4 Cheers for Satanism

Time to emphasize agreement.

(Photo credit: GTRus)

April 11, 2022, marks the 92 anniversary of Anton LaVey’s birth. LaVey, who passed on in 1997, founded contemporary Satanism and the Church of Satan in 1966.

As a philosophy, Lavey’s Satanism has nothing to do with the worship of demons. Conspiracy theories involving Satanic rituals involving animal or human sacrices and pedophilia are entirely disconnected with LaVey’s Satanism, which is rigorously atheistic and which protects the rights of all, including children.

What Lavey’s Satanism seems to me is a philosophy of individualism that may use rituals as a form of emotional clearing and the focusing of intention (the same with many religions and “spiritual” practices), but also might use ceremonies as parody. As I wrote last summer, Satanism is a catch-all term for evil, but I don’t think any member of the Church of Satan would have proposed and implemented something as grotesque as the ritual abuse at TSA checkpoints.

The ugliness of Satanism is that its individualism is ruthless. It seems to have no taste for empathy or compassion at all. That’s not necessarily bad: no one can force or persuade another to be more empathetic or compassionate than they want to be. But “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!” doesn’t sound conducive to building…