CHURCH OF SATAN (Religious Movement)

The Church of Satan was founded by Anton LaVey in 1966 in California as the first organization that openly identified itself with Satanism. Although it was structured as a series of local ‘grottos’ it was intended to foster individualism and self-achievement. LaVey disbanded the grotto system in 1975, after which the Church has existed only as an ever-changing network of individuals who self-identify as members, perhaps read the works of Anton LaVey and/or magazines such as The Black Flame, and might communicate with each other by email. Such networks are less paradoxical in relation to individualism than the previous grotto system. In any form, the Church of Satan presents a ‘sinister’ image to the world, looking like Hollywood’s archetypal or even cliched Satanism. Inverted pentagrams, horned devils, nudity, blasphemy against Christian concepts of deity, and decency have been emblematic. In part, Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible (1969) reads like an invocation and sermon inspired by reverence to a real Satan. A closer reading, however, reveals that belief in an actual devil, whether supernatural or otherwise, is unnecessary, and is increasingly explicitly rejected. Reference to Satan is a mask that needs to be seen through if people are to understand and achieve what LaVey intended. The Satanism of the Church of Satan can be summarized (with careful attention to context) in the first two of ‘the Nine Satanic Statements’ contained in The Satanic Bible:

1. Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!

2. Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams! (LaVey 1969:25).

This is carefully worded: Satan is a representation not a personal being. Thus Satanism in the Church of Satan neither encourages worship of the devil nor any attempt to emulate such a being.

The Church of Satan and all of LaVey’s writings and organizing encourage individual self-exploration and self-expression. Excess and indulgence are modes of experimentation not metaphysical speculation or required modes of obedience. In this sense, the Church of Satan is comparable to self-religions (see Self-Religion, The Self, and self). Like them, this kind of Satanism is primarily interested in the achievement of the full potential of each individual’s inner or true ‘self’. It offers a unique means of working towards that goal for those who are willing to transgress boundaries. LaVey wrote, ‘One does not “find” oneself, One creates one’s self’ (1992:44). In order to ‘create one’s self’ people are encouraged to honestly indulge their desires. They are not offered a system of enlightenment or a technique for religious experience. The goal is the evolution of more individual selves. While this goal is like that of other self-religions, the method is radically different. This becomes most clear in contrast to the New Age Movement and New Age Movements in which the self is divinized and frequent reference to ‘the light’ encourage a rejection of carnality and ‘lower’ desires. The Church of Satan’s Satanism is all about indulgence of precisely those attachments, activities and desires demonized by the wider society and mainstream religions. Nonetheless, LaVey and others in the Church of Satan encouraged a recognition that an experiment might lead to the realization that a particular desire was fruitless as a means of self-realization. One reason for the closure of the grotto system was that regular repetition of the same (perhaps transgressive) rituals proved counter-productive in the development of mature individuality. Furthermore, the Church’s writings do suggest that individuals best achieve their greatest potential in chosen forms of sociality. Members are, therefore, encouraged to indulge in the context of a wider society that can be transgressed against and from an elective community or network of others whose wills and individualities are also to be respected.

Like other self-religions, the Church of Satan’s Satanism inherits some of the interests and methods of earlier esoteric movements. The deliberate inversion of Christian religious acts (e.g. in the so-called ‘Black Mass’) may be little more than transgressive psychodrama, but there is an esoteric and magical undercurrent within the Church. This is demonstrated not primarily in the inclusion of alleged Satanic revelations in ‘Enochian’ or angelic language within LaVey’s writings, but more in the use of ceremonial magic to effect changes according to the true will of the individual ritualist. However, the largest purpose of the Church of Satan is to provoke change in the name of the arch symbol of opposition to stasis: Satan.

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