Bible verse by verse

[_LittleNipper]

Nipper, here is where your linked reference fails.

Likewise, to determine if Jesus was a real person, we need to seek evidence for his existence in the following areas:
1. Archaeology
2. Early non-Christian accounts
3. Early Christian accounts
4. Early New Testament manuscripts
5. Historical impact

2,3, and 4 are the equivalent of people writing about Harry Potter.
Archeology will prove Harry potter a real person, Kings Cross will be found as part of future 'digs' thereby, using your references required standards, establishing him as a real person.
Historical impact.....so you're saying that you believe 'Thetans' really existed because they have had historical impact?

Archaeology
The sands of time have buried many mysteries about Jesus that only recently have been brought to light.
Perhaps the most significant discoveries are several ancient manuscripts unearthed between the 18th and 20th centuries. We will look closer at these manuscripts in a later section.
Archaeologists have also discovered numerous places and relics that agree with the New Testament accounts of Jesus. Malcolm Muggeridge was a British journalist who considered Jesus a myth until he saw such evidence during a BBC television assignment to Israel.
After reporting on the very places written about in the New Testament account of Jesus, Muggeridge wrote, “A certainty seized me about Jesus’ birth, ministry and Crucifixion...I became aware that there really had been a man, Jesus....”[5]

So, in terms of 'Archeology', the proof of Jesus is some manuscripts and places that match the New Testament....and a warm feeling from a TV pundit.
Your standards of 'proof' are a lot lower than I thought.

There is a lot more than that and I'm sure you left that out for obvious reasons..............

[_LittleNipper]

Judges 13:1-25 Israel AGAIN sinned by worshiping false gods, so the Lord let them be conquered by the Philistines, who kept them in subjection for 40 years. One day the angel of the Lord [likely a preincarnate manifestation of Christ] appeared to the wife of Manoah, of the tribe of Dan, who lived in the city of Zorah. She had no children, but this messanger said to her, that even though she had been barren so long, she will soon conceive and have a son. She must not drink any fermented drinks and not to eat any food that isn’t Kosher. This son’s hair must never be cut, for he shall be a Nazirite, a special servant of God from the time of his birth. He will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines.

The woman ran and told her husband that a man from God appeared to her and, he was almost too stupendous to look at. She didn't ask where he was from, and he didn’t say his name. He did say that they are going to have a baby boy, and everything else he said.

Manoah prayed, “O Lord, please let the man from God come back to us again and give us more instructions about the child you are going to give us.” The Lord answered his request, and this Angel of God appeared again to his wife as she was sitting in the field. Again, she was alone... She quickly ran and found her husband and told him, that the messenger has returned.

Manoah ran back with his wife and asked, if he was the man who talked to his wife the other day? Yes, was the reply, “I am.”

Manoah asked him for any special instructions about how the baby should be raised after he is born. And the Angel replied, “Be sure that your wife follows the instructions I gave her. She must not eat grapes or raisins, or drink any wine or beer, or eat anything that isn’t kosher.”

Manoah told the angel to please remain until food is provided. “I’ll stay,” the Angel replied, “but I’ll not eat anything. However, if you wish to bring something, bring an offering to sacrifice to the Lord.” (Manoah didn’t yet realize that he was the Angel of the Lord.)

Manoah asked him for his name. “When all this comes true and the baby is born,” he said to the Angel, “we will certainly want to tell everyone that you predicted it!” “Don’t even ask my name,” the Angel replied, “for it is a secret.”

Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered it as a sacrifice to the Lord; and the Angel did a strange and wonderful thing, for as the flames from the altar were leaping up toward the sky, and as Manoah and his wife watched, the Angel ascended in the fire! Manoah and his wife fell face downward to the ground, and that was all they ever saw of him. It was then that Manoah finally realized that it had been the Angel of the Lord.

“We will die,” Manoah cried out to his wife, “for we have seen God!” His wife said that if the Lord was going to kill, he wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offerings and wouldn’t have appeared to us and told us this wonderful thing and done these miracles.

When the boy was born they named him Samson, and the Lord blessed him as he grew up. And the Spirit of the Lord began to excite him whenever he visited the army camp of the tribe of Dan, located between the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol.

So, here we have another miracle baby born to a couple who could not conceive. The first recorded one was Isaac.

Young's Literal Translation (YLT)


1 And the sons of Israel add to do the evil thing in the eyes of Jehovah, and Jehovah giveth them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

2 And there is a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danite, and his name [is] Manoah, his wife [is] barren, and hath not borne;

3 and a messenger of Jehovah appeareth unto the woman, and saith unto her, `Lo, I pray thee, thou [art] barren, and hast not borne; when thou hast conceived, then thou hast borne a son.

4 And, now, take heed, I pray thee, and do not drink wine, and strong drink, and do not eat any unclean thing,

5 for, lo, thou art conceiving and bearing a son, and a razor doth not go up on his head, for a Nazarite to God is the youth from the womb, and he doth begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.'

6 And the woman cometh and speaketh to her husband, saying, `A man of God hath come unto me, and his appearance [is] as the appearance of a messenger of God, very fearful, and I have not asked him whence he [is], and his name he hath not declared to me;

7 and he saith to me, Lo, thou art pregnant, and bearing a son, and now do not drink wine and strong drink, and do not eat any unclean thing, for a Nazarite to God is the youth from the womb till the day of his death.'

8 And Manoah maketh entreaty unto Jehovah, and saith, `O, my Lord, the man of God whom Thou didst send, let him come in, I pray thee, again unto us, and direct us what we do to the youth who is born.'

9 And God hearkeneth to the voice of Manoah, and the messenger of God cometh again unto the woman, and she [is] sitting in a field, and Manoah her husband is not with her,

10 and the woman hasteth, and runneth, and declareth to her husband, and saith unto him, `Lo, he hath appeared unto me -- the man who came on [that] day unto me.'

11 And Manoah riseth, and goeth after his wife, and cometh unto the man, and saith to him, `Art thou the man who spake unto the woman?' and he saith, `I [am].'

12 And Manoah saith, `Now let thy words come to pass; what is the custom of the youth -- and his work?'

13 And the messenger of Jehovah saith unto Manoah, `Of all that I said unto the woman let her take heed;

14 of anything which cometh out from the wine-vine she doth not eat, and wine and strong drink she doth not drink, and any unclean thing she doth not eat; all that I have commanded her she doth observe.'

15 And Manoah saith unto the messenger of Jehovah, `Let us detain thee, we pray thee, and prepare before thee a kid of the goats.'

16 And the messenger of Jehovah saith unto Manoah, `If thou detain me -- I do not eat of thy bread; and if thou prepare a burnt-offering -- to Jehovah thou dost offer it;' for Manoah hath not known that He [is] a messenger of Jehovah.

17 And Manoah saith unto the messenger of Jehovah, `What [is] thy name? when thy words come to pass, then we have honoured thee.'

18 And the messenger of Jehovah saith to him, `Why [is] this -- thou dost ask for My name? -- and it [is] Wonderful.'

19 And Manoah taketh the kid of the goats, and the present, and offereth on the rock to Jehovah, and He is doing wonderfully, and Manoah and his wife are looking on,

20 and it cometh to pass, in the going up of the flame from off the altar toward the heavens, that the messenger of Jehovah goeth up in the flame of the altar, and Manoah and his wife are looking on, and they fall on their faces to the earth,

21 and the messenger of Jehovah hath not added again to appear unto Manoah, and unto his wife, then hath Manoah known that He [is] a messenger of Jehovah.

22 And Manoah saith unto his wife, `We certainly die, for we have seen God.'

23 And his wife saith to him, `If Jehovah were desirous to put us to death, He had not received from our hands burnt-offering and present, nor shewed us all these things, nor as [at this] time caused us to hear [anything] like this.'

24 And the woman beareth a son, and calleth his name Samson, and the youth groweth, and Jehovah doth bless him,

25 and the Spirit of Jehovah beginneth to move him in the camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

[_LeVay]

HAIL SATAN!

INTRODUCTION by Michael A. Aquino

This introduction appeared in the hardcover Satanic Bible from 1972 and in the Avon paperback edition from 1972 to 1976

Each successive era of man’s cultural and ethical development has upraised its literary manifesto—an argument challenging existing norms and proposing a novel approach to the enduring issues of civilization. It has not infrequently been the case that the realities of political nationalism have been blended with the idealisms of extranational emphasis to produce what we now cautiously term existentialism. Pertinent works might include the Republic of Plato, the Politics of Aristotle, Machiavelli’s Prince, and the writings of Nietzsche, Hobbes, Locke, Marx, and Sartre.

This is the book of our era.

The dawn of the Satanic Age was celebrated on April 30, 1966—the Year One. On that date Anton Szandor LaVey consecrated the Church of Satan in the city of San Francisco and assumed office as its first High Priest. What had begun several years earlier as an intellectual forum dedicated to the investigation and application of the Black Arts has since expanded into an international philosophical movement of the first magnitude. Satanism, once the isolate province of furtive outcasts and radical eccentrics, has now become a serious alternative to the doctrines of theism and materialism. In its championship of indulgence instead of abstinence, the Church of Satan rejects the notion that man’s progress is contingent upon his acceptance of a self‐imposed morality. Sound judgment derives from the comparison and resolution of opposites, Satanists maintain, and one cannot presume to justice by honoring a single standard of behavior.

An empirical approach to morality is not a recent innovation; such theorists as Pythagoras, Hegel, Spencer, and Compte advanced the original propositions for man’s intellectual independence from the natural order. And, though this concept has invariably provoked adverse reaction from society‐oriented institutions, it is not an insubstantial viewpoint. One need only consider the spasmodic cataclysms of history to see how inadequately Homo sapiens cooperates with his fellows.

By itself, however, all theory is inconsequential. Until now the only advocates of a subjective morality were professorial abstractionists and—occasionally—the scattered and disorganized devotees of the traditional “White” witchcraft. Indeed the latter have enjoyed some notoriety of late, as their supposed proclamation of a liberal morality tempered by social correctness appeals to the bored but timid dilettante. Such aficionados of the occult profess a righteous horror of Black Magic or Satanism, which they denounce as a maleficent, degenerate creature of moral and carnal abuse.

The Satanist, on the other hand, regards traditional witchcraft as merely a neurotic reaction against the established religions of the parent culture. The worship of any deity or deities—under any guise whatsoever—is repulsive to the Black Magician, who considers all protestations of faith or trust in a supernatural protectorate to be humiliating demonstrations of cowardice and emotional insecurity. Satanism has been frequently misrepresented as “devil worship”, when in fact it constitutes a clear rejection of all forms of worship as a desirable component of the personality. It is not so much an anti‐religion—a simple rebuttal of any one belief—as it is an un‐religion, an uncompromising dismissal of all insubstantial mysticism. As such it represents a far more serious threat to organized theologies than do the archaic customs of the old dæmonologies.

Ritual and fantasy play a very real part in the activities of the Satanic Church, on the assumption that the experience and control of mental and metaphysical irrationality are necessary for the strengthening of the psyche. Thus a distinct effort is made to avoid what was perhaps the Achilles’ heel of the Gurdjieff‐Ouspensky school of subjective psychological evolution; earlier disciples of self‐determined transcendentalism postulated that all non-materialistic sensations were a danger to the coherence of the student. Crucial to the concept of Satanic ritual is an appreciation of its illustrative and inspirational qualities without necessarily regarding it as inflexible reality.

Satanism is more accurately identified as a disposition than as a religion, as it is actively concerned with all the facets of human existence, not with only the so‐called spiritual aspects.

Yet those who proclaim it to be a danger to justice and cooperative order have missed the point entirely. Satanism advocates unrestricted freedom, but only to the extent that one’s preferences do not impinge upon another’s. It should also be noted that Satanism is a philosophy of the individual, not of the mass. There are no collective policy statements save the famous Crowley admonition: “Self‐deceit is the gravest of all ‘sins’.”

While the majority of the populace may instinctively incline to a de facto Satanism, the Church cautions that its propositions are not for the irresponsible. There are no Satanic missionaries, and to affiliate one must meet exacting standards. Inexperience is not dishonored, but pretentiousness, hypocrisy, and pomposity are treated with the scorn that they deserve. Satanism is no less an art than it is a science, and there is “no standard of measurement deified”.

Dr. LaVey is uniquely prepared to author the new Diabolism. An American of Georgian, Alsatian, and Romanian Gypsy descent, he was quick to display the characteristic restlessness of his nomadic ancestors and an unusual empathy for their earthy, arcane lore.

An early preoccupation with the military sciences led him to read the various logistical publications of the World War II era, only to discover that the proud visions of martial glory entertained in the first world war had given way to a detached, mercenary realism in the second. His experiences as a student did nothing to dispel this first taste of human cynicism, and LaVey’s growing impatience with the sterile regimentation of conventional education drove him to seek the strange, surrealistic enchantments of the circus. He assisted Clyde Beatty as a wild‐animal trainer, and he soon developed a strong affinity for the cats which was to mark his personality in a most curious manner. All animate creatures are basically bestial, he reasoned, and even the most refined social orders achieve at best only a flimsy suppression of this innate savagery. From the circus he proceeded to a carnival, where the glitter of the performing arts was tinged with the ever‐present struggle for daily subsistence.

Here LaVey worked in a pathetic but quietly dignified world of misfits, sideshow freaks, and human oddities; and here he was to learn the craft of the stage magician, whose success depends upon the contrived distraction of the audience’s attention. With a certain grimness he noted the fascination with which the “normal” man regards his deformed comrades—a gloating satisfaction over the visiting of misfortune upon another instead of oneself.

Becoming increasingly interested in this cruel, lycanthropic attribute of human nature, he studied criminology in college and eventually worked with the San Francisco Police Department as a photographer.

As a circus professional he had seen carnal man at his most artistic; now he was to view him at his most vicious. Three years of the gore, brutality, and abject misery that permeate the criminal subculture left him sickened, disillusioned, and angered with the rampant hypocrisy of polite society. He turned to the pipe organ as a means of living and devoted the greater part of his efforts to what was to become his life’s work—Black Magic.

LaVey had long since rejected the stereotypical tracts on ceremonial sorcery as the hysterical products of medieval imaginations. The “Old Craft” with its superstitions, affected mannerisms, and infantile parlor games was not for him; what he sought was a metaphysical psychology that would approach the intellectual man only after giving due consideration to his brutal, animalistic origins. And so he came at last to the Goat of Mendes.

Satan is easily the most enigmatic figure in classical literature. Possessed of every conceivable wealth, and the most powerful of the Archangels, he spurned his exalted allegiance to proclaim his independence from all that his Heavenly patron personified.

Although condemned to the most hideous of domains, a Hell totally shunned by the divinity, he embraced such privations as the burden of his intellectual prerogative. In his Infernal Empire one might indulge even the most extraordinary tastes with impunity, yet amidst such wanton licentiousness the Devil maintained a peculiar nobility. It was this elusive quality which Anton LaVey determined to identify.

After long years of research and experiment, he pronounced the guiding principle of Satanism: that the ultimate consequence of man lies not in unity but in duality. It is only synthesis that decides values; adherence to a single order is arbitrary and therefore insignificant.

LaVey’s disturbing theories and bizarre operations of ceremonial Black Magic eventually attracted a following of similarly minded individuals. From this first small circle the Church of Satan was to emerge, attuned to its founder’s contention that its messages would be presented most effectively through “nine parts social respectability to one part of the most blatant outrage”.

The social impact and spectacular growth of the Church were to become something of a legend in themselves, but it was an essential part of LaVey’s convictions that the formal institution’s role was principally that of a catalyst. Contemporary civilization has proved too interdependent to permit the luxury of monastic isolationism. Satanism must accordingly assume a stance comprehensible to the average intellect. It was with such intent that the Satanic Bible was conceived.

The Satanic Bible is a most insidious document. One is strongly tempted to compare it with that obscure, malefic mythology The King in Yellow, a psychopolitical work that supposedly drove its readers to madness and damnation. As candid and conversational as the Satanic Bible might seem at first glance, it is not a volume to be gently dismissed. It is very much the product of our time, not only because such a book—together with its author—

would more than likely have been destroyed in an earlier era, but because its creation was an evolutionary inevitability.

You, the reader, are about to be impaled upon the sharp horns of a Satanic dilemma. If you accept the propositions of this book, you condemn your most cherished sanctuaries to annihilation. In return you will awaken—but only to the most fiery of Hells. Should you reject the argument, you resign yourself to a cancerous disintegration of your previously subconscious sense of identity. Small wonder that the Archfiend’s legacy has won him so many bitter enemies!

Whatever your decision, it can be avoided no longer. The Satanic Bible finally articulates what man has instinctively dreaded to proclaim: that he himself is potentially divine.

INTRODUCTION by Burton H. Wolfe

This second introduction by Burton Wolfe was used from 1976 through 2005

On a winter’s evening in 1967, I drove crosstown in San Francisco to hear Anton Szandor LaVey lecture at an open meeting of the Sexual Freedom League. I was attracted by newspaper articles describing him as “the Black Pope” of a Satanic church in which baptism, wedding, and funeral ceremonies were dedicated to the Devil. I was a free‐lance magazine writer, and I felt there might be a story in LaVey and his contemporary pagans; for the Devil has always made “good copy,” as they say on the city desk.

It was not the practice of the black arts itself that I considered to be the story, because that is nothing new in the world. There were Devil‐worshipping sects and voodoo cults before there were Christians. In eighteenth‐century England a Hell‐Fire Club, with connections to the American colonies through Benjamin Franklin, gained some brief notoriety. During the early part of the twentieth century, the press publicized Aleister Crowley as the “wickedest man in the world.” And there were hints in the 1920s and ‘30s of a “black order” in Germany.

To this seemingly old story LaVey and his organization of contemporary Faustians offered two strikingly new chapters. First, they blasphemously represented themselves as a

“church,” a term previously confined to the branches of Christianity, instead of the traditional coven of Satanism and witchcraft lore. Second, they practiced their black magic openly instead of underground.

Rather than arrange a preliminary interview with LaVey for discussion of his heretical innovations, my usual first step in research, I decided to watch and listen to him as an unidentified member of an audience. He was described in some newspapers as a former circus and carnival lion tamer and trickster now representing himself as the Devil’s representative on earth, and I wanted to determine first whether he was a true Satanist, a prankster, or a quack. I had already met people in the limelight of the occult business; in fact, Jeane Dixon was my landlady and I had a chance to write about her before Ruth Montgomery did. But I had considered all the occultists phonies, hypocrites, or quacks, and I would never spend five minutes writing about their various forms of hocus‐pocus.

All the occultists I had met or heard of were white‐lighters: alleged seers, prophesiers, and witches wrapping their supposedly mystic powers around God‐based, spiritual communication. LaVey, seeming to laugh at them if not spit on them in contempt, emerged from between the lines of newspaper stories as a black magician basing his work on the dark side of nature and the carnal side of humanity. There seemed to be nothing spiritual about his “church”.

As I listened to LaVey talk that first time, I realized at once there was nothing to connect him with the occult business. He could not even be described as metaphysical. The brutally frank talk he delivered was pragmatic, relativistic, and above all rational. It was unorthodox, to be sure: a blast at established religious worship, repression of humanity’s carnal nature, phony pretense at piety in the course of an existence based on dog‐eat‐dog material pursuits.

It was also full of sardonic satire on human folly. But most important of all, the talk was logical. It was not quack magic that LaVey offered his audience. It was common sense philosophy based on the realities of life.

After I became convinced of LaVey’s sincerity, I had to convince him that I intended to do some serious research instead of adding to the accumulation of hack articles dealing with the Church of Satan as a new type of freak show. I boned up on Satanism, discussed its history and rationale with LaVey, and attended some midnight rituals in the famous Victorian manse once used as Church of Satan headquarters. Out of all that I produced a serious article, only to find that was not what the publishers of “respectable” magazines wanted. They were interested in only the freak show kind of article. Finally, it was a so‐called “girlie” or “man’s” magazine, Knight of September 1968, that published the first definitive article on LaVey, the Church of Satan, and LaVey’s synthesis of the old Devil legends and black magic lore into the modern philosophy and practice of Satanism that all followers and imitators now use as their model, their guide, and even their Bible.

My magazine article was the beginning, not the end (as it has been with my other writing subjects), of a long and intimate association. Out of it came my biography of LaVey, The Devil’s Avenger, published by Pyramid in 1974. After the book was published, I became a card‐carrying member and, subsequently, a priest of the Church of Satan, a title I now proudly share with many celebrated persons. The postmidnight philosophical discussions I began with LaVey in 1967 continue today, a decade later, supplemented sometimes these days by a nifty witch or some of our own music, him on organ and me on drums, in a bizarre cabaret populated by superrealistic humanoids of LaVey’s creation.

All of LaVey’s background seemed to prepare him for his role. He is the descendant of Georgian, Roumanian, and Alsatian grandparents, including a gypsy grandmother who passed on to him the legends of vampires and witches in her native Transylvania. As early as the age of five, LaVey was reading Weird‐Tales magazines and books such as Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Though he was different from other children, they appointed him as leader in marches and maneuvers in mock military orders.

In 1942, when LaVey was twelve, his fascination with toy soldiers led to concern over World War II. He delved into military manuals and discovered arsenals for the equipment of armies and navies could be bought like groceries in a supermarket and used to conquer nations. The idea took shape in his head that contrary to what the Christian Bible said, the earth would not be inherited by the meek, but by the mighty.

In high school LaVey became something of an offbeat child prodigy. Reserving his most serious studies for outside the school, he delved into music, metaphysics, and secrets of the occult. At fifteen, he became second oboist in the San Francisco Ballet Symphony Orchestra.

Bored with high school classes, LaVey dropped out in his Junior year, left home, and joined the Clyde Beatty Circus as a cage boy, watering and feeding the lions and tigers. Animal trainer Beatty noticed that LaVey was comfortable working with the big cats and made him an assistant trainer.

Possessed since childhood by a passion for the arts, for culture, LaVey was not content merely with the excitement of training jungle beasts and working with them in the ring as a fill‐in for Beatty. By age ten he had taught himself to play the piano by ear. This came in handy when the circus calliope player became drunk before a performance and was unable to go on; LaVey volunteered to replace him, confident he could handle the unfamiliar organ keyboard well enough to provide the necessary background music. It turned out he knew more music and played better than the regular calliopist, so Beatty cashiered the drunk and installed LaVey at the instrument. He accompanied the “Human Cannonball”, Hugo Zachinni, and the Wallendas’ high‐wire acts, among others.

When LaVey was eighteen he left the circus and joined a carnival. There he became assistant to a magician, learned hypnosis, and studied more about the occult. It was a curious combination. On the one side he was working in an atmosphere of life at its rawest level—of earthy music; the smell of wild animals and sawdust; acts in which a second of missed timing meant accident or death; performances that demanded youth and strength, and shed those who grew old like last year’s clothes; a world of physical excitement that had magical attractions. On the other side, he was working with magic in the dark side of the human brain. Perhaps the strange combination influenced the way he began to view humanity as he played organ for carnival sideshows.

“On Saturday night,” LaVey recalled in one of our long talks, “I would see men lusting after half‐naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent‐show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday night they’d be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man’s carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scourged by any white-light religion.”

Though LaVey did not realize it then, he was on his way toward formulating a religion that would serve as the antithesis of Christianity and its Judaic heritage. It was an old religion, older than Christianity or Judaism. But it had never been formalized, arranged into a body of thought and ritual. That was to become LaVey’s role in twentieth‐century civilization.

After LaVey became a married man himself in 1951, at age twenty‐one, he abandoned the wondrous world of the carnival to settle into a career better suited for homemaking. He had been enrolled as a criminology major at the City College of San Francisco. That led to his first conformist job, photographer for the San Francisco Police Department. As it worked out, that job had as much to do as any other with his development of Satanism as a way of life.

“I saw the bloodiest, grimiest side of human nature,” LaVey recounted in a session dealing with his past life. “People shot by nuts, knifed by their friends; little kids splattered in the gutter by hit‐and‐run drivers. It was disgusting and depressing. I asked myself: ‘Where is God?’ I came to detest the sanctimonious attitude of people toward violence, always saying

‘it’s God’s will’.”

So he quit in disgust after three years of being a crime photographer and returned to playing organ, this time in nightclubs and theaters to earn a living while he continued his studies into his life’s passion: the black arts. Once a week he held classes on arcane topics: hauntings, E.S.P., dreams, vampires, werewolves, divination, ceremonial magic, etc. They attracted many people who were, or have since become, well known in the arts and sciences, and the business world. Eventually a “Magic Circle” evolved from this group.

The major purpose of the Circle was to meet for the performance of magical rituals LaVey had discovered or devised. He had accumulated a library of works that described the Black Mass and other infamous ceremonies conducted by groups such as the Knights Templar in fourteenth‐century France, the Hell‐Fire club and the Golden Dawn in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century England. The intent of some of these secret orders was to blaspheme, lampoon the Christian church, and address themselves to the Devil as an anthropomorphic deity that represented the reverse of God. In LaVey’s view, the Devil was not that, but rather a dark, hidden force in nature responsible for the workings of earthly affairs, a force for which neither science nor religion had any explanation. LaVey’s Satan is “the spirit of progress, the inspirer of all great movements that contribute to the development of civilization and the advancement of mankind. He is the spirit of revolt that leads to freedom, the embodiment of all heresies that liberate.”

On the last night of April 1966– Walpurgisnacht, the most important festival in the lore of magic and witchcraft–LaVey ritualistically shaved his head in accordance with magical tradition and announced the formation of the Church of Satan. For proper identification as its minister, he put on the clerical collar. Up to that collar he looked almost holy. But his Genghis Khan‐like shaven head, his Mephistophelian beard, and his narrow eyes gave him the necessary demonic look for his priesthood of the Devil’s church on earth.

“For one thing,” LaVey explained himself, “calling it a church enabled me to follow the magic formula of one part outrage to nine parts social respectability that is needed for success. But the main purpose was to gather a group of like‐minded individuals together for the use of their combined energies in calling up the dark force in nature that is called Satan.”

As LaVey pointed out, all other churches are based on worship of the spirit and denial of the flesh and the intellect. He saw the need for a church that would recapture man’s mind and carnal desires as objects of celebration. Rational self‐interest would be encouraged and a healthy ego championed.

He began to realize that the old concept of a Black Mass to satirize Christian services was outmoded or, as he put it, “beating a dead horse”. In the Church of Satan, LaVey initiated some exhilarating psychodramas, in lieu of Christianity’s self‐debasing services, thereby exorcising repressions and inhibitions fostered by white‐light religions.
There was a revolution in the Christian church itself against orthodox rites and traditions.

It had become popular to declare that “God is dead”. So, the alternative rites that LaVey worked out, while still maintaining some of the trappings of ancient ceremonies, were changed from a negative mockery to positive forms of celebrations and purges: Satanic weddings consecrating the joys of the flesh, funerals devoid of sanctimonious platitudes, lust rituals to help individuals attain their sex desires, destruction rituals to enable members of the Satanic church to triumph over enemies.

On special occasions such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals in the name of the Devil, press coverage, though unsolicited, was phenomenal. By 1967 the newspapers that were sending reporters to write about the Church of Satan extended from San Francisco across the Pacific to Tokyo and across the Atlantic to Paris. A photo of a nude woman, half covered by a leopard skin, serving as an altar to Satan in a LaVey‐conceived wedding ceremony, was transmitted by major wire services to daily newspapers everywhere: and it showed up on the front page of such bulwarks of the media as the Los Angeles Times. As the result of the publicity, grottos (LaVey’s counterpart to covens) affiliated with the Church of Satan spread throughout the world, proving one of LaVey’s cardinal messages: the Devil is alive and highly popular with a great many people.

Of course LaVey pointed out to anyone who would listen that the Devil to him and his followers was not the stereotyped fellow cloaked in red garb, with horns, tail and pitchfork, but rather the dark forces in nature that human beings are just beginning to fathom. How did LaVey square that explanation with his own appearance at times in black cowl with horns?

He replied: “People need ritual, with symbols such as those you find in baseball games or church services or wars, as vehicles for expending emotions they can’t release or even understand on their own.” Nevertheless, LaVey himself soon tired of the games.
There were setbacks. First, some of LaVey’s neighbors began complaining bout the full-grown lion he was keeping as a house pet, and eventually the big cat was donated to the local zoo. Next, one of LaVey’s most devoted witches, Jayne Mansfield, died under a curse he had placed on the head of her suitor, lawyer Sam Brody, for a variety of reasons I have explained in The Devil’s Avenger; LaVey had persistently warned her away from Brody and felt depressed over her death. It was the second tragic death in the sixties of a Hollywood sex symbol with whom he had been intimately involved; the other was Marilyn Monroe, LaVey’s paramour for a brief but crucial period in 1948 when he had quit the carnival and was playing organ for strippers around the Los Angeles area.

On top of all that, LaVey was tired of organizing entertainments and purges for his church members. He had gotten in touch with the last living remnants of the prewar occult fraternities of Europe, was busily acquiring their philosophies and secret rituals left over from the pre‐Hitler era, and needed time to study, write and work out new principles. He had long been experimenting with and applying the principles of geometric spatial concepts in what he terms “The Law of the Trapezoid”. (He scoffs at current faddists who are “barking up the wrong pyramids”.) He was also becoming widely sought as speaker, guest on radio and television programs, and production and/or technical adviser to scores of television producers and moviemakers turning out Satanic chillers. Sometimes he was also an actor. As sociologist Clinton R. Sanders points out: “...no occultist has had as direct an impact upon formulaic cinematic presentations of Satanism as has Anton Szandor LaVey. Ritual and esoteric symbolism are central elements in LaVey’s church and the films in which he has had a hand contain detailed portrayals of Satanic rites and are filled with traditional occult symbols. The emphasis upon ritual in the Church of Satan is ‘intended to focus the emotional powers within each individual’. Similarly, the ornate ritualism that is central to LaVey’s films may reasonably be seen as a mechanism to involve and focus the emotional experience of the cinema audience.”

At last LaVey decided to transfer rituals and other organized activities to Church of Satan grottos around the world, and devote himself to writing, lecturing, teaching—and to his family: wife Diane, the blonde beauty who serves as High Priestess of the Church; raven-haired daughter Karla, now in her early twenties, a criminology major like her father before, spending much of her time lecturing on Satanism at universities in many parts of the country; and finally Zeena, remembered by people who saw the famous photo of the Satanic Church baptism as a tiny tot, but now a gorgeously developed teenager attracting a growing pack of wolves, human male variety.

Out of LaVey’s relatively quiescent period came his widely read, pioneering books: First, The Satanic Bible, which at this writing is in its twelfth edition (and this is my second, revised introduction, after having written the original introduction to the first edition). Second, The Satanic Rituals, which covers more of the somber, complex material LaVey unearthed from his increasing sources. And third, The Compleat Witch, a bestseller in Italy, but, sadly, allowed by its American publisher to go out of print with its potential unfulfilled.

LaVey’s spreading out from organized church activities to writing books for worldwide distribution has, of course, greatly expanded Church of Satan membership. Satanism’s growing popularity has naturally been accompanied by scare stories from religious groups complaining that The Satanic Bible now outsells the Christian Bible on college campuses and is a leading causative factor in youngsters’ turning away from God. And certainly one suspects that Pope Paul had LaVey in mind when he issued his worldwide proclamation two years ago that the Devil is “alive” and “a person”, a living, fire‐breathing character spreading evil over the earth. LaVey, maintaining that “evil” is “live” spelled backward and should be indulged in and enjoyed, answers the pope and the religious scare groups this way:

“People, organizations, nations are making millions of dollars off us. What would they do without us? Without the Church of Satan, they wouldn’t have anybody to rage at and to take the blame for all the rotten things happening in the world. If they really feel this way, they shouldn’t have blown us out of proportion. What you really have to believe instead is that they are the charlatans, and they’re really glad to have us around so they can exploit us.

We’re an extremely valuable commodity. We’ve helped business, lifted up the economy, and some of the millions of dollars we have generated have in turn flowed into the Christian church. We have proved many times over the Ninth Satanic Statement that says the church—

and countless individuals—cannot exist without the Devil.”
For that the Christian church must pay a price. The events that LaVey predicted in the first edition of The Satanic Bible have come to pass. Repressed people have burst their bonds.

Sex has exploded, the collective libido has been released, in movies and literature, on the streets, and in the home. People are dancing topless and bottomless. Nuns have thrown off their traditional habits, exposed their legs, and danced the “Missa Solemnis Rock” that LaVey thought he was conjuring up as a prank. There is a ceaseless universal quest for entertainment, gourmet foods and wines, adventure, enjoyment of the here and now.

Humanity is no longer willing to wait for any afterlife that promises to reward the clean, pure—translate: ascetic, drab—spirit. There is a mood of neopaganism and hedonism, and from it there have emerged a wide variety of brilliant individuals—doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, stockbrokers, real estate developers, actors and actresses, mass communications media people (to cite a few categories of Satanists)—who are interested in formalizing and perpetuating this all‐pervading religion and way of life.

It is not an easy religion to adopt in a society ruled so long by Puritan ethics. There is no false altruism or mandatory love‐thy‐neighbor concept in this religion. Satanism is a blatantly selfish, brutal philosophy. It is based on the belief that human beings are inherently selfish, violent creatures, that life is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest, that only the strong survive and the earth will be ruled by those who fight to win the ceaseless competition that exists in all jungles—including those of urbanized society. Abhor this brutal outlook if you will; it is based, as it has been for centuries, on real conditions that exist in the world we inhabit rather than the mystical lands of milk and honey depicted in the Christian Bible.

In The Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey has explained the philosophy of Satanism more profoundly than any of his ancestors in the Kingdom of Darkness, while describing in detail the innovative rituals and trappings he has devised to create a church of realists. It has been clear from the first edition that many people want to read this book to learn how to start Satanic groups and ritualize black magic. The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals are the only books that have demonstrated, in a way that is authentic and true to relevant traditions, how all of that can be done. There have been many imitators, never attributing their source, and with good reason; because once the shabbiness and shallowness of the imitators have been compared to LaVey’s pioneering work, there can no longer be any market for the ripoff artists.

The evidence is clear to any who are willing to view the record: Anton LaVey brought Satan out of the closet and the Church of Satan is the fountainhead of contemporary Satanism. This book summarizes the message both convey, and remains both challenge and inspiration, as timely today as when it was written.

SAN FRANCISCO

December 25, 1976 (XI Anno Satanas)

INTRODUCTION by Peter H. Gilmore

This introduction has been used since 2005

HAIL SATAN!

[_LittleNipper]

Judges 14:1-20
Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. When he returned, he said to his father and mother that he had seen a Philistine woman in Timnah and wants to marry her. His parents asked if there are not acceptable women among all Israel? They could understand Samson wanting a Philistine pagan. Samson insisted. (His parents did not know that this was from God, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling Israel.) Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached the vineyards of Timnah, a young lion came roaring toward him. The Spirit of the Lord came strongly upon him so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a baby goat. Samson said nothing to anyone. Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her.

Some time later, when he went back to marry her, he went out of his way to look at the lion’s rotting body, and in it he saw a swarm of bees and some honey. He scooped out the honey with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the lion’s carcass.

His father went down to see the woman. And there Samson held a feast, as was customary for young men at that time and place. When the people saw him, they chose 30 men to accompany him.
“Let me tell you a riddle,” Samson said to them. “If you can give me the answer within the seven days of the feast, I will give you 30 undergarments and thirty outfits. If you can’t tell me the answer, you must give me 30 undergarments and 30 outfits."

They told Samson to tell them the riddle.

He replied, “Out of the eater, something to eat;
out of the strong, something sweet.”
For three days they had no clue...

On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s intended, “Coax Samson into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father’s household to death. Did you invite us here to steal our property?”
Then Samson’s wife threw herself on him, sobbing, “You hate me! You don’t really love me. You’ve given my people a riddle, but you haven’t told me the answer.”

“I haven’t even explained it to my folks,” he replied, “so why should I explain it to you?” She cried the whole seven days of the feast. So on the seventh day he finally told her, because she continued nagging him. She in turn explained the riddle to her people.

Before sunset on the seventh day the men of the town said to him,
“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”

Samson told them that if they hadn't worked on his wife they would not have found out the answer. The Spirit of the Lord rialed him up. He went down to Ashkelon, killing thirty of their men, stripped them naked and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. Burned up, he returned to his father’s home. And Samson’s intended ended up with one of those who accompanied Samson, and attended the feast.

Judges 14

Young's Literal Translation (YLT)


1 And Samson goeth down to Timnath, and seeth a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines,

2 and cometh up and declareth to his father, and to his mother, and saith, `A woman I have seen in Timnath, of the daughters of the Philistines; and now, take her for me for a wife.'

3 And his father saith to him -- also his mother, `Is there not among the daughters of thy brethren, and among all my people, a woman, that thou art going to take a woman from the uncircumcised Philistines?' and Samson saith unto his father, `Take her for me, for she is right in mine eyes.'

4 And his father and his mother have not known that from Jehovah it [is], that a meeting he is seeking of the Philistines; and at that time the Philistines are ruling over Israel.

5 And Samson goeth down -- also his father and his mother, to Timnath, and they come unto the vineyards of Timnath, and lo, a lion's whelp roareth at meeting him,

6 and the Spirit of Jehovah prospereth over him, and he rendeth it as the rending of a kid, and there is nothing in his hand, and he hath not declared to his father and to his mother that which he hath done.

7 And he goeth down and speaketh to the woman, and she is right in the eyes of Samson;

8 and he turneth back after [some] days to take her, and turneth aside to see the carcase of the lion, and lo, a company of bees [are] in the body of the lion -- and honey.

9 And he taketh it down on to his hands, and goeth on, going and eating; and he goeth unto his father, and unto his mother, and giveth to them, and they eat, and he hath not declared to them that from the body of the lion he took down the honey.

10 And his father goeth down unto the woman, and Samson maketh there a banquet, for so the young men do;

11 and it cometh to pass when they see him, that they take thirty companions, and they are with him.

12 And Samson saith to them, `Let me, I pray you, put forth to you a riddle; if ye certainly declare it to me [in] the seven days of the banquet, and have found [it] out, then I have given to you thirty linen shirts, and thirty changes of garments;

13 and if ye are not able to declare [it] to me, then ye have given to me thirty linen shirts, and thirty changes of garments.' And they say to him, `Put forth thy riddle, and we hear it!'

14 And he saith to them: `Out of the eater came forth meat, And out of the strong came forth sweetness;' and they were not able to declare the riddle [in] three days.

15 And it cometh to pass, on the seventh day, that they say to Samson's wife, `Entice thy husband, that he declare to us the riddle, lest we burn thee and the house of thy father with fire; to possess us have ye called for us? is it not?'

16 And Samson's wife weepeth for it, and saith, `Thou hast only hated me, and hast not loved me; the riddle thou hast put forth to the sons of my people -- and to me thou hast not declared it;' and he saith to her, `Lo, to my father and to my mother I have not declared [it] -- and to thee I declare [it]!'

17 And she weepeth for it the seven days [in] which their banquet hath been, and it cometh to pass on the seventh day that he declareth [it] to her, for she hath distressed him; and she declareth the riddle to the sons of her people.

18 And the men of the city say to him on the seventh day, before the sun goeth in: -- `What [is] sweeter than honey? And what stronger than a lion?' And he saith to them: `Unless ye had ploughed with my heifer, Ye had not found out my riddle.'

19 And the Spirit of Jehovah prospereth over him, and he goeth down to Ashkelon, and smiteth of them thirty men, and taketh their armour, and giveth the changes to those declaring the riddle; and his anger burneth, and he goeth up to the house of his father;

20 and Samson's wife becometh his companion's, who [is] his friend.

[_LeVay]

HAIL SATAN!

NOT ALL VAMPIRES
SUCK BLOOD!


SATANISM represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires.

Many people who walk the earth practice the fine art of making others feel responsible and even indebted to them, without cause. Satanism observes these leeches in their true light. Psychic vampires are individuals who drain others of their vital energy.

This type of person can be found in all avenues of society. They fill no useful purpose in our lives, and are neither love objects nor true friends. Yet we feel responsible to the psychic vampire without knowing why.

If you think you may be the victim of such a person, there are a few simple rules which will help you form a decision. Is there a person you often call or visit, even though you really don’t want to, because you know you will feel guilty if you don’t? Or, do you find yourself constantly doing favors for one who doesn’t come forward and ask, but hints?

Often the psychic vampire will use reverse psychology, saying: “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that”—and you, in turn, insist upon doing it. The psychic vampire never demands anything of you. That would be far too presumptuous. They simply let their wishes be known in subtle ways which will prevent them from being considered pests. They “wouldn’t think of imposing” and are always content and willingly accept their lot, without the slightest complaint—outwardly!

Their sins are not of commission, but of omission. It’s what they don’t say, not what they do say, that makes you feel you must account to them. They are much too crafty to make overt demands upon you, because they know you would resent it, and would have a tangible and legitimate reason for denying them.

A large percentage of these people have special “attributes” which make their dependence upon you more feasible and much more effective. Many psychic vampires are invalids (or pretend to be) or are “mentally or emotionally disturbed.” Others might feign ignorance or incompetence so you will, out of pity—or more often, exasperationdo things for them.

The traditional way to banish a demon or elemental is to recognize it for what it is, and exorcise it. Recognition of these modern‐day demons and their methods is the only antidote for their devastating hold over you.

Most people accept these passively vicious individuals at face value only because their insidious maneuvers have never been pointed out to them. They merely accept these “poor souls” as being less fortunate than themselves, and feel they must help them however they can. It is this misdirected sense of responsibility (or unfounded sense of guilt) which nourishes well the “altruisms” upon which these parasites feast!

The psychic vampire is allowed to exist because he cleverly chooses conscientious, responsible people for his victims—people with great dedication to their “moral obligations.”

In some cases we are vampirized by groups of people, as well as individuals. Every fund raising organization, be it a charitable foundation, community council, religious or fraternal association, etc., carefully selects a person who is adept at making others feel guilty for its chairman or coordinator. It is the job of this chairman to intimidate us into opening first our hearts, and then our wallets, to the recipient of their “good will” never mentioning that, in many cases, their time is not unselfishly donated, but that they are drawing a fat salary for their “noble deeds.” They are masters at playing upon the sympathy and consideration of responsible people. How often we see little children who have been sent forth by these self‐righteous Fagins to painlessly extract donations from the kindly. Who can resist the innocent charm of a child?

There are, of course, people who are not happy unless they are giving, but many of us do not fit into this category. Unfortunately, we are often put upon to do things we do not genuinely feel should be required of us. A conscientious person finds it very difficult to decide between voluntary and imposed charity. He wants to do what is right and just, and finds it perplexing trying to decide exactly who he should help and what degree of aid should rightfully be expected of him.

Each person must decide for himself what his obligations are to his respective friends, family, and community. Before donating his time and money to those outside his immediate family and close circle of friends, he must decide what he can afford, without depriving those closest to him. When taking these things into consideration he must be certain to include himself among those who mean most to him. He must carefully evaluate the validity of the request and the personality or motives of the person asking it of him.

It is extremely difficult for a person to learn to say “no” when all his life he has said “yes.” But unless he wants to be constantly taken advantage of, he must learn to say “no” when circumstances justify doing so. If you allow them, psychic vampires will gradually infiltrate your everyday life until you have no privacy left—and your constant feeling of concern for them will deplete you of all ambition.

A psychic vampire will always select a person who is relatively content and satisfied with his life—a person who is happily married, pleased with his job, and generally well-adjusted to the world around him—to feed upon. The very fact that the psychic vampire chooses to victimize a happy person shows that he is lacking all the things his victim has; he will do everything he can to stir up trouble and disharmony between his victim and those people he holds dear.

Therefore, be wary of anyone who seems to have no real friends and no apparant interest in life (except you). He will usually tell you he is very selective in his choice of friends, or doesn’t make friends easily because of the high standards he sets for his companions. (To acquire and keep friends, one must be willing to give of himself something of which the psychic vampire is incapable.) But he will hasten to add that you fulfill every requirement and are truly an outstanding exception among men— you are one of the very few worthy of his friendship.

Lest you confuse desperate love (which is a very selfish thing) with psychic vampirism, the vast difference between the two must be clarified. The only way to determine if you are being vampirized is to weigh what you give the person compared to what they give you in return.

You may, at times, become annoyed with the obligations put upon you by a loved one, a close friend, or even an employer. But before you label them psychic vampires, you must ask yourself, “What am I getting in return?” If your spouse or lover insists that you call them frequently, but you also require them to account to you for their time spent away from you, you must realize this is a give and take situation. Or, if a friend is in the habit of calling upon you for help at inopportune moments, but you similarly depend upon them to give your immediate needs priority, you must regard it as a fair exchange. If your employer asks you to do a little more than is normally expected of you in your particular position, but will overlook occasional tardiness or will give you time off when you need it, you certainly have no cause for complaint and need not feel he is taking advantage of you.

You are, however, being vampirized if you are incessantly called upon or expected to do favors for someone who, when you need a favor, always happens to have other “pressing obligations.”
Many psychic vampires will give you material things for the express purpose of making you feel you owe them something in return, thereby binding you to them. The difference between your giving, and theirs, is that your return payment must come in a non‐material form. They want you to feel obligated to them, and would be very disappointed and even resentful if you attempted to repay them with material objects. In essence, you have “sold your soul” to them, and they’ll constantly remind you of your duty to them, by not reminding you.

Being purely Satanic, the only way to deal with a psychic vampire is to “play dumb” and act as though they are genuinely altruistic and really expect nothing in return. Teach them a lesson by graciously taking what they give you, thanking them loudly enough for all to hear, and walking away! In this way you come out the victor. What can they say? And when you are inevitably expected to repay their “generosity,” (this is the hard part!) you say “NO”—but again, graciously! When they feel you falling from their clutches two things will happen. First, they will act “crushed,” hoping your old feeling of duty and sympathy will return, and when (and if) it doesn’t, they will show their true colors and will become angry and vindictive.

Once you have moved them to this point, YOU can play the role of the injured party. After all, you’ve done nothing wrong—you just happened to have had “pressing obligations” when they needed you, and since nothing was expected in return for their gifts, there should be no hard feelings.

Generally, the psychic vampire will realize his methods have been discovered and will not press the issue. He will not continue to waste his time with you, but will move on to his next unsuspecting victim.

There are times, however, when the psychic vampire will not release his hold so easily, and will do everything possible to torment you. They have plenty of time for this because, when once rejected, they will neglect all else (what little else they have, that is) to devote their every waking moment to planning the revenge to which they feel they are entitled. For this reason, it is best to avoid a relationship with this kind of person in the first place. Their “adulation” and dependence upon you may, at first, be very flattering, and their material gifts very attractive, but you will eventually find yourself paying for them many times over.

Don’t waste your time with people who will ultimately destroy you, but concentrate instead on those who will appreciate your responsibility to them, and, likewise, feel responsible to you.

And if you are a psychic vampire—take heed! Beware of the Satanist—he is ready and willing to gleefully drive the proverbial stake through your heart!

OPENING THE ADAMANTINE GATES

An Introduction to The Satanic Bible
by Magus Peter H. Gilmore

This book has the potential to change your life – it did mine. It is a diabolical work, written with elegance, earthiness, and might, serving quite magically as a mirror. If you look within these pages and see yourself; if you find its principles to be those you’ve lived by as long as you can remember; if you feel the evocation of an overwhelming sense of homecoming, then you will have discovered that you are a part of a scattered “meta‐tribe,” and the proper name for what you are is “Satanist.”

I first encountered Anton Szandor LaVey through The Satanic Bible, at the age of thirteen when I was an avowed atheist. Not being partial to literature promoting faith of any sort, I was pleasantly surprised that this was no rant by someone claiming direct contact with Satan.

Instead, I found a common sense, rational, materialist philosophy, along with theatrical ritual techniques meant as self‐transformative psychodrama. Here was a tool perfectly suited to my nature as a means for getting the most out of my life. I knew that “atheist” was no longer sufficient as a designation for myself. This book lead me to meet and befriend LaVey, working with him to administer the Church he created, and finally to succeed him as the second High Priest of the Church of Satan.

It is one of Anton LaVey’s numerous talents that his written words are vivid, brimming with his distinct personality. His well‐wrought phrases give the sense of encountering the man himself, and such an impression is not a delusion. When my wife, Peggy Nadramia, and I met The Doctor” (an affectionate moniker used by those close him), we agreed that here was exactly the man we had dared to expect from reading his books.

Unlike the founders of other religions who claimed ‘inspiration” delivered through some supernatural entity, LaVey readily acknowledged that he used his own faculties to synthesize Satanism. He based it on both his understanding of the human animal acquired from life experience and the wisdom he’d gained from other advocates of materialism, pragmatism, and individualism. His blasphemously named “Church of Satan” was consciously designed to be an adversary to existing “spiritual’ belief systems. It was the first organization promulgating religious philosophy championing Satan as the symbol of liberty and individualism. Concerning his role as founder he said that, “If he didn’t do it himself, someone else, per haps less qualified, would have.” His perceptive insights thus lead him to give a proper name to a human type that has always been part of our species.

LaVey was born in Chicago in 1930, and his parents soon relocated to California, that westernmost gathering place for the brightest and darkest manifestations of that “American Dream.” It was a fertile environment for the sensitive child who would eventually mature into a role the press would dub “The Black Pope.” From his Eastern European grandmother, young LaVey learned of the superstitions that are still extant in that part of the world. These tales whetted his appetite for the outré, leading him to become absorbed in classic dark literature such as Dracula and Frankenstein. He also became an avid reader of the pulp magazines, which first published tales now deemed classics of the horror and science fiction genres. He later befriended seminal Weird Tales authors such as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Barbour Johnson, and George Has. His fancy was captured by fictional characters found in the works of Jack London and Somerset Maugham, in comic strip characters like Ming the Merciless, as well as by historical figures of a diabolical cast such as Cagliostro, Rasputin, and Basil Zaharoff. More interesting to him than the available occult literature, which he dismissed as being little more than sanctimonious white magic, were books applied obscure knowledge such as Dr. William Wesley Cook’s Practical Lessons in Hypnotism, Jane’s Fighting Ships, and manuals for handwriting analysis.

His musical abilities were noticed early, and he was given free reign by his parents to try his hand at various instruments. LaVey was mainly attracted to the keyboards because of their scope and versatility. He found time to practice and could easily reproduce songs heard by ear without recourse to fake books or sheet music. This talent would prove to be one of his main sources of income for many years, particularly his calliope playing during his carnival days, and later his many stints as an organist in bars, lounges, and nightclubs. These venues gave him the chance to study how various melodic lines and chord progressions swayed the emotions of his audiences, from the spectators at the carnival and spook shows to the individuals seeking solace for the disappointments in their lives in distilled spirits and the smoke‐filled taverns for which LaVey’s playing provided a moody soundtrack.

His odd interests marked him as an outsider, and he did not alleviate this by feeling any compulsion to be “one of the boys.” He despised gym class and team sports and often cut classes to follow his own interests. Moving beyond the standard school texts, he absorbed volumes analyzing human behavior on every level, from the impulses of the individual to the dynamics of the herd. He watched films that would later be labeled film noir as well as German expressionist cinema such as M, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the Dr. Mabuse movies. His taste for flashy apparel also served to amplify his alienation from the mainstream.

He dropped out of high school to hang around with hoodlum types and gravitated towards working in the circus and carnivals, first as a roustabout and cage boy and later as a musician. His always‐active curiosity was rewarded as he “learned the ropes” from the carnies. He worked an act with the big cats–he had an affinity for these powerful predators-and later assisted with the machinations of the spook shows. He became well‐versed in the many rackets used to separate the rubes from their money, along with the psychology that lead people to such pursuits. Under the name “The Great Szandor” he played calliope and organ for the bawdy shows on Saturday nights, as well as for tent revivalists on Sunday mornings, seeing many of the same men attending both and noting this telling contradiction.

All of these activities provided a firm, earthy background for his evolving cynical worldview.

When the carnival season ended, LaVey would earn money by playing organ in Los Angeles area burlesque houses, and he relates that it was during this period that he met and had a brief affair with a then‐unknown Marilyn Monroe, after accompanying her “chain-dragging” striptease at the Mayan Burlesque Theater. Moving back to San Francisco, LaVey worked for a while as a photographer for the police department, and, during the Korean War, enrolled in San Francisco City College as a criminology major to avoid the draft. Both his studies and occupation revealed grim insights into human nature and confirmed his rejection of spiritual doctrines. At this time he met and married Carole Lansing, who bore him his first daughter Karla Maritza, in 1952. A few years earlier LaVey had examined the writings of Aleister Crowley, so in 1951 he decided to meet some of the Berkeley Thelemites.

He was unimpressed, as they were more mystical and less “wicked” than he supposed they should be for disciples of Crowley’s libertine creed.

During the 1950s, LaVey supplemented his income as an investigator of alleged supernatural phenomena, handing “nut calls” referred to him by friends in the police department. These experiences proved to him that many people were inclined to seek a bizarre, “otherworldly” explanation for phenomena that had prosaic causes. His rational explanations often disappointed the complainants, so LaVey invented exotic sources to make them feel better, giving him insight as to how belief functions in people’s lives.

In 1956 he purchased a Victorian house on California Street in San Francisco’s Richmond District. It was reputed to have been a speakeasy, and was tricked out with secret passages, possibly to aid in clandestine carnal activities. He painted it black, thus creating a haunted intrusion on an otherwise typical block, matching his own unique presence. It was only natural that it would later become home to the Church of Satan. After his death, the building remained unoccupied, a brooding “shunned house,” until it was demolished on October 17

of 2001 by the real estate company that owned the property.
LaVey met and became entranced by Diane Hegarty in 1959; he then left Carole in 1960.

Hegarty and LaVey never married, but she bore him his second daughter, Zeena Galatea in 1964 and was his companion for many years. Hegarty and LaVey later separated; she sued him for palimony and this was settled out of court.

Through his “ghost busting,” and his frequent public gigs as an organist, including playing the Wurlitzer at the Lost Weekend cocktail lounge, LaVey became a local celebrity and his holiday parties attracted many San Francisco notables. Guests included Carin de Plessin, called “the Baroness” as she had grown up in the royal palace of Denmark, anthropologist Michael Harner, Chester A. Arthur III (grandson to the U.S. President), Forrest J. Ackerman (later, the publisher of Famous Monsters of Filmland and acknowledged expert on science fiction), author Fritz Leiber, local eccentric Dr. Cecil E. Nixon (creator of the musical automaton Isis), and underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger. From this crowd LaVey distilled what he called a “Magic Circle” of associates who shared his interest in the bizarre, the hidden side of what moves the world. As his expertise grew, LaVey began presenting Friday night lectures summarizing the fruits of his research. In 1965, LaVey was featured on the “The Brother Buzz Show”, a humorous children’s program hosted by marionettes. The focus was on LaVey’s “Addams Family” lifestyle—making a living as a hypnotist, investigator of the paranormal, and organist, as well as on his highly unusual pet Togare, a Nubian lion.

In the process of creating his lectures, LaVey noticed many common threads, which he then began weaving into a tenebrous conceptual tapestry. When a member of his Magic Circle suggested that he had the basis for a new religion LaVey agreed and decided to found the Church of Satan as the best means for communicating his ideas. And so, in 1966 on the night of May Eve—the traditional Witches’ Sabbath—LaVey declared the founding of the Church of Satan and renumbered 1966 as the year One, Anno Satanas— the first year of the Age of Satan.

The attention of the press soon followed, particularly with the wedding of Radical journalist John Raymond to New York socialite Judith Case on February 1st, 1967. Famed photographer Joe Rosenthal was sent by the San Francisco Chronicle to capture an image that went onward to the pages of the Los Angeles Times and other prominent newspapers. LaVey began the mass dissemination of his Philosophy via the release of a record album, The Satanic Mass (Murgenstrumm, 1968). The album featured a cover graphic named by LaVey as the “Sigil of Baphomet”: the goat head in a pentagram, circled with the Hebrew word “Leviathan,” which has since become the ubiquitous symbol of Satanism. Featured on the album was part of the rite of baptism written for three‐year‐old Zeena (performed on May 23rd, 1967). In addition to the actual recording of a Satanic ritual, side two of the LP had LaVey reading excerpts from the as‐yet‐unpublished The Satanic Bible over music by Beethoven, Wagner, and Sousa. His Friday lectures continued and he instituted a series of “Witches’ Workshops” to instruct women in the art of attaining their will through glamour, feminine wiles, and the skillful discovery and exploitation of men’s fetishes.

By the end of 1969, LaVey had taken monographs he had written to explain the philosophy and ritual practices of the Church of Satan and expanded them. His influences included philosophers such as Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, and Mencken, the base wisdom of the carnival folk, the observations of P.T. Barnum, and finally the imagery of the archfiend found in Twain, Milton, Byron, and other romantics. He prefaced these essays and rites with reworked excerpts from Ragnar Redbeard’s Might is Right and concluded it with “Satanized”

versions of John Dee’s Enochian Keys to create The Satanic Bible. It has never gone out of print and remains the main source for the contemporary Satanic movement.

The philosophy presented in it is an integrated whole, not a smorgasbord from which one can pick and choose. It is meant only for a select few who are epicurean, pragmatic, worldly, atheistic, fiercely individualistic, materialistic, rational, and darkly poetic. There may be fellow‐travelers— atheists, misanthropes, humanists, freethinkers—who see only a partial reflection of themselves in this showstone. Satanism may thus attract these types in some ways, but ultimately it is not for them. If it was only a philosophy, such individualists might be welcome; it is more. Satanism moves into the realm of religion by having an aesthetic component, a system of symbolism, metaphor, and ritual in which Satan is embraced not as some Devil to be worshipped, but as a symbolic external projection of the highest potential of each individual Satanist. The identification Satanists have with Satan is an intentional barrier against those who cannot resonate with this sinister archetype. The Satanic Bible was followed in 1971 by The Compleat Witch (re‐released in 1989 as The Satanic Witch), a manual that teaches “Lesser Magic”—the ways and means of reading and manipulating people and their actions toward the fulfillment of one’s desired goals. The Satanic Rituals (1972) was printed as a companion volume to The Satanic Bible and contains “Greater Magic” rituals culled from a Satanic tradition identified by LaVey in various world cultures. Two collections of essays, which range from the humorous and insightful to the gleefully sordid, The Devil’s Notebook (1992) and Satan Speaks (1998), complete his written canon.

Since its founding, LaVey’s Church of Satan attracted many varied people who shared an alienation from conventional religions, including celebrities Jayne Mansfield and Sammy Davis Jr., as well as rock stars King Diamond, Marilyn Manson, and Marc Almond who all became, at least for a time, card‐carrying members. He numbered among his associates Robert Fuest, director of the Vincent Price “Dr. Phibes” films as well as The Devil’s Rain; Jacques Vallee, ufologist and computer scientist, who was used as the basis for the character Lacombe, played by Francois Truffaut, in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind; and Aime Michel known as a spelunker and publisher of Morning of the Magicians.

LaVey’s influence spread through articles in the news media throughout the world, popular magazines such as Look, McCalls, Argosy, Newsweek, Time, and later Seconds, The Nose, and Rolling Stone, numerous men’s magazines, and via talk shows such as Joe Pyne, Phil Donahue, and Johnny Carson. This publicity left a mark on novels like Rosemary’s Baby (completed by Ira Levin during the early days of the Church’s high profile media blitz) and Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness, and films such as Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Devil’s Rain (1975), The Car (1977), Dr. Dracula (1980), and many of the “Devil Cult” films from the 1970s through today that picked up on symbolism from LaVey’s writings. A feature length documentary, Satanis: The Devil’s Mass (1969) covered the rituals and philosophy of the Church, while LaVey himself was profiled in Nick Bougas’ 1993 video documentary Speak of the Devil.

The Doctor’s musicianship is preserved on several recordings, primarily Strange Music (1994) and Satan Takes a Holiday (1995). These reflect his penchant for tunes from the 1930s through the 1950s, which range from humorous to doom‐laden as well as devil‐themed songs. LaVey renders them on a series of self‐programmed synthesizers, imitating various instrumental groups. They are impressive, as these are not multi‐track recordings, but are done in one take with the sounds of the full instrumental ensemble created through the simultaneous use of numerous synthesizers played by LaVey’s dexterous fingers as well as his feet on an organ‐style foot pedal keyboard hooked‐up via midi.

While his relationship with Diane Hegarty crumbled in the late 70s, a new lady would enter his life to become his final companion. Blanche Barton became his helpmate, co-conspirator, High Priestess, lover, and best friend. She bore him his only son, Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey on November 1, 1993. As his health deteriorated in the mid‐90s, LaVey preferred to spend time only with the people whom he found enriching, gaining him a reputation as a recluse. He died on October 29, 1997, of complications arising from heart disease. There was no deathbed repentance. He went proudly as he lived, as a Satanist, his only regrets being that he was leaving the great party that was life, and that he would miss seeing his young son Xerxes grow to manhood.

According to LaVey’s wishes, Barton succeeded him as the head of the Church after his death. In 2001, she passed on this position to myself, Peter H. Gilmore, by then a longtime church administrator and member of the Council of Nine. In 2002, Magistra Barton exchanged her position as High Priestess with my wife Magistra Peggy Nadramia, another veteran administrator who was serving as chair of the Council of Nine.

Two biographies have been written about LaVey: The Devil’s Avenger (1974) by Burton Wolfe and Secret Life of a Satanist (1990) by Blanche Barton. In recent years detractors of LaVey with rather obvious agendas have disputed the authenticity of some of the events chronicled in these books. They accuse him of fabrication and self‐promotional exaggeration.

LaVey was a skilled showman, a talent he never denied. However, the incidents detailed in both biographies that can be authenticated via photographic, testimonial, and documentary evidence far outweigh the items in dispute. The fact remains that LaVey pursued a course that exposed him to unusual individuals from all strata of society. It climaxed with his founding of the Church of Satan, which lead to international notoriety. He was gifted beyond what is normally considered a standard for excellence, turning his hand to many arts with a deftness usually gained through dedication to only one muse. He lived his life as a true exemplar of all that he extolled—pursuing his pleasures without stinting while producing works only attained through vigorous self‐discipline.

LaVey succeeded in avoiding the fate of Mrs. Cassan, a character from Charles G. Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao, a favored novel of The Doctor. Her doom was to die and be forgotten, for her life produced nothing that was memorable in either a creative or destructive manner. With his thoughts, now presented in multiple languages, continuing to inspire like minds around the globe, Anton Szandor LaVey has won a place in the arena of philosophical and religious discourse. We Satanists owe him our gratitude for symbolically opening the adamantine gates of Hell, by giving form and structure to a philosophy that names us as the Gods of our own subjective universes. His ultimate heresy against the complacent masses was to reject their idolized dictum that all men are equal. Consequently he challenged his comrades to exercise their faculties to judge and be judged in all that they do. He dethroned the seeking of external saviors and championed responsibility for all of one’s actions and the resultant consequences. That is perhaps the most frightening principle to a society wherein none are held accountable for their behavior.

The Church of Satan remains a world‐spanning cabal of those who work to continue human society’s momentum along the vector set by LaVey. It shall remain the treasured domain of an imperious few, who live by their own blood and brains, who proudly reject any “good guy badge” and embrace the title of Satanist. There is nothing to fear in The Satanic Bible, for it will not transform you into something that you are not. It cannot convert you, or persuade you in directions not inherent in your nature. Its power lies in its ability to show you what you are through your reaction to its contents. Embrace them, and your life shall gain a new focus, for you will have sharpened your understanding of your self, and you will see more clearly how you differ from those around you. Reject some or all of these hardnosed postulates, and you are free to move on towards whatever other spiritual or conceptual haven that provides you with satisfaction. However, you will no longer be ignorant of what it means to be a Satanist. If you’ve grasped these fundamentals and have the talent to read people, you might notice that there are such individuals about you, and like LaVey himself, that they are some of the most just and fascinating folks you’ll have the pleasure of knowing.

Magus Peter H. Gilmore
High Priest, Church of Satan

[_LittleNipper]

Judges 15:1-20

Young's Literal Translation (YLT)


1 And it cometh to pass, after [some] days, in the days of wheat-harvest, that Samson looketh after his wife, with a kid of the goats, and saith, `I go in unto my wife, to the inner chamber;' and her father hath not permitted him to go in,

2 and her father saith, I certainly said, that thou didst certainly hate her, and I give her to thy companion; is not her sister -- the young one -- better than she? Let her be, I pray thee, to thee, instead of her.'

3 And Samson saith of them, `I am more innocent this time than the Philistines, though I am doing with them evil.'

4 And Samson goeth and catcheth three hundred foxes, and taketh torches, and turneth tail unto tail, and putteth a torch between the two tails, in the midst,

5 and kindleth fire in the torches, and sendeth [them] out into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burneth [it] from heap even unto standing corn, even unto vineyard -- olive-yard.

6 And the Philistines say, `Who hath done this?' And they say, `Samson, son-in-law of the Timnite, because he hath taken away his wife, and giveth her to his companion;' and the Philistines go up, and burn her and her father with fire.

7 And Samson saith to them, `Though ye do thus, nevertheless I am avenged on you, and afterwards I cease!'

8 And he smiteth them hip and thigh -- a great smiting, and goeth down and dwelleth in the cleft of the rock Etam.

9 And the Philistines go up, and encamp in Judah, and are spread out in Lehi,

10 and the men of Judah say, `Why have ye come up against us?' and they say, `To bind Samson we have come up, to do to him as he hath done to us.'

11 And three thousand men of Judah go down unto the cleft of the rock Etam, and say to Samson, `Hast thou now known that the Philistines are rulers over us? and what [is] this thou hast done to us?' And he saith to them, `As they did to me, so I did to them.'

12 And they say to him, `To bind thee we have come down -- to give thee into the hand of the Philistines.' And Samson saith to them, `Swear to me, lest ye fall upon me yourselves.'

13 And they speak to him, saying, No, but we certainly bind thee, and have given thee into their hand, and we certainly do not put thee to death;' and they bind him with two thick bands, new ones, and bring him up from the rock.

14 He hath come unto Lehi -- and the Philistines have shouted at meeting him -- and the Spirit of Jehovah prospereth over him, and the thick bands which [are] on his arms are as flax which they burn with fire, and his bands are wasted from off his hands,

15 and he findeth a fresh jaw-bone of an ass, and putteth forth his hand and taketh it, and smiteth with it -- a thousand men.

16 And Samson saith, `With a jaw-bone of the ass -- an ass upon asses -- with a jaw-bone of the ass I have smitten a thousand men.'

17 And it cometh to pass when he finisheth speaking, that he casteth away the jaw-bone out of his hand, and calleth that place Ramath-Lehi;

18 and he thirsteth exceedingly, and calleth unto Jehovah, and saith, `Thou -- Thou hast given by the hand of Thy servant this great salvation; and now, I die with thirst, and have fallen into the hand of the uncircumcised.'

19 And God cleaveth the hollow place which [is] in Lehi, and waters come out of it, and he drinketh, and his spirit cometh back, and he reviveth; therefore hath [one] called its name `The fountain of him who is calling,' which [is] in Lehi unto this day.

20 And he judgeth Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.

[_Bazooka]

There is a lot more than that and I'm sure you left that out for obvious reasons..............

Feel free to post what you believe to be the most credible proof of Jesus being a real person.

[_LeVay]

HAIL SATAN!

INDULGENCE . . . NOT COMPULSION

THE HIGHEST PLATEAU OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IS THE AWARENESS OF THE FLESH!

ATANISM encourages its followers to indulge in their natural desires. Only by doing so can you be a completely satisfied person with no frustrations which can S be harmful to yourself and others around you. Therefore, the most simplified description of the Satanic belief is:

INDULGENCE INSTEAD OF ABSTINENCE

People often mistake compulsion for indulgence, but there is a world of difference between the two. A compulsion is never created by indulging, but by not being able to indulge. By making something taboo, it only serves to intensify the desire. Everyone likes to do the things they have been told not to. “Forbidden fruits are sweetest.”

Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary defines indulgence thusly: “To give oneself up to; not to restrain or oppose; to give free course to; to gratify by compliance; to yield to.” The dictionary definition of compulsion is: “The act of compelling or driving by a force, physical or moral; constraint of the will; (compulsory, obligatory).” In other words, indulgence implies choice, whereas compulsion indicates the lack of choice.

When a person has no proper release for his desires they rapidly build up and become compulsions. If everyone had a particular time and place for the purpose of periodically indulging in their personal desires, without fear of embarrassment or reproach, they would be sufficiently released to lead unfrustrated lives in the everyday world. They would be free to plunge headlong into whatever undertaking they might choose instead of going about their duties half‐heartedly, their creative urges frustrated by denying their natural desires. This would apply in the majority of cases, but there will always be those who work better under pressure.

Generally, those who need to endure a certain amount of hardship to produce to their full capabilities are in basically artistic vocations. (More will be said later about fulfillment through self‐denial.) This does not mean to imply that all artists fit into this category. On the contrary, many artists are unable to produce unless their basic animal needs have been satisfied.

For the most part, it is not the artist or individualist, but the average middle‐class working man or woman who is lacking the proper release for their desires. It is ironic that the responsible, respectable person—the one who pays society’s bills—should be the one given the least in return. It is he who must be ever conscious of his “moral obligations,” and who is condemned for normally indulging in his natural desires.

The Satanic religion considers this a gross injustice. He who upholds his responsibilities should be most entitled to the pleasures of his choice, without censure from the society he serves.

Finally a religion (Satanism) has been formed which commends and rewards those who support the society in which they live, instead of denouncing them for their human needs.

From every set of principles (be it religious, political, or philosophical), some good can be extracted. Amidst the madness of the Hitlerian concept, one point stands out as a shining example of this—“strength through joy!.” Hitler was no fool when he offered the German people happiness, on a personal level, to insure their loyalty to him, and peak efficiency from them.

It has been clearly established that the majority of all illnesses are of a psychosomatic nature, and that psychosomatic illnesses are a direct result of frustration. It has been said that “the good die young.” The good, by Christian standards, do die young. It is the frustration of our natural instincts which leads to the deterioration of our minds and bodies.

It has become very fashionable to concentrate on the betterment of the mind and spirit, and to consider giving pleasure to one’s body (the very shell without which the mind and spirit could not exist) to be coarse, crude, unrefined. AS OF LATE, MOST PEOPLE WHO DEEM THEMSELVES EMANCIPATED HAVE LEFT NORMALCY ONLY TO “TRANSCEND” INTO IDIOCY! By way of bending their behinds around to meet their navels, subsisting on wild and exotic diets like brown rice and tea, they feel they will arrive at a great state of spiritual development.

“Hogwash!” says the Satanist. He would rather eat a good hearty meal, exercise his imagination, and transcend by means of physical and emotional fulfillment. It seems, to the Satanist, that after being harnessed with unreasonable religious demands for so many centuries, one would welcome the chance to be human for once!

If anyone thinks that by denying his natural desires he can avoid mediocrity, he should examine the Eastern mystical beliefs which have been in great intellectual favor in recent years. Christianity is “old‐hat,” so those who wish to escape its fetters have turned to so-called enlightened religions, such as Buddhism. Although Christianity is certainly deserving of the criticism it has received, perhaps it has been taking more than its share of the blame. The followers of the mystical beliefs are every bit as guilty of the little humanisms as the “misguided” Christians. Both religions are based on trite philosophies, but the mystical religionists profess to be enlightened and emancipated from the guilt-ridden dogma which is typified by Christianity. However, the Eastern mystic is even more preoccupied than the Christian with avoiding animalistic actions that remind him he is not a “saint,” but merely a man—only another form of animal, sometimes better, more often worse, than those who walk on all fours; and who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!

The Satanist asks, “What is wrong with being human, and having human limitations as well as assets?” By denying his desires the mystic has come no closer to overcoming compulsion than his kindred soul, the Christian. The Eastern mystical beliefs have taught people to contemplate their navels, stand on their heads, stare at blank walls, avoid the use of labels in life, and discipline themselves against any desire for materialistic pleasure.

Nevertheless, I am sure you have seen just as many so‐called disciplined yogis with the inability to control a smoking habit as anyone else; or just as many supposedly emancipated Buddhists become just as excited as a “less aware” person when they are confronted with a member of the opposite or in some cases, the same—sex. Yet when asked to explain the reason for their hypocrisy, these people retreat into the ambiguousness which characterizes their faith—no one can pin them down if there are no straight answers that can be given!

The simple fact of the matter is that the very thing which has led this type of person to a faith which preaches abstinence, is indulgence. Their compulsive masochism is the reason for choosing a religion which not only advocates self‐denial, but praises them for it; and gives them a sacrosanct avenue of expression for their masochistic needs. The more abuse they can stand, the holier they become.

Masochism, to most people, represents a rejection of indulgence. Satanism points out many meanings behind the meanings, and considers masochism to be an indulgence if any attempt to sway or change the person from his masochistic traits is met with resentment and/or failure. The Satanist does not condemn these people for giving vent to their masochistic desires, but he does feel the utmost contempt towards those who cannot be honest enough (at least with themselves) to face and accept their masochism as a natural part of their personality make‐up.

Having to use religion as an excuse for their masochism is bad enough, but these people actually have the effrontery to feel superior to those who are not bound‐up in self‐deceitful expression of their fetishes! These people would be the first to condemn a man who found his weekly release with a person who would beat him soundly, thereby releasing himself from the very thing which could, if unreleased, make him—as they are—a compulsive church‐goer or religious fanatic. By finding adequate release for his masochistic desires, he no longer needs to debase and deny himself in his every waking moment, as do these compulsive masochists.

Satanists are encouraged to indulge in the seven deadly sins, as they need hurt no one; they were only invented by the Christian Church to insure guilt on the part of its followers.

The Christian Church knows that it is impossible for anyone to avoid committing these sins, as they are all things which we, being human, most naturally do. After inevitably committing these sins financial offerings to the church in order to “pay off” God are employed as a sop to the parishioner’s conscience!

Satan has never needed a book of rules, because vital natural forces have kept man “sinful” and intent on preserving himself and his feelings. Nevertheless, demoralizing attempts have been made on his body and being for his “soul’s” sake, which only illustrate how misconceived and misused the labels of “indulgence” versus “compulsion” have become.

Sexual activity certainly is condoned and encouraged by Satanism, but obviously the fact that it is the only religion which honestly takes this stand, is the reason it has been traditionally given so much literary space.

Naturally, if most people belong to the religions which repress them sexually, anything written on this provocative subject is going to make for titillating reading.

If all attempts to sell something (be it a product or an idea) have failed—sex will always sell it. The reason for this is that even though people now consciously accept sex as a normal and necessary function, their subconscious is still bound by the taboo which religion has placed upon it. So, again, what is denied is more intensely desired. It is this bugaboo regarding sex which causes the literature devoted to the Satanic views on the subject to overshadow all else written about Satanism.

The true Satanist is not mastered by sex any more than he is mastered by any of his other desires. As with all other pleasurable things, the Satanist is master of, rather than mastered by sex. He is not the perverted fiend who is just waiting for the opportunity to deflower every young virgin, nor is he the skulking degenerate who furtively hangs around in the “dirty” bookstores, slavering over the “nasty” pictures. If pornography fills his needs for the moment, he unashamedly buys some “choice items” and guiltlessly peruses them at his leisure.

“We have to accept the fact that man has become disgruntled at being constantly repressed, but we must do everything we can to at least temper the sinful desires of man, lest they run rampant in this new age,” say the religionists of the right‐hand path to the questioning Satanist. “Why continue to think of these desires as shameful and something to be repressed, if you now admit they are natural?” returns the Satanist. Could it be that the white‐light religionists are a bit “sour‐grapes” about the fact that they didn’t think of a religion, before the Satanists, which would be enjoyable to follow; and if the truth were known, would they too not like to have a bit more pleasure out of life, but for fear of losing face, cannot admit it? Could it also be that they are afraid people will, after hearing about Satanism, tell themselves “This is for me—why should I continue with a religion which condemns me for everything I do, even though there is nothing actually wrong with it?” The Satanist thinks this is more than likely true.

There is certainly much evidence that past religions are, every day, lifting more and more of their ridiculous restrictions. Even so, when an entire religion is based on abstinence instead of indulgence (as it should be) there is little left when it has been revised to meet the current needs of man. So, why waste time “buying oats for a dead horse”?

The watchword of Satanism is INDULGENCE instead of “abstinence” . . . BUT—it is not “compulsion.”

ON THE CHOICE
OF
A HUMAN SACRIFICE

tHE supposed purpose in performing the ritual of sacrifice is to throw the energy provided by the blood of the freshly slaughtered victim into the atmosphere of the magical working, thereby intensifying the magician’s chances of success.

The “white” magician assumes that since blood represents the life force, there is no better way to appease the gods or demons than to present them with suitable quantities of it. Combine this rationale with the fact that a dying creature is expending an overabundance of adrenal and other biochemical energies, and you have what appears to be an unbeatable combination.

The “white” magician, wary of the consequences involved in the killing of a human being, naturally utilizes birds, or other “lower” creatures in his ceremonies. It seems these sanctimonious wretches feel no guilt in the taking of a non‐human life, as opposed to a human’s.

The fact of the matter is that if the “magician” is worthy of his name, he will be uninhibited enough to release the necessary force from his own body, instead of from an unwilling and undeserving victim!

Contrary to all established magical theory, the release of this force is NOT effected in the actual spilling of blood, but in the death throes of the living creature! This discharge of bioelectrical energy is the very same phenomenon which occurs during any profound heightening of the emotions, such as: sexual orgasm, blind anger, mortal terror, consuming grief, etc. Of these emotions, the easiest entered into of one’s own violation are sexual orgasm and anger, with grief running a close third. Remembering that the two most readily available of these three (sexual orgasm and anger) have been burned into man’s unconscious as “sinful” by religionists, it is small wonder they are shunned by the “white” magician, who plods along carrying the greatest of all millstones of guilt!

The inhibitive and asinine absurdity in the need to kill an innocent living creature at the high‐point of a ritual, as practiced by erstwhile “wizards,” is obviously their “lesser of the evils” when a discharge of energy is called for. These poor conscience‐stricken fools, who have been calling themselves witches and warlocks, would sooner chop the head off a goat or chicken in an attempt to harness its death agony, than have the “blasphemous” bravery to masturbate in full view of the Jehovah whom they claim to deny! The only way these mystical cowards can ritualistically release themselves is through the agony of another’s death (actually their own, by proxy) rather than the indulgent force which produces life!

The treaders of the path of white light are truly the cold and the dead! No wonder these tittering pustules of “mystical wisdom” must stand within protective circles to bind the “evil” forces in order to keep themselves “safe” from attack—ONE GOOD ORGASM WOULD PROBABLY KILL THEM!

The use of a human sacrifice in a Satanic ritual does not imply that the sacrifice is slaughtered “to appease the gods.” Symbolically, the victim is destroyed through the working of a hex or curse, which in turn leads to the physical, mental or emotional destruction of the “sacrifice” in ways and means not attributable to the magician.

The only time a Satanist would perform a human sacrifice would be if it were to serve a twofold purpose; that being to release the magician’s wrath in the throwing of a curse, and more important, to dispose of a totally obnoxious and deserving individual. Under NO circumstances would a Satanist sacrifice any animal or baby! For centuries, propagandists of the right‐hand path have been prattling over the supposed sacrifices of small children and voluptuous maidens at the hands of diabolists. It would be thought that anyone reading or hearing of these heinous accounts would immediately question their authenticity, taking into consideration the biased sources of the stories. On the contrary, as with all “holy” lies which are accepted without reservation, this assumed modus operandi of the Satanists persists to this day!

There are sound and logical reasons why the Satanists could not perform such sacrifices.

Man, the animal, is the godhead to the Satanist. The purest form of carnal existence reposes in the bodies of animals and human children who have not grown old enough to deny themselves their natural desires. They can perceive things that the average adult human can never hope to. Therefore, the Satanist holds these beings in a sacred regard, knowing he can learn much from these natural magicians of the world.

The Satanist is aware of the universal custom of the treader of the path of Agarthi; the killing of the god. Inasmuch as gods are always created in man’s own image—and the average man hates what he sees in himself—the inevitable must occur: the sacrifice of the god who represents himself. The Satanist does not hate himself, nor the gods he might choose, and has no desire to destroy himself or anything for which he stands! It is for this reason he could never willfully harm an animal or child.

The question arises, “Who, then, would be considered a fit and proper human sacrifice, and how is one qualified to pass judgment on such a person?” The answer is brutally simple.

Anyone who has unjustly wronged you—one who has “gone out of his way” to hurt you—to deliberately cause trouble and hardship for you or those dear to you. In short, a person asking to be cursed by their very actions.

When a person, by his reprehensible behavior, practically cries out to be destroyed, it is truly your moral obligation to indulge them their wish. The person who takes every opportunity to “pick on” others is often mistakenly called “sadistic.” In reality, this person is a misdirected masochist who is working towards his own destruction. The reason a person viciously strikes out against you is because they are afraid of you or what you represent, or are resentful of your happiness. They are weak, insecure, and on extremely shaky ground when you throw your curse, and they make ideal human sacrifices.

It is sometimes easy to overlook the actual wrongdoing of the victim of your curse, when one considers how “unhappy” a person he really is. It is not so easy, though, to retrace the damaging footsteps of your antagonist and make right those practical situations he or she has made wrong.

The “ideal sacrifice” may be emotionally insecure, but nonetheless can, in the machinations of his insecurity, cause severe damage to your tranquility or sound reputation. “Mental illness,” “nervous breakdown,” “maladjustment,” “anxiety neuroses,” “broken homes,” “sibling rivalry,” etc., etc., ad infinitum have too long been convenient excuses for vicious and irresponsible actions. Anyone who says “we must try to understand” those who make life miserable for those undeserving of misery is aiding and abetting a social cancer! The apologists for these rabid humans deserve any clobberings they get at the hands of their charges!

Mad dogs are destroyed, and they need help far more than the human who conveniently made froths at the mouth when irrational behavior is in order! It is easy to say, “So what!—these people are insecure, so they can’t hurt me.” But the fact remains—
given the opportunity they would destroy you!

Therefore, you have every right to (symbolically) destroy them, and if your curse provokes their actual annihilation, rejoice that you have been instrumental in ridding the world of a pest! If your success or happiness disturbs a person—you owe him nothing! He is made to be trampled under foot! IF PEOPLE HAD TO TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS, THEY WOULD THINK TWICE!

HAIL SATAN!

[_LittleNipper]

There is a lot more than that and I'm sure you left that out for obvious reasons..............

Feel free to post what you believe to be the most credible proof of Jesus being a real person.

The Jews and the Nation of Israel is among the most incredible proof that the Bible is entirely true and that would mean that the Messiah has come.

[_LittleNipper]

Judges 15:1-20 Later on, at the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his woman. He said, “I’m going to my wife’s room.” But her father would not let him go in. Her father was so sure that Samson no longer wanted his daughter that she was given to the "best" man. The father suggested that younger sister was prettier and that Samson could have her.

Samson said to them, “This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines; I will really harm them.” He went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails ----- ignited them and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the sheaves and standing grain, together with the vineyards and olive groves.

The Philistines were told that Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law did it, because his wife was given to his companion. So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death. Samson said to them, “Since you’ve acted like this, I swear that I won’t stop until I get my revenge on you.” He attacked them viciously and massacred many of them. He went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam. The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi. The people of Judah wanted to know why they came. They of course came to take Samson prisoner for what he did. 3000 men of Judah to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?” He answered, “I merely did to them what they did to me.” They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.” Samson said, “Swear to me that you won’t kill me yourselves.” So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock. As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands. Grabbing a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he struck down a 1000 men.

Then Samson said,
“With an ass's jawbone
I have made ass's of them.
With aa ass’s jawbone
I have killed a thousand men.”

When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was called Ramath Lehi. Because he was very thirsty, he cried out to the Lord. Then God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water sprang out. When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived. So the spring was called En Hakkore, and it is still there in Lehi. Samson led Israel for 20 years in the time of the Philistines.

Young's Literal Translation (YLT)

1 And it cometh to pass, after [some] days, in the days of wheat-harvest, that Samson looketh after his wife, with a kid of the goats, and saith, `I go in unto my wife, to the inner chamber;' and her father hath not permitted him to go in,

2 and her father saith, I certainly said, that thou didst certainly hate her, and I give her to thy companion; is not her sister -- the young one -- better than she? Let her be, I pray thee, to thee, instead of her.'

3 And Samson saith of them, `I am more innocent this time than the Philistines, though I am doing with them evil.'

4 And Samson goeth and catcheth three hundred foxes, and taketh torches, and turneth tail unto tail, and putteth a torch between the two tails, in the midst,

5 and kindleth fire in the torches, and sendeth [them] out into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burneth [it] from heap even unto standing corn, even unto vineyard -- olive-yard.

6 And the Philistines say, `Who hath done this?' And they say, `Samson, son-in-law of the Timnite, because he hath taken away his wife, and giveth her to his companion;' and the Philistines go up, and burn her and her father with fire.

7 And Samson saith to them, `Though ye do thus, nevertheless I am avenged on you, and afterwards I cease!'

8 And he smiteth them hip and thigh -- a great smiting, and goeth down and dwelleth in the cleft of the rock Etam.

9 And the Philistines go up, and encamp in Judah, and are spread out in Lehi,

10 and the men of Judah say, `Why have ye come up against us?' and they say, `To bind Samson we have come up, to do to him as he hath done to us.'

11 And three thousand men of Judah go down unto the cleft of the rock Etam, and say to Samson, `Hast thou now known that the Philistines are rulers over us? and what [is] this thou hast done to us?' And he saith to them, `As they did to me, so I did to them.'

12 And they say to him, `To bind thee we have come down -- to give thee into the hand of the Philistines.' And Samson saith to them, `Swear to me, lest ye fall upon me yourselves.'

13 And they speak to him, saying, No, but we certainly bind thee, and have given thee into their hand, and we certainly do not put thee to death;' and they bind him with two thick bands, new ones, and bring him up from the rock.

14 He hath come unto Lehi -- and the Philistines have shouted at meeting him -- and the Spirit of Jehovah prospereth over him, and the thick bands which [are] on his arms are as flax which they burn with fire, and his bands are wasted from off his hands,

15 and he findeth a fresh jaw-bone of an ass, and putteth forth his hand and taketh it, and smiteth with it -- a thousand men.

16 And Samson saith, `With a jaw-bone of the ass -- an ass upon asses -- with a jaw-bone of the ass I have smitten a thousand men.'

17 And it cometh to pass when he finisheth speaking, that he casteth away the jaw-bone out of his hand, and calleth that place Ramath-Lehi;

18 and he thirsteth exceedingly, and calleth unto Jehovah, and saith, `Thou -- Thou hast given by the hand of Thy servant this great salvation; and now, I die with thirst, and have fallen into the hand of the uncircumcised.'

19 And God cleaveth the hollow place which [is] in Lehi, and waters come out of it, and he drinketh, and his spirit cometh back, and he reviveth; therefore hath [one] called its name `The fountain of him who is calling,' which [is] in Lehi unto this day.

20 And he judgeth Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.