The Cloven Hoof, Issue 88

Volume XIII, #1 January/February XVI A. S. 88th Issue

(Entire contents by Anton Szandor La Vey)

Curses by the Dozen, or Wholesale Hexes

You have been cursed. Every day you are the recipient of very real and magically formidable curses. One who is versed in the psychology of hexes generally evaluates same in terms of highly personal attacks, based on real or imagined injustices or slights. In short, you curse another to get revenge, or someone attempts to curse you for the same reason.

In the sending of a curse, it is presumed that a strong degree of emotion must be the motivating factor. If one simply goes about throwing random hexes, supposedly nothing will happen. As The Satanic Bible explains it, one should really mean it if any form of ritual magic is per- formed. The same text also states, though, that if you curse someone who is undeserving, no- thing will happen. What is the standard of "deserving"--what constitutes a deserving victim? As we know, those qualities are also covered in The Satanic Bible.

Assuming someone is not a deserving victim, though, they can be easily modified into a reasonable facsimile. In other words, they can be "set up" to act unreasonably, harbor guilts and fears, and generally behave themselves in a manner which will attract disaster and court failure. The reason fortune tellers actually can curse people much of the time is because the seer's clients are "ripe" the moment they walk through the door.

A Venign or even tactful fortune teller or psychic will never foretell really bad tidings to a client, because a dire prophecy emanating from a credible source will most likely happen. The fact that a client wants to be told what is about to happen guarantees the reliability of what- ever is forecast.

Let's multiply this principle to a high social power, with media the medium and the public as the sitter or client. A public unused to doing its own thinking looks to diverse authorities for guidance, not to mention amusement. The general public is, quite literally, Easy Marks, Unlimited. Hence, it is easy to understand why their concerns and fears are prepackaged--and to someone else, profitable to prey upon.

Each day you are bombarded with dire warnings and ill tidings. "No news is good news" is a truism. Good news doesn't sell. There are more people working at media-related jobs than ever. In order to keep their jobs, there must be plenty of bad news. The more bad news you hear and read, the more depressed you become. Other people's bad news rubs off on you. Problems beget problems. Everywhere you turn, you are reminded of one of the myriad hazards to your health, economic stability, or domestic tranquility. You are not supposed to be simply aware or prepared for unpleasant contingencies. You are supposed to be scared shitless. It's easy to scoff and say, "I don't let that sort of thing get to me," but like it or not, it does.

Theoretically, people should live longer because of medical advances over the past half century. Mass consumerism should have, with creature comforts, made lives happier. Educational procedures and materials that are easily understood should make people smarter and more articulate. Instead, people are feeling sicker, sadder, and more tongue-tied than ever.

Contemporary pulpit-pounders blame it all on " a breakdown of moral fiber and relaxing of spiritual values." If there is any value at all in that absurd claim it is that if you are zealously self-righteous enough to be a religious nut, you won't feel any guilt about anything you do; anything you hear or see will be ignored; and you may go about acting like a first- class sonofabitch with immunity. But then, if someone were honest enough to say, I will plunge headlong into "spiritual values" just so the hype of the outside world won't get to me," the whole thing would be a contrivance and its effect doomed to failure.

Brain washing is the only manner by which an individual of average intelligence can acquire a spiritual value" antidote. Those who come by it naturally are of sub-human mentality. This is a brutal, insensitive world and the more it is populated, the greater the diversity of deceits and scams and setups are necessary to human survival. When Barnum declared, "A sucker is born every minute," he hadn't foreseen the population increase of a century later.

As I've stated, opportunities for individual expression haven't lessened; there are just more people around. Each, in his or her own way, is scrambling for survival. The western world is a giant fleamarket of conflicting interests hawking their wares. Competition is far beyond the point of free enterprise in its conservative sense; and even though you are, by necessity, one of the exploiters, you are also, from someone else's standpoint, a victim.

You may be completely solvent financially with an increasingly successful business, yet cursed by the effects of mass media in other ways. Like, your family or spouse may be an insurmountable problem. Or, you might be worried sick about heart attack, cancer, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, sickle cell anemia, etc. Listen kiddies, the day when family problems were as simple as in-laws, poor school grades, unwed motherhood, reform school, and adultery, pale by comparison to the profound traumas suffered now, domestically, where none should even exist. Health-wise, the big killers of yesterday were tuberculosis and constipation, the latter being the most hyped. Sure, people died of other things, but weren't hexed into them ahead of time. They used to go crazy from masturbation, it was claimed, and some most likely did--from worry. The medical profession has the power to cure, but its propaganda techniques are flagrant curses.

Christianity still harbors formidable opposition to birth control, yet whines about the plight of neglected children in underdeveloped countries (where missionaries are running the hospitals). "Sponsor a foster child," exhorts a Christian "charity." If they really want to do something, they could fight those elements of their own religion who would stifle mandatory birth control. Of course, the whole thing is economic in origin. If you haven't guessed by now, the name of the game is Give With One Hand, Take Away With the Other. You are being beaten down by the very thugs who will then come to nurse your wounds.

As Satanists, you are just a tiny step closer to honesty, a wee bit tougher in the will department, and slightly more sensitive as a barometer. In this world of sameness, you are outrageously different just in being a Satanist, and that alone is quite a distinction. individuality and freedom from thought-pollution you can retain, the less affected by wholesale hexes you will be.

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If you ever wonder why you don't encounter many other Satanists, you can count yourself lucky. Satanism is still for the few. In this world of awful sameness, take pride in your elitism. Even though you, as everyone else, is being cursed into universal depression and anxiety, you can truly tell yourself, "I have something which separates me from the rest. I may be exploited, but I know the game well, and in a big way that makes me stronger than most. In fact, I am so strong, that if enough others thought and acted like me, our 'economy' would be in some real trouble. The fact is that without commiting a single unlawful act, I am a potential menace to the existing double-standard."

As a Satanist, you don't have to turn the other cheek. You can share the hypocrisies around you, but you don't have to like them. You can spot them for the games they are--the subtle curses--and stalk with stealth as an alien with X-ray vision.

The time has come when you need not explain Satanism to those who don't already feed back an innate understanding of its substance. That is very important. Most who ask are not ready for Satanism. The Satanic Bible will answer most questions anyone needs to know, if they really want to find out. Don't debate. It's entertainment for your antagonist. Starve him out with a shrug of your shoulder or a patronizing nod.

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One of the most frequently asked questions regarding the Church of Satan is "How many mem- bers are there?" The question should be answered, "Enough." The moment you provide a statistic, you become one yourself. You become exactly what statistics confer: predictability, spelled s-a-f-e. If you provide an alarmingly large figure, you present enough of 'a threat to provide a "cause." If you say too small an amount, you will be dismissed as eccentric. I'm sure the compleat Satanist who is reading this has already discovered just how to answer the question to his or her best advantage. Suffice it to say, in fifteen years we have picked up a lot of fellow travelers.

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ECI Relative to Memory Retention: A Reevaluation of the Term Occult (Dedicated to Elzie Segar, The Three Stooges, and Nelson Eddy)

The word wizard is derived from and connotes one who is old and wise. The reason many depictions of witches, sorcerers, and wizards show old people is because once upon a time the elders of the tribe knew things that were unfamiliar to younger members. It wasn't that the elders were necessarily smarter; they remembered things from another era, exclusive of what was currently happening. They were in a position to either freely pass on their experiences and what was learned from them, or else esoterically dole out same. Those who did the latter attained a sort of enigmatic charm that implied a magical power. Either way, old people held on to memories which had strong emotional meaning.

The "kick" they received when they were young, and which shaped their standards for the future, is called "Erotic Crystalization Inertia, or ECI. An erotic/emotional response at a critical point in one's life triggers certain engrams into multiplicity, which, if allowed to flourish, make that person a "specialist" of his particular era. He carries with him, hence- forth, the telltale signs of that era into which he was locked. Out of choice, he rejects new ideas and trends, for they cannot measure up to his ECI. He is not stigmatized by his age into abandoning his ECI...

Until relatively recently, age was respected in favor of youth, largely because the wealth of a society was controlled by its older members. As buying power shifted to a youth-oriented market, the desirability of thinking and acting young became obsessive. The Fountain of Youth might not have been found, but convincing substitutes could be purchased. Everywhere, people began to get with it and think young. That meant keeping up with input designed for youthful consumption--the only real experiential input available to generations who had not lived earlier. In pursuing and assimilating data from the present (to achieve youth/acceptance), old data had to be tossed out of the brain. Brain washing, in its strictest sense and application, gets rid of old ideas by providing new ones. The coercion needed to kick out an established engram must be so strong as to invalidate other related old thought patterns. That's why, as necessity imposes fresh challenges in one's later life, subjects learned well in college are some- times completely forgotten.

Speaking of brainwashing, we have been brainwashed into believing the half-truth that one never forgets anything, having once learned it. That is as silly and pretentious as the old saw about us using only a small fraction of our brains. The bitter truth of the matter is that brains, like computers, come in various capacities. Some limited minds, like budget computers, can only store and process so much data. Any more will cause either malfunction, shut-off, or be thrown out. A 25-watt brain cannot accept 250 watts input, despite its earnest desire or egotistical confidence. Something's got to give.

Those who arrogantly presume to be using only a "fraction" of their brain power might really be straining their ten-percent brains as it is.

Whenever one hears, "Don't confuse me with facts; my mind's made up," it is inadvertently a defense against new data which threatens to erase a comfortable memory. Let's rework the last statement to, "Don't confuse me with hype; my real pleasures and valid standards are established." Remember, every new piece of data you program (or allow to be programmed!) into your computer kicks out something else which might be far more valuable. This is especially important within the crucial (and crisis) years of thirty-five to fifty.

If you haven't learned or experienced much of value prior to that age, and-your life has been one big dull thud, then start experiencing. But, if you revelled in what you experienced and learned while younger, hang on to it like the treasure trove it is. Then you will radiate a truly occult quality--an uncanny appeal of that which is literally unknown. It is the new

The appeal of trivia and nostalgia is part of its fabric.

Somewhere out there are wheeler-dealers who are eager to strip you of past ideas and know- ledge by providing you with new ones, bright and shiny. Once you have drunk the wine of forgetfulness, those wily merchants will have collected and stockpiled your memorabilia--your old discarded enthusiasm--and then set themselves up as exclusive and expert purveyors of rare re- discoveries. In fact, they might even sell them back to you at a profit. And the saddest thing of all is that you, having forgotten that you ever possessed them, will be ecstatic with your purchase. I have seen this happen many times.

It's understandable that many young people are acquiring their ECI's from past eras. There have always existed those who felt misplaced in the present and that, somehow, they may be re- living someone else's life. Much of what is accepted as reincarnation is based on that enhanced notion. If someone is out of step with the present, it is assumed that their ideal existence must lie somewhere in the past or what might be speculated as the future. Since less is known about the future than the past, speculation toward the future is easier, i.e. less homework insofar as trivia, and no need for historical accuracy or verification. True to brainwashing technique, fresh and "new" ideas, presented within an atmosphere of limited comparisons, are readily assimilated.

Those persons who opt for the past will find it more costly to indulge their "reincarnated". pleasures, as the aforementioned merchants of discarded experiences have discovered. I find it deplorable that there are so many old farts who have, in trying to keep up with new trends, dis- carded much of the greatest stuff--stuff which willing and eager young people could keep alive and flourishing.

An example is the musician who once performed or played a vast repertoire of then-popular mu- sic. Each year, being a performing professional, he "learns" new material, presuming to continue as a crowd-pleaser. And each year he drops an equal number of selections from his list. He is like a human juke box. He keeps a few "standards" in his memory bank perennially--standards which his musical colleagues also retain. He would die, rather than see himself as a stodgy vaudevillian, doing the same act year after year, because "as everyone knows" it is imperative to update oneself. Consequently, he gets older but not wiser--just as wise or stupid as the current market of popular entertainment dictates.

Meanwhile, children who have grown up look to him as a source of experiential inspiration. What do they get? An old codger playing their kind of music, which they can play just as well, if not better. He is called to task to bestow some arcane music upon them--music he played back in the good old days. So, what does he play for them? What does he teach them? Pop standards that all of his contemporaries deem worthy of safe inclusion in their repertoires. It's not that the smattering of old tunes he has retained is all that bad. To ears unexposed to the real treasures, it sounds great. Don't forget, the merchants of rare rediscoveries have seen to it that only when they deem it fit and proper, the public may be re-exposed to some slickly packaged delicacy.

The old musician presents no threat. It's because he has, deliberately, of his own volition, allowed himself to be brainwashed away from those forbidden melodies over the years. In his desperate quest for acceptance, he has commited emotional suicide and sold out his most valuable memory cells. He couldn't play or sing some of his best material if he had to because he's simply forgotten it ever existed.

This phenomenon is unfortunately common in all aspects of the performing arts. Actors must live too, and not all can become presidents. Consequently, they accept roles which are severely panned by critics. They attempt comebacks with updated material, which is even more depressing. Whenever one attempts a comeback with the same old material, the results are usually disastrous because enough updating agents the performance so as to negate the magic of a total environment/ experience.

In all fairness to many performers, the fault often lies with their agent or advisors, many of whom confuse salability with mediocrity. For every imaginative, intelligent and articulate agent, there are ninety-nine who are parasitic numbskulls.

Popeye, Superman, and Flash Gordon have been around and available for a long time. To those who never lost them, it must seem bewildering to see them being "discovered"--especially by those who grew up with them. Being an incurable people-watcher, I've always been fascinated by "characters" of all kinds. One factor that characters have in common is a readily discernible and unshakable ECI. In fact, cartoons of all kinds are drawn--figuratively and literally--from real life characters. It is something of a tribute if one's persona is so strong as to evolve into a cartoon character. Cartoons, like myths, evolve from actual persons or situations, and are exaggerations of same. Therein lies their charm. To take that very exaggeration as a starting point for further exaggeration in human form does not develop, but rather negates, the original premise of cartooning. It is forgotten that a real inspiration ever existed in the first place; and, again, an imitation of an imitation is sold to an eager consumer. If most people are living human redundancies, it's understandable that they would support third and fourth- hand role models. Let's face it; every person throughout history who has contributed to progress has been considered a weirdo or "character" by his or her contemporaries.

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