- Jun 26, 2003
- 376
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Here is a pseudy piece about LaVeyan Satanism I have constructed this dark, eldritch, prank-pizza-delivery-orchestrating evening. It had been influenced by the ideas of many writers/posters.
Quote from The Satanic Bible:
"The Eastern philosophies preach the dissolution ofman's ego before he can produce sins. It is unfathomable to the Satanist to conceive of an ego which would willfully choose denial of itself.
Abstract:
Ego-gratification is worthless if no account of context is taken.
Argument:
“It is unfathomable to the Satanist to conceive of an ego which would willfully choose denial of itself.” - Anton LaVey
In philosophy, the path of self denial is referred to as ‘asceticism.’
I have respect for the ascetic path, in which one forsakes short-term, sensory gratification in favor of long-term mental goals and achievements. However, my respect turns to scorn where this path is moralized, as in the Christian religion, where not only is asceticism represented by meekness, passivity and resigned fatalism but comes with a concomitant moralized attack on pre-Christian ‘virtues,’ such as strength, might, achievement and action.
Influenced by a post on this board, I believe there are two kinds of love. 1 – Love of self, object or person. 2 – Love of life’s conditions and context as a worldly and universal process. In my view, those philosophies which attempt to wholly deny the first are broken. These would include, on the ascetic end, Christian traditionalism, Buddhism and Schopenhauerian pessimism - all of which attempt to vitiate the importance of the self, resign the will-to-power or reduce the importance of this life through specious postulations regarding an afterlife. I also believe that those philosophies that focus exclusively on the first to the abnegation of the second are equally bankrupt. Included here would be LaVeyan Satanism and any branch of the Left Hand Path that posits that the highest form of life is to be found in self ego-gratification and the accumulation of power for its own sake, regardless of context.
For me, the essential entry point to philosophy is the nihilistic recognition that life has no meaning other than what is inherent. The conditions that are inherent to life (genetics, mortality, location) offer a window of potentiality that may be colored by the individual self and through which the will to power may be expressed. It is essential, in my view, to reconcile this self to the conditions inherent to life; first to avoid solipsist utopia and secondly to avoid what might be termed surrender to the technological gestalt of the age. To elaborate on this gestalt:
Ernst Junger, a fascistic writer who served in the German army in World War I, held that war represented the supreme rationale of an age bent on the accumulation of power. This ‘accumulation’ was really transference, with man aiming to rape his environment for gain. What once were rocks became the fuel for ammunitions; what once was a river became potential for an electric dam; what once was a field became the crater-riven, scorched wasteland of war’s imperial refrain. Never in history has an epoch arisen in which man held himself so utterly in command of nature. For Junger, descended from the literary tradition of Poe, all that was to be done was narrate right from the heart of no-man’s land and revel in the flying body parts, exploding shells and chatter of machine gun fire; an aesthetic validation of a power-crazed epoch. The entire effort of a country was expressed in war, from the lowest factory munitions worker to the highest army general. As German philosopher Martin Heidegger poignantly noted, what once in National Socialism had attracted him – a promise to glorify the green and flowing volkland – now sought to rend the very same with battle, construct great forges and industry over its fields and see it as a source of fuel, to be cannibalized by its own people.
This is an excellent allegory for LaVeyan Satanism and the broken irreverence of usurping the will-to-power so it simply becomes a ‘will-to-will’ - that is, a desire for power merely for its own sake, regardless of end result or context. The culmination of this thought echoes in Oppenheimer’s words of bitter sweet triumph upon his creation of the atomic bomb: ‘I am become death: the destroyer of worlds.’
I utterly refute the thought of any ideology or philosophical system that preaches such ‘will-to-will.’ It ends in broken fatalism in which man can only submit to the irrational gestalt of greed and gratification. Power is expressed not in denial of man’s universal context but in an aesthetic embracing and celebration of it, so the child does not need to break the toy to prove his mastery over it but is able to disclose new aspects of it through art and creation. This poetic thought – Heidegger himself would term the Nietzschean Superman a ‘warrior poet’ - is of a wholly more worthwhile, well-aligned and powerful nature than the LaVeyan doctrine of endless ego-gratification.
What is the locus of this ‘ego’ anyhow? If it is, to return to our opening proposition, simply the first kind of love, then I would hold such Satanism to be the desperate rattling of the cage by inmates who hold making a noise the highest gratification; a thousand genitals thrashing for transient, no-end result, returning-to-base-level content. If it is the second love, all actions gratify both the self’s ego and, at a higher level, the cosmic process of life. Power should be accumulated in accordance with a desire to use it creatively, not as a store and anesthetic against encroaching mortality (how bitter death must be in this latter case - truly the grand leveler).
How frustrating to live a life in which gratification is sensual, indulgent, vapid and enshrined! LaVeyan Satanism, for me, is equivalent to a ‘making the best of’ coping strategy for modern society, sharing its mindless, hedonistic greed or perhaps, more colorfully, an excuse to bury your head in the sand and masturbate at the shrine of sensuality while the chance for pursuit of higher ideals passes by.
Side point:
“For anyone who has every opportunity for material gain, to choose this form of religious thought seems foolish, indeed!“ - LaVey
This is nonsense and a transparently dishonest attempt to veil an
endorsement of the consumerist doctrines of Capitalism in esoteric mysticism. Material gain is, in my view, of no considerable import to people of quality. What good are possessions or money as end results in themselves? Whatever gratification they give passes, no matter the width of the new television set, leaving one exactly where they were before they purchased, left to shake the head for a moment before diving straight into the next empty indulgence.
Quote from The Satanic Bible:
"The Eastern philosophies preach the dissolution ofman's ego before he can produce sins. It is unfathomable to the Satanist to conceive of an ego which would willfully choose denial of itself.
Abstract:
Ego-gratification is worthless if no account of context is taken.
Argument:
“It is unfathomable to the Satanist to conceive of an ego which would willfully choose denial of itself.” - Anton LaVey
In philosophy, the path of self denial is referred to as ‘asceticism.’
I have respect for the ascetic path, in which one forsakes short-term, sensory gratification in favor of long-term mental goals and achievements. However, my respect turns to scorn where this path is moralized, as in the Christian religion, where not only is asceticism represented by meekness, passivity and resigned fatalism but comes with a concomitant moralized attack on pre-Christian ‘virtues,’ such as strength, might, achievement and action.
Influenced by a post on this board, I believe there are two kinds of love. 1 – Love of self, object or person. 2 – Love of life’s conditions and context as a worldly and universal process. In my view, those philosophies which attempt to wholly deny the first are broken. These would include, on the ascetic end, Christian traditionalism, Buddhism and Schopenhauerian pessimism - all of which attempt to vitiate the importance of the self, resign the will-to-power or reduce the importance of this life through specious postulations regarding an afterlife. I also believe that those philosophies that focus exclusively on the first to the abnegation of the second are equally bankrupt. Included here would be LaVeyan Satanism and any branch of the Left Hand Path that posits that the highest form of life is to be found in self ego-gratification and the accumulation of power for its own sake, regardless of context.
For me, the essential entry point to philosophy is the nihilistic recognition that life has no meaning other than what is inherent. The conditions that are inherent to life (genetics, mortality, location) offer a window of potentiality that may be colored by the individual self and through which the will to power may be expressed. It is essential, in my view, to reconcile this self to the conditions inherent to life; first to avoid solipsist utopia and secondly to avoid what might be termed surrender to the technological gestalt of the age. To elaborate on this gestalt:
Ernst Junger, a fascistic writer who served in the German army in World War I, held that war represented the supreme rationale of an age bent on the accumulation of power. This ‘accumulation’ was really transference, with man aiming to rape his environment for gain. What once were rocks became the fuel for ammunitions; what once was a river became potential for an electric dam; what once was a field became the crater-riven, scorched wasteland of war’s imperial refrain. Never in history has an epoch arisen in which man held himself so utterly in command of nature. For Junger, descended from the literary tradition of Poe, all that was to be done was narrate right from the heart of no-man’s land and revel in the flying body parts, exploding shells and chatter of machine gun fire; an aesthetic validation of a power-crazed epoch. The entire effort of a country was expressed in war, from the lowest factory munitions worker to the highest army general. As German philosopher Martin Heidegger poignantly noted, what once in National Socialism had attracted him – a promise to glorify the green and flowing volkland – now sought to rend the very same with battle, construct great forges and industry over its fields and see it as a source of fuel, to be cannibalized by its own people.
This is an excellent allegory for LaVeyan Satanism and the broken irreverence of usurping the will-to-power so it simply becomes a ‘will-to-will’ - that is, a desire for power merely for its own sake, regardless of end result or context. The culmination of this thought echoes in Oppenheimer’s words of bitter sweet triumph upon his creation of the atomic bomb: ‘I am become death: the destroyer of worlds.’
I utterly refute the thought of any ideology or philosophical system that preaches such ‘will-to-will.’ It ends in broken fatalism in which man can only submit to the irrational gestalt of greed and gratification. Power is expressed not in denial of man’s universal context but in an aesthetic embracing and celebration of it, so the child does not need to break the toy to prove his mastery over it but is able to disclose new aspects of it through art and creation. This poetic thought – Heidegger himself would term the Nietzschean Superman a ‘warrior poet’ - is of a wholly more worthwhile, well-aligned and powerful nature than the LaVeyan doctrine of endless ego-gratification.
What is the locus of this ‘ego’ anyhow? If it is, to return to our opening proposition, simply the first kind of love, then I would hold such Satanism to be the desperate rattling of the cage by inmates who hold making a noise the highest gratification; a thousand genitals thrashing for transient, no-end result, returning-to-base-level content. If it is the second love, all actions gratify both the self’s ego and, at a higher level, the cosmic process of life. Power should be accumulated in accordance with a desire to use it creatively, not as a store and anesthetic against encroaching mortality (how bitter death must be in this latter case - truly the grand leveler).
How frustrating to live a life in which gratification is sensual, indulgent, vapid and enshrined! LaVeyan Satanism, for me, is equivalent to a ‘making the best of’ coping strategy for modern society, sharing its mindless, hedonistic greed or perhaps, more colorfully, an excuse to bury your head in the sand and masturbate at the shrine of sensuality while the chance for pursuit of higher ideals passes by.
Side point:
“For anyone who has every opportunity for material gain, to choose this form of religious thought seems foolish, indeed!“ - LaVey
This is nonsense and a transparently dishonest attempt to veil an
endorsement of the consumerist doctrines of Capitalism in esoteric mysticism. Material gain is, in my view, of no considerable import to people of quality. What good are possessions or money as end results in themselves? Whatever gratification they give passes, no matter the width of the new television set, leaving one exactly where they were before they purchased, left to shake the head for a moment before diving straight into the next empty indulgence.
