LaVey’s Greater Magic Reconsidered

While the purely psychodynamic interpretation of LaVey’s methods fits with the agenda of his apologists uncomfortable with the magical aspects of LaVey’s Work, it does not match his sense of what he was doing. He was axiomatic about the importance and value of Greater Magic to create change beyond mere psychodynamics, making it a foundational piece of his Eleven Satanic Rules of Earth.

Emotional release in the models that LaVey was using for understanding magic drew heavily from the works of Wilhelm Reich. Reich’s model was that of bio-energetic psychology, where psychological processes accompanied a real energy phenomenon. This energy could be channeled and directed in LaVey’s interpretation of Reich through the concentration and focus provided by Greater Magic. While he was one of the first to articulate this Reichian magical theory, Israel Regadie’s works have a similar model.

This energy model underlies many of LaVey’s insights towards magic in The Satanic Bible. In particular, the argument against animal sacrifice in “On The Choice of a Human Sacrifice” rests almost entirely on a Magico-Reichian notion of death and emotional discharge, releasing energy capable of being molded through ritualization.

This, in part, explains the basic outline of LaVey’s key rituals:

• A performative utterance of the magical intention
• A method of full emotional engagement through a complete emotional cycle
• A daimonic capping of this experience through the use of the Enochian Keys

The performative utterance, emotional cycle, and daimonic capping pattern can be adapted to idioms other than the Enochian and forms one of the most straightforward and valuable approaches to operative magic.

There is a decent introduction to Reich’s ideas by Danny Lowe available at

Wilhelm Reich by Danny Lowe

Performative utterance can be a somewhat complicated topic but is well worth investigating. Ipsissimus Flowers and Ipsissimus Webb have written on the importance of performative utterance to magic. There is a decent short introduction to the idea in the following video.

As far as daimonic systems go, Setians are free to explore as they will. If no particular daimonic systems strongly call to you, but you want to get started with Greater Black Magic, I would recommend a kind of return to our roots. Use Dr. Aquino’s Word of Set material as your daimonic capping in your Workings, connecting what you do to the Aeon’s roots and the Work of Ra-En-Set. It is available as a part of Dr. Aquino’s Temple of Set and his Satanic Bible: Re-Vision.