Ruth 4:1-22 Boaz went down to the marketplace and found the relative he had mentioned. Boaz asked to talk to him and so they sat down together. Boaz called for ten of the chief men of the village and asked them to sit as witnesses. Boaz said to his relative, “You know Naomi, who came back to us from Moab. She is selling Elimelech’s property. I felt that I should speak to you about it so that you can buy it if you wish, with these respected men as witnesses. If you want it, let me know right away, for if you don’t take it, I will. You have the first right to purchase it and I am next.” The man replied, “All right, I’ll buy it.” Then Boaz told him, that this purchase from Naomi requires marriage to Ruth so that she can have children to carry on her husband’s name and to inherit the land. “Then I can’t do it,” the man replied. “For her son would become an heir to my property too;[c] you buy it.”
It was the custom in Israel for a man transferring a right of purchase to pull off his sandal and hand it to the other party; this legally validated the transaction. So, as the man said to Boaz, “You buy it for yourself,” he drew off his sandal. Boaz said to the witnesses and to the crowd standing around that they have seen that he willingly buys all the property of Elimelech, Chilion, and Mahlon, from Naomi, and that with it he willingly takes Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Mahlon, to be his wife, so that she can have a son to carry on the family name of her dead husband.
All the people standing there and the witnesses replied, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make this woman, who has now come into your home, as fertile as Rachel and Leah, from whom all the nation of Israel descended! May you be a great and successful man in Bethlehem, and may the descendants the Lord will give you from this young woman be as numerous and honorable as those of our ancestor Perez, the son of Tamar and Judah.”
Boaz married Ruth, and the Lord gave her a son. The women of the city said to Naomi, “Bless the Lord who has given you this little grandson; may he be famous in Israel. May he restore your youth and take care of you in your old age; for he is the son of your daughter-in-law who loves you so much, and who has been kinder to you than seven sons!”
Naomi took care of the baby, and the neighbor women said, “Now at last Naomi has a son again!” He was named Obed. He was the father of Jesse and grandfather of King David.
This is the family tree of Boaz, beginning with his ancestor Perez: Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nashon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David.
(All are the Ancestors of Jesus)
Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
1 And Boaz hath gone up to the gate, and sitteth there, and lo, the redeemer is passing by of whom Boaz had spoken, and he saith, `Turn aside, sit down here, such a one, such a one;' and he turneth aside and sitteth down.
2 And he taketh ten men of the elders of the city, and saith, `Sit down here;' and they sit down.
3 And he saith to the redeemer, `A portion of the field which [is] to our brother, to Elimelech, hath Naomi sold, who hath come back from the fields of Moab;
4 and I said, I uncover thine ear, saying, Buy before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people; if thou dost redeem -- redeem, and if none doth redeem -- declare to me, and I know, for there is none save thee to redeem, and I after thee.' And he saith, I redeem [it].'
5 And Boaz saith, `In the day of thy buying the field from the hand of Naomi, then from Ruth the Moabitess, wife of the dead, thou hast bought [it], to raise up the name of the dead over his inheritance.'
6 And the redeemer saith, `I am not able to redeem [it] for myself, lest I destroy mine inheritance; redeem for thyself -- thou -- my right of redemption, for I am not able to redeem.'
7 And this [is] formerly in Israel for redemption and for changing, to establish anything: a man hath drawn off his sandal, and given [it] to his neighbour, and this [is] the testimony in Israel.
8 And the redeemer saith to Boaz, `Buy [it] for thyself,' and draweth off his sandal.
9 And Boaz saith to the elders, and [to] all the people, `Witnesses [are] ye to-day that I have bought all that [is] to Elimelech, and all that [is] to Chilion and Mahlon, from the hand of Naomi;
10 and also Ruth the Moabitess, wife of Mahlon, I have bought to myself for a wife, to raise up the name of the dead over his inheritance; and the name of the dead is not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place; witnesses ye [are] to-day.'
11 And all the people who [are] in the gate say -- also the elders -- `Witnesses! Jehovah make the woman who is coming in unto thy house as Rachel and as Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel; and do thou virtuously in Ephrathah, and proclaim the Name in Beth-Lehem;
12 and let thy house be as the house of Pharez (whom Tamar bare to Judah), of the seed which Jehovah doth give to thee of this young woman.'
13 And Boaz taketh Ruth, and she becometh his wife, and he goeth in unto her, and Jehovah giveth to her conception, and she beareth a son.
14 And the women say unto Naomi, `Blessed [is] Jehovah who hath not let a redeemer cease to thee to-day, and his name is proclaimed in Israel,
15 and he hath been to thee for a restorer of life, and for a nourisher of thine old age, for thy daughter-in-law who hath loved thee -- who is better to thee than seven sons -- hath borne him.'
16 And Naomi taketh the lad, and layeth him in her bosom, and is to him for a nurse;
17 and the neighbouring women give to him a name, saying, `There hath been a son born to Naomi,' and they call his name Obed; he [is] father of Jesse, father of David.
18 And these are genealogies of Pharez: Pharez begat Hezron,
19 and Hezron begat Ram, and Ram begat Amminidab,
20 and Amminidab begat Nahshon, and Nahshon begat Salmon,
21 and Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed,
22 and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.
Bible verse by verse
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_Quasimodo
- _Emeritus
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Re: Bible verse by verse
ludwigm wrote:But I am only a Hungarian with limited understanding of English.
I have noticed that your English, while good from the beginning, has gotten continuously better. My Magyar is still beyond hope.
I blame you, ludwigm.
This, or any other post that I have made or will make in the future, is strictly my own opinion and consequently of little or no value.
"Faith is believing something you know ain't true" Twain.
"Faith is believing something you know ain't true" Twain.
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_LeVay
- _Emeritus
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Re: Bible verse by verse
HAIL SATAN!
I. LaVey: Early Writings
The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth
Anton Szandor LaVey, 1967
1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9. Do not harm little children.
10. Do not kill non‐human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop.
If he does not stop, destroy him.
“Satanism” Monograph (1968-1969)
Anton Szandor LaVey
The following monograph, distributed in 1968‐1969, was written to convey the essence of the Satanic religion as it was practiced by the Church of Satan in its earliest years. Much of the material in the monograph was later expanded into a series of twenty essays issued to Satanists as a study course.
Both the original monograph and the essays derived from it were discontinued prior to the 1970
publication of the Satanic Bible because of that volume’s incorporation of the essays in its “Books of Lucifer” and “Belial”. This monograph, then, may be considered the original manifesto of the Church of Satan and hence its founding statement of principles.—M.A.A.
The Nine Satanic Statements
1
Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2
Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3
Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self‐deceit!
4
Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5
Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6
Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7
Satan represents man as just another animal—sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all‐fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8
Satan represents all of the so‐called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9
Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!
Part I: Foreword
In writing this monograph it is our intent to give you a basic understanding of the Satanic religion. Therefore we have attempted to present this to you in a form which will be easily understood.
We fully realize that many of you who will read this booklet will not be novices to the basics of Satanism or the fundamentals of psychology which make up a large part of the Satanic philosophy.
We are aware that to many of you part of the information herein is elementary. Therefore it is to be understood that there is no attempt on our part to be condescending to those to whom some of this information is already known.
We realize, however, that probably many more of you know comparatively little about Satanism, except what little you have been able to decipher from the reams of ponderous material which is shrouded in so much esoteric jargon as to make it virtually useless to neophytes in Satanic theology. It is with this in mind that we have avoided delving into the finer points of Satanic thought and ritual magic. A complete statement of the tenets of Satanism and an explanation of the ceremonies and detailed instructions on same are available to our members.
In the past the only writings on Satanism were those done by other religions as a means of propaganda to turn people against it, or by uninformed journalists who were influenced by the Judæo‐Christian society surrounding them. Therefore the information contained in such writings was either completely false or sensationalized.
Our purpose is to enlighten you as to the true concepts of Satanism and to refute the myths attached to it.
The “seven deadly sins” of the Christian church are greed, pride, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth. Satanism advocates indulging in each of these “sins”, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification. A Satanist feels there is nothing wrong with being greedy, as it only means that he wants more than he already has. Envy simply means to look with favor upon the possessions of others and to be desirous of obtaining similar things for oneself. Envy and greed are the motivating forces of ambition, and without ambition very little of any importance would be accomplished.
Gluttony is simply eating more than you need to keep yourself alive. When you have over‐eaten to the point of obesity, you will oftentimes resort to another sin—pride—to regain an appearance which will return your self‐respect. Anyone who buys an article of clothing for a purpose other than covering his body and keeping off the elements is guilty of pride.
You may encounter scoffers who maintain that labels are not necessary. You might find it an ego‐satisfying little exercise to point out to these people that one or many articles that they are wearing are not necessary to keep them warm. There is not a person on this earth who is completely devoid of all ornamentation. You can inform the person that any ornamentation of his body shows that he too is guilty of pride. Regardless of how verbose he may be in his intellectual description of how free he is, he is still wearing the elements of pride. This thought may serve no other purpose for you than that of being a satisfying exercise in abuse of non‐Satanists.
Being reluctant to get up in the morning is to be guilty of sloth; and if you lie in bed long enough, you may find yourself indulging in yet another sin—lust. To have the faintest stirring of sexual desire is to be guilty of lust. In order to ensure the propagation of humanity, nature made lust the second most powerful instinct, the first being self‐preservation.
Realizing this, the Christian church made fornication the “original sin”. In this way it made certain that no one would escape sin. Your very state of being is as a result of sin—the original sin!
The strongest instinct of every living creature is self‐preservation, which brings us to the last of the “seven deadly sins”—anger. Is it not our self‐preservation instinct which is aroused when someone harms us and we become angry enough to protect ourselves from further attack? A Satanist practices the motto: “If a man smite thee on one cheek, smash him on the other!” Let no wrong go unredressed. Be as a lion in the path; be dangerous even in defeat!
Since man’s natural instincts lead him to sin, all men are sinners; and all sinners go to Hell. If everyone goes to Hell, then you will meet all of your friends there. Heaven must be populated by some very strange creatures if all they live for is to go to a place where they can strum harps for eternity.
We have been told that Hell is a terrible place consisting of a huge lake of fire. Pleasure, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Christian missionaries were very unsuccessful in Alaska because, to an Eskimo who knows nothing other than freezing weather, a perpetual lake of fire is very inviting. To the distress of the missionaries, the Eskimos asked, “How do we get there?”
Hell has always been the mold from which Heaven has been cast. Heaven or Paradise, to most people, represents a vision of having their desires fulfilled … these very desires being those which, if practiced during their earthly lives, would certainly have sent them to Hell!
Life is an indulgence, death an abstinence. For a person who is satisfied with his earthly existence, life is like a party, and no one likes to leave a good party. Similarly if a person is enjoying himself here on earth, he will not so readily give up his life for the promise of an afterlife about which he knows nothing.
In most religions death is touted as a beautiful, spiritual awakening. This is very appealing to one who has not had a satisfactory life. But to those who have experienced all of the joys that life has to offer, there is a great dread attached to dying. This is as it should be. It is this lust for life that will allow the vital person to live on after the inevitable death of his fleshly shell.
The only time an animal will resort to suicide is if he is in such pain or life is so unbearable that death comes as an indulgence rather than an abstinence. Suicide is considered a sin. It is rather curious that the only time death, for a human being, is considered sinful is when it comes as an indulgence.
The four principal devils are: Leviathan, representing the sea; Lucifer, the lord of the air or bearer of light; Belial, the lord of the earth; and Satan, lord of the fire.
One of the main goals of the Church of Satan is to build pleasure domes in which the members of the Church can indulge themselves in their personal desires. By having a place where they can go to release their desires, the members can lead an unfrustrated life in the everyday world. Satanism advocates indulgence, not compulsion. Compulsion is very different from indulgence. When a person cannot control his desires and is a slave to these urges, they become compulsions. If a person has no proper release for his desires, they rapidly build up and become compulsions. A pleasure dome would consist of many different rooms and recreational facilities for the purpose of fulfilling each member’s personal desires.
Satanism represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires. Satanism represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates. Psychic vampires are individuals who drain others of their vital existence. We might feel responsible to such people yet not know why. These types of persons can be found in all avenues of society. They fill no useful purpose in our lives and are neither love objects nor true friends. We must rid ourselves of these psychic vampires so that we can devote our time to the people about whom we truly care. Rituals which can be performed to rid ourselves of these people will be discussed later.
The Satanist believes in fulfillment of the ego. Satanism, in fact, is the only religion which advocates the intensification or the encouragement of the ego. All other religions on the face of the Earth are concerned only with the dissolution of man’s ego. Only if a person’s ego is sufficiently fulfilled can he afford to be kind and complimentary to others without robbing himself of his self‐respect. Braggarts are very insecure people. We generally think of a braggart as a person with a large ego, but in reality it is his unfulfilled ego which leads to his bragging as a means of satisfying his ego.
To become a Satanist one does not have to “sell his soul to the Devil”. This concept was developed by Christianity to terrorize people so that they would not stray from the fold. It was taught that if you gave in to the temptations of Satan and lived your life in an indulgent manner, you would have to pay Satan with your soul when you died. And what is the soul, as religionists would have it, but a passport to everlasting life? People were led to believe that selling their souls to the Devil meant that they would suffer in Hell for the rest of eternity. This type of ridiculous thinking is what the Christian church has used to keep its parishioners in line. Phrases like “God‐fearing” are indicative of the basis for the Christian religion. It is through such fear that Christianity has been able to exist all these years.
We are no longer supplicating weaklings trembling before an unmerciful “God” who cares not whether we live or die. It has been a popular misconception that the Satanist does not believe in God. This is not so; but we realize that God, by whatever name he is given—or by no name at all, is only the balancing factor in nature and has little concern for any suffering which we may encounter. 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 that leads to the premature deterioration of our bodies.
When one commits a wrong in other religions, he either prays to God for forgiveness or confesses to an intermediary and asks him to pray to God for his sins. The Satanist feels that confessing to another human being like himself accomplishes nothing and is degrading.
When a Satanist commits a wrong, he realizes it is natural to make mistakes. If we are truly sorry about something, we will learn from our mistakes and not do the same thing again.
There has been much sensationalism regarding the Satanic Church and its views on free love. Free love in the Satanic Church means that a person is free to either be faithful to one person or indulge in his sexual desires with as many others as he feels necessary to satisfy his personal needs. Satanism advocates any type of sexuality which properly satisfies the person’s desires, be it heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, or even asexuality if you choose—or any of the fetishes pertaining to these. To most people masochism represents a rejection of indulgence. We consider 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.
Satanism does not encourage orgiastic activities or extramarital affairs for those to whom they do not come naturally. Being unfaithful to one’s chosen mate would be very unnatural and detrimental to some people. To others it would be frustrating to be bound sexually to one person without any hope of outside sexual activity. Each person must decide for himself what form of sexual activity best suits his individual needs. To thine own self be true. Self-deceit is intolerable in the Satanic religion.
There are two major holidays in the Satanic religion. These are Walpurgisnacht, which is celebrated on April 30th, and Halloween, October 31st. The solstices and equinoxes are also celebrated as holidays. On these occasions special rituals are performed, and festivities follow.
Part II: Ritual Magic
Ritual magic is a large part of the Satanic religion. The purpose in performing a ritual is to accomplish something that, by other means, could not be done. Ritual magic is a very real power. It utilizes such tools as hypnosis, telepathy, psychology, etc. The type of magic practiced in the Satanic Church is similar to all primitive forms of magic that have been used successfully for centuries, but which have been brought into the contemporary world in a workable way that will relate to the society in which we live.
A Satanic ritual is basically an emotional rather than an intellectual performance. For this reason certain devices and dramatic effects are used. As in stage magic, the art of misdirection is one of the most valuable tools of the ritual magician. By utilizing the following devices the ritual magician can temper his intellectual analysis of the ritual.
Therefore he can allow his emotions free reign.
A nude female is used as the altar in Satanic rituals because she represents the Earth mother and is a natural passive receptor for the workings of magic. The devices used in a Satanic ritual are as follows:
• The Chalice, symbolic of the Chalice of Ecstasy, is to be drunk from first by the Priest, then by one assistant.
• The Bell is used to purify the air at the beginning of the ritual and is used as a pollutionary at the end of the ritual.
• The Phallus is a pagan fertility symbol, the symbol of generation or aggression. It is also a non‐hypocritical version of the holy water sprinkler of other religions. The Phallus is used to bless the congregation.
• Candles are symbolic of the light of Lucifer—the bearer of light, enlightenment, burning desire, and the flames of the pit. Candles should be the only light source during a ritual.
• The Sword is symbolic of aggressive force, and is used as an extension and intensifier of the arm the Priest uses to gesture or point. A parallel to this is the pointing stick or blasting wand used in other forms of magical ritual.
• The Gong is used to call up the Powers of Darkness.
The male participants in the ritual should wear black robes. Women should wear the most sexually appealing clothing possible, or all black for older women. The amulet of Baphomet is worn by all participating in the ritual. The color black represents the Powers of Darkness.
Sexually appealing clothing worn by women is stimulating to the male members and intensifies the outpouring of adrenalin energy to ensure a more powerful working.
During a Satanic ritual it is essential to summon up the strongest emotions that will be beneficial to the respective working. The following are examples of this: During a compassion ritual it is necessary for the magician to feel honest sympathy and compassion for the recipient of his working. It is useless to attempt a ritual of this type if the magician cannot truly feel compassion for the person involved. It is all very well and good to tell a person that you will perform a compassion ritual for him, but unless you have the necessary deep feelings for this person and are sympathetic to his situation, the ritual will not be effective. We oftentimes think that we might perform a ritual for a person for whom we really have no concern; but it is a sad but true fact of magic that, if we are not intensely concerned for the person, the ritual will not work. You should be able to shed an honest tear for this person. If this much emotion cannot be felt, it is best not to attempt this type of working. If you are the type of person who excuses his inability to do this by thinking “I am not that emotional” or “I’ve never been able to cry”, then it is high time you learned how.
In a hate ritual in which a curse is to be conjured, a strong feeling of contempt for the recipient of the curse is mandatory. In a ritual of this sort the more vindictive your curse can be, the more powerful your outpouring of hate forces will be. Love is one of the most powerful emotions known to man; the other is hate. Without being able to experience one of these emotions, you cannot fully experience the other. Therefore you must love those who deserve and return your love, but hate your enemies with a whole heart. Half‐hearted hatred is very harmful to a person’s emotional stability. When a person prays for his enemies, he is in reality bottling up his feelings of hatred. He still hates the person; but, being bound by the tenets of his religion, he cannot express the hatred he feels. To pray for your enemies is to buy second‐hand hate, which is of a decidedly inferior quality.
The harboring of unwarranted guilt is very detrimental. We have been taught to feel guilty for all of the things that we most naturally do. Many of us can realize intellectually that it is foolish to feel guilty for these natural acts, but to accept this emotionally is another matter. If you cannot release yourself from guilt, then you should learn to make it work for you. You should act upon your natural instincts and then, realizing that you cannot perform these acts without feeling guilty, revel in your guilt. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, but guilt can often add a fillip to the senses. Adults would do well to take a lesson from children. Children often take delight in doing something they know they are not supposed to. One of the first laws of magic is to turn every disadvantage into an advantage.
The quickest way of traveling between two points is in a straight line. If all the guilts that have been built up can be turned into advantages, then intellectual scraping of the psyche—
in an attempt to cleanse it of these repressions—is eliminated. Satanism is the only religion known to man that accepts this rationale [of turning a bad thing into a good thing] rather than that of bending over backwards to eliminate the bad thing.
The Satanist shuns terms such as hope and prayer, as they are indicative of negative thinking. If we hope or pray for something to come about, we will not act in a positive way which will make it happen. The Satanist commands, rather than prays to his god. Positive thinking results in positive actions. Through positive thinking, combined with ritual, we command the forces of nature. We tell ourselves “this will be done, come Hell or high water”, and therefore it is done.
Human beings have personality traits which are either passive or aggressive. Passivity and aggressiveness are tamer terms for masochism and sadism. We are all made up of varying degrees of these personality types. Some of us lean more towards one or the other, but it is rare to find an individual who has equal portions of each of these traits. If a person is basically passive or masochistic, he would be most proficient in the mystic or mediumistic side of Satanism. This type of person is the most natural psychic or medium. Such persons’ very passivity puts them in a position of receptivity.
Since magic is based on positive force, the person who is basically aggressive or sadistic in personality traits will do well as a magician. In the field of magic and Satanism, both passive and aggressive people are necessary. The aggressive person is best suited for sending forces, and the passive or mediumistic person is best utilized as a receptor. Generally a person with a great deal of perception is passive.
It has been the popular misconception that Satanists practice human sacrifice. There has, however, never been a clarification of the method used for sacrifice, or of the reasons for which a Satanist would resort to this. When we sacrifice a person in a Satanic ritual, we do not slaughter him on the altar in a physical manner. We simply direct our hate forces towards the deserving recipient. You must never direct a curse toward a person unless you are prepared for the ultimate consequences.
There is no such thing as a mild curse. If a curse is to be effective, you must feel the maximum in disdain and hatred for the recipient. By sending these hate forces forth, we ensure suffering on the part of the person who has dealt us an injustice. It can only be left to the victim’s environmental conditions to decide what form our retribution will take, and a measure of the person’s rottenness as to the degree he will suffer.
If the recipient of the curse has redeeming qualities of sufficient amounts, then he will not only be saved but will be rehabilitated into a more worthwhile person as a result of the curse.
Therefore you cannot perform a working of this type and specify that you want the person to suffer only a broken arm or mild illness. You must realize that death may be the final outcome of a magical working of this nature.
The Satanic Church feels that forcing oneself to feel indiscriminate love for all is very unnatural. There has never been any great love movement in the history of the world that has not wound up killing countless numbers of people to prove, we must assume, how much they loved them. Every hypocrite that ever walked the earth has had pockets bulging with love! You cannot love everyone, and by trying to you only lessen your feelings for the people who deserve your love. Repressed hate can lead to many physical ailments. For this reason you must periodically perform a hate ritual to rid yourself of this bottled‐up hate. By choosing a deserving target for your hate forces, you cleanse yourself of these malignant emotions and are free to give your loved ones full benefit of your emotions without being concerned that you may be, at times, taking your pent‐up hatred out on them.
There is a definite period of the day when a person is in a more receptive state than during other times. Assuming that the person regularly sleeps for eight hours, the receptive state comes in the last two hours or so before awakening. This has been established as the period of time in which the person has the dreams he can recall most easily. This is due to the fact that the person’s body has completed its required rest; but the slow rate of metabolism keeps it dormant for a short time afterwards, producing the most receptive time during total sleep. This is when we receive some of our most fruitful ideas. It is the twilight period between sleep and waking. A person’s subconscious is at its most active point during this period of time. It is during this period that a telepathic communication would have the best chance of being received. To be most effective, therefore, your magical working should be performed during this twilight period.
There are many herbs and spices which are used in ritual magic. The most common ingredient used in love potions is mandrake root. Just as most acts which are considered evil are within the law, so some of the most effective ingredients used in potions can be legally obtained. There is no need to resort to popular and/or illegal drugs for any magical purpose.
The magical language used in Satanic ritual is Enochian. Enochian is a language which is thought to be older than Sanskrit, with a sound grammatical and syntactical basis. It was developed into a practical translation, which is its current form, by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. In Enochian the meaning of the words, combined with the quality of the words, unite to create a pattern of sound which can cause tremendous reaction in the atmosphere. The barbaric tonal qualities of this language give it a truly magical effect which cannot be described.
It is thought by most that all Satanic rituals are in the form of the Black Mass. This is a misconception. Most Satanic rituals have nothing in them which would be considered sacrilegious to another religion. One of the reasons a Black Mass would be performed in the Satanic Church would be to remove a stigma attached to the activities of one or several members. If a person feels bound or stifled by a previous religion, a Black Mass would be performed to enable him to completely divorce himself from the limiting factors of that past religion.
A Black Mass consists of such things as saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards—
interspersed with obscenities, trampling the cross underfoot or hanging it upside‐down, desecration of the wafer or host, and similar forms of defilement or parody of the sacred cows which make the religion a threat to the person involved. By reducing the awesomeness of the religion to ridiculousness, we remove its fearsomeness.
The only other circumstance in which a Black Mass would be performed would be one in which another religion had directly attacked the Satanic Church. To perform a Black Mass just for its shock value would serve no useful purpose. The Christian religion is no threat to the Satanist. One might say that the Devil has kept all the religions on earth in business for many, many years. If it were not for these religions which he has allowed to flourish, Satan could not come forth now and establish his organized church, built on the very episcopacy and structure of the existing religions.
Satanism is taken up by most people not out of protest, but out of logic. Therefore the debasement of their previous religions is unnecessary. There are many sacred cows in our current society which warrant protest as much if not more than the Christian religion. A modern‐day form of the Black Mass might consist of such things as urinating on marijuana, crushing an LSD sugar cube under foot, hanging a picture of Timothy Leary or a famous Indian guru upside‐down, exposing the parallel between the Hippie generation and the “emperor’s new clothes.” These things would be far more effective to the magical workings of a Satanist than a typical Black Mass.
The results of a magical working will start to manifest themselves within thirty‐six hours from the time the ritual was performed. Once the magical working has been performed, you must push all thoughts of hope or anxiety from your mind. You have released your emotions and sent them out into the ether, where they can effect your desired results. After this there is nothing left to do but sit back and wait for the results. Anxiety only acts to lessen the effectiveness of your working.
The Satanic ritual is not always confined to sinister or occult surroundings. The true magician is adept at turning any situation he encounters into a magical working. He can manipulate his surroundings to his best advantage.
A ritual which is performed for the sake of reducing an awesome figure to a ridiculous state is called a Shibboleth ritual. In this type of ritual each of the participants chooses a pillar of society or a type of person who is particularly awesome or irritating to him. Each then dresses in the costume of the chosen victim. For about an hour all participants communicate with one another, all the while acting out in parody what would be the actions of the persons portrayed.
After this psychodrama has been performed, a sort of kangaroo court is held, and the person acting as Priest for the ritual takes the role of Satan. In the form of Satan he questions each person individually. Each participant answers Satan’s questions in the manner in which his chosen character would answer them. Through the favorite tools of the Devil, wile and guile, Satan exposes the character for what he is. He talks him into selling his soul to the Devil, utilizing things which are sacred cows to the shibboleth for the purpose of disguising his tactics.
In a ritual such as this, the purpose is to ridicule the shibboleth. In this way he will no longer be awesome to the person who has suffered in some way by his actions. The situation in which the Satanist comes in contact with the shibboleth may be one in which he is forced to treat him in a civil or even respectful manner, but once the ritual has been performed, the Satanist can laugh up his sleeve at the person. The shibboleth will sense that he is being patronized and will no longer feel that he is capable of wielding the power that he once did over the Satanist.
I. LaVey: Early Writings
The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth
Anton Szandor LaVey, 1967
1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9. Do not harm little children.
10. Do not kill non‐human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop.
If he does not stop, destroy him.
“Satanism” Monograph (1968-1969)
Anton Szandor LaVey
The following monograph, distributed in 1968‐1969, was written to convey the essence of the Satanic religion as it was practiced by the Church of Satan in its earliest years. Much of the material in the monograph was later expanded into a series of twenty essays issued to Satanists as a study course.
Both the original monograph and the essays derived from it were discontinued prior to the 1970
publication of the Satanic Bible because of that volume’s incorporation of the essays in its “Books of Lucifer” and “Belial”. This monograph, then, may be considered the original manifesto of the Church of Satan and hence its founding statement of principles.—M.A.A.
The Nine Satanic Statements
1
Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2
Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3
Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self‐deceit!
4
Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5
Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6
Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7
Satan represents man as just another animal—sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all‐fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8
Satan represents all of the so‐called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9
Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!
Part I: Foreword
In writing this monograph it is our intent to give you a basic understanding of the Satanic religion. Therefore we have attempted to present this to you in a form which will be easily understood.
We fully realize that many of you who will read this booklet will not be novices to the basics of Satanism or the fundamentals of psychology which make up a large part of the Satanic philosophy.
We are aware that to many of you part of the information herein is elementary. Therefore it is to be understood that there is no attempt on our part to be condescending to those to whom some of this information is already known.
We realize, however, that probably many more of you know comparatively little about Satanism, except what little you have been able to decipher from the reams of ponderous material which is shrouded in so much esoteric jargon as to make it virtually useless to neophytes in Satanic theology. It is with this in mind that we have avoided delving into the finer points of Satanic thought and ritual magic. A complete statement of the tenets of Satanism and an explanation of the ceremonies and detailed instructions on same are available to our members.
In the past the only writings on Satanism were those done by other religions as a means of propaganda to turn people against it, or by uninformed journalists who were influenced by the Judæo‐Christian society surrounding them. Therefore the information contained in such writings was either completely false or sensationalized.
Our purpose is to enlighten you as to the true concepts of Satanism and to refute the myths attached to it.
The “seven deadly sins” of the Christian church are greed, pride, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth. Satanism advocates indulging in each of these “sins”, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification. A Satanist feels there is nothing wrong with being greedy, as it only means that he wants more than he already has. Envy simply means to look with favor upon the possessions of others and to be desirous of obtaining similar things for oneself. Envy and greed are the motivating forces of ambition, and without ambition very little of any importance would be accomplished.
Gluttony is simply eating more than you need to keep yourself alive. When you have over‐eaten to the point of obesity, you will oftentimes resort to another sin—pride—to regain an appearance which will return your self‐respect. Anyone who buys an article of clothing for a purpose other than covering his body and keeping off the elements is guilty of pride.
You may encounter scoffers who maintain that labels are not necessary. You might find it an ego‐satisfying little exercise to point out to these people that one or many articles that they are wearing are not necessary to keep them warm. There is not a person on this earth who is completely devoid of all ornamentation. You can inform the person that any ornamentation of his body shows that he too is guilty of pride. Regardless of how verbose he may be in his intellectual description of how free he is, he is still wearing the elements of pride. This thought may serve no other purpose for you than that of being a satisfying exercise in abuse of non‐Satanists.
Being reluctant to get up in the morning is to be guilty of sloth; and if you lie in bed long enough, you may find yourself indulging in yet another sin—lust. To have the faintest stirring of sexual desire is to be guilty of lust. In order to ensure the propagation of humanity, nature made lust the second most powerful instinct, the first being self‐preservation.
Realizing this, the Christian church made fornication the “original sin”. In this way it made certain that no one would escape sin. Your very state of being is as a result of sin—the original sin!
The strongest instinct of every living creature is self‐preservation, which brings us to the last of the “seven deadly sins”—anger. Is it not our self‐preservation instinct which is aroused when someone harms us and we become angry enough to protect ourselves from further attack? A Satanist practices the motto: “If a man smite thee on one cheek, smash him on the other!” Let no wrong go unredressed. Be as a lion in the path; be dangerous even in defeat!
Since man’s natural instincts lead him to sin, all men are sinners; and all sinners go to Hell. If everyone goes to Hell, then you will meet all of your friends there. Heaven must be populated by some very strange creatures if all they live for is to go to a place where they can strum harps for eternity.
We have been told that Hell is a terrible place consisting of a huge lake of fire. Pleasure, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Christian missionaries were very unsuccessful in Alaska because, to an Eskimo who knows nothing other than freezing weather, a perpetual lake of fire is very inviting. To the distress of the missionaries, the Eskimos asked, “How do we get there?”
Hell has always been the mold from which Heaven has been cast. Heaven or Paradise, to most people, represents a vision of having their desires fulfilled … these very desires being those which, if practiced during their earthly lives, would certainly have sent them to Hell!
Life is an indulgence, death an abstinence. For a person who is satisfied with his earthly existence, life is like a party, and no one likes to leave a good party. Similarly if a person is enjoying himself here on earth, he will not so readily give up his life for the promise of an afterlife about which he knows nothing.
In most religions death is touted as a beautiful, spiritual awakening. This is very appealing to one who has not had a satisfactory life. But to those who have experienced all of the joys that life has to offer, there is a great dread attached to dying. This is as it should be. It is this lust for life that will allow the vital person to live on after the inevitable death of his fleshly shell.
The only time an animal will resort to suicide is if he is in such pain or life is so unbearable that death comes as an indulgence rather than an abstinence. Suicide is considered a sin. It is rather curious that the only time death, for a human being, is considered sinful is when it comes as an indulgence.
The four principal devils are: Leviathan, representing the sea; Lucifer, the lord of the air or bearer of light; Belial, the lord of the earth; and Satan, lord of the fire.
One of the main goals of the Church of Satan is to build pleasure domes in which the members of the Church can indulge themselves in their personal desires. By having a place where they can go to release their desires, the members can lead an unfrustrated life in the everyday world. Satanism advocates indulgence, not compulsion. Compulsion is very different from indulgence. When a person cannot control his desires and is a slave to these urges, they become compulsions. If a person has no proper release for his desires, they rapidly build up and become compulsions. A pleasure dome would consist of many different rooms and recreational facilities for the purpose of fulfilling each member’s personal desires.
Satanism represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires. Satanism represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates. Psychic vampires are individuals who drain others of their vital existence. We might feel responsible to such people yet not know why. These types of persons can be found in all avenues of society. They fill no useful purpose in our lives and are neither love objects nor true friends. We must rid ourselves of these psychic vampires so that we can devote our time to the people about whom we truly care. Rituals which can be performed to rid ourselves of these people will be discussed later.
The Satanist believes in fulfillment of the ego. Satanism, in fact, is the only religion which advocates the intensification or the encouragement of the ego. All other religions on the face of the Earth are concerned only with the dissolution of man’s ego. Only if a person’s ego is sufficiently fulfilled can he afford to be kind and complimentary to others without robbing himself of his self‐respect. Braggarts are very insecure people. We generally think of a braggart as a person with a large ego, but in reality it is his unfulfilled ego which leads to his bragging as a means of satisfying his ego.
To become a Satanist one does not have to “sell his soul to the Devil”. This concept was developed by Christianity to terrorize people so that they would not stray from the fold. It was taught that if you gave in to the temptations of Satan and lived your life in an indulgent manner, you would have to pay Satan with your soul when you died. And what is the soul, as religionists would have it, but a passport to everlasting life? People were led to believe that selling their souls to the Devil meant that they would suffer in Hell for the rest of eternity. This type of ridiculous thinking is what the Christian church has used to keep its parishioners in line. Phrases like “God‐fearing” are indicative of the basis for the Christian religion. It is through such fear that Christianity has been able to exist all these years.
We are no longer supplicating weaklings trembling before an unmerciful “God” who cares not whether we live or die. It has been a popular misconception that the Satanist does not believe in God. This is not so; but we realize that God, by whatever name he is given—or by no name at all, is only the balancing factor in nature and has little concern for any suffering which we may encounter. 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 that leads to the premature deterioration of our bodies.
When one commits a wrong in other religions, he either prays to God for forgiveness or confesses to an intermediary and asks him to pray to God for his sins. The Satanist feels that confessing to another human being like himself accomplishes nothing and is degrading.
When a Satanist commits a wrong, he realizes it is natural to make mistakes. If we are truly sorry about something, we will learn from our mistakes and not do the same thing again.
There has been much sensationalism regarding the Satanic Church and its views on free love. Free love in the Satanic Church means that a person is free to either be faithful to one person or indulge in his sexual desires with as many others as he feels necessary to satisfy his personal needs. Satanism advocates any type of sexuality which properly satisfies the person’s desires, be it heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, or even asexuality if you choose—or any of the fetishes pertaining to these. To most people masochism represents a rejection of indulgence. We consider 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.
Satanism does not encourage orgiastic activities or extramarital affairs for those to whom they do not come naturally. Being unfaithful to one’s chosen mate would be very unnatural and detrimental to some people. To others it would be frustrating to be bound sexually to one person without any hope of outside sexual activity. Each person must decide for himself what form of sexual activity best suits his individual needs. To thine own self be true. Self-deceit is intolerable in the Satanic religion.
There are two major holidays in the Satanic religion. These are Walpurgisnacht, which is celebrated on April 30th, and Halloween, October 31st. The solstices and equinoxes are also celebrated as holidays. On these occasions special rituals are performed, and festivities follow.
Part II: Ritual Magic
Ritual magic is a large part of the Satanic religion. The purpose in performing a ritual is to accomplish something that, by other means, could not be done. Ritual magic is a very real power. It utilizes such tools as hypnosis, telepathy, psychology, etc. The type of magic practiced in the Satanic Church is similar to all primitive forms of magic that have been used successfully for centuries, but which have been brought into the contemporary world in a workable way that will relate to the society in which we live.
A Satanic ritual is basically an emotional rather than an intellectual performance. For this reason certain devices and dramatic effects are used. As in stage magic, the art of misdirection is one of the most valuable tools of the ritual magician. By utilizing the following devices the ritual magician can temper his intellectual analysis of the ritual.
Therefore he can allow his emotions free reign.
A nude female is used as the altar in Satanic rituals because she represents the Earth mother and is a natural passive receptor for the workings of magic. The devices used in a Satanic ritual are as follows:
• The Chalice, symbolic of the Chalice of Ecstasy, is to be drunk from first by the Priest, then by one assistant.
• The Bell is used to purify the air at the beginning of the ritual and is used as a pollutionary at the end of the ritual.
• The Phallus is a pagan fertility symbol, the symbol of generation or aggression. It is also a non‐hypocritical version of the holy water sprinkler of other religions. The Phallus is used to bless the congregation.
• Candles are symbolic of the light of Lucifer—the bearer of light, enlightenment, burning desire, and the flames of the pit. Candles should be the only light source during a ritual.
• The Sword is symbolic of aggressive force, and is used as an extension and intensifier of the arm the Priest uses to gesture or point. A parallel to this is the pointing stick or blasting wand used in other forms of magical ritual.
• The Gong is used to call up the Powers of Darkness.
The male participants in the ritual should wear black robes. Women should wear the most sexually appealing clothing possible, or all black for older women. The amulet of Baphomet is worn by all participating in the ritual. The color black represents the Powers of Darkness.
Sexually appealing clothing worn by women is stimulating to the male members and intensifies the outpouring of adrenalin energy to ensure a more powerful working.
During a Satanic ritual it is essential to summon up the strongest emotions that will be beneficial to the respective working. The following are examples of this: During a compassion ritual it is necessary for the magician to feel honest sympathy and compassion for the recipient of his working. It is useless to attempt a ritual of this type if the magician cannot truly feel compassion for the person involved. It is all very well and good to tell a person that you will perform a compassion ritual for him, but unless you have the necessary deep feelings for this person and are sympathetic to his situation, the ritual will not be effective. We oftentimes think that we might perform a ritual for a person for whom we really have no concern; but it is a sad but true fact of magic that, if we are not intensely concerned for the person, the ritual will not work. You should be able to shed an honest tear for this person. If this much emotion cannot be felt, it is best not to attempt this type of working. If you are the type of person who excuses his inability to do this by thinking “I am not that emotional” or “I’ve never been able to cry”, then it is high time you learned how.
In a hate ritual in which a curse is to be conjured, a strong feeling of contempt for the recipient of the curse is mandatory. In a ritual of this sort the more vindictive your curse can be, the more powerful your outpouring of hate forces will be. Love is one of the most powerful emotions known to man; the other is hate. Without being able to experience one of these emotions, you cannot fully experience the other. Therefore you must love those who deserve and return your love, but hate your enemies with a whole heart. Half‐hearted hatred is very harmful to a person’s emotional stability. When a person prays for his enemies, he is in reality bottling up his feelings of hatred. He still hates the person; but, being bound by the tenets of his religion, he cannot express the hatred he feels. To pray for your enemies is to buy second‐hand hate, which is of a decidedly inferior quality.
The harboring of unwarranted guilt is very detrimental. We have been taught to feel guilty for all of the things that we most naturally do. Many of us can realize intellectually that it is foolish to feel guilty for these natural acts, but to accept this emotionally is another matter. If you cannot release yourself from guilt, then you should learn to make it work for you. You should act upon your natural instincts and then, realizing that you cannot perform these acts without feeling guilty, revel in your guilt. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, but guilt can often add a fillip to the senses. Adults would do well to take a lesson from children. Children often take delight in doing something they know they are not supposed to. One of the first laws of magic is to turn every disadvantage into an advantage.
The quickest way of traveling between two points is in a straight line. If all the guilts that have been built up can be turned into advantages, then intellectual scraping of the psyche—
in an attempt to cleanse it of these repressions—is eliminated. Satanism is the only religion known to man that accepts this rationale [of turning a bad thing into a good thing] rather than that of bending over backwards to eliminate the bad thing.
The Satanist shuns terms such as hope and prayer, as they are indicative of negative thinking. If we hope or pray for something to come about, we will not act in a positive way which will make it happen. The Satanist commands, rather than prays to his god. Positive thinking results in positive actions. Through positive thinking, combined with ritual, we command the forces of nature. We tell ourselves “this will be done, come Hell or high water”, and therefore it is done.
Human beings have personality traits which are either passive or aggressive. Passivity and aggressiveness are tamer terms for masochism and sadism. We are all made up of varying degrees of these personality types. Some of us lean more towards one or the other, but it is rare to find an individual who has equal portions of each of these traits. If a person is basically passive or masochistic, he would be most proficient in the mystic or mediumistic side of Satanism. This type of person is the most natural psychic or medium. Such persons’ very passivity puts them in a position of receptivity.
Since magic is based on positive force, the person who is basically aggressive or sadistic in personality traits will do well as a magician. In the field of magic and Satanism, both passive and aggressive people are necessary. The aggressive person is best suited for sending forces, and the passive or mediumistic person is best utilized as a receptor. Generally a person with a great deal of perception is passive.
It has been the popular misconception that Satanists practice human sacrifice. There has, however, never been a clarification of the method used for sacrifice, or of the reasons for which a Satanist would resort to this. When we sacrifice a person in a Satanic ritual, we do not slaughter him on the altar in a physical manner. We simply direct our hate forces towards the deserving recipient. You must never direct a curse toward a person unless you are prepared for the ultimate consequences.
There is no such thing as a mild curse. If a curse is to be effective, you must feel the maximum in disdain and hatred for the recipient. By sending these hate forces forth, we ensure suffering on the part of the person who has dealt us an injustice. It can only be left to the victim’s environmental conditions to decide what form our retribution will take, and a measure of the person’s rottenness as to the degree he will suffer.
If the recipient of the curse has redeeming qualities of sufficient amounts, then he will not only be saved but will be rehabilitated into a more worthwhile person as a result of the curse.
Therefore you cannot perform a working of this type and specify that you want the person to suffer only a broken arm or mild illness. You must realize that death may be the final outcome of a magical working of this nature.
The Satanic Church feels that forcing oneself to feel indiscriminate love for all is very unnatural. There has never been any great love movement in the history of the world that has not wound up killing countless numbers of people to prove, we must assume, how much they loved them. Every hypocrite that ever walked the earth has had pockets bulging with love! You cannot love everyone, and by trying to you only lessen your feelings for the people who deserve your love. Repressed hate can lead to many physical ailments. For this reason you must periodically perform a hate ritual to rid yourself of this bottled‐up hate. By choosing a deserving target for your hate forces, you cleanse yourself of these malignant emotions and are free to give your loved ones full benefit of your emotions without being concerned that you may be, at times, taking your pent‐up hatred out on them.
There is a definite period of the day when a person is in a more receptive state than during other times. Assuming that the person regularly sleeps for eight hours, the receptive state comes in the last two hours or so before awakening. This has been established as the period of time in which the person has the dreams he can recall most easily. This is due to the fact that the person’s body has completed its required rest; but the slow rate of metabolism keeps it dormant for a short time afterwards, producing the most receptive time during total sleep. This is when we receive some of our most fruitful ideas. It is the twilight period between sleep and waking. A person’s subconscious is at its most active point during this period of time. It is during this period that a telepathic communication would have the best chance of being received. To be most effective, therefore, your magical working should be performed during this twilight period.
There are many herbs and spices which are used in ritual magic. The most common ingredient used in love potions is mandrake root. Just as most acts which are considered evil are within the law, so some of the most effective ingredients used in potions can be legally obtained. There is no need to resort to popular and/or illegal drugs for any magical purpose.
The magical language used in Satanic ritual is Enochian. Enochian is a language which is thought to be older than Sanskrit, with a sound grammatical and syntactical basis. It was developed into a practical translation, which is its current form, by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. In Enochian the meaning of the words, combined with the quality of the words, unite to create a pattern of sound which can cause tremendous reaction in the atmosphere. The barbaric tonal qualities of this language give it a truly magical effect which cannot be described.
It is thought by most that all Satanic rituals are in the form of the Black Mass. This is a misconception. Most Satanic rituals have nothing in them which would be considered sacrilegious to another religion. One of the reasons a Black Mass would be performed in the Satanic Church would be to remove a stigma attached to the activities of one or several members. If a person feels bound or stifled by a previous religion, a Black Mass would be performed to enable him to completely divorce himself from the limiting factors of that past religion.
A Black Mass consists of such things as saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards—
interspersed with obscenities, trampling the cross underfoot or hanging it upside‐down, desecration of the wafer or host, and similar forms of defilement or parody of the sacred cows which make the religion a threat to the person involved. By reducing the awesomeness of the religion to ridiculousness, we remove its fearsomeness.
The only other circumstance in which a Black Mass would be performed would be one in which another religion had directly attacked the Satanic Church. To perform a Black Mass just for its shock value would serve no useful purpose. The Christian religion is no threat to the Satanist. One might say that the Devil has kept all the religions on earth in business for many, many years. If it were not for these religions which he has allowed to flourish, Satan could not come forth now and establish his organized church, built on the very episcopacy and structure of the existing religions.
Satanism is taken up by most people not out of protest, but out of logic. Therefore the debasement of their previous religions is unnecessary. There are many sacred cows in our current society which warrant protest as much if not more than the Christian religion. A modern‐day form of the Black Mass might consist of such things as urinating on marijuana, crushing an LSD sugar cube under foot, hanging a picture of Timothy Leary or a famous Indian guru upside‐down, exposing the parallel between the Hippie generation and the “emperor’s new clothes.” These things would be far more effective to the magical workings of a Satanist than a typical Black Mass.
The results of a magical working will start to manifest themselves within thirty‐six hours from the time the ritual was performed. Once the magical working has been performed, you must push all thoughts of hope or anxiety from your mind. You have released your emotions and sent them out into the ether, where they can effect your desired results. After this there is nothing left to do but sit back and wait for the results. Anxiety only acts to lessen the effectiveness of your working.
The Satanic ritual is not always confined to sinister or occult surroundings. The true magician is adept at turning any situation he encounters into a magical working. He can manipulate his surroundings to his best advantage.
A ritual which is performed for the sake of reducing an awesome figure to a ridiculous state is called a Shibboleth ritual. In this type of ritual each of the participants chooses a pillar of society or a type of person who is particularly awesome or irritating to him. Each then dresses in the costume of the chosen victim. For about an hour all participants communicate with one another, all the while acting out in parody what would be the actions of the persons portrayed.
After this psychodrama has been performed, a sort of kangaroo court is held, and the person acting as Priest for the ritual takes the role of Satan. In the form of Satan he questions each person individually. Each participant answers Satan’s questions in the manner in which his chosen character would answer them. Through the favorite tools of the Devil, wile and guile, Satan exposes the character for what he is. He talks him into selling his soul to the Devil, utilizing things which are sacred cows to the shibboleth for the purpose of disguising his tactics.
In a ritual such as this, the purpose is to ridicule the shibboleth. In this way he will no longer be awesome to the person who has suffered in some way by his actions. The situation in which the Satanist comes in contact with the shibboleth may be one in which he is forced to treat him in a civil or even respectful manner, but once the ritual has been performed, the Satanist can laugh up his sleeve at the person. The shibboleth will sense that he is being patronized and will no longer feel that he is capable of wielding the power that he once did over the Satanist.
REGIE SATANAS!
AVE SATANAS!
HAIL SATAN!
AVE SATANAS!
HAIL SATAN!
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_LeVay
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Re: Bible verse by verse
LittleNipper wrote:God is present; however, those in Hell are not aware of His presence.
LittleNipper wrote:God is everywhere; however, it is the God's love that is withheld from those in Hell. Its residence do not witness God's perfect love, but God's perfect judgment.
LittleNipper wrote:Well, I have the Lord and you don't seem to, and yet He is all around. You don't see him. Why cannot hell be more of the same for those who rejected God in this life.
LittleNipper wrote:2 Thessalonians 1:9"They will be punished with eternal destruction, forever separated from the Lord and from his glorious power."
Which of these mutually conflicting statements are the product of your imagination, LittleNipper? The first? The second? The third? All three?
How can someone like you who invents new doctrine claim to be "saved"?
REGIE SATANAS!
AVE SATANAS!
HAIL SATAN!
AVE SATANAS!
HAIL SATAN!
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_huckelberry
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Re: Bible verse by verse
LeVay wrote:LittleNipper wrote:God is present; however, those in Hell are not aware of His presence.LittleNipper wrote:God is everywhere; however, it is the God's love that is withheld from those in Hell. Its residence do not witness God's perfect love, but God's perfect judgment.LittleNipper wrote:Well, I have the Lord and you don't seem to, and yet He is all around. You don't see him. Why cannot hell be more of the same for those who rejected God in this life.LittleNipper wrote:2 Thessalonians 1:9"They will be punished with eternal destruction, forever separated from the Lord and from his glorious power."
Which of these mutually conflicting statements are the product of your imagination, LittleNipper? The first? The second? The third? All three?
How can someone like you who invents new doctrine clam to be "saved"?
And be saved???
I may not always agree with Nipper. On a occasion have felt his take on something to be incorrect. However I have not imagined that his errors would condemn him. Instead I imagine God grace raining down on him each morning as he awakes.
On the other hand Satans character would be shining through in the desire to withold salvation from Nipper due to the guilt of some error or inaccuracy.
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_ludwigm
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Re: Bible verse by verse
Something really on topic, after
You know, I have a soft spot for translation --- as I should continuously translate here back and forth every word.
Isaac Asimov is known as scifi writer. This is one of his other works, from the "Opus 200" collection. Not a scifi, by the way...
(I'm sorry for the character errors, the downloaded text probably comes from scanned pages, and I had no time to edit. There are many "v" instead of "y", the preprogrammed error of the seerstone used in the scanner)
------ and to all others appeared in this thread: please read this pearl of great price ...LittleNipper wrote:Book of Ruth 1-2-3-4
You know, I have a soft spot for translation --- as I should continuously translate here back and forth every word.
Isaac Asimov is known as scifi writer. This is one of his other works, from the "Opus 200" collection. Not a scifi, by the way...
(I'm sorry for the character errors, the downloaded text probably comes from scanned pages, and I had no time to edit. There are many "v" instead of "y", the preprogrammed error of the seerstone used in the scanner)
"Lost in Non-Translation" (1972)
At the Noreascon (the Twenty-ninth World Science
Fiction Convention), which was held in Boston on the
Labor Day weekend of 1971, I sat on the dais, of
course, since, as the Bob Hope of science fiction, it is
my perennial duty to hand out the Hugos. On my left
was my daughter, Robynsixteen, blond, blue-eyed,
shapely, and beautiful. (No, that last adjective is not a
father's proud partiality. Ask anyone.)
My old friend Clifford D. Simak was guest of honor,
and he began his talk by introducing, with thoroughly
justified pride, his two children, who were in the au-
dience. A look of alarm instantly crossed Robyn's face.
"Daddy," she whispered urgently, knowing full well
my capacity for inflicting embarrassment, "are you
planning to introduce me?"
"Would that bother you, Robyn?" I asked.
"Yes, it would."
"Then I won't," I said, and patted her hand reassur-
ingly.
She thought a while. Then she said, "Of course,
Daddy, if you have the urge to refer, in a casual sort
of way, to your beautiful daughter, that would be all
right."
So you can bet I did fust that, while she allowed her
eyes to drop in a charmingly modest way.
But I couldn't help but think of the blond, blue-eyed
stereotype of Nordic beautv that has filled Western lit-
erature ever since the blond, blue-eyed Germanic
tribes took over the western portions of the Roman
Empire, fifteen centuries ago, and set themselves up
as an aristocracy.
. . , And of the manner in which that stereotype has
been used to subvert one of the clearest and most im-
portant lessons in the Biblea subversion that con-
tributes its little bit to the serious crisis that today
faces the world, and the United States in particular.
In line with my penchant for beginning at the be-
ginning, come back with me to the sixth century B.C.
A party of Jews had returned from Babylonian exile to
rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, which Nebuchad-
nezzar had destroyed seventy years before.
During the exile, under the guidance of the prophet
Ezekfel, the Jews had firmly held to their national
identity by modifving, complicating, and idealizing
their worship of Yahweh into a form tliat was directly
ancestral to the Judaism of today. (In fact Ezekiel is
sometimes called "the father of Judaism.")
This meant that when the exiles returned to Jerusa-
lem, they faced a religious problem. There were peo-
ple who, all through the period of the exile, had been
living in what had once been Judah, and who wor-
shiped Yahweh in what they considered the correct,
time-honored ritual. Because their chief city (with Je-
rusalem destroyed) was Samaria, the returning Jews
called them Samaritans.
The Samaritans rejected the newfangled modifica-
tions of the returning Jews, and the Jews abhorred the
old-fashioned beliefs of the Samaritans. Between them
arose an undying hostility, the kind that is exacer-
bated because the differences in belief are compara-
tively small-
In addition there were, also living in the land, those'
who worshiped other gods altogetherAmmonites,
Edomites, Philistines, and so on.
The pressures on the returning band of Jews were
not primarilv military, for the entire area was under
the more or less beneBcent rule of the Persian Em-
pire; they were social pressures, and perhaps even
stronger for that. To maintain a strict ritual in the face
of overwhelming numbers of nonbelievers is difficult,
and the tendency to relax that ritual was almost irre-
sistible. Then, too, young male returnees were at-
tracted to the women at hand and there were inter-
marriages. Naturally, to humor the wife, ritual was
further relaxed.
But then, possibly as late as about 400 B.C., a full
century after the second Temple had been built, Ezra
arrived in Jerusalem. He was a scholar of the Mosaic
law, which had been edited and put into final form in
the course of the exile. He was horrified at the back-
sliding and put through a tub-thumping revival. He
called the people together, led them in chanting the
law and expounding on it, raised their religious fervor,
and called for confession of sins and renewal of faith.
One thing he demanded most rigorously was the
abandonment of all non-Jewish wives and their chil-
dren. Only so could the holiness of strict Judaism be
maintained, in his view. To quote the Bible (and I
will use the recent New English Bible for the pur-
pose ):
"Ezra the priest stood up and said, *You have com-
mitted an offense in marrying foreign wives and have
added to Israel's guilt. Make vour confession now to
the Lord the God of vour fathers and do his will, and
separate yourselves from the foreign population and
from vour foreign wives.' Then all the assembled peo-
ple shouted in reply, 'Yes; wte must do what vou say
. . . (Ezra 10:10-12).
From that time on, the Jews as a whole began to
practice an exclpsivi.sm, a voluntary separation from
others, a multiplication of peculiar customs that fur-
ther emphasized their separateness; and all of this
helped them maintain their identity through all the
miseries and catastrophes that were to come, through
all the crises, and through exiles and persecutions that
fragmented them over the face of the earth.
The exclusivism, to be sure, also served to make
them socially indigestible and imparted to them a
high social visibility that helped give rise to condi-
tions that made exiles and persecutions more iikely.
Not everyone among the Jews adhered to this pol-
icy of exclusivism. There were some who believed
that all men were equal in the sight of God and that
no one should be excluded from the community on
the basis of group identity alone.
One who believed this (but who is forever name-
less) attempted to present this case in the form of a
short piece of historical fiction. In this fourth-century-
B.C. tale the heroine was Ruth, a Moabite woman.
(The tale was presented as having taken place in the
time of the judges, so the traditional view was that it
was written by the prophet Samuel in the eleventh
century B.C. No modem student of the Bible believes
this.)
Why a Moabite women, by the way?
It seems that the Jews, returning from exile, had
traditions concerning their initial arrival at the bor-
ders of Canaan under Moses and then Joshua, nearlv a
thousand vears before. At that time, the small nation
of Moab, which lay east of the lower course of the
Jordan and of the Dead Sea, was understandably
alarmed at the incursion of tough desert raiders and
took steps to oppose them. Not only did they prevent
the Israelites from passing through their territory, but,
tradition had it, they called in a seer, Balaam, and
asked him to use his magical abilities to bring misfor-
tune and destruction upon the invaders.
That failed, and Balaam, on departing, was sup-
posed to have advised the king of Moab to let the
Moabite girls lure the desert raiders into liaisons,
which might subvert their stem dedication to then-
task. The Bible records the following:
"When the Israelites were in Shittim, the people be-
gan to have intercourse with Moabite women, who in-
vited them to the sacrifices offered to their gods; and
they ate the sacrificial food and prostrated themselves
before the gods of Moab. The Israelites joined in the
worship of the Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry
with them" (Numbers 25:1-3).
As a result of this, "Moabite women" became the
quintessence of the type of outside influence that by
sexual attraction tried to subvert pious Jews. Indeed,
Moab and the neighboring kingdom to the north, Am-
mon, were singled out in the Mosaic code:
"No Ammonite or Moabite, even down to the tenth
generation, shall become a member of the assembly of
the Lord . . . because they did not meet you with
food and water on your way out of Egypt, and be-
cause they hired Balaam ... to revile you . . , You
shall never seek their welfare or their good all your
life long" (Deuteronomy 23:3-4, 6).
And yet there were times in later history when
there was friendship between Moab and at least some
men of Israel, possibly because they were brought to-
gether by some common enemy.
For instance, shortly before 1000 B.C., Israel was
ruled by Saul. He had held off the Philistines, con-
quered the Amalekites, and brought Israel to its great-
est pitch of power to that point. Moab naturally
feared his expansionist policies and so befriended any-
one rebelling against Saul. Such a rebel was the Ju-
dean warrior David of Bethlehem. When David was
pressed hard by Saul and bad retired to a fortified
stronghold, he used Moab as a refuge for his family.
"David . . . said to the king of Moab, 'Let my fa-
ther and motlier come and take shelter with you until
I know what God will do for me.' So he left them at
the court of the king of Moab, and they stayed there
as long as David was in his stronghold" (1 Samuel
22:3-4).
As it happened, David eventually won out, became
king first of Judah, then of all Israel, and established
an empire that took in the entire east coast of the
Mediterranean, from Egypt to the Euphrates, with the
Phoenician cities independent but in alliance with
him. Later, Jews always looked back to the time of
David and his son Solomon as a golden age, and Da-
vid's position in Jewish legend and thought was unas-
sailable. David founded a dynasty that ruled over Ju-
dah for four centuries, and the Jews never stopped
believing that some descendant of David would yet
return to rule over them again in some idealized fu-
ture time.
Yet, on the basis of the verses describing David's
use of Moab as a refuge for his family, there may have
arisen a tale to the effect that there was a Moabite
strain in David's ancestry. Apparently, the author of
the Book of Ruth determined to make use of this tale
to point up the doctrine of nonexclusivism by using
the supremely hated Moabite woman as his heroine.
The Book of Ruth tells of a Judean family of Bethle-
hema man, his wife, and two sonswho are driven
by famine to Moab. There the two sons marry Moa-
bite girls, but after a space of time all three men die,
leaving the three womenNaomi, the mother-in-law,
and Ruth and Orpah, the two daughters-in-lawas
survivors.
Those were times when women were chattels, and
unmarried women, without a man to own them and
care for them, could subsist only on charity. (Hence
the frequent biblical injunction to care for widows
and orphans.)
Naomi determined to return to Bethlehem, where
kinsmen might possibly care for her, but urged Ruth
and Orpah to remain in Moab. She does not say, but
we might plausibly suppose she is thinking, that Moa-
bite girls would have a rough time of it in Moab-
hating Judah.
Orpah remains in Moab, but Ruth refuses to leave
Naomi, saying, "Do not urge me to go back and desert
you . . . Where you go, I will go, and where you stay,
I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your
God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I
will be buried. I swear a solemn oath before the Lord
your God: nothing but death shall divide us" (Ruth
1:16-17).
Once in Bethlehem, the two were faced with the
direst poverty, and Ruth volunteered to support her-
self and her mother-in-law by gleaning in the fields. It
was harvest time, and it was customary to allow any
stalks of grain that fell to the ground in the process of
gathering to remain there to be collected bv the poor.
This t^leanin^ was a kind of welfare program for those
in need. It was, however, backbreaking work, and any
young woman, particularly a Moabite, who engaged
in it underwent certain obvious risks at the hands of
the lusty young reapers. Ruth's offer was simply he-
roic.
As it happened, Ruth gleaned in the lands of a rich
Judean farmer named Boaz, who, coming to oversee
the work, noticed her working tirelessly. He asked
after her, and his reapers answered, "She is a Moabite
girl . . . who has Just come back with Naomi from
the Moabite country" (Ruth 2:6).
Boaz spoke kindly to her and Ruth said, "Why are
you so kind as to take notice of me when I am only a
foreigner?" (Ruth 2:10). Boaz explained that he had
heard how she had forsaken her own land for love of
Naomi and how hard she worked to take care of her-
As it turned out, Boaz was a relative of Naomi's
dead husband, which must be one reason why he was
touched bv Ruth's love and fidelity. Naomi, on hear-
ing the story, had an idea. In those days. if a widow
was left childless, she had the right to expect her dead
husband's brother to marry her and offer her his pro-
tection. If the dead husband had no brother, some
other relative would fulfill the task.
Naomi was past the age of childbearing, so she
could not qualify for marriage, which in those days
centered about children; but what about Ruth? To be
sure, Ruth was a Moabite woman and it might well be
that no Judean would marry her, but Boaz had proven
kind. Naomi therefore instructed Ruth how to ap-
proach Boaz at night and, without crudely seductive
intent, appeal for his protection.
Boaz, touched by Ruth's modesty and helplessness,
promised to do his duty, but pointed out that there
was a kinsman closer than he and that, by right, this
other kinsman had to have his chance first.
The verv next day, Boaz approached the other kins-
man and suggested that he buy some property in
Naomi's charge and, along with it, take over another
responsibility. Boaz said, "On the day when you ac-
quire the field from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the
Moabitess, the dead man's wife . . ."(Ruth 4:5).
Perhaps Boaz carefully stressed the adjectival
phrase "the Moabitess," for the other kinsman drew
back at once. Boaz therefore married Ruth, who in
time bore him a son. The proud and happy Naomi
held the child in her bosom and her women friends
said to her, "The child will give you new life and
cherish you in your old age; for your daughter-in-law
who loves vou, who has proved better to you than
seven sons, has borne him" (Ruth 4:15).
In a society that valued sons infinitely more than
daughters, this verdict of Judean women on Ruth, a
woman of the hated land of Moab, is the author's
moralthat there is nobilitv and virtue in all groups
and that none must be excluded from consideration in
advance simply because of their group identification.
And then, to clinch the argument for any Judean so
nationalistic as to be impervious to mere idealism, the
story concludes: "Her neighbors gave him a name:
'Naomi has a son,' they said; 'we will call him Obed.'
He was the father of Jesse, the father of David" (Ruth
4:17).
Where would Israel have been, then, if there had
been an Ezra present to forbid the marriage of Boaz
with a "foreign wife"?
Where does that leave us? That the Book of Ruth is
a pleasant story, no one will deny. It is almost always
referred to as a "delightful idyll," or words to that ef-
fect. That Ruth is a most successful characterization
of a sweet and virtuous woman is beyond dispute.
In fact everyone is so in love with the storv and
with Ruth that the whole point is lost. It is, by right, a
tale of tolerance for the despised, of love for the
hated, of the reward that comes of brotherhood. By
mixing the genes of mankind, by forming the hybrid,
great men will come.
The Jews included the Book of Ruth in the canon
partly because it is so wonderfully told a tale but
mostly (I suspect) because it gives the lineage of the
great David, a lineage that is not given beyond Da-
vid's father, Jesse, in the soberly historic books of the
Bible that anteceded Ruth. But the Jews remained, by
and large, exclusivistic and did not leam the lesson of
universalism preached by the Book of Ruth.
Nor have people taken its lesson to heart since. Why
should they, since every effort is made to wipe out
that lesson? The story of Ruth has been retold any
number of ways, from children's tales to serious nov-
els. Even movies have been made of it. Ruth herself
must have been pictured in hundreds of illustrations.
And in every illustration I have ever seen, she is pre-
sented as blond, blue-eyed, shapely, and beautiful
the perfect Nordic stereotype I referred to at the be-
ginning of the article.
For goodness' sake, why shouldn't Boaz have fallen
in love with her? What great credit was there in
marrying her? If a girl like that had fallen at your feet
and asked you humbly to do your duty and kindly
marry her, you would probably have done it like a
shot.
Of course she was a Moabite woman, but so what?
What does the word "Moabite" mean to you? Does it
arouse any violent reaction? Are there many Moabites
among vour acquaintances? Have vour children been
cha-sed bv a bunch of lousv Moahites latelv? Have
thev been reducing property values in vour neighbor-
hood? When was the last time vou heard someone sav,
"Got to get those rotten Moabites out of here. They
just fill un the welfare rolls"?
In fact, judging by the way Ruth is drawn, Moa-
bites are English aristocrats and their presence would
raise property values.
The trouble is that the one word that is not trans-
lated in the Book of Ruth is the kev word "Moabite,"
and as long as it is not translated, the point is lost; it is
lost in non-translation.
The word "Moabite" reallv means "someone of a
group that receives from us and deserves from us
nothing but hatred and contempt." How should this
word be translated into a single word that means the
same thing to, sav, many modern Greeks? . . . Why,
Turk." And to manv modem Turks? . . . Why,
"Greek." And to many modern white Americans? . . .
Why, "black."
To get the proper flavor of the Book of Ruth, sup-
pose we think of Ruth not as a Moabite woman but as
a black woman.
Reread the story of Ruth and translate "Moabite" to
"black" every time you see it. Naomi (imagine) is
coming back to the United States with her two black
daughters-in-law. No wonder she urges them not to
come with her. It is a marvel that Ruth so loved her
mother-in-law that she was willing to face a society
that hated her unreasoningly and to take the risk of
gleaning in the face of leering reapers who could not
possibly suppose they need treat her with any consid-
eration whatever.
And when Boaz asked who she was, don't read the
answer as, "She is a Moabite girl," but as, "She is a
black girl." More likely, in fact, the reapers might have
said to Boaz something that was the equivalent of (if
you'll excuse the language), "She is a nigger girl." [sorry Shades, sometimes the word censor should be spoofed]
Think of it that way and you find the whole point is
found in translation and only in translation. Boaz' ac-
tion in being willing to marry Ruth because she was
virtuous (and not because she was a Nordic beauty)
takes on a kind of nobility. The neighbors' decision
that she was better to Naomi than seven sons becomes
something that could have been forced out of them
only by overwhelming evidence to that effect. And
the final stroke that out of this miscegenation was
born none other than the great David is rather breath-
taking.
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco
- To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
- To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
-
_LeVay
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 155
- Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 7:33 pm
Re: Bible verse by verse
I might be inclined to agree with you if not for the fact that LittleNipper has never, to my knowledge, admitted any of his "errors", unintentional or otherwise.huckelberry wrote:And be saved???
I may not always agree with Nipper. On a occasion have felt his take on something to be incorrect. However I have not imagined that his errors would condemn him. Instead I imagine God grace raining down on him each morning as he awakes.
In my experience, conservative christians like LittleNipper are among the most dishonest people I have ever encountered. Do you recall the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the 80' and 90's? The SRA scare was entirely the result of lies and obfuscations from conservative christians like LittleNipper and his ilk.
You haven't read many of LittleNipper's posts, have you? One of LittleNipper's favorite games involves telling people they're headed straight to hell if they disagree with his bizarre-o belief system.huckelberry wrote:On the other hand Satans character would be shining through in the desire to withold salvation from Nipper due to the guilt of some error or inaccuracy.
Last edited by Guest on Sun Feb 16, 2014 6:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
REGIE SATANAS!
AVE SATANAS!
HAIL SATAN!
AVE SATANAS!
HAIL SATAN!
-
_ludwigm
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 10158
- Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2007 8:07 am
Re: Bible verse by verse
LeVay wrote:You haven't read many of LittleNipper's posts, have you?
You haven't read my comment above, have You?
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco
- To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
- To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
-
_LeVay
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 155
- Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 7:33 pm
Re: Bible verse by verse
ludwigm wrote:LaVey wrote:You haven't read many of LittleNipper's posts, have you?
You haven't read my comment above, have You?
I'm about a quarter of the way through.
REGIE SATANAS!
AVE SATANAS!
HAIL SATAN!
AVE SATANAS!
HAIL SATAN!
-
_ludwigm
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 10158
- Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2007 8:07 am
Re: Bible verse by verse
LaVey wrote:You haven't read many of LittleNipper's posts, have you?
ludwigm wrote:You haven't read my comment above, have You?
Go on! You may learn a lot... see my comment above about Ruth!LeVay wrote:I'm about a quarter of the way through.
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco
- To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
- To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei