(reformatted by tn)]
SATAN : GOD, OR ANTI-GOD?
(no author credited)
Often it is that we come across the terms 'Devil-worshipper' and
'Satanist' used synonymously: in the sensationalist tabloids, fundy smears, t.v. dramas, Hollywood horrors, and even among Satanists
themselves.
What is the nature of this worship, and is it an appropriate
manifestation of the Satanic philosophy?
'Devil-worshippers' there undoubtedly are. As far as they exist in
the Western world they can be seen primarily among adolescents and
psychotics/neurotics. Typically they are big on Denis Wheatley-type theatrics, but philosophically lacking. Some are rebelling against
parents, trying to shock, or escape from reality by pandering to
fantasy. In so doing the Devil-worshipper has substituted Satan for Jehovah/Jesus. He has become an inverse-Christian, but is a long
way off from the truly Satanic.
Satan is the 'god' of such types, but Satan is not God; he is Anti-God.
"THE FALL"
According to the Judaeo-Christian mythos, Man was separated from
his 'Creator' when he partook of the Tree of Knowledge, thereby gaining wisdom and self-consciousness. This was offered, promethean-style
by The Serpent, Satan. This put him on the road to potential godhood;
thus mankind fell from the state of grace in the eyes of the Creator.
(Gen. Ch. 2-3).
The Genesis legend is a Hebraic elaboration of the Babylonian
Creation epic, which recounts more vaguely that Man drew wrath of
the Gods by similarly acquiring a godlike capacity for wisdom. A
serpent is also involved somehow. (Chaldean Account of Genesis,
Transl. by G. Smith). In both the Genesis and Babylonian legends
the central theme is the separation of Man from God(s), after
acquiring godlike attributes from a Being considered 'evil' by the
godly on that account.
The Satanic gift is thus one of separating man from divine
subordination and dependence, and from the dull, static
contentedness of an 'Eden' in which nothing changes from
millennium-to-millennium, accept by a godly whim.
It is precisely god-worship which Man was liberated by the 'Serpent',
just as Satan liberated himself and a large percentage of the
Angelic host from the divine-tyrant, as brilliantly rendered by John Milton in Paradise Lost, and Dr Michael Aquino, High Priest of Set, in The Diabolicon.
"BLASPHEMY"!
God-worship of any kind, including and especially devil-worship, is quite clearly blasphemy unto Satan. Devil-worship is the negation of the very Gift of Satan, for his promise to Mankind was that we shall
'be as gods', by freeing ourselves from godly tyranny. Today
psychologists call it self-actualization; self-proclaimed Anti-Christ philosopher Nietzsche call it self-overcoming; in both instances the emphasis is on the Self, freed from the bondage of herd-conformity, whether prescribed by priestly superstition or herd-morality.
The only 'god' the Satanist worships is his own Self, leading towards a Godhead of our own conception.
Worship other than this is to render worthless the Gift of Satan.
This principle was wonderfully stated by Anatole France in his The
Revolt of the Angels. Satan launches an attack on Heaven and is
victorious. He casts Ialdabaoth (Jehovah) into Hell and assumes his throne...
"And Satan found pleasure in praise and in the exercise of his grace;
he loved to hear his wisdom and power belauded...
"Satan, whose flesh had crept, in days gone by, at the idea that
suffering prevailed in the world, now felt himself inaccessible to pity.
He regarded suffering and death as the happy results of his omnipotence...
the savour of the blood of victims rose upwards towards him like sweet incense. He fell to condemning intelligence and to hating curiosity.
He himself refused to learn anything more, for fear that in acquiring fresh knowledge he might let it be seen that he had not known everything from the very outset...
"Dense fumes of Theology filled his brain...
"Thus centuries passed like seconds. Now, one day, from the
altitudes of his throne, he plunged his gaze into the depths
of the pit and saw Ialdabaoth in the Gehenna where he himself
had long lain enchained. Amid the everlasting gloom
Ialdabaoth still retained his lofty mien. Blackened and
shattered, terrible and sublime, he glanced upwards at the
palace of the King of Heaven with a look of proud disdain,
then turned away his head. And the new god, as he looked
upon his foe, beheld the light of intelligence and love pass
across his sorrow-stricken countenance. And lo! Ialdabaoth
was now contemplating the Earth and, seeing it sunk in
wickedness and suffering, he... rose up... and hastened
hither to instruct and console mankind..."
But all this was only a nightmare Satan was having. He had not yet
begun his war against God, and he awoke bathed in sweat...
"Comrades," said Satan to those standing around him,
"no - we will not conquer the heavens. Enough to have the
power. War engenders war, and victory defeat.
"God conquered will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will
become God. May the fates spare me this terrible lot; I
love the Hell which formed my genius. I love the Earth
where I have done some good... Now, thanks to us, the
god of old is dispossessed of his terrestrial empire, and
every thinking being on this globe disdains him or knows
him not. But what matter that men should no longer be
submissive to Ialdabaoth if the spirit of Ialdabaoth is
still in them; if they, like him, are jealous, violent,
quarrelsome, and greedy, and the foes of the arts and
beauty?... As to ourselves... we have destroyed
Ialdabaoth, our Tyrant, if in ourselves alone that we
have destroyed Ignorance and Fear.
"...It is in ourselves and in ourselves alone that we
must attack and destroy Ialdabaoth."
The Satanist does not pray, he does not beg to Satan, nor perform
any knee-bending exercises. He recognizes the god within and works to actualize it. If he performs rituals or declares Satanic affirmations these are to evoke the powers of his own Being, latent or otherwise, and draw upon energies which are only being realized now by the mundane sciences.
THE SATANIC PRINCIPLE
Who or what is Satan? A malevolent figure of hideous aspect
demanding that his adherents kiss his arse in homage? Reading the
Old Testament and The Revelation the description seems more fitting for Jehovah, as Anatole France clearly recognised.
The following description of the 'Devil' by Paul Carus, author of
The History of The Devil states well the nature of Satan as perceived today by thinking Satanist:
"Evil personified appears at first sight repulsive. But
the more we study the personality of the Devil, the more
fascinating it becomes. In the beginning of existence
the Evil One is the embodiment of everything unpleasant,
then of everything bad, evil and immoral. He is hatred,
destruction, and the annihilation incarnate, and as such
he is the adversary of existence, of the Creator, of God.
The Devil is the rebel of the cosmos, the independent in
the empire of the tyrant, the opposition to uniformity,
the dissonance in universal harmony, the exception to the
rule, the particular in the universal, the craving for
originality, which bodily upsets the ordinance of God
that enforce a definite kind of conduct; he overturns the
monotony that would permeate the cosmic spheres if every
atom in unconscious righteousness and with pious obedience
slavishly followed a generally prescribed course."
Satan can be seen from the above description to be the embodiment
of those forces which lead to progress by upsetting the static order where necessary, which led Man from primal, animalistic existence towards that which is truly 'human'. This is the real significance of the
Genesis legend, and the 'Fall' of Man away from 'God'.
Satan then is not God, but Anti-God. His demand is that he is not
worshipped, but rather that Man worships the God within and thereby strives towards higher forms of Being, for in doing so we truly honour both ourselves and Satan.
excerpted from "The Watcher", September 1990CE XXV AS, Issue No. 4
originally edited by:
Graeme Wilson
P.O. Box 38-262
Petone
Wellington
New Zealand
