Nitpick much? 
Truth is, I can never remember how to use them WRT possession -
Again, dammit, AGAIN with the freakin tab-enter fat finger posting too soon.
So, I can never remember how to use apostrophes - I thought leaving them out was appropriate.
I think the preivious post about LaVey mixing his hedonism with lots of witchy mumbo jumbo (The Enochian Keys and such) is what sort of undermines the whole thing. This atheist actually would agree with a lot of what “The Satanic Bible” says. It has got quite a bit of well reasoned hedonistic philosphy in it actually. But I disagree with LaVey emphatically about the inherent human need for dogma, hence his “ritual magic” claptrap.
If I’m reading you correctly, Satanists don’t give to charity, then?
How can an agnostic gal like myself get in on that poker game?
Do you draw inverted pentagrams? Do you use blood? Is it human blood? Is it goat blood? If I come to the poker game will you use my blood?
Can you tell me what metal artists are Satanists. I like Disturbed - is the lead singer a Satanist?
I think Juanita offers an excellent counter-point to Rib Eye. Instead of simply saying “I’m not giving to charity”, she needs a dogma to keep her from doing so.
Maybe there was something to his theory, after all
Interesting. Do you indoctrinate a magickal system into your beliefs? If so, would you describe it? How many of your fellow Satanists are actually also demonaltors? I have met a few of both in the past and have seen the Church of Satan folk tend to try to distance themselves from the demonaltor sects.
For those that don’t know demonaltry is the actual worship of demons and devils. It could be the worship of the incarnation of Satan but most likely it isn’t.
Satanists give to charity if they want to. The point is not to be selfish, but rather to not feel obligated to share things you don’t want to.
If so, it’s probably just for shock value. There’s the devil worship practiced by outcast teenagers, and then there’s Satanism, which doesn’t generally have trappings like that. Personally, I have nothing but disdain for the devil worshippers.
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Well, I have trouble even seriously calling Disturbed a metal band, but I seriously doubt that they have any Satanic influence. If you want Satanic metal bands, check out Deicide, Morbid Angel, Cradle of Filth, and Emperor.
I’ll post more later, once I’ve had a chance to reflect on what I want to say.
I gotta say,
hanging on to the Satan name is really misleading.
You might want to get the evil council together and seriously talk about a name change. The current one has too much shock value to be taken seriously.
I’d forgoe a name outright, and just explain the philosophy if I was you, it makes you sound much less kooky.
So, you guys have nothing to do with the creation of subliminable (dubya) messages in popular music?
I’m married to her.
I don’t recall ever being told that pride was a sin. Excessive pride yes, but pride no. It’s a natural human emotion (not that some of those haven’t been declared sins) and perfectly normal. Excessive pride is self-destructive, which doesn’t serve the self very well at all.
And I’d like to point out that there is a difference between taking pride in accomplishments and being egotistical about natural traits. For instance, being proud that you finished a marathon is perfectly acceptable, but feeling superior because you have high cheekbones should not be.
Just to play devils advocate (ha!), how does one make friends to be loyal to if one is anti-social and xenophobic to strangers?
By divine right, I take it that you believe in a divinity which grants you this right. If you do in fact believe in this divine entity, and you do, based on your religion’s title, call him Satan, then surely you must also believe in God. That as it is, do you completely discount all that has been written in His name? If so, on what justification?
You’re a bit vague on the rules though, does this mean that if I assault you, you have the right to draw and quarter me? Or is it more of an eye for an eye sort of transfer?
Personally it sounds to me like rationalization for avenging peer cruelty in high school.
By the way, I never signed that contract (I always read the fine print), so good luck enforcing it.
As a side not, I’m an athiest. I’m not intentionally promoting the worship of God, or any being, I am merely questioning the reasoning so that I and perhaps others might better understand.
Let’s try it from this standpoint.
I do believe in satan and god, and I don’t worship either. A big part of why some people say we prefer to be called satanists nowadays has a lot more to do with giving a bit of homage to someone we appreciate, not someone we worship.
For instance, if you equate satan with the serpent in the garden of Eden, he encouraged, (or tempted, depending on what side you take) us to grab on to what we believe is one of the greatest gifts possible: knowledge.
Most of the satanists I know love studying just about anything, but manage to avoid the whole looking down on other people because we think we’re so much more intelligent than everyone else. We do enjoy the occasional debate, however.
Also, if you equate satan with Lucifer (most people don’t anymore) then we can go off on a different tangent. A lot of people equate Lucifer with Prometheus (some call L the modern day Prometheus) Prometheus, as we know, gave fire to man. The gods, however, were pretty upset about this, and chained him to a big friggin rock so vultures could eat away at him as they pleased. In fact, I know some people who prefer to be called Luciferians, as they believe this gets them more away from being just the ones who oppose gods, to those who respect and pay homage to “Mankinds greatest friends”
Either way, it pretty much breaks down to the fact that we don’t worship anyone but ourselves, but we respect and give much thanks to those who are a great friend to man, and do not asked to be worshiped.
Hmmm. Interesting. This is all new to me, so apologies if I’m hopelessly off base with this. Some of what you’re describing sounds similar to Ayn Rand’s stuff, especially the primacy of self, etc. only with a spiritual (metaphysical?) component. I guess I’m trying to compare/contrast/something to get a feeling for where this fits in the spectrum of beliefs.
True, false, maybe, kinda, totally stupid?
Veb
It seems to me that if you’re going to use the Adam and Eve story, you ought to recognise all of that story. They gained knowledge, lost paradise and began to die.
If you consider that a fair trade, fair enough - but only looking at the upside of that deal seems disingenuous.
My impression of Laveyan Satanism is that’s always been a sort of a Thelema-lite; a, er, simplified version of ol’ Bullethead’s (aka, Aleister Crowley) work. Heavier on the proclamations of the rightness of hedonism and will; much lighter on any more complicated formulations, “secret” meanings behind the surface words–the usual occultist stuff, in other words.
If you could cut metaphysics out of it, Crowley and Rand were actually pretty similar. In the future, technology several more generations into tampering with God’s domain should be used to resurrect them both, imprison them into the same household, and make a reality tv series out of.
Thanks for everything so far, guys! I’ll try to get to all of these questions the best I can.
Part of the reason I wanted to start this thread, I should have mentioned above. A lot of the beliefs about satanism I don’t understand myself. Several of you have made the point that it might be better termed as something else. I really agree with you. There really is just no better term for it (again, refer to the attempts of some of my fellows calling themselves Luciferians) I’m hoping to wade through a lot of it with imput from you guys as well, and am researching anything I don’t know how to answer. But anyways, I’m being called out, so let me try to give some answers with some of these questions.
Most satanists I know don’t belong to churches, covens or any other group. It’s closest relative would be the solitary pagan thing.
There are definately many flavors of us. As many as there are types of God worshippers (I don’t mean for that to sound bad. I just can’t think of a good term at the moment to encompass all Jews, Christians etc.)
A lot of satanists do practice magick. A lot of us don’t, but almost all of us believe in it. I don’t. I do, however, have a great fetish for collecting the Grimoires and such (Grand Grimoire, Grimoirium Verum, Constitution of Honorus, Lemegeton etc.) A lot of it has to do with making pacts, of course. There really isn’t that much sacrificing in it, more along the lines of summoning beings of other plains and making deals with them. (on a side note, they never seem to want souls. they want things like tobacco, alcohol, red meat or possession of the body so they can induldge in promiscuous sex. Seriously. I guess demons have never read a health magazine.)
Most of us are overly friendly, and make friends quite easily. I think I wasn’t very clear about the friendship thing. We DO like meeting new people and making friends. We DON’T care about small children in India sewing soccer balls. It’s not that we’re really that mean spirited, it’s just one of those don’t know therefore don’t care things. I guess there’s really not a way to make that not sound mean…drat.
One important thing that I forgot to mention is the strong philosophy that it’s impossible to truely love someone if you don’t love yourself. Damn…now I just sound like a self help book. But I always said…Save the dolphins, save the whales, save the trees…how can you do that when you can’t save yourself?
The whole contract thing needs to be cleared up, too. It is way more of an eye for an eye thing than I originally made it sound. More of an I don’t hurt you, you don’t hurt me. But the minute you do, I do have the right to assume that you were intending on taking your harm to the farthest extreme, and therefore I have the right to defend myself accordingly.
Of course, like everything, the above will be taken too seriously. I would not sadistically torture anyone for hitting me. Maybe for getting my order wrong at the Taco Bell drive through, but that’s as far as it goes.
I guess the basic rule should state, “If you do something to intentionally harm someone, you should expect retaliation, and know that you deserved it when it comes to you.”
A lot of what Ayn Rand says comes from some of the philosophies.
As far as giving up eternal life for knowledge, I don’t think it was such a bad trade. I can’t imagine going through life without learning everything I could. Although living forever would be OK (I have LOTS of hobbies) And if we had knowledge of good and evil, would we truely think it was paradise? I guess the only two who could answer that are long gone.
I, personally would feel like I was living in gods personal terrarium if I were in the garden, but if I didn’t have knowledge, I guess I wouldn’t know what a terrarium was. Hmmmmmmmm…
I assume you mean the Christian God. Christian theology is pretty specific: Salvation = Good, Damnation = Bad. If you accept Christian theology, you believe everything, including the deity from which your religion derives its name, was created by God and ultimately is under Gods power - He is omnipotent. To idolize the Adversary, which you do by identifying yourself as a Satanist, is to suffer damnation. How do you reconcile this with the philosophy of acting in ones best interests at all times? Surely it’s in your best interests to enter into eternal life at the foot of God rather than suffer eternal damnation?
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Cite, please? I’ve never heard this before. What has Satan (or Lucifer) given to humanity?
Easy, Satan gave us the knowledge of good and evil when he tempted Eve into partaking of the fruit of that tree in that garden place.
No, no raisin, Satan has nothing to give. The tree, fruit, and knowledge all belonged to God. Satan tempted Eve into stealing them. There was no gift involved - they were not his to give.
But there are people who self-identify as Satanists who do in fact worship some version of Satan or other. In my experience, this version is very similar to the one that can be heard about in certain Christian churches. There are people out there who practice a brand of Satanism that recognizes Old Scratch as an actual entity who is to be worshiped with prayers, rituals, and sacrifices. I know other people who don’t necessarily worship Satan, but who think the concept and/or reality of him is pretty neat, who feel that evil is something to be embraced, and who sometimes try to perform magic (often with the sometimes pretentious k) for evil purposes. One of the people I used to get high with as a kid actually thought he had a conversation with a demon in his basement, and he thought this was the very height of cool. I therefore think it’s wrong to state, as mr. splitfoot did, that:
This post should not be construed as any kind of attack on mr. splitfoot, his knowledge, or his honesty. Rather, most of this is a just a big nitpick stemming from the fact that I know Satanists who believe in Satan and worship Satan and I sometimes get irritated when I hear certain people say these kinds of people do not exist. Also, I guess this ended up on being something of an expansion on the demonaltry comment made by dorkusmalorkusmafia.
I see on preview that the OP of the bifurcated foot made the following comment:
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That quote makes me wonder what, if any, experience you have with some of the religions of Africa and the Caribbean (Voodoo, which can be spelled so many different ways, Santeria, Macumba, and so forth)? I know many of these religions are often (and almost always inaccurately) associated with the popular concept of Satanism. I wonder what you think about these religions, if you’ve had contact with them. If not, I’m curious to hear more about your smoking, drinking, horny, body-possessing carnivore spirits. Whatever your opinion on these things, you should know before you respond that I’m a skeptic who doubts most people’s claims and beliefs about things supernatural, though I can and do respect people with beliefs contrary to mine.
I also think it’s funny that someone with the name Beelzebubba has trouble with possession . . . ah, wish I could turn it into a better joke . . .
Wow. I wrote much more than I originally intended. Basically, I just popped in here to say “hi.”
I got interested in this thread for its own sake and got rather sidetracked from Duty. Actually the point about health-scoffing demons preferring bodies for sex, drugs and rock 'n roll (so to speak) instead of souls got me to speculating about the idiocyncratic ways religions can become toxic if taken to excess. Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Tao…what are the inherent fracture lines?
That’s when belated light dawned that this thread probably belongs more appropriately in Great Debates. So…
Mod note:
Hate to lose a good thread from IMHO, especially given the overkill in oral sex threads, but a mod’s gotta do what a mod’s gotta do.
Movin’ it on over.
Flunking Satanism dismally,
TVeblen
for the SDMB