SECTS AND SATANIC CULTS—2
The attention given recently by the mass media to some episodes more
or less directly tied to the world of Satanism is a symptom and effect
of a morbid curiosity exhibited today by many with regard to the occult
in general and also to the satanic in particular. All the more urgent
then is the necessity of acquiring clear and significant tools for
discerning the cause and the forms of this phenomenon. This is necessary
also in order to understand its relationship with contemporary culture
and the subjective motives which lead people to let themselves become
involved in, or attracted by, this dark world.
First of all, we need to specify that the term Satanism embraces a
broad plethora of phenomena, with a thousand faces and numerous facets.
Here we will limit ourselves to an examination of only some of the more
significant examples, capable of bringing to light its principal
characteristics for the purposes of an anthropological analysis. More
precisely, our anthropological view of Satanism has the intention of
dealing with two distinct problems, which are closely connected and can
throw light on each other. On the one hand, we will present some
elements which can help to identify the image of man that emerges from
the context of satanic teaching, and on the other hand, we will describe
some of the subjective motives of those who approach the world of
Satanism.
The anthropology of some Satanists
A perusal of the most significant and widespread works of recent and
contemporary Satanism clearly brings to light a "Promethean"
vision of man, manifesting itself in his exaltation and divinization.
"You shall be as gods", promised the ancient tempter,
and the promise has remained unchanged for those inspired by him today.
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), undoubtedly the inspiration for many
contemporary satanic authors, makes explicit the link between the
exaltation of man and rebellion against God, particularly against the
God of the moral precepts with which Crowley had been raised in a
fundamentalist sect. "There is no law", Crowley writes
in his Liber legis, "except 'do what you will'....
Be strong, O man! Desire and enjoy all things of the senses and ecstasy:
do not fear that any God will reject you for this. Every man, every
woman, is a star, if he finds his own true will; otherwise he is a
slave, and slaves will have to serve. Let mercy be excluded: all who
have compassion are damned! Kill and torture, spare none!".
Anton Szandor La Vey (born in 1930) is of the same line of thought.
His Satanic Bible (Avon, New York, 1969) begins with nine satanic
affirmations, a sort of hymn to the human desire of psychophysical
self-gratification at whatever cost. This holds with regard to oneself
("Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence. Satan
represents vital existence instead of vacuous spiritual dreams"),
with regard to others ("Satan represents revenge instead of
turning the other cheek"), and above all with regard to God and
his moral norms ("Satan represents man as nothing more than
another animal, sometimes better, but more often worse than those who
walk on four paws, because, by the pretext of his 'divine intellectual
and spiritual development', he has become the most vicious animal of
all. Satan represents all the so-called sins, to the extent they lead to
physical, mental and emotional gratification").
Already in this manifesto of Satanism the symptoms of a
profound rebellion against religion in general and against Christianity
in particular clearly emerge. As one continues to read The Satanic
Bible, one meets with a little chapter significantly titled: "Wanted!
God dead or alive", in which any type of relationship with God,
to whom men turn only for relief from physical evil and pardon for moral
evil, is deemed nonsense. The negation of the role of God is the satanic
condition for the fulfilment of man, in the sense that the Satanist has
no need to bow his head before anyone and must find in himself all the
resources necessary to create his own happiness on earth. "All
religions of a spiritual nature", writes La Vey, "are
inventions of man", a sort of projection into infinity of his
frustrated desires, of all that man would like to do without being able
to. On the contrary, "the Satanist believes in the complete
gratification of his ego"; he lives his life "like a
party", without denying himself any satisfaction and without
cultivating that useless love for every man which the Satanist holds
impossible and absurd: "You cannot love all; it is ridiculous to
think that you can do so. If you love everyone and everything you lose
your natural capacity for selection. Love is one of the most intense
emotions experienced by man and hate is another. Attempting to
experience love indiscriminately is very unnatural. If you are not able
to experience one of these emotions, neither will you succeed in fully
experiencing the other".
The illusion of the self-divinization of man through rebellion
against God is also cultivated on the ritual level. The principal feast
for the members of the church of Satan is their birthday (given that
"every man is God"), and the collection of satanic
rites as a whole is presented as a series of psychodramas aiming at
liberating its initiates from the unconscious heritage of their previous
Christian religious membership in general, and of the Catholic religion
in particular (cf. The Satanic Rituals, New York, 1972). The
blasphemous profanations of Christian rites are carried out for the most
part in the context of a ritual calling for both heterosexual and
homosexual actions, regarding which La Vey candidly stated that the
sexual gratification is undoubtedly enjoyed, but is not to be sought
"for its own sake". Although La Vey emphasizes several
times that these rituals have the character of psychodramas, there
remains nonetheless an ambiguity typical of Satanism. On the one hand,
belief in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Church, in the sacraments and in
their salvific value is denied, but on the other hand, God is directly
addressed (in order to affirm that he does not exist), as is Jesus
Christ (in order to offend him), and consecrated hosts are often used in
order to be profaned during the rituals. In this way all the
contradictions of this "rebellious faith" are
manifested, in which the negation of God can be considered simply as a
concrete form of satanic hatred towards him, and not vice versa.
Subjective motives of those who approach the world of Satanism
From an analysis of the anthropological elements presented above, it
is clear that the central element in the identity of Satanism is the
absolute exaltation of the self, connected with a radical rebellion
against the divine in general and of the God of the Bible in particular,
coupled with a substantial rejection of every commonly accepted ethical
norm. Reference to the biblical perspective is unavoidable, and the
interior experience of Satanists cannot be understood unless seen from
the viewpoint of a strongly antagonistic relationship with the God of
the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
Let us begin then by trying to imagine the possible results of a
crisis of faith badly resolved, and by hypothetically supposing that the
principal reason for this crisis is tied to the inability to accept the
experience of physical evil and to live serenely one's own relationship
with those moral norms showing the characteristic steps of the Christian
path towards God. Unfortunately, this is a recurring situation which,
fortunately does not generally result in involvement with satanic
practices, but which can be the starting point for understanding those
who do reach such an extreme point. The primary datum for our reflection
is that a situation of interior crisis usually does not remain forever
in an acute state, but tends rather to stabilize itself in some way, so
that we can take into consideration various theoretically possible
hypotheses in order to arrive at what interests us.
A first way to escape the crisis of faith mentioned above is that of
a more complete conversion to Christ, accepting his "easy yoke"
and asking pardon for having temporarily abandoned it. A second
possibility is for man to come out of the situation of interior travail
by refusing even to think about (theoretical or practical atheism) that
God who, if he existed, would be responsible for a world in which there
is room for suffering, as well as being the source of those ethical
norms which are seen to lead to so much discomfort. A third possibility
can take the form of believing as one pleases in a god of one's own
making, forged for personal use and consumption, in order to consent to
one's wishes and to forbid only what one willingly allows to be
forbidden, a god with whom one can speak if desired, as desired and when
desired. In any case this is not the God proclaimed by the Church (this
phenomenon occurs both individually and in the numerous sects which
offer a sort of supermarket of the sacred). A final possibility is the
one more properly called satanic: a final result of the religious crisis
outlined above, which is neither conversion, nor a more or less explicit
form of atheism or agnosticism, but a radical rebellion against the God
of the Bible, whether done in explicit adoration of Satan understood as
a personal being, or reduced to his invocation or evocation in order to
attain benefits, or limited to a more or less symbolic use of satanic
doctrines and rites in order to free oneself from the residue of one's
own faith or simply of one's Christian culture.
The Satanist's is a "reverse act of faith", in which
he expresses his personal belief in this cosmic, dissolving and
destructive force, of which man is at once master and slave. The human
frustration of one who fails to fulfil himself in a society that seeks
to base itself on order and justice (values in full harmony with the
Judaeo-Christian mentality) runs the risk of exploding in uncontrolled
and extreme forms. Satanism seems to offer an alternative and an
opportunity to frustrated spirits or to those who are ill with some form
of acute egolatria, through an absurd reversal of the dominant
religion, identified as the source of one's own unhappiness. This is
accomplished by appealing to God's adversary, since the God of faith
does not seem to guarantee the earthly happiness which is sought, or at
least not in the ways and times desired.
In this context one can well understand the desire to acquire a more
or less absolute power over oneself, over other men and over things, and
for this reason Satanism involves the belief in some form of ritual
magic which has the power to propitiate occult forces, whether they are
clearly and directly identified with the Satan of the Bible, or are
conceived in a vaguer impersonal way, but nevertheless connected with
the dark side of the cosmos and of life, or are only seen to be
vital cosmic forces opposed to an ordered and solar vision (which
in the Judaeo-Christian tradition is represented by God, the Creator of
heaven and earth).
In conclusion we would like to make some critical remarks both with
regard to every form of sensationalism, especially typical of the media
(which sometimes make use of the devil and Satanism, naming it
deliberately or mistakenly only to increase their own ratings) as well
of those authors who define the phenomenological category too narrowly
so that to speak of Satanism in the strict sense, they require a true
and explicit veneration of Satan understood precisely as the adversary
of the God of the Bible, excluding from the group of satanists those
who invoke Satan to make use of him instead of to serve him.
It is clear that, if understood in this way, Satanism in fact would
hardly exist, nor could certain founders of sects which define
themselves as Satanist be legitimately called so. But above all, we do
not see the reason for this concern to defend against the accusation of
Satanism those who do not turn to Satan in an explicit or direct way.
The sensationalism of the media and the attitude of those who see
devils everywhere however, creates a needless confusion in the minds of
many, and prevents Satanism from being seen for what it basically is: an
extreme example how people who are very poor in religious and human
values can reach the point of employing a type of contact (real,
presumed, or even only imaginary) with the Prince of Darkness, in order
to exalt their own ego and proclaim themselves to be absolute masters of
good and evil.
In anthropological terms, it seems that we can consider the radical
rebellion of which we have spoken as a sufficiently significant element
common to the different forms of Satanism, whether this rebellion takes
the form of an explicit adoration or veneration of Satan in order to
serve him, or whether he is sought in order to be used for those earthly
purposes which the biblical Satan offers to men as the ultimate goal of
their existence, or whether he is used as a symbol in a sort of
psychodrama that aims at achieving a total rebellion against the God of
the Bible for the purpose of cultivating the illusion of being better
able to enjoy the good things of this world.
Among other things, we could reasonably hypothesize a sort of inverse
proportionality between explicit faith in Satan understood as a person
and the degree of publicity that a satanic sect is disposed to seek. It
is not surprising if exponents of a symbolic and rationalistic Satanism
publish books and pamphlets, appear on television, and other media, and
acquire considerable publicity in various ways (assuming that the
publicity is fully truthful and is not simply the public side of a
Satanism that also takes on forms which aim at creating a more real
contact with the Principle of Evil in the pleasing obscurity of the
private realm). On the contrary, it is not difficult to suppose that
satanic groups which are more explicitly dedicated to authentic satanic
invocations prefer darkness to light, and obscurity to spotlights.
The analysis of publicized Satanism (more accessible to the scholar
because of the availability of the sources) is useful, nevertheless, for
better understanding what is more hidden, because their published texts
also influence those who make use of their texts, giving them a sense
which in a certain way is different from that claimed by the authors. We
can even see a certain conceptual continuity between the radical
rebellion against the God of the Bible and the rebellious desire of not
wishing even to credit that God with the fact that the Scriptures are
the source of the knowledge which enables us even to speak of Satan, who
is there described as the adversary of God. The Satanist can decide to
rebel even against this debt and proclaim the total independence of his
own vision from that of the Bible, while continuing to nourish his own
creed and rites with elements actually taken from the Christian faith.
On the other hand, it seems difficult even to hypothesize a complete
and total substitution of God with Satan as the object of that adoration
which is prescribed by the first commandment. This is because, as St.
Thomas observes (cf. Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 78, a. 1), he who
chooses evil never chooses it "in itself" and "in
so far as" it is bad, but always because (erroneously or
sinfully) some semblance of good (in so far as one is dealing with an
adulterated, depreciated, materialized good...) is seen in it.
Consequently, we are led to think that even the adoration of Satan
understood in a personal sense, as a matter of fact and despite more or
less sincere declarations, is never a pure adoration as though it were a
sort of contemplation of the evil of Satan as such. Perhaps we can think
of it as a kind of perverse veneration of the devil, in which one hopes
to gain certain benefits from him, or to use him as a model for the
rebellion against God which the Satanist himself hopes to achieve. The
desire for this rebellion is therefore the true subjective drive of the
attitude proper to the various forms of Satanism: whether it prefers to
conceive of Satan as a real person (perverted spiritual being and
perverter of the Christian faith), or it conceives of him as an
impersonal reality with characteristics that oppose him to the Christian
concept of God (matter and energy), or it simply uses him as a
consciously anti-Christian symbol for the exaltation of the self. The
true object of adoration for the man who gives himself to satanic
practices remains always and in any case his own ego, with its
disordered desire to create a completely earthly happiness without
recourse to the help of God, but counting only on his own natural
abilities, or at the most on those of someone ready to offer himself as
an accomplice to such a humanly desolate and perverse scheme.
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