Tomorrow begins year LIV, Anno Satanas.

As we’ve noted for several years, human society is in a raging turmoil of rabid tribalism, with barbarity on a perpetual rise. Individual liberty is threatened by many antagonists. We Satanists advocate for wider use of reason and forward thinking as tools to resist the trending rush towards authoritarianism, but that momentum is difficult to halt. Yet we fight our own battles in varied arenas to attain the goals our values have brought into focus. In time, society will move according to that will.

Whether circumstances might curtail the ends we seek, every moment that we live and breathe we continue our efforts to shape the world, and by so doing craft legacies that will move those who value our pursuits—both in the present and in times to come. Mortality is our physical doom, but that does not evoke fear. We know that the waves we’ve lashed into motion through the uniqueness of our creativity will propagate throughout the oceans of remembrance.

My dear comrades, may your invincible wills surmount transitory woe while joy manifests as your deepest self-determined destiny. You live with utmost vitality, and so earn respect and admiration from your fellows, who avidly join you in shaping the flux of existence.

From our Black House in the Haunted Hudson Valley to all of your lairs, High Priestess Nadramia and I offer our blessings to you indomitable individuals who ever enkindle our excitement!

As is our tradition, we raise our glasses to our kind—Satanists, fellow secularists, freethinkers and all champions of the best qualities of our species—marking the dawn of a New Year of health and prosperity to be filled with a abundance of delight:

“Here’s to champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends!”

Joy to the flesh—forever!

Shemhamforash! Hail Satan!

—Magus Peter H. Gilmore