THE REVISED EDITION OF THE BOOK OF INFERNAL PRAYER IS FINALLY HERE.
A devotional manual of scripture, psalms, prayer, art, and ritual for Diabolists and Theistic Satanists. While this book was created initially for use by a small coven of practitioners (Brethren of the Morningstar), it is hoped that fellow travelers on the crooked path will find it useful and inspiring. This edition has expanded content and a more user-friendly layout from the original.
Nearly 12 years ago, before I had fully embraced Diabolism but had been involved in the occult for nearly two decades, I flirted with Christian Gnosticism. I wrote a manuscript at this time, attempting to produce a gnostic catechism that would outline where Gnostic Christianity and orthodox Christianity diverged and where they agreed. I let a close friend read this manuscript at the time. He was impressed with the writing, but noted, “You never mention salvation. Christ comes to save, right? What does this gnosis save you from?”
That same question can be asked about Satanism and the western Left Hand Path, and Bilé tells us we can find the answer in Nietzsche. It is nihilism. What Satan can save us from is life destroying nihilism.
This may be confusing for some readers, who have perhaps been led to believe that Nietzsche was a nihilistic philosopher, rejecting any notion of objective norms and morality. But this association of Nietzsche with nihilism is only a half-truth. For Nietzsche, there were two forms of nihilism: negative or passive nihilism, which was to be opposed, and positive or active nihilism, which is part of the necessary path to the Overman.
Bilé explains that the origin of our current malaise and passive nihilism (the culture of what Nietzsche would call the “Last Man”) has its roots in the Platonic and Christian obsession with a search for truth. Unfortunately, he never formally defines what he means by truth, but it is apparent by how he talks about it in chapter three that what is not meant is factuality. Rather, the truth Christianity, and thus western civilization, has been obsessed with is analogous to the Platonic world of Forms. He writes that, “Religion, philosophy, and even science answer to our impulse toward self-preservation, the will to truth is a consequence of this trepidation and terror evoked by and absence of worldly meaning.” Rather than a pursuit of fact as opposed to fiction, what Bilé means by the “will to truth” is the search for something eternal and unchanging in a world that by definition is transitory and ever-changing. It is the pursuit of a world of pure Being, which, since reality is a realm of Becoming, can never be found in this world.
“As mentioned above,” Bilé writes, “the ascetic ideal breeds the will to truth, which seeks the affirmation of another world by denying this one. The ‘truth’ as a categorical commitment places higher importance on the elusive eternality than on life itself; illusion is elevated above prudential goods.”
This pursuit of Truth sows the seeds for the passive nihilism western culture is now in the grips of. Since an eternal unchanging Truth cannot exist in this world of flux in which we live it must be put off in a metaphysical hereafter. But as science makes the existence of such a realm of Truth all the more improbable, not only do we lose faith in that metaphysical world, we are left bereft of any value in or attachment to the actual world of nature, and in any interest in forming a morality that will allow us to positively live in it. As Bilé writes, “Man’s yearning for suprasensorial truths becomes a self-immolating and self-refuting force: where artifice of ultimacy is lost, meaning itself is lost; and where meaning is lost, the beingness of Man is lost.” A god of Eternal Truth will never lead to world affirmation, only world weariness. As Nietzsche wrote, placing ultimate value in eternal Truth will eventually lead to a poisonous pessimism, “which is an expression of the uselessness of the modern world.” In fact, Nietzsche equates Nihilism with Christianity in his aphorism, “Nihilist and Christian—this rhymes.”
Bilé contrasts the worshipper of Eternal Truth to the Satanist, who “does not forfeit the natural world for the neo-Platonic heavenly but abandons reason to engage in a depositional process, a drawing down of God into the Beast.” Here again we are confronted with the image of the satyr, the Baphomet, who combines the heavenly and the earthly in one being. As an antichrist, the Satanist is moved to oppose Christianity’s moral valuations: the inversion and obliteration of hierarchy, whereby what is vulgar and common is valued over what is strong and elite; communism over individualism; the valorization of pity; esteeming the hereafter instead of what is present now. All these are anathema to the servant of the Devil.
It is through Lavey that Bilé presents a blueprint for how we can wage war against the Crucified One. As said earlier, Lavey consciously drew on Friedrich Nietzsche when developing his own infernal philosophy. Nietzsche is famous for writing about the coming Overman, and what such a man or woman might look like, but he is perhaps just as famous for never having laid out any sort of program by which the Overman could be realized. Lavey seeks to remedy this problem by setting out a plainspoken moral and ritual practice by which an individual may save the godhead within themselves.
There are a few ways in which Lavey takes up the torch Nietzsche left behind. Firstly, Laveyan Satanism:
seeks out the inverse of virtue; it revaluates the vice of Christianity, so that they become newfound virtues. Modesty becomes indulgence, and anti-sensual restrictions inspire sexual expression—pride, vengefulness, and avarice all become positive attributions, associated with Satan and the core tenets of Satanic identity.
Secondly, Laveyan Satanism rejects the emphasis on the spiritual and places all value squarely back in natural existence. By rejecting the transcendent, Lavey makes the natural world “the good world, a world of transition, change, and chaos, all of which are viewed as immoral according to Christian moral valuations.” Rather than the soul, the Satanist becomes primarily concerned with the needs and urges of the human body. Nietzsche would approve, as he claimed the body was “a more astonishing idea” than the human “soul.” For Lavey, epicurean pleasure and physical indulgence are ends in themselves and need no further moral justification.
Thirdly, where Christianity emphasizes pity (the meek shall inherit the earth), favors the poor majority over the noble minority (blessed are the poor…but woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort), and emphasizes self-denial (you must take up your cross daily), Laveyan Satanism values meritocracy, power, and the elite over the downtrodden. “Blessed are the strong,” Lavey’s Satan declares, “for they shall possess the earth—Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!” Where Christianity preaches forgiveness and love of enemies, Lavey preach lex talionis—an eye for an eye.
Fourthly, Laveyan Satanism seeks a mode of living that lies beyond common conceptions of “good and evil.” We see this in Lavey’s rejection of there being something that can be called white magic. “There is no white or black magic; both compassion and hate are to serve the ego.” In fact, Lavey says, morality is never anything other than self-serving. What we proclaim as right is truthfully what we deem will best serve our self-interest (though whether we are accurate in those judgments is another matter entirely). Social scientists have begun to come around to this idea, some going so far as to argue that most of our moral judgements are actually post hoc justifications for our behavior, and rarely as rational and dispassionate as we like to pretend.
The rest of Friedrich Nietzsche & the Left Hand Path is largely devoted to considering how the Satanist, with both Nietzsche and Lavey informing their practice, can overcome the nihilism that kills and embrace the nihilism that breeds life. As I want readers to get ahold of the book for themselves, I will not exhaustively consider these concluding sections. Primarily, such an endeavor involves making oneself the locus of their spiritual life, antinomianism, carnal indulgence, moral and philosophical skepticism, and creating meaning through will in a world that is harsh and unforgiving. “Equipped with the transvaluation of values,” Bilé writes, “the Satanist adopts a Dionysian pessimism, a pessimism of strength, a pessimism of the future that ‘destroys all other pessimisms,’… Like the overman, the Satanist will always be ‘without a master” — a radical individualist who becomes his own redeemer.”
Diabolists would be well served to read this book, think about it, and then read it again. I do warn the prospective reader, however, that this book focuses almost entirely on Laveyan, rationalistic Satanism. Not to say that it is hostile to theistic Satanism, but that isn’t its focus, and some passages rub against what I consider the values and conclusions of traditional Devil worship. In fact, one of the questions I am left with is how much of this book reflects Bilé’s own philosophy, and how much of it is an academic exercise? Bilé is openly theistic in his Satanism, so I am left to wonder why he would write a book that is so secular in its perspective.
Whatever the reason, readers should be cognizant of the fact that the book is largely written from an atheistic point-of-view, and will thus require some small interpretation on their part.
The larger issue my readers will have to consider for themselves, though, pertains to the very Left Hand Path itself. I have never considered the Diabolist’s path to be solely that of the Left. The Devil’s is a Crooked Path, meaning that we cross between the Left and the Right as needed, learning the lessons of dominance and submission, mercy and severity, darkness and light. Nor do I find much worthwhile in the idea of absolute auto-theism. The traditional Satanist is certainly called to a path of apotheosis, pursuing their Will and manifesting as much of their divine self as they can at any moment, ideally growing into an ever-greater vessel for the daemonic spirit they have been given. But we do have a Master and Mistress. We worship a god and goddess. There is a Law both within and outside us. We are stars, yes, but we exist in a universe full of them. And the language of becoming an “isolate intelligence,” which comes from the Temple of Set, frankly leaves me cold, for it sounds much more like escaping reality and our humanity than embracing it. We are social creatures, who find our highest sense of fulfillment through our interaction with the social and external world. There is nothing that exists in isolation. We are all part of the web of existence, and what affects an individual part will invariably come to affect the whole. The opposite is true as well. The only way I can conceive of transcending the interdependence of existence is to destroy everything else that isn’t you. The logical conclusion of absolute autotheism and seeking to become an isolate intelligence seems to be anti-cosmicism, which by definition is not only self-defeating but, again, the opposite of embracing reality for what it is.
What is the use of becoming a god if you must destroy everything you love and enjoy and everything you are to do it?
I am also skeptical of the claim that there are no objective moral principles whatsoever. If there is no foundation to morality (albeit as grey and fluid as that foundation may be) why is there any reason for Nietzsche and those who came after to him to reject the passive nihilism he so forcefully rails against? Why prefer the Overman to the Last Man? Why do we value strength, nobility, creativity, and individuation over their opposites? Nietzsche cares about these things because, to his mind, they are the basis of life and health, but if good and evil are entirely subjective, what basis is there to object to preferring slavery over freedom, decadence and decay over growth and fruitfulness? Perhaps the argument could be made that it isn’t a matter of morality, merely of aesthetic taste. But if that is the case, who gives a shit about Nietzsche’s preferences? The truth is, the things Nietzsche (and by extension Lavey and Satanists more generally) value imply moral judgments.
As with the word truth, what is meant by “objective morality” may be the real bone of contention. The co-host Sitch, from the Sitch and Adam podcast, has an axiom known as Sitch’s Law, which asserts that the majority of political and philosophical disagreements are really just arguments over definitions. Perhaps what Bilé means by objective morality I would call something else. I concede that all morality is in some sense subjective, but to me the subject can just as easily be a species as it can an individual. And while particular modes of moral conduct may make more or less sense in specific situations, that doesn’t negate the existence of the virtues those modes are aiming to embody.
Regardless, it is clear to me that even if we cannot point to an absolutely objective morality, that doesn’t entail that all moralities are created equal.
Lavey clearly assumes a particular moral foundation in The Satanic Bible. Non-aggression; respect for the property and rights of others, including animals and children; sexual freedom; the importance of consent; and the right to self-expression are just some of the moral principles contained, implicitly or explicitly, in The Satanic Bible. Yes, Lavey talks about being ruthless against one’s enemies, but this is always in the context of an individual’s rights having been violated. Never does he suggest that a Satanist should be the unprovoked aggressor. Yes, Lavey does make use of “might makes right” language and sees reality as bluntly Darwinian, but there is a tension in The Satanic Bible between extoling that which is savage and that which is noble.
Consider this, the myths we tell about Satan and Lilith have certain moral standards coded within them. Satan opposes tyranny. The fallen angels are loyal to their captain, rather than treacherous. Lilith shows courage in escaping Eden, obeying her own nature. Jehovah is condemned for his bloodlust, misogyny, and ethical narrow-mindedness. As servants of the Devil, we absolutely have a code of honor, and examples of conduct we seek to emulate.
As Diabolists we worship the Adversary. To accept the Devil’s Mark is to enter a spiritual conflict of cosmic proportions. There are forces who oppose Satan’s vision for the world, and they are our enemies. Perhaps it is true that there is no such thing as objective morality, but there is such a thing as a Satanic Morality, and it is not “anything goes.”
All that is to say, while the Diabolist must surely move beyond a vulgar conception of good and evil, we do believe there is evil in the world and seek to oppose it. If not directly then indirectly by how we choose to live in our daily lives.
I want to circle back and reiterate there is much of value in this book. A lot. For those who are looking to move beyond neophyte level Satanism, this book is a fantastic place to start. Even if you don’t agree with everything in it, it gives you formidable intellectual arguments to wrestle against. If nothing else, it helps drive home just how much nascent Christian morality (whether of the orthodox or heretical “woke” variety) most of us need to root out of ourselves.
So, I encourage you, let Bilé take your hand and, along with Nietzsche, be a guide in understanding your Lord and religion all the better.
I first encountered Shea Bilé’s work on his (seemingly now defunct) Deferred Gnosis podcast, where he explored religious Satanism with an atheist co-host. After that, I heard interviews with him on a couple of different other podcasts. On all of these he proved to be one of the most serious, erudite, and interesting voices currently vocal in Satanism. So, it was with great interest and expectation that I purchased his book, published by Atramentous Press, Friedrich Nietzsche & the Left Hand Path.
This will be less of a review and more of a close examination of Bilé’s book, but for those who are interested, it is finely written and produced. My copy is the Standard Edition: black linen covered with gold foil debossing. The pages are sewn rather than glued, which means the book should hold together well past my lifetime.
As an aside, I have mixed-feelings about the high-end occult book craze of the last decade. On the one hand, many of these books are beautiful. There is no arguing that. And there is something to be said for finely published occult tomes possessing talismanic qualities. On the other, this puts the price range of many of these books outside what some, perhaps many, occultists can afford. That may be a bug or a feature depending on your perspective. What I have noticed, however, is that this means most of these books end up in the hands of the collector and armchair crowd, rather than the people actually doing the work. As someone who takes his Satanic ministry seriously, it is the latter I am most concerned with.
And, to be blunt, just because a book contains outward talismanic qualities doesn’t mean it has much worthwhile inside.
That is not the case with Friedrich Nietzsche & the Left Hand Path. This is both a superbly written book, but a densely written one as well. Though it clocks in at only a little over 130 pages, nearly every sentence on those pages is packed with insight and meaning. This is not a book you skim through, put back on the shelf, and never touch again. I have read it three times over the past year, and still feel I haven’t mined everything in it yet. This is a book that forces you to slow down and to think. This is not a work for beginners, but for the intermediate and advanced practitioner. There aren’t enough of those out there, so they are true gems when they appear.
As the title of the book indicates, this book is primarily about the intersection of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy with the philosophy of the western Left Hand Path. Specifically, it looks at the affect Nietzsche’s work had on Anton Lavey (the popularizer of the concept of a western Left Hand Path) and the early Church of Satan. Crowley and others invariably make an appearance here and there, but Lavey’s Nietzschean discipleship is the primary concern. The Black Pope made no secret of how much influence Nietzsche had on him, and his religious Satanism is in many ways an attempt to translate Nietzsche’s insights into a viable spiritual path.
These are all solid decisions of focus. Without Lavey there would be no religious Satanism or western Left Hand Path more generally, and without Nietzsche there would be no Lavey.
For anyone familiar with Nietzsche, a question is likely to arise at this point of how organic this connection between Lavey and Nietzsche is. While the German philosopher did write a small book called The Antichrist, he had surprisingly very little to say about Satan, Lucifer, or the Devil explicitly. He certainly never recommends the Devil as a figure of religious veneration, or an archetype to emulate.
Or does he?
Friedrich Nietzsche & the Left Hand Path begins with a rather poignant and powerful epigram from Nietzsche’s The Dawn of Day. “Now I belong to the Devil. I go with him to Hell. Break, break, poor hearts of stone! Will you not break? …I am damned that you maybe saved! There he is! Yes, there he is! Come, kind Devil! Come!”
While the above is one of the few times Nietzsche has much explicitly to say about Satan, there is a figure Nietzsche holds up as a spiritual paragon—Dionysus. The god of wine and madness is a thread that runs through and connects nearly all of Nietzsche’s philosophical writing. At the opening of the first chapter, Bilé writes:
The sacred pain of a dying mother, the frenzied consumption of a child’s flesh, the penetrating gaze of holy terror, the entwined dervish of life and death, the bloodied face of a wrathful lover, the lustful revelry of a depraved people, the purifying fire and the consecrated wine—this is the divine paradox of Dionysus, the god of Friedrich Nietzsche and the god of this world.
If the phrase “god of this world” calls to mind Satan, that is right and intentional. It is a title associated with the Devil in the Christian New Testament. Bilé makes the argument that the being we know as Satan or Lucifer is a multi-faceted one. A deity who wears many masks and goes by many names. This has a tangible connection to Dionysus himself, whose visible totem of worship was often a mask nailed to a tree. Bilé says that the god of wine is clearly an antecessor of what would later become the Christian Devil. “[A]n origination borne from antinomian beauty and a contentious allure.”
For Nietzsche, Dionysus was a symbol of everything that had been lost of the ancient world when Christianity came to power in Europe. The wan, meek, and ineffectual Christ replaced the beauty, vigor, excellence, frenzy, and strength of the Hellenic world. For Nietzsche this was a tragedy, and so he sought to conjure this Dionysian force back into the world through his writing. This force was so powerful for the philosopher, Bilé writes, “he would end some of his letters with the nom de plume ‘Dionysus’—auspiciously similar to Aleister Crowley’s self-identification with ‘The Beast’ or Anton Szandor Lavey’s endearingly carnivalesque ‘The Black Pope.’”
“Nietzsche conceptualizes Dionysus as a tragic hero,” Bilé says. “The fusion of antipodal ideals—happiness and death, madness and freedom, the birthing mother and the dancing murderess…the affirmational union of the radical in-between, synthesized by the artistic and metaphysical force of Dionysus, the goat-god of tragedy and the tragic Greek myth.”
Nietzsche himself wondered, “Where does this synthesis of god and billy goat in the satyr point?” For Bilé the answer is obvious. “Here is the ‘synthesis of god and billy goat in the satyr…’: Nietsche’s Dionysus, Milton’s Lucifer, Shelley’s Prometheus, and the god of Man himself—Satan.”
So, for Bilé, whether we speak of Pan, Dionysus, Prometheus, Lucifer, or Satan we are speaking about aspects of the same spiritual being. He groups the attributes of this god into two primary forces, both in tension with one another—fire and wine.
This sense of blended of polarity is a key feature of religious Satanism’s understanding of the Devil. We see it portrayed in the light and dark aspect of Baphomet. The intellectual and carnal aspects of Satan and Lucifer. Readers who are familiar with the Brethren of the Morningstar’s Book of Infernal Prayer will perhaps think of the satanic psalm, “Annunciation.”
Behold the Lightbringer who lights the way out of bondage. Topple the mountains. Flood the valleys. All shall be put to the test. Cling not to names and images. Stability is found in motion. What use is the past but to dissolve and recombine? Search not for my paths in books. I direct my beloved by invisible means. Step lightly in your certainty. Sit boldly in your doubt. In the palace of tension, I am found.
For Bilé, Satan’s fiery aspect is his Will to Power. Lucifer is the great figure of revolution, who casts off his undeserved chains in search of freedom. And who likewise offers humanity the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge to lead us in a similar quest. He describes the worshippers of Dionysus, the maenads, in terms very much reminiscent of the folk tales of witches’ sabbaths from the late Middle Ages. Women who, in an ecstasy of freedom and fury, have thrown off all conventional morality to make contact with an existence that is deeper and more primordial.
“The Devil is an impassioned emancipator,” Bilé writes, “…because he embodies that which is sinful, unspoken desires and indulgences are associated with evil, and that which is evil is the Devil’s blessing.”
As a figure of political revolt, Satan came into his own in the 19th century, when socialists and anarchists alike appropriated the Lucifer of the earlier Romantic Satanists for their own goals. Bilé uses this well-known quote from anarchist Mikhail Bakunin to demonstrate this point.
Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty… He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.
In his capacity as the liberator of mankind, Lucifer is in direct confrontation with the Christian god and Christ. Bilé writes that, for Nietzsche, Christianity is the rejection of everything that was great in the Greco-Roman world. The Pagan world, which Christ came to subvert, was life-affirming, “an expression of the will to power—the will to life.” Quoting Nietzsche, what replaced this world was a slave world, “emptier, paler, and more diluted.” According to Bilé, what replaced the will to life was a will to death—“antinatural, antiactual, and illogical.”
The other half of the polar equation that is the Devil is the God of Wine, of surrender, imagination, ecstasy, who is emblematic of nature itself. Bilé evokes the images of the horned gods of paganism, Pan and Cernunnos. In a passage that is far too beautiful not to quote at length, he writes:
The Devil’s forked path begins at the shores of an impossible twilight, the death-speckled blanket above that swallows the starlit gaze of the devotional. His face is terrible nature in toto; his eyes are setting suns, beaming beautiful and black as the ocean. Satan swallows the faithful; their cries of joy are rain descending upon an enshadowed mountaintop—the Crown of Heaven, and the Crowned King of damnation and death, beauty and truth, oakwood and the ashes of the desert bush…Ancient and eternal, undeniable and death-like, metaphysic and material, what Satan’s face reflects is Nature itself.
What was most valuable in ancient Paganism, for Nietzsche, was that it embraced the natural world for what it was, rather than rejecting it for an imagined world that conformed more to what we wish the world would be. This rejection doesn’t just take place in Christianity, but in many world religions, Buddhism being the most obvious. Indo-European paganism, on the other hand, venerated what was natural, strong, exuberant, and proud. Rather than hide from the bestial side of our nature, Paganism embraced it with a whole heart. For Bilé, it is the satyr-like Pan who embodies the true image of humankind, personifying “an unadorned expression of truth that exists beneath the synthetic cultural trappings” of humanity.
This Horned God, this Dionysus, this Satan, in his earthly aspect, “stands in opposition to the ‘Crucified,’ his antithesis. Life itself, with all its joys and annihilations, torment and suffering, destruction and vibrancy of life—the ‘innocent one’ represents a denial and objection to this world as-it-is, its condemnation. The Dionysian man affirms the innate viciousness of life—its tragedy; for this, he is strong, resilient, and rich in spirit.”
How to live just such a life of strength, self-actualization, and courage is precisely what Lavey set out to answer in his creation of the Church of Satan and The Satanic Bible. The above two Dionysian poles of fire and wine are very much present in Lavey’s spirituality. Through a satanic “re-reading and revaluation of Christian tradition, Satan’s negative associations transfigure into positive attribution, and he comes to embody sex, pride, rebellion, opposition, individualism, and rational self-interest.” Bilé further notes that, for Lavey, Lucifer is a bearer of knowledge—a god of invention and reason. This is the fire side.
On the wine side, Lavey’s Satan also represents the animal urges that are just as much a part of our humanity as the intellectual side. It is through this bestial side that Lavey draws a need for a “naturalistic morality.” Such a morality would not only accept but celebrate our urges for violence, pain, and physical indulgence. Such a morality, however, flies in the face of what Christianity has taught for the past 2,000 years. Bilé writes:
Lavey concedes that Satanism is “not an easy religion to adopt in a society ruled so long by Puritan ethics” and that it does not contain any concept of “false altruism” or a mandatory “love-thy-neighbor” morality. He also admits that Satanism is a “selfish and brutal philosophy” and that life is a “Darwinian struggle for survival” where only the mighty thrive and the masterful are the ones that inherit the earth…”
For Lavey, humans are predatory and hierarchical. To deny this or worse, attempt to smother it entirely, is to deny our very existence as a species. Rather than looking to an external redeemer to save us, or fool ourselves into thinking the world is anything other than what it is, Lavey challenges his followers to, “Say unto thine own heart, ‘I am my own redeemer.’” That is, to descend into reality and, through a Nietzschean transvaluation of values, affirm life in all its glory and horror.
What say you? That life is suffering and sorrow? That all the world is misery and decay? Yes, but there is leaping and dancing and laughter of the most brazen sort.
Wander! And trample the wretched who would enslave you.
Wander! And discover yourself in the flux of the world.
Wander! And let your heart sing a song of love.
Wander! And make of your death a crown. “Joy”
In Swami Anand Nisarg’s commentary on the Bhagavad Gita he has this to say about gurus and spiritual masters:
31. One’s own spiritual nature must also be considered. You should never hesitate, for to your spiritual nature, there is nothing that suits you better than being a warrior. It is your destiny to be a warrior. You have no other choice.
32. When it naturally occurs, conflict such as this can open the doors to higher consciousness. For those who are kings, this is a very fortuitous event.
How is it possible that a horrific war can be a great opportunity? It is because a conflict like this is a crisis. Human beings only have the chance to connect to that which is beyond themselves, to get out of their comfortable routines, when there is a spiritual crisis pushing them to it. That is why the Guru’s task is to create spiritual Crisis in his students.
The concept of needing to find a spiritual master is not stressed much in the Western Left-Hand Path. If anything, Western LHPers are likely to have an allergic reaction to the very idea. As much as Theistic Satanism tends to take its ceremonial cues from Catholicism, philosophically speaking it tends to align more with the foundations of Protestantism. Each individual is their own high priest and final interpretive authority. The idea of total intellectual surrender to an external guru is an anathema to the individualistic ethos of the LHP.
I have called attention to the above verses and commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, however, because Diabolists do have a spiritual Master. We call him Satan—amongst other names and titles—and invoke him for spiritual empowerment and instruction. In the Brethren of the Morningstar we make this relationship explicit. Consider our prayer Gloria:
Glory to the infernal Lord and Lady, and on Earth life and strength to their disciples. We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we give thanks to you for your great glory. Prince of Darkness and Mother of Daemons who replenish the world with pleasure and make us whole. You alone are our god and goddess. You alone are our Master and Mistress.
Just as Arjuna has Krishna to initiate and instruct him, we have Lucifer, who with equal aplomb leads us to the battlefield to teach us the yoga of intellect and action. Unlike more orthodox forms of Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism, however, we do not see our external teachers as embodiments of the divine teacher, or as avatars of our god himself. We are not encouraged to surrender to external individuals as a means of yoking ourselves to the divine. One of the more common practices in Vajrayana Buddhism is to meditate on the image and actions of one’s spiritual teacher, seeing them as the living embodiment of Buddhahood. To quote Wikipedia, guru yoga is “a tantric devotional practice in which the practitioner unites their mindstream with the mindstream of the body, speech, and mind of their guru.” In this practice the teacher and the teaching are seen as one and the same. To conform yourself more with the image of the former is embody the latter.
True Diabolists would recoil at the suggestion of a practice like this. I say true because there are plenty of self-identifying Satanists whose guru yoga can be seen in their shaved heads and goatees, or their incessant Crowley cosplaying.
No, the Diabolist’s Master dwells within them, because Lilith births a seed of his presence into our very soul. She births it into the very soul of the world, in fact. When we learn to recognize Satan’s voice both inside and outside ourselves we have Lilith to thank, for she is our High Priestess, mediating the presence of our Lord.
Note that our Lord’s voice is present both within and without us. For as much as Diabolists are not called to give their will over entirely to another person, neither are they called to renounce the external world. On the contrary, Satan wants us to stoop ever more deeply into its dark depths. For the world is Lilith’s glorious body, and our Lord, who bestows upon us our eternal spirit, desires most of all to become entangled in her limbs.
But just because Diabolists are not directed to cast their crowns at the feet of human gurus, that doesn’t mean we won’t have flesh-and-blood teachers or masters in our life. Brethren should consider the Devil’s statement, “I sway the development of the creatures of the earth. I influence the affairs of all who are under my hand” (“Apocalypsis Satanae”). Lucifer will absolutely put people in our path whom we are meant to learn from. They will be our initiators and instructors, inducting us further into his mysteries.
These student-master relationships will sometimes be explicit. For example, when we enroll in a course to learn a specific skill. In these situations, we are surrendering a portion of our time and will in order to come under a teacher’s guidance to learn. We should never give complete control of ourselves over to another, of course, but being a student requires respecting the authority of another.
Most of the masters we seek to learn from in life will likely not be occultists. Diabolism is primarily a solitary path, so some Diabolists may have little to no interaction with others on the path at all. But even an entirely solitary Diabolist is going to have teachers through books and other media. Some Diabolists will participate in groupwork, however. Perhaps not always in a full-blown coven, but they will have a more experienced Diabolist or LHPer whose instruction they seek.
Excerpt from Donald Tyson’s Liber Lilith.
O my love, you are as upright as the palm whose fruit is ripe. You are slender as the river reed that bows its head at eventide. Your hips twist with the grace of the serpent that glides across the face of the waters, and the waters cover it not. Beneath the Sun your hair is a living flame woven on a loom with golden threads. Beneath the Moon your hair is a dark river that sweeps away the stars. Your breasts rise with your breaths like two sheep that climb the hillside. Beneath the Sun your eyes are white as doves that flit amid the cool green shadows of the cedar. Beneath the Moon your eyes are silver fish that dark and hide in obsidian depths. Your voice is as the splashing of a fountain in the heat of midday, and the paleness of your cheek a place of shade to lie under on the sands of the desert. Cool my parched lips with the wine of your kisses. Soothe my brow with sighs from the mountain snows. Your thighs are pillars of marble that guard the entrance to the Temple of Mysteries, black beneath the Sun but white under the Moon. With your scarlet mouth you smile wordless promises. Dance for me by moonlight, O my beloved. Come to my bed when the lamps burn dry of oil and the dogs that guard the threshold sleep. On the altar of your belly I offer up my lifeblood. Dance within my dreams until I love sleep more than waking, and learn to hate the dawn.
*Artwork, “Sister of the Night,” by Selenada.
[The following is from a post made by the Reddit user Purple_Tatters, author of Behold Set: Prince of Darkness, who has since deleted his Reddit account. I was struck by this piece when I read it a few months ago, and wanted to share it here.]
Satan is the abyss of dream, untamed wishes of the subconscious crashing as waves against the walls of reality. Plunging into the infinite pit of mind, the Infernal flame of desire.
Satan is the seed of all power, all wills that remain unbent. Strive ever more, settle for naught but to recover strength. Stoke the black flame to cause fires in the skies and ascend.
Satan is the wear of river on rock, behold the earth tear before him and give way. Eternally flowing spring of life, primed to consume the hardened stone.
Satan is the recognition of true values, the consistency and belief in one’s true morals. The word of the Self is the word of a God.
Satan is the thorn on the rose, bloodied hands striving to find pristine beauty against the pain. Comfort is irrelevant, meaningless in the face of reality.
Satan is the serpent of Gnosis, the hero in the garden, the voice of true goodness. Speak unto us truth, great Serpent, whisper the ancient words from your eternal place in heaven.
Satan is the vibration of music, the bass shaking the innards from their place, drums pulsing in the ears, flutes and violins crying for olden myths. Around an eldritch fire he reads along from the lost poems, tapping his foot with the rhythm.
Satan is the warmth of fire in winter, the body, shivering and abandoned, embraced in flame. Wandering through a snow covered forest at the turn of the year, he brings you to deep forgotten caverns.
Satan is the quest for true wisdom, the hermit embracing their isolation in the midst of sheep. Be not driven by a lack of struggle, do not revel in the acceptance of stasis.
Satan is the awe of the child, the laughter of discovery, the esotericism in the mundane.
Satan is the hero of consciousness, fighting back the destruction of chaos, forcing the slavery of order to give way. Each has this power, like the burning center of a distant star.
Satan is the blinding brilliance of autonomy, the sharpened double blade which may wound opponent and wielder in equal measure. The greatest achievements and horrors to come stem from the same minds.
Satan is the inspiration of the artist, the Muse of the Romantics, the promptor of the author. Create new works and visit upon the the old, revel in their eternal glory.
Satan is the lust of deep passion, the tingling of newborn desire, the first brush of fingertips. If we are to be slaved in matter then enjoy the needs of flesh.
Satan is the goat leaping in joy. If God intends to enjoy our suffering, the ultimate blasphemy is enjoyment. Be rapturous, eat of fine foods and consume your favorite drinks.
Satan is the shield against tyranny, opposition of the cosmic dictator. Lo, were we as God wished we should be no more than debased slaves scrounging for scraps of love.
Satan is the violent thunder of the storm, the tempest gathering on the horizon, lightning splitting the darkened sky. The unprepared may be swept away yet all kin are washed clean.
Satan is the fascination with the unknown, the mind reaching out to comprehend infinity. Each failure to understand is a gift, a continuance of the greatest quest.
Satan is the euphoric howling of ancient rites, devotees flinging themselves around blazing bonfires in orgiastic delight. The wood cracks and crumbles in offering to lost gods.
Satan is the blasphemy of the heretic, the iconoclasm of the decadent, the thoughts which are impure. Know man that no matter what mask you must bear, the destruction of light is written on your soul.
Satan is the unending night sky, Draco chasing his tail in eternal delight, the womb of all existence. Facing north you feel your feet leaving the ground, a slight pull there since childhood, he takes your hand.
Jack Whiteside Parsons has enjoyed a bit of renewed notoriety lately both inside and outside the world of the occult. Thanks largely to various podcasts and the CBS streaming series Strange Angel, this rocket scientist turned Aleister Crowley disciple has went from being an obscure figure, known only to a handful of ceremonial magicians, to someone known, at least somewhat, by the general public. Given the fantastical qualities of Parson’s life, the biggest surprise is that it took this long for him to become better known. Readers unfamiliar with Jack Parsons are encouraged to check out one of the many podcast episodes about his life, or to read the biography Strange Angel, by George Pendle, which was the inspiration for the now cancelled TV series.
For the diabolist, Parsons’ significance has as much to do with his philosophy and occult ideas as his larger than life story. His four-part essay “Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword” is recommended reading for Satanists of all stripes. His poem “Birth of Babalon” appears in adapted form in the Brethren of the Morningstar’s The Book of Infernal Prayer. While he remained a committed Thelemite in his own way until his premature death, Parson’s eventually became disillusioned with some of Crowley’s interpretations, emphases, and prescribed means of attainment. Jack Parsons left the OTO in the late 1940s, hoping to eventually establish a magical system of his own, stripped of all the claptrap that so often chokes older esoteric orders, which he referred to simply as The Witchcraft. His surviving writings make clear that The Witchcraft would aim to lift women and femininity to a place of equality, emphasize the exercise of personal liberty over the study of cabalistic minutiae, and openly embrace witchcraft’s satanic basis. Whether he consciously aware of Parson’s or not, in many ways this same spirit animated fellow Californian Anton LaVey’s own project of stripping magic of its smug hypocrisy as well as the detritus it had collected through the centuries. While the Wiccan and Wiccan-inspired witches of the 1960s onward have sought to cleave the term “witch” from any association with the Devil entirely, historically the word implied veneration of Satan as much as it did a worker of sorcery. Parson’s use of “witch,” much like LaVey would later, sought to reclaim this infernal heritage.
Below is a short essay by Jack Parson’s simply and fittingly entitled “The Witchcraft.” It is a manifesto for his ideas toward this end. Because it is so hard to find this essay, even on the internet, I wanted to make it available here for diabolists to access. Consider it a call to arms for satanic witches and warlocks to lay claim to their power and place in the shadows once again.
John Whiteside Parsons
WE ARE THE WITCHCRAFT. We are the oldest organization in the world. When man was born, we were. We sang the first cradle song. We healed the first wound, we comforted the first terror. We were the Guardians against the Darkness, the Helpers on the Left Hand Side. Rock drawings in the Pyrenees remember us, and little clay images, made for an old purpose when the world was new. Our hand was on the old stone circles, the monolith, the dolmen, and the druid oak. We sang the first hunting songs, we made the first crops to grow; when man stood naked before the Powers that made him, we sang the first chant of terror and wonder. We wooed among the Pyramids, watched Egypt rise and fall, ruled for a space in Chaldea and Babylon, the Magian Kings. We sat among the secret assemblies of Israel, and danced the wild and stately dances in the sacred groves of Greece.
In China and Yucatan, in Kansas and Kurdistan we are one. All organizations have known us, no organization is of us; when there is too much organization we depart. We are on the side of man, of life, and of the individual. Therefore we are against religion, morality and government. Therefore our name is Lucifer. We are on the side of freedom, of love, of joy and laughter and divine drunkenness. Therefore our name is Babalon.
Sometimes we move openly, sometimes in silence and in secret. Night and day are one to us, calm and storm, seasons and the cycles of man, all these things are one, for we are at the roots. Supplicant we stand before the Powers of Life and Death, and are heard of these Powers, and avail. Our way is the secret way, the unknown direction. Our way is the way of the serpent in the underbrush, our knowledge is in the eyes of goats and of women.
It is our own force that sometimes shifts jeweled coils and […] mighty pinions in the breast of man; our Power is one with the Power that causes the God to stir in the heart of the seed, and the bud to burst into blossom and fruit; and whenever a man and a woman are united in one substance, our power is that substance.
Merlin was of us, and Gawain and Arthur, Rabelais and Catullus, Gilles de Retz and Jehanne d’Arc, De Molensis, Johannes Dee, Cagliostro, Francis Hepburn and Gellis Duncan, Swinburne and Eliphas Levi, and many another bard, Magus, poet, martyr known and unknown that carried our banners against the enemy multiform and ubiquitous, the Church and the State. And when that vermin of Hell that is called the Christian Church held all the West in a slavery of sin and death and terror, we, and we alone, brought hope to the heart of man, despite the dungeon and the stake.
II.
We are the Witchcraft, and although one may not know another, yet we are united by an indissoluble bond. And when the high wild cry of the eagle sounds in your mind, know that you are not alone in your desire for freedom. And when the howl of the wolf echoes in the forests of your night, know that there are those who also prowl. And when the ways of your fellows about you seem the ways of idiocy and madness, know that there are also others who have seen and judged – and acted.
Now know that the power that we serve lies in the heart of every man and woman as the tree lives in the seed. And to be with us, you have but to call upon that Power, and you are as one of us. And when our Power and Joy have come upon you, you may go forth and do your will among men, and none shall say you nay. And if it be your will, you shall do your will secretly, and if it be your will, you will do your will openly, as your will.
Therefore lift up your hearts saying, “I am a man” or “I am a woman, and the Power of Life is mine!” And in the Power of Life you shall live and love, accepting no restriction and placing no restriction, freely and granting freedom. And it may be in the bounty of life you shall see the love of life shine in the eyes of another, and the lust of life burn upon his brow, and thus you shall take great joy together. And it may be in good fortune you may find a number such; and share your joy in secret feasting and rejoicing and all manner of lovemaking and festival. Or it may be that at hazard and danger you will teach the joyous power to men; as your wills move you.
And this is well so long as you remember one thing. There can be no restriction. The Power of Life is not restricted; it knows its own way, but no mind knows that way. Therefore in yourself practice all the giving and taking of freedom that is consistent with life, for thereby alone can you remain in our joy.
Pain is. Terror is, loss and loneliness and agony of heart and spirit, even unto Death. For this is the gateway to the kingdom of Pan.
Our way is not for all men. There are those who are so constricted and sick in themselves that the thought of their own freedom is a horror, and that of others a fierce pain; so that they would enslave all men. And these you should shun, or, if you must, destroy them as you will know how, for this also is bounty.
Nor think the life power should manifest in those who have no trouble or turmoil, for these may be mere dumb cattle, innocents out of season. Rather does the power often show the most where conflict rages, since at any time, and especially in a false civilization, the way must be won through. Surrender is disaster. The other side of the coin is a song in the sunlight and a dance in the moonlight, where all mists are dispersed. But the way must be won.
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:
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.
It is likely that anyone with the most casual knowledge of Satanism assumes all Devil worshippers are pro-choice. For the Abrahamic fundamentalist this is putting it lightly—they believe child sacrifice is the central act of Satanic worship. The ubiquitous role that accusations of infanticide played in the Satanic Panic is easily enough discovered by anyone who makes even a cursory read of the related literature of the time. Satanists kill babies, the fundamentalist says, and the children they let live they molest. Every evangelical Christian in the 80s knew that.
Among those who are actually Satanically inclined, the pro-choice position is assumed not because of a wanton desire to destroy children, but mostly because of the Devil’s romantic association with feminine liberty. We see this expressed most visibly in the Satanic Temple’s tenet of bodily autonomy and their vociferous support of so-called reproductive rights. To this faction, anti-abortion attitudes and legislation are the products of Judeo-Christian indoctrination and the machinations of the patriarchy, which they would mostly see as being synonymous. Male authorities want to control women’s bodies and shouldn’t be allowed to. End of story.
It will perhaps come as a surprise to some that support for open, on-demand abortion access has not been, nor is now, a universal belief among Satanists. Aleister Crowley speaks negatively of it in his Confessions. Anton LaVey wrote against abortion in multiple periods of his life. In 1971, LaVey wrote:
Abortion is unnatural and unnecessary. Man is the only animal who practices such wanton killing of its young. And yet man considers himself emancipated and more highly evolved than any other species. Legalized abortion would have a disastrously demoralizing effect on our society, for it would further instill the notion that human life is one of the cheapest commodities in the world.
LETTERS FROM THE DEVIL, MARCH 21, 1971
In our own time, groups like the Satanic Thulian Society hold to this tenet in their moral code:
The act of abortion is an affront: A woman’s womb is of the utmost sacred of temples. For within, the Elixir of Life is created and allowed to take root and flourish. Cursed are they who willfully destroys that life that has grown within the sacred temple of womanhood. For if such a gift is not desired, then let the temple be rendered barren and devoid of power.
“LEX SATANICUS”
So, how should the Diabolist think about abortion? Is the Satanic Temple correct? Is abortion a woman’s right, full stop? Or are LaVey and those inspired by his line of thinking correct to consider abortion a tragedy that the Satanist should avoid participating in?
Let’s start by saying that I agree with some of the Satanic Thulian Society’s (STS) initial premises. Another of their moral tenets, as outlined in their “Lex Satanicus,” is that “bodily autonomy is a privilege, not a right.” This is intentionally in conflict with the Satanic Temple’s assertion that bodily autonomy is an “inviolable right.” As the STS points out, societies of all types deems it right and necessary to deny people bodily autonomy if they prove—or are presumed likely to be—overly irresponsible with it. We incarcerate criminals, for example, and legally deny children the right to make many decisions until they are considered to be an appropriate age.
So, STS is right: bodily autonomy is not inviolable by any stretch. But I am not convinced that fact helps their argument in the long run. In their commentary on this tenet of autonomy being a privilege, the STS writes:
“Bodily Autonomy!”, is a myth cried by the enfeebled herd in a vain attempt to escape the blood splashed jaws of the predatory Satanist. It is by the rule of Fang & Claw, that the true Satanist guarantees their own Bodily Autonomy.
“LEX SATANICUS; AN IN DEPTH EXPLORATION”
They go on to say, “How often did LaVey preach of Lex Talionis and the Rule of Fang and Claw? Satan[ism] has always been based on the principle of Might is Right, and Social Darwinism.” All true and well and good, but it begs the question, by what fang and what claw has any fetus won the right to survive? The answer, of course, is none. It survives solely at the whim of its parents or, where abortion is banned, because of legal fiat. If might truly makes right, what is the problem with aborting a child the mother doesn’t want?
That aside, I also agree with the STS that the ability to birth children is a sacred gift that only the women in our species possess. It thus naturally follows that the womb is a uniquely holy part of a woman’s body. Brethren celebrate Lilith as the “Mother of Daemons,” and turn to her as a spiritual matron, precisely because of this fact.
In the modern world, Western culture is at best ambivalent when it comes to honoring motherhood. Young women are less likely to be taught that motherhood is a blessing as that it is a potential curse, robbing girls of their youth, wealth, and future career choices. The reasons for this attitude are complex. Some of it is on account of feminism’s—often justified—reaction against historical patriarchy. But crass materialism, financial considerations (baby’s cost a lot of money, after all), and an over-glorification of youth, leading to a subsequent reluctance to fully mature into adulthood, also play a role.
All this leads to many women being convinced that the last thing they want to be is a mother. Simultaneously, for a lot of the same reasons above, many men become convinced the last thing they want to be is a father. So, even if a woman desperately wants to be a mother, she may struggle to find a man who is willing or mature enough to be a mate. Tragically, the end result is that many women put off having children until they are at an age where it is both harder to find a mate, but also when the likelihood of birth defects are far greater than would have been if they were younger.
So, here I agree with STS; Devil Worshippers should celebrate and honor motherhood. We should encourage our young women and young men to see parenthood as a state that is sacred and generally desirable for most people.
All that said, I still find myself in disagreement with the conclusion that “abortion is an affront” to Satan or nature. The womb very well may be where the “Elixir of Life is created,” but, just as the Earth is both from whence our bodies come and to which they shall one day go, so too the womb is also a symbol of darkness and death. Lilith is both a bringer of life and of destruction. She creates children and kills them as well. The femme fatale and the nurturing mother are both sides of the coin that is femininity, and both are holy.
LaVey is factually incorrect in stating that only humans so “wantonly kill their young.” Filial (or parental) infanticide is observable in a whole spectrum of species. For example, pigs, rabbits, bass, storks, honey bees, non-human primates, and, yes, nearly all human cultures. The females of some species—mostly rodents—will reabsorb embryos or miscarry fetuses if they are exposed to the scent of unfamiliar males. Most importantly, this process doesn’t always occur against the females wishes. As the biologists S.D. Becker and J.L. Hurst write, pregnant rodent females will sometimes knowingly seek out the scent of novel males as a form of what we might call family planning. By seeking out novel, usually more dominant males during specific times of their pregnancies, these “females can exert a post-copulatory mate choice, reserving their reproductive resources for the highest-quality male.” *
As stated above, abortion has been practiced by a vast range of human cultures throughout our history. And while some cultures have indeed sought to curtail the practice through legislation, others have seen it as a legitimate social tool. Many Greco-Roman philosophers, for example, saw abortion as serving a eugenic purpose. Plato in his Republic writes:
And then, as the children are born, they’ll be taken over by the officials appointed for the purpose, who may be either men or women or both, since our offices are open to both sexes. Yes. I think they’ll take the children of good parents to the nurses in charge of the rearing pen situated in a separate part of the city, but the children of inferior parents, or any child of the others that is born defective, they’ll hide in a secret and unknown place, as is appropriate.
In his “Politics,” Plato’s student Aristotle writes:
As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess in the number of children, if the established customs of the state forbid this (for in our state population has a limit), no child is to be exposed, but when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation.
While the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote:
Mad dogs we knock on the head; the fierce and savage ox we slay; sickly sheep we put to the knife to keep them from infecting the flock; unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children who at birth are weakly and abnormal. Yet it is not anger, but reason that separates the harmful from the sound.“ON ANGER”
LaVey and the STS argue that advancements in contraception make abortion an unacceptable option for Satanists. We agree that preventing an unwanted pregnancy in the first place is preferable, but birth defects are—for obvious reasons—not detectable until after conception. Eugenically speaking, abortion is as necessary a tool as it ever was. Neither is contraception entirely foolproof. While the STS may be correct that the vast majority of abortions are not sought out as a result of rape, incest, or health concerns (whether those of the fetus or the mother), from the Diabolist’s understanding of what “responsibility to the responsible” means this is irrelevant. For the Devil worshipper, getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy is as legitimate a means of “taking responsibility” as is fobbing a child off to an orphanage. An argument could be made that abortion is taking actually taking more personal responsibility than expecting someone else to take care of your unwanted baby.
So, while Brethren might disagree with how the Satanic Temple frames the abortion issue, in the end we side with a staunchly pro-choice stance. This essay has went on long enough, so to wrap it up I want to be explicit about Diabolism and its relationship to abortion.
This is the truth as the Brethren of the Morningstar see it.
*See Becker and Hurst’s article, “Female behaviour plays a critical role in controlling murine pregnancy block”.
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