In a discussion several years ago, someone raised the following about Setian “taboos.” My thoughts on LaVey on a personal level have changed a good deal since I originally wrote the following. However, it remains something I stand behind.
The Taboo of Satanism: Do we forget or avoid the idea we have Satanic roots? It’s our past; we should draw/use that. Yes, we want to evolve and grow from what we were and what we came from, but we shouldn’t ignore or hide it.
I chalk this up first and foremost to the healthy and essential impulse begun early in Working II to expand the Temple of Set beyond its Satanic Roots and to embrace the broader manifestations of left-hand path Initiation in other cultural contexts running headlong into the family dramas of Anton LaVey following his death. The second issue, which included statements against LaVey by his daughter and son-in-law and their intentional targeting to remove anyone with the faintest interest or praise for Anton, created significant toxicity around the topic of Satanism within the Temple.
We are certainly something unique in the spectrum of those practicing magic. We are no more Satanists than we are Thelemites, and rightly so. Yet it is ironic that within the contemporary Setian culture, we have far more Setians feeling comfortable talking about Crowley and Thelema, a subject that the Book of Coming Forth by Night dismisses as, at best, a curiosity. In contrast, an interest in LaVey still has this sense of disgrace and mild discomfort. I see this far more in I° and II° than I do the Priesthood, and when I do, I am often reminded of LaVey’s comment in the interview he did at the height of his High Priesthood for “The Occult Explosion”:
“The Devil made me do it” has always been a stock alibi. Once it held, and held very firm. Now, fortunately – fortunately for us – it has become ludicrous to say, “The Devil made me do it.” Yet many, while laughing, still play the old game of self-deceit and blame the Devil in one way or another. So the old game is still going on. This is made amply clear in, of all places, the very world of the occult. “Witches,” who held the Devil’s name for centuries, now refute Satanism with a passion, employing it as the other side of the fence. All manner of occultists, from ESP researchers to faith healers, denounce Satanists as worthless, meaningless, dangerous, ad nauseam. Never is there to be found a positive adjective about Satanists. We Satanists smile at such transparencies – for they are transparent opinions; their motivations are most clear. It shows that even those who now claim emancipation from inquisitors need devils themselves, in order to make their art more palatable to others.
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Man must quit kidding himself. Only when he emancipates himself from dubious interpretations of good and evil – when he can truly rise above good and evil, beyond good and evil, realizing that these terms are probably the most relative terms in his existence; when he can accept the long, obscene name of “Satan” [because that is a dirty word, “Satan” – the occult world seems to find it even more so]; when he can accept this word, this name into his vocabulary as a sound to be honored – then he will be free! Until then he will walk in fear of the very scapegoat he has created, and his potential guide will remain his nemesis.
Mind you, personally, I have little interest in the media Satanism that arose in the vacuum of Anton LaVey’s retreat within the Black House. The entire aesthetic concocted and propagated about Satanism by various media industries leaves me cold. In that oddly, I have an ally in LaVey who, when reflecting on what arose in his retreat, wrote:
Now, in your End Times, you blame Death Metal and its influence on youth. You fret over the quality and content of their sounds. You demand warning labels on shrink-wrap. You silly mush-heads. YOU listened to the warnings and examples set forth by the Blattys, Pazders, Geraldos, Oprahs, Sally Jessies, Bob Larsons and their identity-starved stooges. I wanted to tell your children what was RIGHT about Satanism: encouraging sensuality with achievement, outrage with justice, nonconformity with wisdom. Instead, YOU provided media saturation informing them what “real” Satanists do, what kind of noises they make when possessed. YOU encouraged them to rebel by the aesthetic standards YOU provided, and still you grouse when they gravitate to Slayer, Ozzy, Electric Hellfire Club, Mercyful Fate, Deicide, Marilyn Manson, Acheron, Morbid Angel.
Do you know what? I think those bands are great. I would also like your kids to listen to Liszt, Borodin, Saint-Saens, Dvorak, Ketelbey, Wagner, Puccini, von Suppe, Rossini, Romberg, Kern, Friml, Al Jolson, Russ Columbo, Nelson Eddy, Nat “King” Cole, and the marches of John Philip Sousa. But you never gave me the time to explain THAT to them. As panderers, you were too busy crinkling the fat around your avaricious eyes and rubbing your money-grubbing hands and thinking of ratings. Or else, as audience, you were too dim-witted to think anyone on TV or mainstream print could be misleading you about Satanism. It runs YOUR life, so it must be OK for your children.
You hypocritical self-righteous fools. YOU made Death Metal and Satanic Metal bands what they are, by YOUR standards of blasphemy –but with significant modification. Now the performers and the audiences aren’t shunning the idea of Satanism. They now greet each slavering monster as a friend. They raise their arms in Satanic salute. By whatever form their sounds take; the lyrics, barely understandable in their guttural roar, hurl all your warnings and admonitions back in your faces.
YOU set the disturbing aesthetic standards which concern you now. If something bold and new will emerge from it, it won’t be to your credit. It will be because enough young people are seeing OTHER arenas of Satan. Your hysterical plan has backfired. YOU brought about your own Apocalypse, like the stupid masochistic victims that you are. You needed a Hell according to your own comfortable requirements. It didn’t quite work out that way. Satan doesn’t play by network, Marvel Universe, or Nintendo rules; or by Augustinian rules either. Soon your children will come walking in the front door with a Satanic Bible in one hand and a CD of Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain in the other. Then, you’ll know you’re in real trouble. You wanted Hell. I’ll give you Hell. It won’t be fun. The Devil’s Plan may not be your plan. Your Apocalypse is HERE. YOU brought it about. Take it. Suffer. It’s all yours.
I happen to enjoy the eclecticism, pragmatism, iconoclasm, and anachronisms of our Satanic heritage and its potent use of the themes of Sex, Sentiment, and Wonder. I like “encouraging sensuality with achievement, outrage with justice, nonconformity with wisdom.” I feel that its foundational emphasis upon unhooking your lust, compassion, and anger from socially approved targets to those rooted in your own desires helps to forge an inner strength like few other methods while avoiding occultnik retreat towards “Higher” nonsense. Its simplified approach to magic combines desire, aesthetics, timing, action, and knowing exactly where to exert your efforts. It is a refreshing alternative to the mental gymnastics most occultists do to avoid ever having to actually do magic.
That these things have often been the metaphoric Devil’s Baby tossed out with the personal bathwater of LaVey does the Temple of Set, and the Prince of Darkness, a disservice.
Setemheb 