Much ado is made of the term “anthropomorphic,” but the issue between theists and atheists has little to do with anthropomorphism. The Baphomet, whether seen in the form that is the seal of the Church of Satan or in the drawing by Eliphas Levi, is anthropomorphic. The word describes a symbol that has human qualities. This much everyone agrees on — Satan is often represented in humanoid form. There's no actual controversy there. What is more to the point is whether a person's belief in the Devil is literal. To a literalist, Satan is a creature that exists in humanoid form deep in the Earth and tortures people for eternity, or something. Existence is not implied by the word “anthropomorphic.” There may be some people who believe in some kind of literal, biblical Satan, but it doesn't seem to represent any sort of numerically significant, coherent grouping of people calling themselves Satanists, and so it is mostly irrelevant except that Christians and other sorts of non-thinkers assume anyone who calls themselves a Satanist should also be a literalist about it. And so we're stuck explaining ourselves over and over; ours is a non-literal, symbolic Satanism.

Intelligent theistic Satanists seem to me to be echoing the ontological argument for the existence of God. If Satan is great and powerful, indeed maybe even the greatest power, then he must also exist in order to be so, otherwise you're not talking about anything. Either we're talking about something about which a person can be wrong in some sense or we're talking about nothing at all. Satan must exist in some sense or the whole thing is an atheistic LARP. They have a point. Simply labeling everything you like “Satanism” is neither philosophical nor religious, it's just an arbitrary personal labeling process. It is building an edgy, powerful appearance while having no actual connection to the occult realm from which the symbols and sense of meaning and depth are drawn. The word “symbol” doesn't rescue the atheistic Satanist from the question, “Symbol of what?”

For us, Satan represents the qualities of his romantic literary character, the essential philosophical direction imbued in Satanism by Anton LaVey, and the aspect of the human psyche Jung called the Shadow. He represents parts of our experience that are very real to us, and thus is real as a symbol of those experiences. He is not just a symbol in general of some vague individualist ideal. Rather, He is a metaphor for our actual, lived experiences of the dark presence, whatever you want to say that, in fact, “is”.

When I make a soup, I don’t care about the chemical reactions between the potatoes and the carrots. I only care about how to get the flavor of the soup I seek. In the same way, when I want to hex someone, I don’t care about the scientific mechanisms involved whether they be psychosomatic, psychological, or what-not. My concern is with how best to hex someone. As a magician, my concern is with effectively doing the thing — not with the scientist’s job of explaining it. — Anton LaVey, quoted in Satan Wants You, pg 114

Magic has always been a form of applied psychology. Its symbols have always been attempts to convey complex ideas about our own deeply felt connection with the universe that fashioned us through aeons of time and evolution.

Invocations and mantras can, under the right circumstances, trigger mental states in which the possibilities available to consciousness expand. You can choose to view it through whatever lens you like, as a magical realist or as a psychologist tinkering with the brain, and find out which view works better in which contexts for yourself.

That certain methods work under certain circumstances by achieving the aim of presencing the acausal, or creating a sacred space, or entering into the liminal, is beyond dispute. The experience of the presence of the Daemon is available to anyone.

Whether Satan exists is a question of how you delimit the term existence. Granted, the suggestion that he exists as an independent, sentient mind that is external to the human mind and can be reliably communicated with by the correct means leads to dubious conclusions and everything that's wrong with cults. Ideas that one attaches to experience because of ingrained theological assumptions are not actually proven in a satisfyingly objective way by mystical experiences, though we often delude ourselves into believing they are.

In order to DARE we must KNOW; in order to WILL, we must DARE; we must WILL to possess empire and to reign we must BE SILENT. — Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic

The exuberance of gnostic states is something that can easily lead one to false conclusions about just what has been experienced, and what has been confirmed, indeed what even can be confirmed by such experiences. Our communications belong to us alone. We should know when to keep silent.