand’s thought. That should be more than sufficient for our purposes, and given its influence, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with.

Rand emphasized an idea she called the prime mover, and this in particular was a clear influence on LaVey. Rand’s prime mover is distinct from the Aristotelian theological notion of “the unmoved mover;” rather, it refers to an exceptional individual whose achievements benefit society as a whole. This relates to Nietzsche’s idea of the exception; Nietzsche’s intended audience was not the whole of humanity, as with other philosophers, but rather those who wanted to live exceptionally. For Rand, the best society is one that allows the maximum individual freedom so that those rare individuals with the capacity for greatness are able to achieve it. But Rand’s philosophy of rational egoism seems to exist in a vacuum in which a few isolated individuals are acting in an environment in which most people are acting altruistically, and I think she underestimates how many people are already acting out of some degree of rational egoism. The top percent of humanity (in terms of whatever arbitrary metric that one might achieve for themselves rather than being accidents of birth) is still seventy-five million people, and even if only a few of them are Satanists, it’s certain that all of them are thinking in terms of strategic self-interest because that is the only means by which one can reach that echelon. If we expand that population across different metrics (the most learned, the most successful, the most influential…) we’ll get some overlap but, regardless, we’re left with a sizable population of “exceptional” individuals. This necessarily changes the strategic calculus for all parties (something I wrote about in “Satanism and Strategic Thinking”), and I don’t think that LaVey, Rand, or Nietzsche have taken that into account.

As mentioned, LaVey’s Satanism is atheistic. Neither God nor Satan are acknowledged as real metaphysical entities, and Satan is considered symbolic of the self, of humankind’s animal nature, of rebellion against God and Christianity, and of enlightenment and wisdom.

All religions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man. He has created an entire system of gods with nothing more than his carnal brain. Just because he has an ego and cannot accept it, he has had to externalize it into some great spiritual device which he calls “God.” God can do all the things man is forbidden to do — such as kill people, perform miracles to gratify his will, control without any apparent responsibility, etc. If man needs such a god and recognizes that god, then he is worshiping an entity that a human being invented. Therefore, he is worshipping by proxy the man that invented God. Is it not more sensible to worship a god that he, himself, has created, in accordance with his own emotional needs — one that best represents the very carnal and physical being that has the idea-power to invent a god in the first place? The Satanic Bible, “The God You Save May Be Yourself”

And this is one point where LaVey and I diverge. I appreciate the sentiment; actually, I think this is one of LaVey’s best ideas and I incorporate it, to some degree, in my own thought. But I am not an atheist. I am, rather, a kind of pantheist, who sees the entire cosmos as being a singular divine being. LaVey actually seems to acknowledge a kind of pantheism in the course of rejecting it:

To the Satanist “God” — by whatever name he is called, or by no name at all — is seen as the balancing factor in nature, and not as being concerned with suffering. This powerful force which permeates and balances the universe is far too impersonal to care about the happiness or misery of flesh-and-blood creatures on this ball of dirt upon which we live. The Satanic Bible, “–Wanted!– God Dead or Alive”

This framing of pantheism likely came from Nietzsche:

Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being. Where should it expand? On what should it feed? How could it grow and multiply? We have some notion of the nature of the organic; and we should not reinterpret the exceedingly derivative, late, rare, accidental, that we perceive only the crust of the earth and make of it something essential, universal, and eternal, which is what those people do who call the universe an organism. This nauseates me. Let us even beware of believing that the universe is a machine: it is certainly not constructed for one purpose, and calling it a “machine” does it far too much honor. …how could we reproach or praise the universe? Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful, nor noble, nor does it wish to become any of these things; it does not by any means strive to imitate man. None of our aesthetic and moral judgements apply to it. Nor does it have any instinct for self-preservation or any other instinct; and it does not observe any laws either. Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. The Gay Science, §109, 1882, Kaufmann’s translation

Here I think that both LaVey and Nietzsche have gone wrong. I was more generous to Nietzsche’s anti-pantheism when I last wrote about this idea in “Lovecraft, Nietzsche, and the Satanism of Cosmic Horror,” but I think all three of us have made the mistake of forgetting that, by virtue of our being here at all, the cosmos is indeed anthropomorphic and conceives of itself anthropomorphically. To reduce the complexity of the cosmos to this anthropomorphism would indeed be an enormous mistake, but to say that it’s absent is mistaken as well. Bringing LaVey’s idea back into the fold at this juncture, I am the god who is the cosmos conceiving of itself as the god who is the self. I don’t think that this idea is in direct conflict with LaVeyan thought, but nor can it be reduced to it.

I frame this pantheist conception in terms of different archetypes which overlap and which do not represent anything distinct but rather different aspects of the whole. Prime among these is Satan the Accuser, which is derived from the original, biblical conception of Satan. LaVey’s Satan, which is the more modern, Miltonian Satan, is the archetype I call Satan the Adversary, whom I also venerate but who takes a lesser role in terms of defining my philosophy. Satan the Accuser is a counterpart to God who exists in conflict with God, but they do not exist in diametric opposition. My early essay “Satan the Accuser” explores this notion (somewhat clumsily) in more depth.

I don’t think that LaVey himself would accept my ideas under his name. Though not explicitly, LaVeyan Satanism tends toward an exclusionist, doctrinal monism:

The philosophy presented in [The Satanic Bible] is an integrated whole, not a smorgasbord from which one can pick and choose. It is meant only for a select few who are epicurean, pragmatic, worldly, atheistic, fiercely individualistic, materialistic, rational, and darkly poetic. There may be fellow travelers — atheists, misanthropes, humanists, freethinkers — who see only a partial reflection of themselves in this showstone. Satanism may thus attract these types in some ways, but ultimately it is not for them. Peter H. Gilmore in “Opening the Adamantine Gates” (2005), an introduction to The Satanic Bible

I don’t require mutual recognition as a Satanist but I’ll take it as a good indicator as to whether or not I should take someone seriously. Someone focused on Satanism as a slavish and unwavering adherence to LaVey likely cares more about the label than the ideas, and likely doesn’t recognize the necessity of complex plurality in Satanic thought, which I consider entirely necessary. This can be contrasted with Christianity, which is manifestly pluralistic, but not intentionally so. To the contrary, the objective of all Christianities has been doctrinal monism; everyone just thinks that it’s their own doctrine that should dominate. Satanism should not strive to emulate that, but should rather reflect the complexity of the world with a complex plurality of thought. No free thinker is going to expect that everyone is going to think the same, especially about so complex an idea as religion.

This is not to say that anyone at all would be correct in calling themselves a Satanist, but that is a lengthy matter that falls outside the scope of this essay. Some might assume at this point that, if I’m not a LaVeyan, I must be affiliated with the Satanic Temple. That is not the case. Expect “Why I Am Not a Satanist of the Satanic Temple” in the near future.

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