Let’s start with the obvious: Satanism isn’t about goats, blood, or midnight sacrifices. It’s about being done with make-believe. The kind Anton LaVey codified back in 1966 wasn’t a call to darkness—it was a raised middle finger to moral obedience.
This isn’t the religion of “evil.” It’s the philosophy of self-ownership. It’s for people who’ve stopped apologizing for being human and started asking why they ever thought they had to.
The Creed of the Self
LaVey’s Satanic Bible didn’t preach worship—it laughed at the idea. It told people to stop groveling before invisible masters and take responsibility for their own existence. No cosmic parent. No forgiveness coupons. No redemption arc written by someone else.
Satanism says: You’re it. You’re the cause, the consequence, the meaning, and the measure.
The core tenets are simple and sharp:
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Indulgence without decay. Enjoy what’s real. Eat, love, create, destroy—but don’t let it rot you.
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Rational self-interest. Protect what’s yours, pursue what fuels you, and don’t play martyr for a system that wouldn’t do the same for you.
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Justice through reciprocity. Be good to those who earn it. Withhold mercy from those who abuse it. Forgiveness isn’t holy; it’s currency—spend it wisely.
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Honesty as power. Stop pretending virtue means weakness. You can be kind without being compliant.
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Human nature, unmasked. Desire, pride, anger—they’re not sins. They’re your operating system. Learn to pilot it instead of running denial software.
No divine test. No spiritual leash. Just one simple directive: live deliberately.
The Theater of Ritual
Now, the trappings—candles, pentagrams, Latin. Are they “occult”? Not in the supernatural sense. They’re psychological tools. Theater for the soul. You act out what you mean until you feel it in your bones.
LaVey called it greater magic: symbolic action that aligns emotion and will. It’s not “summoning forces.” It’s summoning focus. The altar isn’t a gateway to Hell—it’s a mirror, and the reflection staring back is you, stripped of excuses.
Why the Devil?
Because the name still burns. Because it confronts centuries of fear head-on. Because “Satan” is the eternal heretic, the question that undoes obedience.
LaVey took the Christian villain and turned him into a metaphor for intellectual rebellion. To invoke Satan isn’t to side with evil—it’s to reject the guilt economy that keeps people docile. It’s saying, “I’d rather think in fire than kneel in light.”
This is why the Church of Satan remains deliberately theatrical. It weaponizes taboo—not to shock, but to wake people up.
The Panic and the Truth
During the moral hysteria of the ’80s and ’90s, every suburban rumor became “proof” of Satanism’s evil. The press ran wild, cops took notes, and sociologists eventually proved what Satanists had said all along: there was nothing there.
No crimes, no covens of criminals—just a philosophy of self-responsibility misunderstood by a society that still needed monsters. The real Satanists were reading Nietzsche, not summoning demons.
The Broader Lineage
Satanism sits in a long line of defiant thinkers—Epicurus, Nietzsche, Voltaire, even Camus. It’s secular humanism that quit apologizing. It’s existentialism with better branding.
Where humanists talk about empathy, Satanists talk about earned respect.
Where existentialists face the void, Satanists pour a drink and build something in it.
It’s not chaos—it’s personal order without external control.
Why It Still Matters
Because conformity’s gotten smarter. It no longer calls itself religion—it calls itself virtue. It sells obedience as empathy and guilt as enlightenment. Satanism saw that coming decades ago.
LaVey’s work remains dangerous because it doesn’t want followers—it wants thinkers. It’s not selling peace. It’s demanding clarity.
That’s the real rebellion: not horns and candles, but the refusal to be ruled by fear.
Satanism isn’t a cult. It’s a mirror held to a world terrified of honesty. It’s a philosophy for people who’d rather own their flaws than pretend to be pure.
So if you walk away with one idea, make it this: Satanism is the practice of becoming the person your gods warned you about—and being fine with that.
Further Reading
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Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible (1969)
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Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Rituals (1972)
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James R. Lewis, Satanism Today (2001)
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Jesper Aagaard Petersen, “Modern Satanism: Dark Doctrines and Black Flames” (2009)
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Asbjørn Dyrendal, Jesper A. Petersen & James R. Lewis, The Invention of Satanism (2016)
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