Worshipping Satan

I was in the shower to day, and I started thinking about Satanism. I don’t mean you, Satan, I mean the other dude, the Big one, the one who’s the root of all evil and shit like that. (Talk about credentials). Anyway, the very nature of Satan (ie as the embodiment of evil) made the whole idea of his ism seem pretty futile. For example, I believe there is a practice that involves sacrificing horses by hanging them from trees. This is my question:

"Why?"

Waht are the consequences of not sacrificing horses? an angry Satan. What happens if you piss satan off? In short, someone please complete this sentence:

If I do not appease Satan, then when I die I can expect to go to ____________ where i will undergo eternal ______________.

And just to beat a dead horse (HA!) let me also submit the contrary:
If I appease Satan I will spend eternity in ____________ where I will undergo eternal _____________.

I would appreciate any help.

Flup!

Actually, Satanism is not a religion based on worshipping the devil himself, it’s one that was started by this guy named Anton LaVey [I think]. Celebrities at the time of its genesis joined it like people did when that Dianetics book came out.

Satanism is sort of like credit cards; gratification in the short term followed by endless debt payment at usurious rates. People make sacrifices to Satan (the traditional offer being one’s soul) so that he will provide them with secular favors.

Allright, readers, this thread used the word ‘Satanism’, so sit back and listen to Ashley tell ya a story, ready?
“Satanism” before the time of Levay was never a horribly detailed religion, I think–but I invite anyone to correct me. I believe it was a ‘catchall’ term that included devil-worshippers, and other assorted Pagan religions.

Modern Satanism (Post-Levay) is, as Sskuggii mentioned, not about worshipping Lucifer, the fallen angel. It is a ‘deity-less’ religion that focuses on self-improvement (like Buddhism) and the rejection of all other religions. (Hence–“Satanism”. Satan being the old Jewish word for ‘opposer’, and not referring to Lucifer.)

Modern Satanists, I’ve found, are actually on average more decent then most other religious fanatics. They don’t believe in violence unless it’s to preserve yourself or preserve life. And they don’t have any ritual for animal sacrifices like most other religions. (Even Christianity had the ram/bull sacrifices. And in the Old Testament–Abraham was even ordered to kill his own son–although an angel jumps out at the last second and goes ‘Just kidding!’)
You could view Satanism as ‘Anti-theism’. A religion that opposes the worship of any kind of deity except for ones own self.

That concludes my rant. I hope ya found it informative.

-Ashley

Well from here . http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanism.htm

So it would seem that the example you used in the OP does not really matter to at least some satanists.

Well damn. I’ve certainly proven myself the ignorant fuck then haven’t I?

:hangs head:

I apologize if I offended any druids with my ignorant stereotype. I will quietly tend to my own business now…

flup

Don’t be so hard on yerself.

I actually had to be approached by a very kind and tolerant Satanist before I was encouraged to research it on my own.

Websites like churchofsatan.com look pretty intimidating and offensive if you’re uneducated about Satanism–but it’s more of a ploy than anything else. There’s no such thing as ‘bad’ publicity–and being controversial and reaching outwardly with it is one of the strongest methods the Satanists have.

-Ashley

Satan ironically enough has become the most powerful subordinate god related to mishcief, evil and (mis)fortune ever created. Making him ruler of the world until Michael the Archangel defeats him is a masterstroke in theology, in that it makes him and the angels on his side reachable to all of us. Which in turn would compel us to turn to churches and pray to Jesus for deliverance from the clutches of Satan.

From what little i recall from the satanic “bible”, its about getting power for yourself.
You’ll have demons on call for you if you perform the incantations correctly, (and God help you if you don’t),
Its all about doing whatever you can for yourself, and not helping anyone who needs help (survival of the fittest). Its the opposite of do unto others.

From an interview with glen benton. Admitidly, not representative of all satanists.

O: I’m going to sort of plead ignorance here. What’s so bad about God?

GB: What’s so bad about God.

O: Yeah.

GB: [Pauses.] Well, let me ask you: What’s so good about God?

O: Well, I just got got married a year or so ago and got baptized for that. Um, and I’ve just sort of been–

GB: So what religion are you?

O: Lutheran.

GB: Lutheran. [Pauses.] So what’s so bad about God?

O: Yeah.

GB: Well, in my life, I’ve grown up watching the hypocrisies of God, and I take things a little bit more seriously than the average fuckin’ person. And I’ve watched nothing but fuckin’ religion be used as a fuckin’ scapegoat for people’s actions. And I’ve never had a part to do with it.

O: So what does the devil have to offer?

GB: Well, he’s offered me and given me quite a bit. I’ve gotten more out of Satanism than I’ve gotten out of anything my whole life. By acknowledging the fact that every dollar that I make is Satan’s blood money [pause], I have no problem with it.

O: Okay. Well, I guess it’s all sort of intangible, but–

GB: I hate Christians, and I’ll put it to you this way: If you fuckin’ step on my toes, I’ll smash you in the face. That’s the way I look at it. I’m just like anybody else. If you step on my toes, you’ll get fucked up. That’s just the way I look at it. I’m not into lovin’ my neighbor, and I’m not into followin’ some idiot’s fuckin’ philosophy. I don’t follow any person’s philosophy but my own. I’m my own person, and as far as my belief system, yes, I believe in Satan, I partake in fuckin’ what I would fuckin’ consider fuckin’ ceremonies, I don’t fuckin’–I’m completely against God. I think that what Christians do is, by going to a church and getting married–you got married in a church, I got married by a fuckin’ counter person at McDonald’s where I walked in, they said some words and I walked out. All right, it had nothin’ to do with God or anything. It’s like a legal document. You go and get a marriage license, and that’s it. A marriage license has nothing to do with God. So to do that in a church… I just… No way, man. No. No thank you.

O: It’s weird. I’m sort of hearing a response to Christians, and Christians’ hypocrisy, but is it against Christians or is it against God?

GB: It’s against God–well, when we say God, let’s bring everything in that falls into the fuckin’ text of God, okay? ‘Cause then you’ll understand. To me, God means not only that fuckin’ Jehovah sitting up in the clouds somewhere, in the fuckin’ lunar fuckin’ another dimension, or whatever. Okay? It’s not only that: It’s church, it’s fuckin’ people peddling their fuckin’ bullshit, it’s people fuckin’ becoming billionaires off of people’s fuckin’ sorrows and their lack of faith in their selves. All right? It’s everything. Okay? It’s like, when my kid goes to school, I don’t want my kid getting up and singing fuckin’ something that has to do with God. If the Pledge of Allegiance and all them stupid songs, man, they were written by fuckin’ ignorants, and I’m not gonna have my kid be ignorant to that. So my kid’s gonna be one of the kids that leave the room when that shit’s being said. If we have to bring him home to teach him we’ll do that.

The rest of it can be found here.
http://avclub.theonion.com/avclub3011/avclub3011.html

Well, he sure proved his point. Having read that, I now look at (at least his branch of) Satanits as cool-minded, rational-thinking people who are only doing something that they believe in, and not because they’re just frustrated.

(read: WTF was that?!)

I mean, I’ll accept that not all Satanists are bad people, and even that most of the fire-and-brimstone stuff is just for “publicity,” but still, if they do look at Satanism as a belief in any sense of the word, wouldn’t they want to make it look somewhat good some of the time?

ARe there actual “Devil Worshippers”, like in the Omen?
Are there people who actually like LUCIFER, the Devil, etc etc.?

And do they want to go to Hell instead of Heaven…

There was a very curious thing that happened about 10 years ago in Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway in particular) where the worst fears of anti-rock and roll nutters were realised. A new style of music (and yeah, I know it had roots, but it was new in important ways) called Black Metal started, which was dedicated to evil, rather than the new-agey, self-improvement brand of Satanism (Laveyism). Everybody thought it was going to be just another scene with an extreme image and nothing to back it up, until the murders and church fires started. The first murder was committed by the drummer of the band Emperor (Bard Faust), when he stabbed a gay man who tried to pick him up. A number of churches were burned down, and there were death threats made against other bands who were not considered evil enough (the guitarist of one band almost had his house burned down).

It all came to a head when the ironically named Christian “Varg” Vikernes, from the band Burzum, stabbed Oystein “Euronymous” Aarseth (the leader of the band Mayhem) to death, either over a business argument, or because he had heard that Euronymous had told others in the scene to kill him. Lest you feel too sorry for Euronymous, he had gone around the previous years talking about his worship if death, and when the singer in his band Per “Dead” Ohlin committed suicide by blowing his brains out, Euronymous took photos of the scene (for distribution - one of these photos ended up on a Mayhem bootleg), and made a soup out of pieces of his brain. The scene slowly moved away from Satanism and towards Nazism (hidden behind the name of ‘Paganism’), and has now been absorbed into the heavy metal mainstream. For the first time, heavy metal music had been everything that its biggest critics had imagined it was. Here, it was Satanism as a love of death, and the physical destruction of religious people and their buildlings, that was brought to life.

Glen Benton has admitted (proudly) to taking part in rituals where he has mutilated and killed animals, as have a number of people in the death metal/black metal scenes. Recently, the guitarist from a major death metal band, Dissection, was jailed for being involved in another murder - I believe he was charged with something like being an accessory, but it’s accepted within the scene that he had a major part in the actual act. Nowadays, as I mentioned, the scene is more about extreme right wing views than Satanism.

HenrySpencer

I don’t worship Satan, but I’ve seen the pictures and he has a nice ass.

Somebody had to say it people.

<sits back and waits for Drain Bead to chime in>

uh, the devil made me say it Drain , :smiley:

Ok, so Laveyist Satanism is a good-hearted Druidlike attempt at self-fulfillment and spirituality based on a oneness of sorts with nature, which sort of refutes the existence of God de-facto. fine. And there’s this heavy metla bullshit whic is a belief system based on a lack of belief, like nihilism, the self-perpetuating epitome of bullshit.

Religion makes people do some weird shit.

Satanism really isn’t about Satan at all. It is about rejecting Christianity. Read here (http://www.churchofsatan.org/) and it should explain better than I feel like it today. I have discussed it here in GQ not too long ago so if you want to do that search it will be even better.

HUGS!
Sqrl

PS. Also check here. http://www.satanism.org/main.htm

HUGS!
Sqrl

<hijack>

I’m a big heavy metal fan and am familiar with Glen Benton (moronic idiot that he is) and the events in Scandanavia. While I’ll agree with what you say your post I’d like to note that not ALL heavy metal dwells on satanism (in any of its forms). A large portion of the heavy metal community feels the black metal bands are stupid and doing what they do mostly for show. Believe me I’ve read interviews that make the Glen Benton one seem almost intelligent. As with many things it is unfortunate that a few give the majority a bad name.

Now Playing: Agalloch – Pale Folklore
</hijack>