One of the things I’ve wrestled with lately is how to make an argument that Diabolism, while skeptical in its stance toward second-hand morals, is not morally nihilistic. We do hold somethings to be sacred, disdaining or outright opposing values that are in contradiction with our core beliefs. The source of these values are of course Satan and Lilith, whose mythology we read and gnosis we seek in order to understand their will. While I won’t pretend this list is exhaustive, I personally would describe that moral core as follows. Diabolists:

  • Are committed to seeking and disseminating knowledge.
  • Emphasize self-cultivation and preservation.
  • Are skeptical toward group narratives and norms.
  • Stress developing one’s own moral compass.
  • Reject self-sacrifice for enlightened, rational self-interest.
  • Value personal liberty and responsibility.
  • Affirm the world and life “in the here and now.”
  • Reject egalitarianism.
  • Use occult ritual to worship and invoke the powers of Hell.
  • Are at worst neutral at best positive with regard to cultural and sexual diversity.

Different Diabolists will express these values, well, differently. Some may stress certain ones in their lives more than others. Which they place the most emphasis on may in fact change depending on circumstance and what season of their life they happen to be in. What a Diabolist cannot do—and still call themselves a Diabolist—is outright deny or live in such a way that directly contradicts any one of them.

An example might be helpful. There is a debate going on in some Thelemic circles on whether the Law of Thelema is compatible with the political agenda of the Alt Right, particularly its open hostility toward homosexuality. Alt Right leaning Thelemites argue it is their Will to oppose the sexual freedoms of gays and lesbians, and since Will is the whole of the law that’s the only justification needed. I’m not a Thelemite, so I can’t answer whether that’s an accurate understanding of Crowley’s system, but any attempt to curtail the freedoms of gays and lesbians is definitively not something a Diabolist can claim is ever Satan or Lilith’s will, because it seeks to destroy sexual diversity and denies personal liberty to others.

This flirtation with the Far Right happens in satanic circles, too. I have no idea what their numbers are, but there are groups of so-called Devil worshippers who claim their faith is entirely compatible with Nazi ideology. Joy of Satan Ministries and the Order of the Nine Angles are two of the most visible of these groups, but there are certainly others, and no doubt solitary practitioners as well who incorporate the philosophy of the NSDAP into their religious thought and practice. I have a hunch that the majority of Diabolists would say that few things could be more unsatanic than Nazism. I agree, but I want to take a moment to unpack why.

Before we explore that, however, I want to point out one that Nazism’s goal—the preservation of the purity of the Aryan race—is biologically impossible. The purity of any race, Aryan or otherwise, cannot be preserved because there are no pure races. Every ancestral group on the planet has mixed with its neighbors at one time or another.

For the sake of argument, though, let us say a wannabe Nazi Devil worshipper grants that complete purity may be out the window, but that breeding laws and eugenic programs can turn back the clock, at least somewhat. They may not ever be 100% pure, the Nazi says, but a society could become less mongrelized over time. 

Fair enough, but the means to make that happen, to say nothing of the very desire, fly in the face of much if not all of what Satan and Lilith stand for.

The supremacy of the Aryan race is Nazism’s goal, while the heart of Nazi ethics is the claim that the good of the group always supersedes the good of the individual. And the good of the Aryan group, obviously, stands far and above any other. This is why Nazis are preoccupied with homogeneity. Foreign elements threaten not only the purity of the blood but the cultural cohesion of the group as well. The threat the Other poses is so great it is not enough to remove them physically. They must be eradicated. 

Mythologically speaking, Satan has never been interested in cultural or racial purity of this sort. The same cannot be said for his adversary, Jehovah, however. It is Jehovah, after all, who commanded his chosen people to never wear garments constructed of mixed threads (Leviticus 19:19), so that they would constantly be reminded they were a separated people. Jehovah forbids his people from marrying foreigners (Ezra 9:1-2), lest a Jezebel tempt their religious loyalties. It is Jehovah who tells his people that before they can inhabit the promised land they must slaughter every man, woman, and child currently living there (Deuteronomy 7:1-2). No Canaanite is to be spared, he says, but must be offered up as a holocaust to him.

In an ironically perverse way, Nazism is a mirror image of the worst elements of the religion of the ancient Israelites. The difference between them isn’t so much in what they valued or the lengths they were willing to go but in who they considered the chosen bloodline—the Aryans versus the Israelites—and which the chosen soil—Germany versus Israel.

There are other reasons why a Diabolist cannot be a Nazi. The Nazi’s persecution of homosexuals and—contrary to popular imagination—occultists is one. Their penchant for punishing dissent with death is yet another. But these are simply more variations of how similar they are to Jehovah (see Leviticus 20:13 and Numbers 16). There are no doubt others, but the fact that Nazism is closer in character to his nemesis than it is the Devil himself seems to me the most blatantly obvious.