Paranormal Nation

by Marc E. Fitch

  As indicated before, the Church of Satan suffered from its name probably more than anything, as the use of the term “Satan” immediately called forth the old folkloric understanding of Satanism and the Christian belief system. While LaVey used “Satan” to, in effect, create the media uproar that he rode to international fame, he also used it for its original meaning, “adversary.” The Church of Satan was truly an adversarial religion that, unlike folkloric Satanism, operated outside the bounds of Christian thought. In fact, the Church of Satan does not believe in God nor does it believe in Satan. Rather, the Church of Satan is a humanistic belief system that believes man is god, and at his full, god-like potential, he is able to cause events to occur in the world and influence nature to comply with his will.

  Most Satanists do not accept Satan as an anthropomorphic being with cloven hooves, a barbed tail, and horns. He merely represents a force in nature—the powers of darkness which have been named just that because no religion has taken these forces out of the darkness. Nor has science been able to apply technical terminology to this force. It is an untapped reservoir that few can make use of because they lack the ability to use a tool without having to first break down and label all the parts, which make it run. It is this incessant need to analyze which prohibits most people from taking advantage of this many-faceted key to the unknown—which the Satanist chooses to call “Satan.”18

  The Church of Satan acknowledges that there is an unseen magical force in the world that can be manipulated for both good and evil; science cannot define it, and Christianity begs for its mercy. When death or disease befalls one of its followers, they state that it is “God’s will,” i.e., this unnamable force has allowed the death or misfortune and there must, therefore, be a good reason for it. The Church of Satan rejects the prostration of man before God, which it sees as neither all-powerful nor all-good. The presupposition that God is good causes the believer to embrace and excuse the misery that befalls him or her as being part of some strange divine will that supercedes man’s understanding and judgment. The Satanist rejects this, believing that no God exists but rather that man is his own god, able to move and manipulate the unseen force in this world through the use of ceremony, belief, and ritual. The Church of Satan is essentially the celebration of mankind as both beast and god among beasts; it embraces our basest instincts and desires toward carnality, greed, and power. Its roots are in the magic rituals and beliefs of primitive paganism that preceded Christianity and embraced sexuality, animism, nature, and spirituality. It sees the seven deadly sins as mere pragmatism and views the church as a slavery of mankind. “Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven” the saying goes. For the Satanist, hell is here on earth, and he or she reigns supreme. He advocates pure freedom from guilt, morality, taboo, and fear of divine retribution; with absolute freedom, the Satanist becomes a god among servants, able and willing to go where others fear to tread.

  However, the Church of Satan’s notoriety derived more from its rituals displayed before cameras than from its Nietzschean philosophy. LaVey recognized man’s need for ritual and formed his own “Satanic Mass” by which to tap into the need for ritual. Unfortunately for LaVey, his penchant for showmanship may have overshadowed his atheism. His rituals before the cameras involved him donning a devil’s costume and acting out some of the rites that had caused fear throughout the centuries. Designed to shock the Christian majority and mock the Christian religion, his media presentations played into the popular fears of folkloric Satanism. While denying the ability to perform an official Black Mass, LaVey did perform a version of the Black Mass before cameras. While it was meant as a mockery, very few, it seems, got the true message and instead believed that LaVey was the embodiment of evil, worshipping Satan as defined in the Bible. As described in the Alton Evening Telegraph, “LaVey appears before his satanist congregation dressed in a sorcerer’s costume. Instead of invoking a spiritual blessing, the high priest waves an obscene object in the air and calls down “demons” into the service … While members come forward and confess their desires, a nude woman lies on the stone altar—a form of the devil worship which has shocked even the police vice squad of California.”19 LaVey used the imagery of feared Black Masses to inject the shock and outrage he desired into the public mind. While LaVey never strayed from his philosophy when talking with the media, the images conjured up through descriptions of his rituals were enough to inspire fear, shock, and outrage—precisely what LaVey wanted, but perhaps with unintended consequences.

  The symbolism that LaVey chose also played into fears of folkloric Satanism; in particular, his personal trademarked creation of the Sigil of Baphomet. As described by Owen Davies,

  Still, the one occult symbol depicted in the Satanic Bible, which also appeared on the cover—the Sigil of Baphomet—was crucial to its commercial success. The symbol consists of a goat-headed Satan framed within a pentacle, surrounded by two concentric circles containing five Hebraic figures, which, as LaVey explained, constituted a Kabbalistic spelling of “Leviathan” … The key significance of the Sigil of Baphomet, from a publishing point of view, is that in the popular imagination it conjures up expectations of Devil worship, black magic, and sacrifice…”20

  Thus, the symbolism, ritual, and name of the church called to mind the darkest recesses of human actions, that of folkloric Satanism; and, for some misguided individuals, like Sean Sellers, that idea fueled their depravity.

  This is one of the inherent difficulties in a belief system that appeals to the darker side of humanity: it can and will be coopted by those who wish to justify their criminal behavior or psychoses. Owen Davies, in his work, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, described such an incident when Eliphas Levi, a former priest and expert on the occult during the mid-1850s, met another priest looking for the Book of Honorius.

  For Levi the evil hold that malign grimoires could have over the weak or unstable was brought home to him by his encounter with a young priest who inquired of a bookseller where the master of magic (Levi) lived. An appointment was arranged and the priest said he desired to obtain the Grimoire of Honorius and would pay as much as one hundred francs for it. When Levi queried whether he intended to practice forbidden black magic, the priest merely smiled sarcastically. It transpired later that the priest was Jean-Louis Verger, a troublesome and mentally unstable young man who, in 1857, murdered the arch-bishop of Paris during service.21

  Similarly, LaVey had to face down accusations and deranged people as he formed his church. The Los Angeles Times, in an interview with LaVey, cited,

  Within the past week there have been two revolting news stories in Santa Ana and Salinas, Calif., each involving murders woven with hints of human sacrifice and cannibalism, each done by alleged group worshipers of Satan. One suspect admitted receiving counsel from the “chief devil” in San Francisco. The “chief devil” has not yet been publicly named, but the suspect’s attorney has affirmed that it is not LaVey. No matter, LaVey, as California’s best known Satanist, is still getting it about the head and ears pending official clearing up of cases that LaVey says he finds “damn sickening.”22

  LaVey addressed the issue of weak-minded or unbalanced people flocking to his belief system: “This really is an elitist movement, and we’re very fussy about who is coming in and whom we traffic with. We have to guard ourselves against the creeps, and we’ve screened out a lot of people who turned out to be bad apples. Mostly they turned out to be people who were disappointed when they didn’t get the orgies and all the nefarious activities they were looking forward to.”23 LaVey’s nude woman as an altar certainly had mass appeal, but LaVey was looking for the strong of mind, spirit, and character, rather than the delusional, drug-addicted, or psychotic. LaVey’s belief system is ultimately fueled by a Nietzschean belief in the “über manch”—the superman who is god over the earth and subject to no one. Those who practice folkloric Satanism or perform rituals in worship of Satan are not truly following LaVey’s philosophy; they are wors
hipping Satan instead of worshipping themselves.

  While LaVey did not believe in a god-like entity known as Satan, he did believe that the world could be influenced through the manipulation of unseen forces. His rituals (the ones that were not for the sole purpose of mocking Christianity) were based on a learned combination of pagan practices, Egyptian mythology, folklore, and magical rituals that had been practiced in the past by such notable figures as Aleister Crowley (though their philosophies were different). In essence, the ritual magic of LaVey’s practices can be related to the chaos theory metaphor: a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and causes a hurricane in East Asia. This saying has lately been coopted into pop culture, and its author, Edward Lorenz, lamented that it was drastically misunderstood.

  Translated into mass culture, the butterfly effect has become a metaphor for the existence of seemingly insignificant moments that alter history and shape destinies. Typically unrecognized at first, they create threads of cause and effect that appear obvious in retrospect, changing the course of a human life or rippling through the global economy … Such borrowings of Lorenz’s idea might seem authoritative to unsuspecting viewers, but they share one major problem: They get his insight precisely backwards. The larger meaning of the butterfly effect is not that we can readily track such connections, but that we can’t. To claim a butterfly’s wings can cause a storm, after all, is to raise the question: How can we definitively say what caused any storm, if it could be something as slight as a butterfly? Lorenz’s work gives us a fresh way to think about cause and effect, but does not offer easy answers.24

  The ultimate point of the butterfly metaphor is that causality cannot truly be known due to the interaction of a multitude of different influencing factors, thus rendering everyday occurrences, such as weather, a mysterious force. In fact, taken to its ultimate conclusion it renders all of life’s interactions mysterious forces. LaVey’s magic is intended to manipulate this mysterious force through rituals and sending out energy so that life will conform with the Satanist’s will. It is not necessarily supernatural, but it is certainly far from scientific. But the basic belief is that life’s various forces can be manipulated to produce intended results. This is, in essence, the practice of magic, and if successfully completed, can render the practitioner a god.

  One such instance—LaVey’s use of a curse—is highlighted on the Church of Satan website. LaVey was involved in a relationship with Jayne Mansfield, an actress known for her cleavage and platinum blonde hair, who made history by being the first mainstream actress to do a nude scene on camera. According to the Church of Satan,

  LaVey and Mansfield hit it off immediately, each fulfilling a diabolical need in the other. Jayne became passionately obsessed with Anton, calling him several times a day from wherever she traveled, eventually applying for a driver’s license just to be able to drive to San Francisco unescorted by her persistently ubiquitous lawyer/boyfriend, Sam Brody. Jayne’s commitment to LaVey, and her dedication to the satanic philosophy, continued until her death in June of 1967. The auto crash in which she died also killed Sam Brody, whom LaVey had formally cursed in response to Brody’s jealous threats and attempts to discredit LaVey. The night of Mansfield’s death, LaVey had been clipping a Church of Satan news item from the German magazine Bild-Zeitung. When he turned the item over to paste it in the press book, LaVey was shocked to see he had inadvertently cut a photo of Jayne on the opposite side of the page, right across the neck. Fifteen minutes later, a reporter from the New Orleans Associated Press bureau called Anton to get his reaction to the tragic accident. Jayne had been practically decapitated when she was thrown through the windshield of the car.25

  LaVey’s ceremonies, whether to curse someone or cause them to become enamored with another individual, were designed to influence and shape the seemingly random forces in the world. His magic was not supernatural, but its invocation sure looked like it.

  LaVey felt that ceremony and ritual were necessary to cause the magician and others to enter a trance-like state of consciousness so that they could properly focus their minds and energy on the task at hand. This hypnotism through ritual is not unlike many, if not most, other religious ceremonies. LaVey referred to it as an “Intellectual Decompression Chamber,” though he adds that the practicing Satanist recognizes that this is his intended goal in order to expand his will; whereas, the typical religious practitioner believes that he is experiencing God. Religious ceremonies and imagery are designed so that the participant enters a trance-like state in order to be prepared for a mystical encounter with the supernatural. Thus, we have the crucifix, the Catholic rosary, the Pentacostal singing and speaking in tongues, the Buddhist “Ohm,” and various other keys to the transcendental experience. LaVey’s ceremonies were merely different in that they utilized satanic, sexual, bestial, and magical imagery (including the use of alcohol and other drugs) to induce the participant into a state of mind where he or she would reach a transcendental moment. For the Christians, this may be a moment when God “speaks” to them or when they “feel” the love of God; for the LaVeyan Satanists, this is the moment at which they experience the freedom of being completely unbound by law and morality, history and religion; it is that moment when they realize themselves as gods and thus urge the world and the forces therein to conform to their will.

  LaVey’s Satanism, at its philosophical base, is one of celebration of self, and it is precisely this characteristic that makes his use of the term “Satan” so appropriate for his church. LaVey was often questioned as to why he didn’t just call his philosophy Humanism rather than Satanism. He addresses that question in his Satanic Bible; “Humanism is not a religion. It is simply a way of life with no ceremony or dogma. Satanism has both ceremony and dogma.”26 But there is more to LaVey’s philosophy than simply rejecting Christianity that forms the basis of his true Satanism. Mythologist Joseph Campbell defined the religious experience the world over as “…the birth of spiritual man out of animal man. It happens when you awaken at the level of the heart to compassion, shared suffering: experienced participation in the suffering of another person.”27 Hence, in the Christian tradition, believers concentrate on the image of Christ suffering on the cross because it represents both God willingly experiencing man’s suffering through Christ’s crucifixion, and it represents the suffering of all man; it is an image of divine compassion, and when we participate in that compassion, we are touched by the divine. However, LaVey posits that the individual self is divine, and his philosophy is one that focuses on the desires of the self, rather than focusing on compassion and the suffering of others; namely, the desires and gratification of the flesh are to be provided by the world. Thus, the Satanist attempts to manipulate the physical world to comply with his or her desires, rather than manipulating him- or herself in order to appeal to some higher, supposedly benevolent good. LaVey’s use of the term Satan, defined as adversary, could not be more fitting; because at its philosophical base, it truly is the adversary of the Christian God. LaVey lists numerous rejections of the church and its beliefs (as well as other religions) based on historically demonstrated hypocrisy, greed, prejudice, and numerous other scandals and rationalizations that have formed the church as it is today. However, it is the base of his philosophy that truly makes LaVeyan Satanism satanic; it is the adversary of compassion, the glorification of self, and a return to our basest animal urges—preservation of self and satisfaction of desire. LaVey’s magical rituals are testament as he gives instruction for three types of satanic ritual concerning sex, destruction, and compassion. Sex and destruction are obviously for fulfillment of lust and anger. The ritual of compassion, however, is also twisted around so that it becomes self-serving: “The compassion, or sentiment, ritual is performed for the purpose of helping others, or helping oneself. Health, domestic happiness, business activities, material success, and scholastic prowess are but a few of the situations covered in a compassion ritual. It might be said that this form of ceremony could fall into the
realm of genuine charity, bearing in mind that ‘charity begins at home.’ ”28 Even the ritual of compassion is ultimately self-serving.

  To say that LaVey’s philosophy and, subsequently, the philosophy of the Church of Satan is dangerous would be unfair. On the whole, it represents a philosophy based on existentialism, paganism, and pragmatism; and while some of it may appear detestable to certain people, LaVey’s logic is sound, even though it is animalistic in nature. Essentially, it rejects the irrational nature in humanity in favor of a nature aligned with logic, but still quenches man’s need for the mysterious through its magical rituals that supposedly tap into that mysterious force that moves the cosmos.

  However, it is fair to say that The Satanic Bible is a dangerous book. Without careful guidance from someone who understands the satanic philosophy en toto, the book can become a lighted match near a gasoline tank. LaVey’s philosophies have been coopted by the weak-minded, delusional, or racist as cause to commit acts of murder and other criminal activities. Sean Sellers meditated on The Satanic Bible before murdering his parents. Such an act is probably most attributable to the idea that if you consider yourself a god among men, then you are not confined by the law and morality of men. Furthermore, there is LaVey’s instruction that the Satanist should “Hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, smash him on the other! … Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom—with compound interest liberally added thereunto! Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, aye four-fold, a hundred fold!”29 In the hands of a 16-year-old disturbed young man, who probably considers his parents his worst enemies, this can make for dangerous motivation. Furthermore, LaVey’s rabid exultation of the strong conquering the weak has been used by neo-Nazi organizations as justification for their racism and totalitarian ambitions. LaVey’s philosophy ultimately taps into the “law of the jungle” mentality; it is social Darwinism taken to the extreme.