alt.satanism FAQs file
tyaginator
Version: 1.0
Revised: 50030418
Posting-Frequency: monthly or when desired
[Contents
Introduction
GODS AND DEVILS, SATANISTS AND CHRISTIANS
1. So go on then, what is Satanist?
2. Do you believe in God? Do you worship the Devil then?
3. Do you hate Christians?
4. Go on then, rant a little about "The Church".
5. What about Churches of Satan then?
RITUAL
6. Ok, what about Satanic ritual?
RELATED GROUPINGS
7. Now don't rant, but what about Pagans?
8. Any words on Atheists?
9. Dare I ask... Crowley and Thelema?
SATANISTS IN HISTORY
10. Are there any famous Satanists?
11. Whooooah! Some of these people definitely weren't
known for their beliefs in "personal freedom"
were they?
DOCTRINES
12. Do you believe in magic?
13. So what do you believe in?
14. Why do you wear an inverted cross or an
inverted pentagram?
APPEARANCE AND SUBSTANCE
15. Why use the word "Satanist" when you know
people will get the wrong idea?
16. So what do you get out of it, then?
17. Are you going to try and convert me?
18. Why do you have a "Responsibility in free
speech" link on your page?
19. Is "Hi baby, I am a Satanist." a good chat up line?
20. I want to ask some more questions.
21. Is this finished?
22. How honest is this?
=========================================== FAQ PROPER BEGINS HERE -- bobo]
[Introduction]
Someone suggested that I write a Frequently Asked
Questions page on "Satanism". I have collected a few
questions together and answered them from my point of
view. If you read and understand this you will realise
that writing a generic "Satanism FAQ" is impossible. I
have been as honest as I am willing to be in this. I
admit, I have not explained some things fully because I
don't feel the urge to. I have not told any outright
lies though.
I shall no doubt be slated for doing this, both by
Satanists and non-Satanists but I don't care.
So go on then, what is Satanism?
Although later I will claim that Satanism has little to
do with religion, it is always easiest to start with
the Bible and the arch-angel Lucifer. At this point it
is easier to assume that God exists and the Bible has
some degree of truth to it. Lucifer was, in angel
terms, next to God. God is infallible and would not
have created a "broken angel" and so, it seems that
Lucifer was the closest God had to a peer when it came
to chummy philosophical chats over a cup of tea.
Lucifer didn't always agree with God and in a more
famous argument thought that God was a bit off, giving
man everything he wanted and treating them like pets
and should, perhaps, be given "free will". Eventually,
Lucifer offered man (or in this case, woman) free will
and the human race was cast out of Eden to live their
own free lives. In this case, the bringer of light
showed man the light.
The word "Satan" is a descriptive term, it is not
Lucifer's name. It means "accusor". Interestingly, you
won't find any bad references to Lucifer in the bible.
Lucifer as a devil rather than an accusor is an
invention of the middle ages when it was convenient to
have something to pin blame onto. A "Satanist" in the
pure sense is simply someone who won't automatically
accept something because it's the way it always has
been, a "Satanist" in the pure sense is someone who
will have a strong belief in free will, a "Satanist" in
the accepted sense is someone who believes in their
personal freedom to do pretty much anything they want
to.
Do you believe in God?
Do you worship the Devil then?
Personally, I don't believe in God in the clear cut way
the Bible presents it. The Devil is a relatively modern
invention, the bad guys in biblical times were actually
false gods, and there was never any hint that the
arch-angel Lucifer was false. Lucifer's only "crime"
was to tell God he was a bit of a control freak and to
give man freedom. It is interesting to note that God
sent his son to earth to preach pretty much the same
thing and to repledge man's eternal freedom.
I don't worship false Gods, I don't worship the
arch-angel Lucifer. In fact, I don't worship anything
or anybody. I do respect Lucifer's courage in speaking
out against God but then it would seem, so did God.
Do you hate Christians?
Generally, I have found most of the Christians I have
ever met to be nice and fair people. By definiton,
Christians believe in the teachings of Jesus. There can
be little doubt historically that Jesus existed,
whether he was the son of God or just an inspired
leader and speaker, is another matter though. Most of
what Jesus said was all generally sound stuff. He
didn't like what was happening with the church, he
spoke out against it, he attacked the temples. He
taught freedom, he asked people to listen, to think and
to understand. In fact, everything Jesus did was
perfectly in fitting with Satanistic beliefs, he was
himself an excellent example of a Satanist. True
Christians who have read the teachings of Jesus and
understood them for themselves are generally nice
people and good friends. People who call themselves
Christians, and instead follow the warped teachings of
Paul who went on to found the Catholic church have a
rather strange (and often completely misguided) view of
what Jesus was and did.
Go on then, rant a little about "The Church".
Aaaah, thank you. I started above by mentioning Paul
and the start of the Catholic Church. Jesus spoke out
against the temples and the established church so it
seems strange to me that Paul would then go and create
it all again in Jesus' name. All Churches are about
power and control; the elders of the churches want to
look after their flocks, and, at the same time, fleece
them for everything they can get. A huge amount of bad
has been done in the name of various churches but this
is not a "bad things the church has done" FAQ. How
people can read the teachings of Jesus and then believe
that they are not worthy to talk to God themselves, or
that only the Pope is worthy to listen to God is beyond
me. Incidentally, I don't just have a downer on the
Church of Rome... Martin Luther is often hailed as the
creator of the modern church and the person who accused
(that word again, notice) the Catholic church of
speaking crap. Luther was, however, as big a control
freak as any of the corrupt popes and when the Jews
didn't come to join his church as he expected, he
started a vicious and renewed wave of anti-semitism
with articles like: The Jews and their lies. I don't
think all churches are bad, but it's very hard to find
ones that aren't.
What about Churches of Satan then?
The Church Of Satan is a wonderful organisation. It is
quite a shame LeVei is dead since he was a wonderful
example of Satanism in action. I am not sure of the
exact figures, but for about $100 a year your average
screwed up teenager would not only get a really cool
black membership card with a red pentagram on it but
they'd also get a set of laws to live their life by and
a group of people to identify with. He must have made a
fortune out of a need to belong, and good luck to him.
There are churches of Satan that profess to teach
ritual and will tell a new Satanist how they should
act. Personally, I can't see the point, but then I have
never been in one nor seen the need to be in one.
Ok, what about Satanic ritual?
Bunkum! And it's all written in medieval gibberish too!
To be fair, like "Christian" ritual, a lot of true
"Satanic" ritual is merely there to reinforce various
beliefs for the various churches of different types of
Satanic belief. Most other Satanistic ritual was
written by the people who used "Satanism and Devil
Worship" as an excuse to burn loads of old women, you
can usually spot it because it all tends to be based on
Christian things with the word "God" replaced with
"Satan" or, simply the Christian stuff spoken
backwards. If you are into this sort of thing, the only
ritual I have ever thought interesting was "Das
Tierdrama" which basically takes the congregation back
to animal roots and then shows them how man's evolution
makes them more than animals. Oddly enough, such quotes
as "Not to kill without eating, that is the law, are we
not men?" seem a tad odd when it tends to be man that
kills without eating rather than animals. Maybe I just
don't understand this mass, which is highly likely.
Now don't rant, but what about Pagans?
No no, I shan't be wound up... I shall not rant on and
on about Wiccans. There are far too many different
types of Pagans to say anything sensible on this matter
but, since someone mentioned Wiccans anyway, all I have
to say is that to my mind, they are far more biggoted
and closed minded than most Christians I have ever met
and, to make matters worse, their music is as
unbelievably dire as the gods they worship. And why do
their gods wear such awful clothes? At least Egyptian
ones dress well! There see, I didn't rant much, did I?
Any words on Atheists?
Of course! Shoot the lot of them. Most normal people
don't call themselves Atheists. Atheists tend to define
their whole being by the fact that they don't believe
in God and then they seem to think that it is their job
to ram this belief down your throats and bore you
senseless with loads of trivial crap about why there
can't be a God. It requires a great deal of devotion
and belief to be an Atheists in the same way as it
takes a great deal of devotion and belief to be a Born
Again Christian.
Dare I ask... Crowley and Thelema?
Of course you dare! I shan't be too snide, honest.
Crowley admitted openley to writing much of his stuff
to insult the intelligence of his readers. As a poet,
he made a very good member of the Plymouth Bretheren.
Crowley is probably best known for "The Book of the
Law". This book is an excellent example of how the
bible should have been written in that firstly, it is
incredibly short and secondly, the first "law" in the
book says that no-one should attempt to interpret this
book for another person (where would the church be if
the Bible demanded that then?).
I suspect Crowley was a repressed mathematician, and
this somewhat effected his mental wellbeing. This is
getting way out of the scope of this FAQ though so go
and look at a Thelema FAQ instead.
Thelemites believe the following things...
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Love is the law, love under will.
Every man and every woman is a star.
I find nothing wrong with "Do what thou wilt" but
personally, I have a problem with the latter two. Maybe
I should update my opinion of Crowley to include the
fact that deep down he was a big softy and a nice guy
at heart. One word of warning, never get into a
discussion about numerology with anyone who professes
to be into Crowley.
Are there any famous Satanists?
Interesting question, and a hard one to answer. The
obvious answer is that Lucifer is quite a famous one, a
less obvious answer, and one I get ranted at for saying
is that Jesus nearly also fits the bill of a Satanist
especially the strange ideas he had about us being
sheep, and his Father being a shepherd... When people
start calling you sheep you have to worry about their
intentions. I guess it is perfectly logical that Jesus
would hold similar beliefs to Lucifer really though
when you think about it.
On a more serious note, pretty much anyone who is
famous for having beliefs that went against the norm
and was willing to speak out. Leonardo Da Vinci fit
this well though he was so scared of the death penalty
that his "speaking out" is still only recently coming
to light. There has been a lot of critical examination
of his works with the aim of showing he was
deliberately speaking out against the church (see
especially Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince's book "The
Templar Revelation") but Da Vinci was still a brilliant
scientist and hardly any of his inventions and thoughts
were overly compatible with the age. In some ways, it
is a shame that Leonardo lived under so much control
and in so much fear; the world may well have been very
different if that were not the case.
Gallaleio, Newton, Darwin, Livingstone and the
Teletubbies all spring to mind... On a more "negative"
note PR wise, so do Rhodes, Hitler, Luther and Stalin.
Whooooah! Some of these people definately
weren't known for their beliefs in "personal
freedom" were they?
Nope... You are right there but it is their right to
believe that they can enslave other people. This is
where Satanism stops being quite so nice and fluffy as
libertariasm. Whilst Satanists believe firmly in their
own personal freedom they don't necessarialy believe in
your personal freedom. Without mincing words, and using
medieval language that can be taken in more than one
way, Satanists believe basically "Do what you want".
Most Satanists have a deep seated contempt for people
they view as having no free will of their own and no
particular desire to help them. It has to be said that
"love and respect for your fellow man" is not a great
fundamental of Satanism.
Do you believe in magic?
Glad you asked. The simple answer is yes. The
complicated bit is the definition of "magic". Simply
speaking, an act of magic is an act of causing a change
of state in something. I once saw an excellent article
on this somewhere but I have lost it.
Really simplifying things, if you do something directly
to get a result (like hitting someone, and making them
fall down) then you have done an act of lower magic. If
you were to indirectly influence things around you to
cause someone else to hit the person and for them to
fall down, you would be performing higher magic, and
the 3rd party would be a "demon". Some people are good
at "causing things to work out". Whether they do it by
direct means or some means you can't quite put your
finger on, they are still performing magic. Some people
are really good at this and should really be classed as
quite powerful practitioners of the art but a lot of
them don't know they are doing it, or how they are
doing it. The mumbo jumbo of a lot of the "magical
sects" is an attempt to define means of performing this
influence on the world, maybe it works, maybe it
doesn't but most of them look really silly. Karl Jung
had a lot more sense to say about this sort of thing
anyway, as does the Kabbalah.
Incidentally... The mumbo-jumbo brigade will insist on
mispelling the word "magic" in an attempt to confuse
things. They claim it is to differentiate it from the
art of the stage magician. Personally, I think that
good stage magicians are far better practitioners of
magic than people who dance naked around fires and wear
dirty rags, but there you go!
So what do you believe in?
This is a biggie... Obviously, personal freedom is one
of the major ones. I would also say truth as well
although I am an excellent liar so I can't use the
excuse that honesty is easier than lies. That story is
something parents tell kids, but it's a lie in itself,
lying is almost always easier than telling the truth
and these honesty obsessed authority figures seem to
have no problems telling their kids about strange fat
blokes in red suits who come down the chimney
delivering presents every Christmas.
Oooh, I have one... I believe in Fairies (and I don't
spell it Faeries, that seems to be like the
Magic/Magick argument). People who believe in fairies
have a much easier life than the cynical buggers who
don't. If you don't believe me, try it sometime!
Why do you wear an inverted cross or an
inverted pentagram?
The symbols of Satanism are traditionally the inverted
pentagram and the inverted cross. They are both middle
aged inventions but I can't see any harm in a symbol so
I opted for the inverted pentagram. I wear it mostly to
remind myself what I profess to believe in because
sometimes, it's not the easiest belief system in the
world to keep.
I wear a small inverted pentagram. It was made for me,
in white gold, by Lionel Pepper. I had another one
before but I gave it away.
I don't own a ring with pentagrams on it (actually, I
do, but only as a joke!). I don't own one of those huge
1 foot wide pentagrams you can buy from Goth shops. I
don't have any pentagrams tattooed to my eyelids or
whatevever. I really can't see why Pagans have a
tendency to wear all of this crud but I guess it goes
with their general lack of dress sense. One thing I
never really understand is why both Christians and
Pagans have this tendancy to wear their symbols outside
their clothing. They must take a special effort to
untuck it, and keep it in the right place because most
of them are on quite small chains. Very strange!
Why use the word "Satanist" when you know
people will get the wrong idea?
The answer to this one depends on my mood. Sometimes
the answer will be that I object to the medieval
re-definition of the word into something bad; sometimes
I will say that I merely want people to assume I am
something I am not, for a quiet life. In truth, I
mainly use it because it is the proper word for what I
believe though sometimes, I will qualify it by calling
myself a "philosophical Satanist". Someone once asked
me "If it is a descriptive term, then why do you
capitalise it?" I never could think up a good answer to
that.
Telling people you are a Satanist is quite useful if
you want to filter people. If they are biggoted, and
closed minded, they will just go away, if not, they
won't care less and some will even ask you a bit more
about it. I am always intrigued though by how many
people think I secretly dance around bonfires on cold
dirty moors stabbing chickens or babies (I mean, apart
from anything, I would use a nailgun!).
What so you get out of it then?
Smelly Pagans usually avoid me at parties. If that's
not a good thing then I dunno what is!
Are you going to try and convert me?
Nope. This path is one you take yourself. I am not even
going to tell you where to start. If you are interested
follow some of the links on my homepage. If you are
really interested, ignore them because they are mostly
crap.
Why do you have a "Responsibility in free
speech" link on your page?
A few people have asked me this... They are a Christian
organisation and I tend to agree with what they say.
Simple as that.
Is "Hi baby, I am a Satanist." a good chat
up line?
Not sure, I have never tried it. I think for it to work
properly you'd have to use it on people in black
leather jackets, purple silk clothes and an odour of
patchoulli. You may want to flash your Church of Satan
membership card and add that you are looking for
virgins to stab with your dagger too to get the full
effect.
I want to ask some more questions.
I want a wee, mail them to me, and I shall see if any
are worth entertaining.
Is this finished?
No, you daft gobbin. It says at the top that it is
still in the draft and proofread stage. Whether it will
ever get out of that and be published is another
matter.
How honest is this?
That is really for me to know, and for you to decide.
If you have read thus far then you will have formed
some opinions of your own anyway. As you may realise,
honesty to others isn't really something Satanists hold
strong to so it is highly likely that this whole FAQ is
nothing more than a tissue of lies. Whilst it may not
appear obvious why I would lie, if you accept Satanism
as the worship of the Devil then you could also accept
that I am trying to make Satanism seem clean,
honourable and nice in order to lure people into a
false sense of security whilst I twist their minds and
steal their children for midnight sacrifices.
Have a nice day.
=============================================
TITLE: Michael's [alt.!]Satanism FAQ!
VERSION: 500301 [copied from Michael's website
(where I found several hidden
version dates! including:
1998-09-19
&
2000-09-09)
URL: http://www.lorry.com/Docs/sfaq.html )
NOTE: I hope he sends me updates. :>
COPYRIGHT: usenet copyright 2003-2666 Michael Lawriel
all rights reserved.
EDIT: reformatted slightly in transits, additions and
editing decisions: bobo