I would only further note that as mentioned already, Satanism recognizes the need for social contracts. Having all entered the social contract of joining the SDMB, where the abiding rule of thumb is “Don’t be a jerk.”, then threadshitting, especially in MPSIMS, is just poor form. Reading only slightly between the lines, the best guess I can make to explain Lust4Life’s animosity is that he considers himself more of an “evil bastard” than Satanist, and is affronted that someone presumes to use an appellation he considers “Bad Ass”. Or something.
I can totally understand you being peeved. The nerve of this Satanist opening a Pit Thread to take people to task for not automatically understanding exactly what he personally means by the term. A much more logical and productive approach would have been if he had opened the topic in a different forum and amicably invited questions in an attemot to dispell misconceptions.
And I wouldn’t expect that they worship Mao, but either way I would investigate it before presuming to tell them what they profess.
So we’re all in agreement that Satan is mythological. Good. And he has known characteristics, good. This will make communication more efficient if someone wishes to use a mythological name to convey an associated set of concepts concisely. Maybe we could even use it as a root word for other terms.
More on his “known” history below.
Hmmm, opponent, adversary, accuser. But “gods”[sic]? Oh, you mean the Christian Satan. Is that the part of his history known to you? Just wanted to clarify. I’m always nervous talking to someone who “knows something” about the subject. The suffix -ist is used to denote a person who either practices something or a person who is concerned with something or a person who holds certain principles, doctrines, etc. Thank you for the random list of things it is NOT. I also believe it is NOT an old, old wooden ship used in the civil war.
Part of his “known history” you so adamantly invoked further above was widely known centuries before Christians hijacked his name. Are you complaining that we hijacked it, or that we don’t use it in their hijacked context? Consistency might help your unprovoked argument.
I didn’t see any Satanist here trying to impress anyone. Only inform. It takes moral courage to be wild, rebellious and hedonistic? Nah. Any ape with hormones, lack of a frontal cortex or conscience, and the social graces of a dog eating its own turds can be those things. But I expect you already know this well.
Alternative religions? As opposed to…what? Do you claim to have studied Satanism? And you still think they worship Satan and/or don’t grok the reasons for their name? Color me unimpressed with your research.
We’re phony? Because we’re not what you expected? We’re not “evil” enough for you, because we’re not devil worshippers? Because we don’t actually kneel to a figure that even you admit is mythological? You must feel very robbed of your illusions. The world must be a very rough place for you.
Satanists don’t have supporters, we’re self-sufficient. We are especially embarrassed by people who claim to be “evil bastards”, so please quit showing up our meetings trying to get laid and insisting that you know more about us than we do. The guys asked me to ask you, nothing personal, okay?
-pantheon, an avid saxophonist who is neither a follower of his saxophone nor its Credo
Thanks for the earnest question and effort to qualify it! I honestly don’t know if you are or not. From your self-description, I would at least say you share a great amount of Satanists’ perspective on self and religion. I especially love the part of your definition of religion as setting a bar too high to be met by its adherents. Reminded me of the Tori Amos lyric “Got enough guilt to start my own religion.” Failure=guilt/sin=need for redemption=perpetuation of the need for the church.
I guess the Satanic ideal would be to live 100% by the Eleven Rules of the Earth, and never commit any of the [tongue-in-cheek] Nine Sins, of which we would all fall short on occasion. Here is an excellent link to a discussion of the “rules” as well as our rather fast and loose interpretation of how/when/if to live by them lol. So there is a sort of discipline (note: children and animals are considered sacred, being the only true innocents. Please do not confuse the lack of obligation to help the weak with a forbidance to do so!), abiding 100% by such would be the bar-too-high, and there is a coherence of belief, although there is also the endless debate of personal interpretation that is the true hallmark of all religions. 
In short- is it a religion? It is called one. It is also a theology, a philosophy, a lifestyle. Nobody can assign you the label, that is a personal choice. I would at least hazard a guess that you would probably be far more at home kicking back and shooting the shit with a group of Satanists then you would at a church picnic, based, again, purely on what you have said.
Being a spiritual person, do yourself a favor and empower yourself by learning more about it, and any other religion or philosophy that interests you.
So Satanists don’t own cats? 
You forgot to mention that he was an atrocious (albeit diverse) musician, ghost-wrote two biographies of himself full of unsubstantiated and sensationalistic stories, lied about sleeping with Marilyn Monroe, bathed infrequently, called his own followers gullible fools, and had a fetish for watching women pee in their panties. (I’m not sure being disliked by Marilyn Manson qualifies as a negative, though lol.)
Now ask me if any of that matters to me in the application of Satanism in my own life. Not a whit. The message, even if plagiarized from several obvious sources, stands independent of the messenger. The fact is, I already had these various philosophies and lived this lifestyle before I had ever even heard of Lavey. All he did for me was provide a convenient label for the assorted collection, and pull off a refreshing re-combination of previous people’s thoughts.
Objectivism/Ayn Rand, Might is Right/Law of the Jungle/Jack London, Existentialism/Nihilism/Nietzsche, Crowley, Mencken, and many more were all tossed in that salad, the bowl was labeled with a Sharpie: Satanism, and I didn’t care who handed me the bowl because I had already been preparing the ingredients myself at home for years, and suddenly I knew others liked it too, and what to order from the menu to find kindred souls.
I appreciate your honesty in sharing that most of your disillusionment was based on illusions of childhood, your integrity in sharing what you learned about the messenger without disparaging the believers of the message, and your humorous take on the void of an archvillian it all left. I’ve read and enjoyed your stories and humor here for a long time. May Joe Piscopo touch you with his noodly appendage. Wait, I mean the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
But the satanic bible talks about him in imagery that leads our thought to the christian satan. At the very least as more than just an abstract “adversary”.
That, sir, is a legitimate point. It also addresses Lucifer, Leviathan, and Belial (the four crown princes of hell, along with Satan) as if speaking to outside entities and as if hell were an actual place. I will concede again that La Vey, at least, was in to theatrics and may have intentionally chosen the name to offend fundamentalist Christians and gain quicker notoriety. I personally do not practice any ritual magick, and skimmed right through these portions of the book, along with the Satanized Enochian Keys, every time I have read it up until now. My understanding was that imagery and ritual are powerful keys for unlocking raw emotional power within, and the mascot of the Christian Satan was easy and convenient for people to draw upon when performing rituals. The Christian Satan also grew out of and extrapolated the earlier concept, so there are overlaps, too. The philosophy, however, seems to be more along the more ancient Satan-as-adversary, with Christians’ dogma being the chief adversary.
<Shrug> Dunno. I’m not an apologists for La Vey. I call part of my personal philosophy “Satanism” but I don’t really call myself a Satanist much, and never a La Veyan Satanist. Please see my post to Sampiro to understand how I have incorporated this in my life. Lust4Life just came through completely threadshitting on an innocuous “Ask the” thread, and well… Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek.
The pure fact of the matter is telling someone what they can and can’t call themselves is ridiculous. Especially if they don’t care what you think it means, and would prefer you to remain in obscure ignorance if you can’t find the initiative to research it yourself, and/or are obtuse enough to refuse to believe it when a member explains it directly to you.
Quite - I’m a bit perplexed at the number of times people have tried to claim that Satanists have no “legitimate” claim to the title, or that they have to accept constraints on the word whether they like it or not. I don’t agree that the image of Satan belongs to anyone, including Satanists for that matter, but we have applied it and made it mean something so to say it’s just a name used for shock value isn’t true.
Here’s a further illustration of the point. What is an alcoholic? Quick, quick. Make a mental list. It will be based on your personal experience if you are one, your secondhand experience if you know one, and thirdhand which will vary in accuracy according to whether you are researching it, or building a composite image based on media, cartoons, movies, convential stereotypes you learned from others, etc. If you’re in that final category, an alcoholic is a wet-brained, slurred speech, trenchcoated, dirty unemployed beggar/criminal living under a bridge, constantly drinking unless already passed out, or out of alcohol in which case they are determinedly seeking more or experiencing DTs, right? Right?!?!
All of these are well known connotations, have a well known history, and whether a tribal enactment/play from 3,000 yrs ago or in Hollywood last week, an actor can convey within seconds to an audience the stereotype of an alcoholic…the formula is that universal and well known.
I am coherent, articulate, short-coated (so I won’t shed on your couch? lol@me), well-groomed, gainfully employed as an IT specialist, law-abiding, own my own home, have not had a single drop of alcohol (or any other recreational drug) for multiple years, and suffer not at all on a day-to-day basis from any cravings, or even thoughts of alcohol, much less withdrawal or DTs.
Would you deny me my right to self-identify as an alcoholic? Because it does not fit your preconceived notions and thousands of years of associations and connotations? Because the very root word of the title mentions something that I do not engage in? C’mon, alcholics drink, right? That’s why they are called that! In fact, they drink more than normal people! What, you’re a teetotaler? You don’t drink at all? Well, you’re obviously just using the name then for shock value and to trick people. You’re not a true alcoholic! I know real alcholics…true drunks…and you’re not one!
Kinda sounds ridiculous, dontcha ya [sic] think? Wouldn’t you think someone thusly berating an alcoholic, despite protests and explanations from the alcoholic, was a close-minded and ill-informed maroon? Especially if they became irate, when despite explaining to the alcoholic that he wasn’t a real alcoholic, that the bastard continued to dare to label himself such?
<dubious> well, at least you’d save the small child drowning… (and how that differs from an act of fill in the blank religion charity baffles me). I think I am tripping over the name–the term Satan has too many connotations and too much baggage to not be looked at askance, IMO.
I doubt I’m a Satanist–I have trouble with rules, too much guilt at being selfish, and(not that you asked) I don’t see the appeal. Best of luck to you all. Thank you for answering my questions.
Choosing to save the child would not be looked down upon by fellow adherents of my religion, at least. It differs from religious charity because if I give to someone, it is because I have a made a calculated choice that the pleasure of giving outweighs the cost of my donation, or because I have determined that this really is a responsible person fallen on hard times due to circumstances legitimately beyond their control. I would never give because I felt obligated that it was my duty to give, or that a higher power was watching and weighing my actions, or that I’d be damned for not giving, or to impress my fellows with my generosity. That’s the difference, motive.
The name is a big hangup for many people. Most of those people I prefer to be hungup rather than pestering me to invite them to an orgy or help them curse the policeman who gave them a well-deserved ticket. See my post about “bibliophile” for more on that :P.
The rules are kind of meant to be broken, in a way. And no central church is going to come excommunicate you or otherwise punish you for choosing to break them. From the link I sent, "A Satanist who absconded another and said “hey, aren’t you forgetting this particular Satanic Rule of the Earth…” would be laughed at and generally considered a legalistic sheep. "
Guilt is a bitch; learning to not feel any for refusing to abide fools or indulge psychic vampires was one of the most liberating experiences of my life.
You’re quite welcome. Thank -you- for the earnest question[s]. Good luck on your journey as well.
And, in one way, this is exactly why LeVay chose it. It was a double delight for him - first, of course, it raised awareness and notoriety and got him attention both from media (which later, actually, he shunned, and stopped granting interviews), but also from rich and powerful people who were the folks he really wanted to rub elbows with. His is not a religion of equals, remember. There was a time when he started kicking people out left and right, and he used a rather Calvinist rubric: anyone who wasn’t successful in the real world (monetarily) was considered a shitty Satanist, and one he didn’t want in his clubhouse.
(Which, if you’ve spent any time around Thelemites and neopagans, makes an obsene amount of sense. I’ve always wondered why a community that devotes so much of their time and energy to Prosperity Spells is too poor to build a decent church. But I digress…)
So yes, using “Satan” instead of, say “Bob”, got him a lot of attention and a lot of adherents he otherwise might not have.
But there’s another reason, and it’s a little more psychological. LeVay thought that before you could really be free and responsible to yourself, you had to shed all that Christian baggage you came preinstalled with. Even if you weren’t raised as a Christian, it is still in there, because you’ve been raised in a Christian nation (and I can only imagine this was even more so in the 60’s than in today’s more multicultural America.) But we don’t want to believe that. We, especially those drawn to his little counter-culture movement, want to think of ourselves as free thinkers. And in LeVay’s estimation, that itself had to be broken before we can *really *become free thinkers.
So, if you wanted to show people that they really do have a deep seated, perhaps unconscious, attachment to Christian symbols, how would you do that? LeVay thought that intentionally perverting those symbols was a good technique. Take a calm, rational, “free-thinker” and put him in front of a naked woman serving as an altar, consecrate the “host” in her vaginal fluid and hang the cross upside down. Now, how do you feel, Mr. Free-Thinker? If you’re like most of us, you feel somewhere in between uncomfortable and horrified. Good! Now you know you have an irrational emotional attachment to these symbols which aren’t even yours! Now get over it.
Those who could get over it could then become actual free thinkers. Those who couldn’t would lose interest and wander away.
But I think it’s also important to point out that this was only a Phase. Literally, it was Phase One. When LeVay decided it was time to move his religion into Phase Two and said, essentially, “ok, so that doesn’t bother us anymore. We’re done showing you what you aren’t (a Christian), now lets move in to what we ARE”, he lost a lot of people. Some due to the purge mentioned above, but also a lot who didn’t understand that Phase One was just a phase. They wanted to keep up the inverse-Christian stuff, and formed a significant splinter group. LeVay stopped doing that sort of spectacle, stopped granting interviews and took his group into relative seclusion in the mid 70’s.
Er no I dont actually consider myself an evil Bastard,that is what we call a joke aimed at ourselves and personally I hate evil,there is far too much evil in the world today.
Sorry to sound trite.
I’m sorry that it upsets you if people disagree with your self image but that is what we do on the Dope.we dont sit there while somebody says that the policies of political party A are correct while those of party B are wrong and stay mute if we disagree,that is the whole idea of the M.B.
Now as to the name you call yourselves,throughout the world the words Satan and Satanists conjour up(not a play on words) very specific images even amongst non Christians including hard core atheists.
Now assuming that you were brought up in the Western world the people in your group would have KNOWN 100% what impression your title would have given to just about everybody,no ambiguity,no shades of grey.
But you adopted the name anyway.
And yet you take us all to task for misinterpreting the meaning of your name and try to defend yourself on semantics ie.Satanism means opposition…so to save confusion
why didn’t you just call yourselves The Opposition or Self Worshippers or something that gave a more accurate and understandable,to the rest of the world,name?
Apart from anything else it would have been in your own interests,how many would be applicants have you had to waste your time on telling that you DONT hold Satanic rituals at midnight in grave yards?
And how many other people have you lost the chance to interest and convert to your views because they think that your a bunch of loony cultists?
As to your defence of your choice of name on semantic terms I’ll give you an analogy.
I go around telling people that I’m a Muslim and they form their opinion of me from that.
But those that bother to start enquiring about how my beliefs affect my life style are soon puzzled.
So no pork or alcohol then?
Oh no I drink and eat pork.
So how tough is it following the practice of Ramadan then?
Oh I dont do THAT.
Praying five times a day?
No actually I dont believe in god.
So why the hell do you call yourself a Muslim then?
Oh your using the RELIGIOUS meaning of Muslim,Islam actually means Peace and I’m an ardent Pacifist,I cant understand why people get it wrong so often,the Arabic word for peace existed long before the followers of Allah hijacked it for their own purposes…
No I’m sorry but it wont wash,what you call yourselves gives a totally false impression of what you believe in to the world in general,deliberately so in my opinion.
Though respect to Illuminati for attempting to correct peoples misapprehensions with this thread.
I don’t know how you can keep missing these fundamental points. Nobody has been taken to task for misunderstanding. Frustration has been expressed that even AFTER it has been explained, people continue to argue that we should not use the name. I don’t waste time with applicants because I don’t belong to any organized church or society. Satanist have not the slightest interest in converting anybody. It’s not some kind of spiritual pyramid scheme, we don’t earn more Satan-points if we bring six people in who can each bring six more people in. The only people in my life who know I practice Satanism are a few neopagan and atheist friends. I don’t tell people exactly because I am NOT trying to convert, shock, or impress anyone. I felt this thread to be a good anonymous, non-personal place therefore to discuss it and perhaps help educate anyone who was interested in curing their curiousity.
I understand your issue with it. I’ve listened to and understood your reasoning. Why Not? above gave an excellent synopsis of how phase one even somewhat agrees with your accusations. I personally was remiss to go to that detail, but only out of respect for Illumi’s thread and not wanting to hijack it by offending all the Christians. Phase one was over some time ago, and has nothing to do with if and why I call myself a Satanist.
Personally, again, I don’t care two bits about the origin or originator of the term. The term is purely instrumental as a label, and as such I’ll choose to continue using it, choose to not care (opposite of take to task) if people misunderstand it, and not waste my breath or violate my personal principles by ever trying to convert someone. Did you notice my response to eleanorigby when she wasn’t interested? kthanxbai. She seems to have a healthy view of religion, admits she is out for herself and her lifestyle, is at least concious of her own guilt and that maybe it isn’t a good thing, and was secure enough to ask questions and then walk away uninterested, and be aware of the reasons why. What more could I offer her, and what would it benefit me to try, whether I converted her or not? Zilch. Wasted energy. I’ll save that energy to spend on myself and my loved ones.
Your analogy would be more apt if tens of thousands of people also belonged to that particular flavor of Muslims, they had a codified system which explained the distinction published in a book which had sold millions of copies, and their information was widely available in major bookstores and thousands of websites. And guess what? I would still think it an exercise in futility to tell someone they can’t use the label they want.
Perhaps you could respond to my analogy of a self-labeled alcoholic. That’s not a challenge, it is in the honest hopes that we can have a productive discourse and better understand each other, which is why I frequent the Dope. If not, oh well. Absolutely no part of my belief system hinges on validation from others, and it specifically abhors preaching or conversion attempts. Hail Satan! 
WhyNot–thanks for the elucidation; and I understand the need or desire to shock people out of their boxes, but I now have another question:
how is this not just inverting Christianity? I don’t mean that, quite, but it seems to me that Satanists are just playing off established conventional faith constructs. In order to be Other, one must accept the “original” (I use quotes so as to not come across as espousing christianity as the one true religion–I don’t believe that; have never believed it, so I’ve always pretty much sucked at being a Christian).
Do you see what I mean? To make an analogy (that may or may not work), let’s say you have a color of an indeterminate hue, until you set it next to a different color–and suddenly what looked purple is now blue. Do you see what I’m saying? That only with the existence of conventional religions does the Satanist construct become highlighted. Could Satanism exist w/o Christianity? Buddhism can, Judaism and Islam can, as can Hinduism, and Wicca.
Thoughts?
We don’t care about either sets of these people, and certainly not the latter type. I’m starting to wonder if people are selectively reading this thread because arguments are being made on points that have already been answered - such as when I said quite clearly that Satanism doesn’t proselytise and that generally we don’t care what others think of us.
eleanorigby, could Satanism exist without other right hand religions? Certainly, in fact we’re hoping that one day it will. Was it founded as a result of these religions (specifically Christianity)? Sure, you could look at it that way, hence the whole first phase part of Satanism that was entirely inverted Christianity (and I’d point out, in terms of the timeline of the religion, pre-dated the writing of the Satanic Bible, so at that stage it pretty much was all raging against Christianity with no separate doctrine).
But that’s not where we are now, and if you read TSB and other Satanic literature you see that it has virtually nothing to do right hand religion - our philosophy and doctrine is entirely separate. But we are still anti-theistic, and where possible we work against the establishment of right hand religion in our attempts to help create a world that is secular and pluralistic. It’s not imperative that people stop following theistic religions, we just want them to stop trying to get others to do the same (and as in practice that never happens, we’d much rather just see the end of other religions as a whole).
Well, if it’s any comfort to you, Illuminatiprimus, I have my own (animist) religion, and I don’t want anybody else practicing it with me. Frankly, they’d muck it up. 
I have always really hated anyone trying to tell me that I have to go through an intercessor to communicate with the Ineffable.*
Or that I am inherently shameful, or have to hang my head. I know when I’m being shameful, and it’s not because I’ve done something that’s on someone else’s list. It’s when I do something that makes me feel ugly inside.
I’m sure you’re aware that the swastika as used by the nazis was originally an East Indian symbol of considerable usefulness and beauty. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any way I could wear a swastika these days without a lot of people getting the wrong idea. And I know you know that your situation here is an analagous one. Back in the 80’s, there people would actually move to another car on the train, or herd their children away from me, because I was wearing a leather jacket and a lot of makeup. Some days you feel like explaining, some days you don’t.
Me, I’m cool with everybody who isn’t mean.
*See the speech of Nesace in E.A. Poe’s “Al Aaraaf” to see how I feel about this. The part that starts with “Spirit! That dwellest where?”
cite
Scroll down; the rest of it’s not as good.
Very cool, thanks for sharing that. I’ve been using this username or close variants for about 15 years since reading Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, specifically the (two) stanza(s) related to the Pantheon:
Canto IV, CXLVI
Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime –
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,
From Jove to Jesus – spared and blest by time;
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods
His way through thorns to ashes – glorious dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time’s scythe and tyrants’ rods
Shiver upon thee – sanctuary and home
Of art and piety – Pantheon! – pride of Rome!
(CXLVII is also about the Pantheon, but the one above was much more powerful for me.) You can find the entirety online but it is quite lengthy. The highlights from Canto IV about Rome’s monuments can be found here , with handy jumps to the appropriate excerpts at top.
Wow, what an image! --And still, it stands. I would love to go there. I don’t know that we have anything manmade in the states that conveys the same sense of majesty.