Satanism, despite its numerous shortcomings, has to be one of the most fascinating and startlingly coherent religions of the last millennium. It’s also frightfully misunderstood- there’s no doubt of that in anyone’s mind- but one can assert with a reasonable level of assurance that the majority of prejudice towards this ‘religion’ is fuelled by ignorance, and most probably the deep seated dogmatic values that Britons are forced to imbibe every single day. Indeed, journalists, grasping desperately for a succinct phrase to discuss bizarre crimes such as the mutilation of goats on Dartmoor (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23367793-sheep-slaughtered-in-satanic-ritual.do), fall prey to labelling them as the aftermath of satanic rituals. The same goes for most cultural forms that exist on the very fringes of society. Baudelaire’s poetry, Marilyn Mansons’ music or even cult films such as The Wicker Man have all been accused at some point of having a ‘satanic agenda.’ The reality is quite the opposite. In fact, one could argue that almost a third of the British population actually conform to Satanic values – without even knowing it. Western Society, on the whole, is a Satanic culture, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
But what the hell is Satanism? The vast majority of the middle class- especially those frightful weasels with Daily Mail subscriptions- would probably brand it with wonderfully vibrant adjectives such as ‘monstrous,’ ‘evil,’ ‘depraved’ and, if they’ve done a splinter of research, ‘elitist.’ (Intriguingly, many of those attributes can also be traced to the Conservative party but that, alas, is for another article.) Such people quite rightly label the movement this manner- but they do so for all the wrong reasons. Satanism is Evil and monstrous, in the Judeo-Christian sense of those words, but that certainly does not equate it with child molestation, sexual violence or bank robbery; No, Satanism is quite something else altogether.
The Church of Satan, founded by an ex-carnival performer named Anton LaVey, is considered by the majority of those interested in the movement as orthodox – orthodox in the sense that it contains doctrines, such as rituals, bibles, ceremonies etc. - but, crucially, it is orthodox in the sense that any ‘satanic’ act that does not comply with the values of The Church of Satan is by default non-satanic. Therefore, all the goat murders, child rapes and other crazy deviant crimes of the last fifty years are not under any circumstances rooted in Satanism – quite the opposite, in fact. They’re just the offhand product of a bunch of crazy acid-heads whose attention span happened to short out in a field full of farm animals.
The focal point of The Church of Satanism – the form which this article obviously refers to, rather than the loose adjective used to define mutilating sheep’s genitals – is, as many are aware, LaVey’s Satanic Bible. With its sexy black sheen and intricate pentagram sketched onto the cover, one can hardly be surprised to learn that the book is something of a household item. Not dissimilar to Thus Spoke Zarathustra or La Nausée then, in the sense that the majority of those who adorn their bookshelves with it are ignorant to its ideas or content. Despite its enormous pall of controversy, the Satanic Bible can be obtained effortlessly from most bookstores at a generous discount and, in the egotistic spirit of its founder, customers from Amazon are treated to an edition that displays LaVey’s closely shaven head on the blurb.
Essentially, when one peels away the layers of majestic prose in LaVey’s Bible, saturated with adjectives and some rather interesting send-ups of Christianity, the visible centre of gravity in Satanism is individualism – do not accept blindly the established values of your society, the Satanic Bible implores you, but instead create them for yourself. Satanists do not believe in any form of paternal God or intelligent being and therefore the concept of an intrinsic morality is completely dismissed. If there is no God, then there can be no intrinsic, concrete force which creates right and wrong and it’s for this reason that Satanism advocates its own values.
Another fundamental component is the subversion of a good number of Christian doctrines – quite unsurprisingly, the ones that we as humans breach on a daily basis anyway. Self-indulgence, for example, is by no means sinful or something to be condemned. You like cake, go ahead and eat all the cake you want, unless of course this will infringe on your enjoyment of other indulgences, such as pride in your body image. Satanists have no moral gripes about preening ourselves in front of the mirror, and in a culture as image conscious as ours, this surely would be met by many with a sigh of relief. It’s the exaltation of the ‘me’ culture. It plucks God out of the centre of all existence, and encourages you to put yourself there instead. For these reasons, some have drawn comparisons between Satanism and Epicureanism, and on the whole this a fair match.
It’s also a movement that isn’t afraid to promote selfishness. After all, our civilization was not developed to this stage through mutual respect and kindness, but rather through the harsh natural selection of evolution. Our culture as it stands now seems to hold selfishness very close it its chest, whether we like to admit it or not, and numerous examples such as the reckless investments in the financial sector and the fear mongering of airbrushed adverts can testify to this. Other religions are quite right to condemn vanity as satanic, but they are in many ways wrong to brand it as a fault of human beings when it comes so naturally to each and every one of us. Vanity, self-centeredness and an obsession with our outward appearance are the foundations of western capitalist culture- so why condemn them when they appear under the name of ‘Satanism?’
But Satanism is not without its flaws, and even though LaVey’s bible conveys a number of very interesting philosophical ideas, most of them are simply watered-down fragments of Nietzsche. Individualism and pride are simply counterparts of the Uebermensch theory, and most of LaVey’s points regarding the flaws of Christian morality were deconstructed far more effectively in Beyond Good and Evil, and even some of Dawkins’ works. It’s also disappointing to learn that most of the impressive feats and anecdotes surrounding its charismatic founder are actually hugely exaggerated or in many cases, simply completely untrue. It’s somewhat fitting that the poster-boy of Satanism is something of a poster boy himself.
In spite of the flaws, the argument that modern Britain is indeed a part of satanic culture has an alarmingly broad range of evidence, mainly due to the fundamental fact that capitalism and Satanism are almost exactly the same thing: Money is God, the body has replaced the soul, and the earthly pleasures are all we’re ever going to get, so we must devour them hungrily. No doubt, such an affirmation could rile even the most liberal thinking of Britons... but one has to consider the possibility that a superficial and hedonistic society isn’t quite the Tartaraus that hardnosed Conservatives would have us believe.
