Satanism Essay Research Paper The attention given

Satanism Essay, Research Paper

The attention given recently by the mass media to some episodes more or less directly tied to the world of Satanism is a symptom and effect of a morbid curiosity exhibited today by many with regard to the occult in general and also to the satanic in particular. All the more urgent then is the necessity of acquiring clear and significant tools for discerning the cause and the forms of this phenomenon. This is necessary also in order to understand its relationship with contemporary culture and the subjective motives which lead people to let themselves become involved in, or attracted by, this dark world. First of all,we need to specify that the term Satanism embraces a broad plethora of phenomena, with a thousand faces and numerous facets. Here we will limit ourselves to an examination of only some of the more significant examples, capable of bringing to light its principal characteristics for the purposes of an anthropological analysis. More precisely, our anthropological view of Satanism has the intention of dealing with two distinct problems, which are closely connected and can throw light on each other. On the one hand, we will present some elements which can help to identify the image of man that emerges from the context of satanic teaching, and on the other hand, we will describe some of the subjective motives of those who approach the world of Satanism.

A perusal of the most significant and widespread works of recent and contemporary Satanism clearly brings to light a “Promethean” vision of man, manifesting itself in his exaltation and divinization. “You shall be as gods”, promised the ancient tempter, and the promise has remained unchanged for those

inspired by him today. Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), undoubtedly the inspiration for many contemporary satanic authors, makes explicit the link between the exaltation of man and rebellion against God, particularly against the God of the moral precepts with which Crowley had been raised in a fundamentalist sect. “there is no law”, Crowley writes in his Liber legis, “except ‘do what you will’…. Be strong, O man! Desire and enjoy all things of the senses and ecstasy: do not fear that any God will reject you for this. Every man, every woman, is a star, if he finds his own true will; otherwise he is a slave, and

slaves will have to serve. Let mercy be excluded: all who have compassion are damned! Kill and torture, spare none!”. Anton Szandor La Vey (born in 1930) is of the same line of thought. His Satanic Bible (Avon, New York, 1969) begins with nine satanic affirmations, a sort of hymn to the human desire of psychhophysical self-gratification at whatever cost. This holds with regard to oneself (”Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence. Satan represents vital existence instead of vacuous spiritual/ dreams”), with regard to others (”Satan represents revenge instead of turning the other cheek”), and above

all with regard to God and his moral norms (”Satan represents man as nothing more than another animal, sometimes better, but more often worse than those who walk on four paws, because, by the pretext of his ‘divine intellectual and spiritual development’, he has become the most vicious animal of all. Satan represents all the so-called sins, to the extent they lead to physical, mental

and emotional gratification”). Already in this manifesto of Satanism the symptoms of a profound rebellion against religion in general and against Christianity in particular clearly emerge. As one continues to read The Satanic Bible, one meets with a little chapter significantly titled: “Wanted! God dead or alive”, in which any type of relationship with God, to whom men turn only for relief from physical evil and pardon for moral evil, is deemed nonsense. The negation of the role of God is the satanic condition for the fulfilment of man, inthe sense that the Satanist has no need to bow his head before anyone and must find in himself all the resources necessary to create his own happiness on earth. “All religions of a spiritual nature”, writes La Vey, “are inventions of man”, a sort of projection into infinity of his frustrated desires, of all that

man would like to do without being able to. On the contrary, “the Satanist believes in the complete gratification of his ego”; he lives his life “like a party”, without denying himself any satisfaction and without cultivating that useless love for every man which the Satanist holds impossible and absurd: “You

cannot love all; it is ridiculous to think that you can do so. If you love everyone and everything you lose your natural capacity for selection. Love is one of the most intense emotions experienced by man and hate is another. Attempting to experience love indiscriminately is very unnatural. If you are not able to experience one of these emotions, neither will you succeed in fully experiencing the other”.

The illusion of the self-divinization of man through rebellion against God is also cultivated on the ritual level. The principal feast for the members of the church of Satan is their birthday (given that “every man is God”), and the collection of satanic rites as a whole is presented as a series of psychodramas

aiming at liberating its initiates from the unconscious heritage of their previous Christian religious membership in general, and of the Catholic religion in particular (cf. T