The Black Flame Vol. 2 No. 2: Difference between revisions

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There is a disease, a ''cancer'' in the Satanic movement and it must be '''cut out!''' Let me be quite clear about this.
There is a disease, a ''cancer'' in the Satanic movement and it must be '''cut out!''' Let me be quite clear about this.


Satanism is not now, nor shall it ever be, truly threatened as a religious philosophy since Satanism is is the path of reality, the way of the world. As such, those who succeed in the world, who are willing to acknowledge in their actions the truth about reality, will always be Satanists, no matter what other name they assume.
Satanism is not now, nor shall it ever be, truly threatened as a religious philosophy since Satanism is is<ref>[sic]</ref> the path of reality, the way of the world. As such, those who succeed in the world, who are willing to acknowledge in their actions the truth about reality, will always be Satanists, no matter what other name they assume.


This problem actually involves not our unkillable foundation of truth but the course of the modern movement of Satanism.
This problem actually involves not our unkillable foundation of truth but the course of the modern movement of Satanism.
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Again and again the Church of Satan has patiently explained to all who would ask, read or listen that Satan is a ''symbol''.
Again and again the Church of Satan has patiently explained to all who would ask, read or listen that Satan is a ''symbol''.


Yet how many times do we see people advocating a return to the superstitious nansense of belief in a "god"? How often do we see so-called "Satanists" missing the most important single point of Satanism?
Yet how many times do we see people advocating a return to the superstitious nansense<ref>[sic]</ref> of belief in a "god"? How often do we see so-called "Satanists" missing the most important single point of Satanism?


Where's the danger here? I had one so-called "Satanist" once tell me that only life-threatening situations should be called "dangerous". This person, without the slightest awareness of the incredible ignorance that was revealed, told me that mere words can't be dangerous! If you share this viewpoint consider the power of the following words spoken as lies:
Where's the danger here? I had one so-called "Satanist" once tell me that only life-threatening situations should be called "dangerous". This person, without the slightest awareness of the incredible ignorance that was revealed, told me that mere words can't be dangerous! If you share this viewpoint consider the power of the following words spoken as lies:
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Some neo-pagans are now beginning to imitate the Church of Satan's lead by establishing "official" spokespersons. They explain to the media that their religious beliefs are not dangerous to Mr. and Mrs. Middle America. We Satanists acknowledge that our ideas ''are'' dangerous to the status quo as we question the "whys" and "wherefores" of the established controlling factors and opt out of the herd's lock-step. We ''do'' like to remind the general populace that we don't engage in the activities that they'd like to lay at our doorstep: demented sacrifices, criminal activities, and drug use, which seem to constantly come from individuals who were raised as Christians, with Christian values, who thus lapse into the Christian heresy of devil worship, if not committing their acts in the very name of their Christian "savior."
Some neo-pagans are now beginning to imitate the Church of Satan's lead by establishing "official" spokespersons. They explain to the media that their religious beliefs are not dangerous to Mr. and Mrs. Middle America. We Satanists acknowledge that our ideas ''are'' dangerous to the status quo as we question the "whys" and "wherefores" of the established controlling factors and opt out of the herd's lock-step. We ''do'' like to remind the general populace that we don't engage in the activities that they'd like to lay at our doorstep: demented sacrifices, criminal activities, and drug use, which seem to constantly come from individuals who were raised as Christians, with Christian values, who thus lapse into the Christian heresy of devil worship, if not committing their acts in the very name of their Christian "savior."


One group of neo-pagans who is trying the route of "united we stand" calls itelf the '''Alliance for Magical and Earth Religions'''. Based in St. Louis, they state that the one thing held in common by all members is that, "all of them feel that they have been unfairly blamed by some in the media and in law enforcement for the problems of today's society." They have a four-fold statement of purpose. 1) AMER will defend the right of every American to practice his or her own religion, insofar as that religion's practices do not directly harm anyone. In particular, AMER will actively campaign for tolerance for Magical and Earth-centered religions. 2) AMER will work to promote a positive image for Magical and Earth-centered religious groups. 3) AMER will promote cooperation among various Magical and Earth-centered religions groups. 4) AMER will serve as a source of accurate information on Magical and Earth-centered religions and practices.
One group of neo-pagans who is trying the route of "united we stand" calls itelf<ref>[sic]</ref> the '''Alliance for Magical and Earth Religions'''. Based in St. Louis, they state that the one thing held in common by all members is that, "all of them feel that they have been unfairly blamed by some in the media and in law enforcement for the problems of today's society." They have a four-fold statement of purpose. 1) AMER will defend the right of every American to practice his or her own religion, insofar as that religion's practices do not directly harm anyone. In particular, AMER will actively campaign for tolerance for Magical and Earth-centered religions. 2) AMER will work to promote a positive image for Magical and Earth-centered religious groups. 3) AMER will promote cooperation among various Magical and Earth-centered religions groups. 4) AMER will serve as a source of accurate information on Magical and Earth-centered religions and practices.


They have come up with two well written brochures which cover "Human Sacrifice" and "Ritualized Child Abuse." Two of their board members have often contributed articles to '''TBF'''. AMER certainly will have a great deal of work ahead for them, judging from the letter quoted at the beginning of this article. If you'd like further information you can send them a long, self-addressed stamped envelope to the follwing address: AMER, 11220 West Florissant, Suite 288, Florissant, MO 63032.
They have come up with two well written brochures which cover "Human Sacrifice" and "Ritualized Child Abuse." Two of their board members have often contributed articles to '''TBF'''. AMER certainly will have a great deal of work ahead for them, judging from the letter quoted at the beginning of this article. If you'd like further information you can send them a long, self-addressed stamped envelope to the follwing address: AMER, 11220 West Florissant, Suite 288, Florissant, MO 63032.
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The answer was most definitely "yes" and I'll tell you why.
The answer was most definitely "yes" and I'll tell you why.


First, examine the question. The important word here is 'most,' since to imagine yourself the '''best''' person in the world would be unrealistic, unprovable, irrelevant to your life, and pretentious. So now let's define what we mean by 'most people.' Most people to me refers to the mass herd, the general public-at-large. Well, I've observed that these people generally go through their lives with with no focus or purpose. They never seem to use their minds enough to see through their own façades erected for one another. Therefore, I can view the mass herd as being generally blind and without purpose. Now to judge this group ''as a group'' is to assume that they are all the same. Not so. So, if I examine individuals and find them to be blind and without purpose with terrible frequency, what does that tell you? I'm not yet even discussing intelligence, which I've found doesn't always prove anything.
First, examine the question. The important word here is 'most,' since to imagine yourself the '''best''' person in the world would be unrealistic, unprovable, irrelevant to your life, and pretentious. So now let's define what we mean by 'most people.' Most people to me refers to the mass herd, the general public-at-large. Well, I've observed that these people generally go through their lives with with<ref>[sic]</ref> no focus or purpose. They never seem to use their minds enough to see through their own façades erected for one another. Therefore, I can view the mass herd as being generally blind and without purpose. Now to judge this group ''as a group'' is to assume that they are all the same. Not so. So, if I examine individuals and find them to be blind and without purpose with terrible frequency, what does that tell you? I'm not yet even discussing intelligence, which I've found doesn't always prove anything.


During my experiences with school, I met a great many men and women who were intelligent, by common standards. They earned good grades, passed difficult tests of knowledge, and were looked upon as "bright" by their elders. The problem here is that all these people really mastered was the ability to memorize information. Once engaged in a verbal discussion requiring '''application''' of their facts to practical reality, they were often lost. In short, it is how you use your knowledge that counts. Common sense is all to uncommon!
During my experiences with school, I met a great many men and women who were intelligent, by common standards. They earned good grades, passed difficult tests of knowledge, and were looked upon as "bright" by their elders. The problem here is that all these people really mastered was the ability to memorize information. Once engaged in a verbal discussion requiring '''application''' of their facts to practical reality, they were often lost. In short, it is how you use your knowledge that counts. Common sense is all to uncommon!
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''Last Exit to Brooklyn''.
''Last Exit to Brooklyn''.


Quite on the other hand, ''Last Exit'' interweaves several tales of life during the 1940's in an impoverished section of Brooklyn. This is indeed the City of Dreadful Night: we meet strikers, strike-breakers, rowdy boys who pimp for a young prostitute in order to roll her johns, the prostitute's idealistic sailor boyfriend who finally goes off to sea, a working class stiff and the chubby girl he knocks up, as well as a host of others living in quiet, and unquiet, desperation. Their stories are sad, paltry, but the filmmakers tell them in a style that is epic and somehow magnificent. The most interesting and tragic character is Harry Black, a typical working grunt who runs the union's strike headquarters, living off the fat of the land, distributing free beer and hoping the strike will go on forever. But something strange happens to Harry when a young gay man comes around looking for a friend of his, and Harry eventually gets drawn into a world of clever young homosexuals who smoke marijuana, dress up and go out on the town to their kind of places. Harry takes a lover, who later dumps him when the strike funds run out. In a drunken fit of sorrow and anger, Harry attempts contact with a young neighborhood boy who rats him out to the criminal roughnecks. Harry is beaten and left for dead, crucified to a an alleyway fence.
Quite on the other hand, ''Last Exit'' interweaves several tales of life during the 1940's in an impoverished section of Brooklyn. This is indeed the City of Dreadful Night: we meet strikers, strike-breakers, rowdy boys who pimp for a young prostitute in order to roll her johns, the prostitute's idealistic sailor boyfriend who finally goes off to sea, a working class stiff and the chubby girl he knocks up, as well as a host of others living in quiet, and unquiet, desperation. Their stories are sad, paltry, but the filmmakers tell them in a style that is epic and somehow magnificent. The most interesting and tragic character is Harry Black, a typical working grunt who runs the union's strike headquarters, living off the fat of the land, distributing free beer and hoping the strike will go on forever. But something strange happens to Harry when a young gay man comes around looking for a friend of his, and Harry eventually gets drawn into a world of clever young homosexuals who smoke marijuana, dress up and go out on the town to their kind of places. Harry takes a lover, who later dumps him when the strike funds run out. In a drunken fit of sorrow and anger, Harry attempts contact with a young neighborhood boy who rats him out to the criminal roughnecks. Harry is beaten and left for dead, crucified to a<ref>[sic]</ref> an alleyway fence.


Not a film to see when you've got the blues, but fascinating and unforgettable nonetheless.
Not a film to see when you've got the blues, but fascinating and unforgettable nonetheless.
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The Copenhagen Interpretation is the worst in that it basically shrugs and says "What reality?" An anti-realist position makes a mockery of explanation and is, instead, a useless apology for not pursuing knowledge.
The Copenhagen Interpretation is the worst in that it basically shrugs and says "What reality?" An anti-realist position makes a mockery of explanation and is, instead, a useless apology for not pursuing knowledge.


The mind-reality model described by Wolf leaves us with a solipsism that undercuts the possibility of consciousness. If there is nothng separate from you to become conscious of, then consciousness is not present. To be conscious is, by definition, to be concious of ''something''. Capra's "oneness" leads to the same reason-undercutting conclusion as do the models of Postle, Heisenberg and Wolf.
The mind-reality model described by Wolf leaves us with a solipsism that undercuts the possibility of consciousness. If there is nothng<ref>[sic]</ref> separate from you to become conscious of, then consciousness is not present. To be conscious is, by definition, to be concious of ''something''. Capra's "oneness" leads to the same reason-undercutting conclusion as do the models of Postle, Heisenberg and Wolf.


"Quantum Logic" confuses logic with subsets of particularized mathematical situations called, incorrectly, "logic" (suchas Boolean logic, for example). Reason is not just the particular way our human nervous system juggles concepts. Reason relies upon a means of identifying these concepts (and the experiences which underlie them) and then ''validating'' these concepts. The alternative to a logic which validated the facts of reality would be to use a logic which ''invalidated'' the facts of reality!
"Quantum Logic" confuses logic with subsets of particularized mathematical situations called, incorrectly, "logic" (suchas Boolean logic, for example). Reason is not just the particular way our human nervous system juggles concepts. Reason relies upon a means of identifying these concepts (and the experiences which underlie them) and then ''validating'' these concepts. The alternative to a logic which validated the facts of reality would be to use a logic which ''invalidated'' the facts of reality!
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THE CASUAL VIEWER WILL LONG BE UNABLE TO PURGE THESE GRIM, STARTLING IMAGES FROM THEIR MEMORY.
THE CASUAL VIEWER WILL LONG BE UNABLE TO PURGE THESE GRIM, STARTLING IMAGES FROM THEIR MEMORY.


TO TOP OFF THIS SPELLBINDING PRESENTATION IS A RARE APPEARANCE BY ONE OF THE WORLD'S FOREMOST AUTHORITIES ON THE MACABRE... THE EVER-FASCINATING '''DR. ANTON SZANDOR LAVEY!''' THE FORMER CRIME SCENE PHOTOGRAPHER AND CONTROVERSIAL AUTHOR OF "THE SATANIC BIBLE" IS THE HOST AND NARRATOR OF "DEATH SCENES"... THIS IS THE DEFINITIVE NO-HOLDS-BARRED IMMERSION INTO A CRUEL, SAVAGE REALITY MOST CHOOSE NOT TO ACKNOWLEDGE. "DEATH SCENES" FORCES IT'S AUDIENCE INTO A FACE TO FACE CONFRONTATION WITH MAN'S MOST INHUMAN ATROCITIES!
TO TOP OFF THIS SPELLBINDING PRESENTATION IS A RARE APPEARANCE BY ONE OF THE WORLD'S FOREMOST AUTHORITIES ON THE MACABRE... THE EVER-FASCINATING '''DR. ANTON SZANDOR LAVEY!''' THE FORMER CRIME SCENE PHOTOGRAPHER AND CONTROVERSIAL AUTHOR OF "THE SATANIC BIBLE" IS THE HOST AND NARRATOR OF "DEATH SCENES"... THIS IS THE DEFINITIVE NO-HOLDS-BARRED IMMERSION INTO A CRUEL, SAVAGE REALITY MOST CHOOSE NOT TO ACKNOWLEDGE. "DEATH SCENES" FORCES IT'S<ref>[sic]</ref> AUDIENCE INTO A FACE TO FACE CONFRONTATION WITH MAN'S MOST INHUMAN ATROCITIES!


TO ORDER: SEND $39.95 PLUS $4.00 SHIPPING/HANDLING TO:
TO ORDER: SEND $39.95 PLUS $4.00 SHIPPING/HANDLING TO:
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As already mentioned, Socrates was not Hellene, but rather of the tribe of Antiochus [Antioch was in Phrygia which is now in Turkey] (Plato, "The Apology" in ''Great Dialogues of Plato'', translated by W.H.D. Rouse, p. 438). He was described as short, ugly, and snub-nosed (Plato, "The Theatetus" in ''The Dialogues of'' ''Plato'', translated by B. Jowett, p. 144). His character was not only different from Plato's, but quite different from the Hellenes in general. He was utterly un-Satanic.
As already mentioned, Socrates was not Hellene, but rather of the tribe of Antiochus [Antioch was in Phrygia which is now in Turkey] (Plato, "The Apology" in ''Great Dialogues of Plato'', translated by W.H.D. Rouse, p. 438). He was described as short, ugly, and snub-nosed (Plato, "The Theatetus" in ''The Dialogues of'' ''Plato'', translated by B. Jowett, p. 144). His character was not only different from Plato's, but quite different from the Hellenes in general. He was utterly un-Satanic.


He had nothing to say on one of the educated Athenians' favortite topics: the nature and origin of the Universe. He was more intertested in Man's ethics, laws and customs (nomos) rather than in nature (physis). He could not discuss the apeiron, nor the origin of the Universe. He concerned himself with disputing ethics and political matters with clever imposters. Robert Graves believes that myths frightened or offended him, especially Pelasgian cult ideas and symbols (Graves, ''The White Goddess'', pp. 10-11). In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates says "But I have no leisure at all for such matters; and the cause of it, my friend, is this: I am not yet able, according to the Delphic precept, to know myself." (Graves, p. 11). Socrates is referring to the priestess at Delphi, who commanded him to "know thyself," a task he embarked upon. The oracle priestess seemed to know Socrates better than he knew himself, and she appears to have mocked him. She apparently knew that he considered the study of nature and the cosmos as irrelevant to self-knowledge, i.e., that Socrates was someone cut-off from nature, in mind, spirit and body. He was a confirmed city man, who confessed to Phaedrus that "fields and trees will not teach me anything, but men do." (Graves, p. 11). Socrates was the prototypical Judeo-Christian and humanitarian ethicist, for whom man is the "element" of the Universe most deserving of thought and attention. This is opposed to the Pythagorean idea that man, beast and plant are akin and merely part of nature, which deserves study. Socrates' words are in direct contrast to those of a medieval Pythagorean, Bernard of Morlaix, 1140 C.E., of N.W. Europe who said "trees and stones will teach you more than you can learn from the mouth of a doctor of theology" (Graves, p. 238). Bernard was not a nature-worshipper, but according to Graves "held that the mythical qualities of chosen trees and chosen precious stones, as studied by Pythagoras, explained the Christian mysteries better than Saint Augustine had ever been able to do" (ibid).
He had nothing to say on one of the educated Athenians' favortite<ref>[sic]</ref> topics: the nature and origin of the Universe. He was more intertested in Man's ethics, laws and customs (nomos) rather than in nature (physis). He could not discuss the apeiron, nor the origin of the Universe. He concerned himself with disputing ethics and political matters with clever imposters. Robert Graves believes that myths frightened or offended him, especially Pelasgian cult ideas and symbols (Graves, ''The White Goddess'', pp. 10-11). In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates says "But I have no leisure at all for such matters; and the cause of it, my friend, is this: I am not yet able, according to the Delphic precept, to know myself." (Graves, p. 11). Socrates is referring to the priestess at Delphi, who commanded him to "know thyself," a task he embarked upon. The oracle priestess seemed to know Socrates better than he knew himself, and she appears to have mocked him. She apparently knew that he considered the study of nature and the cosmos as irrelevant to self-knowledge, i.e., that Socrates was someone cut-off from nature, in mind, spirit and body. He was a confirmed city man, who confessed to Phaedrus that "fields and trees will not teach me anything, but men do." (Graves, p. 11). Socrates was the prototypical Judeo-Christian and humanitarian ethicist, for whom man is the "element" of the Universe most deserving of thought and attention. This is opposed to the Pythagorean idea that man, beast and plant are akin and merely part of nature, which deserves study. Socrates' words are in direct contrast to those of a medieval Pythagorean, Bernard of Morlaix, 1140 C.E., of N.W. Europe who said "trees and stones will teach you more than you can learn from the mouth of a doctor of theology" (Graves, p. 238). Bernard was not a nature-worshipper, but according to Graves "held that the mythical qualities of chosen trees and chosen precious stones, as studied by Pythagoras, explained the Christian mysteries better than Saint Augustine had ever been able to do" (ibid).


The celebrated concept of "Platonic Love," which prudes use to rationalize their contempt of their own sexuality, was really ''Socratic Love''. Socrates turned his back not only on Hellenic science, poetry and myth, but also on the All-Mother goddess. It will be recalled that "to apeiron," the dark force infused in nature, was considered by the Pythagoreans to be dark, unlimited, female, the source of the daimones, and the cause of all creation, generation, enduring and inspiration. Socrates was in romantic homosexual love (but refrained from touching him with self-restraint) with Alcibiades, an Athenian youth, as attested to by Alcibiades himself in Plato's "Symposium." Socrates turned his back on the Goddess who sent the daimones as intermediaries so men could commune with the gods. Socrates practiced a kind of intellectual homosexuality, a hardened failure to respond to the female ''principle in nature'', whether the response demanded was sexual, emotional, or intellectual. Diotima of Mantineia, the Arcadian witch we have already met in connection with Plato's theory of the daimones, cursed Socrates for this. She warned him that a man's love should be directed toward women, that three female Muses (the Hellenic Triple Muse) presided over all acts of creation and generation, whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual. She told him the goddesses Cybelle and Ishtar in the Temples of Attis tolerated sodomy between men in their temple courts, but she warned him that the ideal of ''intellectual'' homosexuality, or the severance of a man's psyche, thoughts and feelings from the female ''principle'' in nature, was a far more serious aberrancy and offence. She was referring to Socrates' efforts to make his intellect spiritually self-sufficient, to cut himself free from what Goethe called "the eternal feminine principle" and what Carl Jung called "a man's ''anima''." She warned him he would not escape the power and wrath of the All-Mother in her many forms: Leucotheia, Hecate, Athena (Graves, pp. 10-12).
The celebrated concept of "Platonic Love," which prudes use to rationalize their contempt of their own sexuality, was really ''Socratic Love''. Socrates turned his back not only on Hellenic science, poetry and myth, but also on the All-Mother goddess. It will be recalled that "to apeiron," the dark force infused in nature, was considered by the Pythagoreans to be dark, unlimited, female, the source of the daimones, and the cause of all creation, generation, enduring and inspiration. Socrates was in romantic homosexual love (but refrained from touching him with self-restraint) with Alcibiades, an Athenian youth, as attested to by Alcibiades himself in Plato's "Symposium." Socrates turned his back on the Goddess who sent the daimones as intermediaries so men could commune with the gods. Socrates practiced a kind of intellectual homosexuality, a hardened failure to respond to the female ''principle in nature'', whether the response demanded was sexual, emotional, or intellectual. Diotima of Mantineia, the Arcadian witch we have already met in connection with Plato's theory of the daimones, cursed Socrates for this. She warned him that a man's love should be directed toward women, that three female Muses (the Hellenic Triple Muse) presided over all acts of creation and generation, whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual. She told him the goddesses Cybelle and Ishtar in the Temples of Attis tolerated sodomy between men in their temple courts, but she warned him that the ideal of ''intellectual'' homosexuality, or the severance of a man's psyche, thoughts and feelings from the female ''principle'' in nature, was a far more serious aberrancy and offence. She was referring to Socrates' efforts to make his intellect spiritually self-sufficient, to cut himself free from what Goethe called "the eternal feminine principle" and what Carl Jung called "a man's ''anima''." She warned him he would not escape the power and wrath of the All-Mother in her many forms: Leucotheia, Hecate, Athena (Graves, pp. 10-12).
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(Next quarter Part 3, ''Neo-Platonism'')
(Next quarter Part 3, ''Neo-Platonism'')


== The Fine Art of the Nasty-Gram ==
''by Jayne Wayne''


Letters, we get letters. Lotsa letters. And most of them are quite pleasant and polite. Honey LaSalle gets the most interesting letters (along with some gifts - lucky girl!) and Nemo gets some quite profound. But we all get the occasional ...Nasty-Gram!


Here's how to recognize a nasty-gram. It's not just an insult letter, or a letter of complaint, or even a letter arguing a point. Those are often amazingly civil. It's a letter from someone who's trying to ask a question, or answer one, or merely give some necessary information, and its<ref>[sic]</ref> ''incredibly'' ''and unnecessarily nasty''. The author could have been polite, pleasant, or even distantly businesslike, but instead he decides to burn the bridge of communication and put himself forever on your (s)hit list by dropping some venom along the way.


Tulpa Spell Bondage by Diabolos Rex
Many Satanists, or those along for the ride, are incapable of simply ignoring or politely rebuffing another, and instead jump all over people without wisdom or foresight. What happened to Lesser Magic? What happened to reserving your opinion until it is sought? (Satanic Rule of the Earth #1!) What's wrong with being nice when it won't cost you anything, and might even get you a thing or two?


ignoring or politely rebuffing anothe; and instead jump all over peopl without wisdom or foresight. What happened to Lesser Magic? What • happened to reserving your opinion until it is sought? (Satanic Rule of the Earth #11) What's wrong with being . nice when it won't cost you anything, and might even get you a thing or two?
You'll catch more flies with honey - wontcha, Honey?<blockquote>'''CHURCH OF SATAN'''<br><br>FOR INFORMATION: send a self-addressed, stamped envelope or four IRCs to: P.O. Box 210082, San Francisco, CA 94121</blockquote>
You'll catch more flies with honey
- wontcha, Honey?
 
. --.
'
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I
i
 
 
 
 
 
CHURCH OF SATAN
FOR INFORMATION: send a
self-addressed, stamped envelope or four IRCs to: P.O. Box 210082, San Francisco, CA 94121

Latest revision as of 01:52, 28 April 2025

Full uncorrected text (3/18/25) of The Black Flame Vol. 2 No. 2.

THE BLACK FLAME

VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2 $3.00 SUMMER SOLSTICE, XXV A.S.
THE QUARTERLY FORUM FOR SATANIC THOUGHT. AFFILIATED WITH THE CHURCH OF SATAN

ALIENATION

Peter H. Gilmore, ye Editor

Satanists view themselves as being different from the general run of humanity. We see ourselves as set apart from those who merely follow the currents of their cultural milieu, having no desire to be embraced by the teeming hordes. We attempt to throw off, where necessary, the osmoconsciousness that in the West is dominated by Judeo-Christian thinking which says that man is apart from the natural world and should purge himself of the carnal to embrace the spiritual.

Balderdash! Satanists embrace the carnal, are at one with their animal nature and work to recapture the beast within that has been sterilized by those who hate themselves. One of the root causes that has led to the proliferation of anti-carnal thinking is the fact that there are two types of humans, and one type has come to dominate. There are those who feel at one with themselves, comfortable with their emotions and their reason, finding no contradictions between their thoughts and feelings, which we can call the Zoös (animal) type. The other strain feels alienated from itself, sensing a profound personal disharmony of mind vs. emotions, body vs. spirit, carnal vs. spiritual - the Thanatos (death) type.

It is this second type which feels a self-alienation that is a root cause for self-hatred, leading to a disgust for the body which is constantly being thwarted in its natural desires. This Thanatos impulse is behind the major spiritual religions which have spread their loathing for life over our globe. The Zoös individuals have difficulty perceiving what the Thanatos wishes to purge from himself. Indeed, the Zoös is usually too busy enjoying life to worry about such illusory concerns. But to the Thanatos, this is a very tangible dichotomy which must be remedied. Often they employ asceticism, to rid themselves of carnal impurities, stultifying any pleasure they feel. Ultimately this results in a universal masochism, reveling in the agony of "purification." Since the Zoös types can't even begin to split themselves in this fashion, the Thanatos sees them as incurably impure and will often eliminate such individuals to rid themselves of reminders of what they cannot be: harmoniously in tune with their nature as living beings.

The Thanatos have won many a victory with the overwhelming of the West by Christianity. This is the accepted outlook promoted by many religions and philosophies. The Satanist is naturally of the Zoös type, and finds himself completely at odds with this prevailing value system, thus he is alienated from the cultural norm. This is a healthy form of alienation which leads to a strong sense of Ego and the growth of individualism. The Thanatos is alienated from himself, a truly dangerous and destructive alienation that has caused centuries of pain and destruction.

The time is now for the re-emergence and triumph of the Zoös. We have unleashed the beast which will tear the wizened flesh of those who feel apart from the natural order. Their dessicated and poisoned tissues will be buried with the other refuse whose decomposition will provide fertilizer for the new generations of self-aware humans. Nature will claim its victory over those who would deny it.

Any and all articles, letters, essays or commentary submitted to this publication yet demonstrating an ignorance of the principles and ideas in The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey will be ignored

SATANISM NEEDS AN ENEMA!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the time has come to take off the kid gloves.

There is a disease, a cancer in the Satanic movement and it must be cut out! Let me be quite clear about this.

Satanism is not now, nor shall it ever be, truly threatened as a religious philosophy since Satanism is is[1] the path of reality, the way of the world. As such, those who succeed in the world, who are willing to acknowledge in their actions the truth about reality, will always be Satanists, no matter what other name they assume.

This problem actually involves not our unkillable foundation of truth but the course of the modern movement of Satanism.

The movement is in danger. The danger is real. The danger can be stopped. I am writing this to put a stop to it!

From the beginning, the Church of Satan has made it explicitly clear that Satan is not an entity, conscious or preconscious. For example:

"In LaVey's view, the Devil was not [an anthropomorphic deity], but rather a dark, hidden force in nature responsible for the workings of earthly affairs, a force for which neither science nor religion had any explanation." - Burton Wolfe, Introduction to The Satanic Bible.

Other quotes from Dr. LaVey's own pen in The Satanic Bible reiterate this theme:

"...the allegorical personage..." (page 29).

"...Satan, the personification of the Left Hand Path." (page 52).

"Satan...merely represents a force of nature - the powers of darkness which have been named just that because no religion has taken these forces out of darkness." "...this many faceted key to the unknown - which the Satanist chooses to call 'Satan'." (page 62).

Again and again the Church of Satan has patiently explained to all who would ask, read or listen that Satan is a symbol.

Yet how many times do we see people advocating a return to the superstitious nansense[2] of belief in a "god"? How often do we see so-called "Satanists" missing the most important single point of Satanism?

Where's the danger here? I had one so-called "Satanist" once tell me that only life-threatening situations should be called "dangerous". This person, without the slightest awareness of the incredible ignorance that was revealed, told me that mere words can't be dangerous! If you share this viewpoint consider the power of the following words spoken as lies:

"As your personal physician it is my sad task to tell you that you have only six weeks to live."

"We've just killed your wife (husband/son/daughter)." [Click goes the phone connection]

"You are under arrest."

"Remember our last date? Well, the clinic says I have AIDS."

Words can kill. Words can create strokes, heart attacks, suicides. I know this. I have personally performed autopsies on victims of mere words.

If words can kill physical human beings, words can also kill movements and modern Satanism is a movement.

If we do not cut out from our midst this destructive, anti-Satanic theme of godism, if we do not return to our fundamentally atheistic roots, we shall cease to be a vital force, as a movement.

Currently, modern Satanism has been truly occult, dealing with the hidden side, the dark side, the controlling side of reality. If we permit this Satan-worship nonsense to continue under our name, we will degenerate to a mere cult. Our attackers falsely accuse us of "devil worship". Real Satanists have usually responded with condescending smiles, but if we continue to tolerate the true believers in our midst, if we accept these lies through failure to speak out against Satan-deification, we will be lowering ourselves to the level of the masses.

What is it that the Satanist has in our modern movement that truly delineates "us" from "them"? It is not our endearment to the symbols and costuming, the theatre of the dark side. Heavy metal rock fans do this also. It is not our embracing of a philosophy based upon rational self-interest or the glorification of the human carnal elements of Man. The philosophies of Objectivism and Humanism also meet these criteria, respectively. It is not our practice of ritual magic that makes us unique. There are all too many Wiccans, Odinists, Crowleyites and others engaged in these practices. No, it is our total rejection of any external deity or deities including Satan which makes our movement take a vital and unique place in the stream of current events.

Every time some would-be "Satanist" speaks up to endorse the idea that Satan is a "somebody" instead of a symbol, our position is degraded and our movement is retarded. The modern Satanic movement is ideas. The wrong ideas can kill what is truly Satanic in our efforts and leave us just another mindless cult. I used to see it differently. I used to think that those who were not against us were for us. I used to think that if anyone did anything in Satan's name, it was helping. I used to believe that the experiences of ritual magic could be harmlessly anthropomorphised.

I was wrong.

If we, as a movement, fall victim to encroaching theism and permit the deification of Satan, we will be no different in kind from Christians who deified Jesus at the Council of Nicea. The result is the same: mystical nonsense and anti-human dogma.

If we end up with Satan as a person, we end up with an external God, and that means we end up without Satanism!

So what is the price? What needs to be done?

To paraphrase the Joker, "Satanism needs an enema!"

We need to correct every idiot out there who thinks that it is enough to say, "I am a Satanist" while acting like a hallucinating psychotic.

We have a Bible. We have a pro-human dogma. We have a Church. We have a tradition. We have ceremonies and rituals. We have a High Priest.

Now let's quit tolerating white light mystics who claim to be Satanists.

And if you feel, dear reader, that I am attacking you, then just ask yourself if you want to be an occult member or just a member of a cult. Do you believe in Satan or yourself? Are you a Satanist or not?

I am calling for the closing of the ranks and a throwing out of the heretics. I am asking for the Purge! I am asking for a reverse Inquisition. Let me be the first to put you to the question:

Are you a believer in the God "Satan" or are you a Satanist, a God in your own right? Answer now!

CRY OF THE RAVEN

Quarterly Satanic Journal

$15.00 per year

THE RAVEN, Box 321, Meredosia, IL 62665

Does the Right Hand Path Know What the Left Hand Path Is Doing?

Recently, Hell's Kitchen Productions, Inc., sent out flyers to various occult shops in the northeastern region to give these merchants a chance to sell some of our products. Our offer has generally gone unanswered. One nifty response did arrive which we shall quote for the amusement of our readers:

CRAFT OF THE WISE

45 Grove Street

New York, NY 10014

212-989-4891

Proprietors: Caeser Muzzioli and Christina Sluberski

28 June, 1990

To Whom It May Concern:

Please remove our name from your mailing list. We are not interested in any ideas that are based upon a perversion of Judeo-Christian thought.

Our system is based on the balanced concepts derived from ancient harmonious nature worship and it is impossible for us to find any validity in a system that overrides another's free will. We recognize you right to practice whatever you will; but this form of unsolicited direct mail proselytizing is not worthy of any Religion. Furthermore, your freedom of religion and our right to privacy are both protected by our government. Do not send us any more of your information.

Thank you,

CRAFT OF THE WISE

We weren't surprised that this shop wouldn't be interested in materials which clearly explain contemporary Satanism, of which they are obviously quite comfortably in ignorance. But we were amused to find that they would construe an advertisement as an attempt to proselytize. Bigotry and ignorance are not monopolized by the fundamentalist Christians, as this statement made quite evident.

This letter is presented to inform our readers of the level of intolerance which is still rampant among some neo-pagans. Many of these "Good Witches" have recently tried to legitimize their beliefs by pointing out that the Satanists are the "Evil" ones who should perhaps be stopped, while they are merely "pre-Christians" who wouldn't hurt a fly. One publication run by a neo-pagan ceased reviewing The Black Flame because the editor felt that such Satanic material could lead to their persecution by the locals, who would presumably think it okey-dokey that they were simply witches.

Let's pull the wool off of their eyes for a moment. Just ask any fundamentalist Christians (the denomination which campaigns against any religion that is not "Christian" by its definition) what they think is the difference between Satanism and witchcraft? They'll tell you that there is no difference! Just listen to such paragons as Texe Marrs, who said on a talk show to some neo-pagans who tried to make such a differentiation, that he certainly knew who their "horned god" was if they didn't, and that he was Satan. So some of these ignorant neo-pagans think that they can throw Satanists on the bonfire to save their "white" butts. Fear not, for we'll never be in that position, but should they fail to get to us, guess who will get tossed on the flames as warm-up kindling?

Some neo-pagans are now beginning to imitate the Church of Satan's lead by establishing "official" spokespersons. They explain to the media that their religious beliefs are not dangerous to Mr. and Mrs. Middle America. We Satanists acknowledge that our ideas are dangerous to the status quo as we question the "whys" and "wherefores" of the established controlling factors and opt out of the herd's lock-step. We do like to remind the general populace that we don't engage in the activities that they'd like to lay at our doorstep: demented sacrifices, criminal activities, and drug use, which seem to constantly come from individuals who were raised as Christians, with Christian values, who thus lapse into the Christian heresy of devil worship, if not committing their acts in the very name of their Christian "savior."

One group of neo-pagans who is trying the route of "united we stand" calls itelf[3] the Alliance for Magical and Earth Religions. Based in St. Louis, they state that the one thing held in common by all members is that, "all of them feel that they have been unfairly blamed by some in the media and in law enforcement for the problems of today's society." They have a four-fold statement of purpose. 1) AMER will defend the right of every American to practice his or her own religion, insofar as that religion's practices do not directly harm anyone. In particular, AMER will actively campaign for tolerance for Magical and Earth-centered religions. 2) AMER will work to promote a positive image for Magical and Earth-centered religious groups. 3) AMER will promote cooperation among various Magical and Earth-centered religions groups. 4) AMER will serve as a source of accurate information on Magical and Earth-centered religions and practices.

They have come up with two well written brochures which cover "Human Sacrifice" and "Ritualized Child Abuse." Two of their board members have often contributed articles to TBF. AMER certainly will have a great deal of work ahead for them, judging from the letter quoted at the beginning of this article. If you'd like further information you can send them a long, self-addressed stamped envelope to the follwing address: AMER, 11220 West Florissant, Suite 288, Florissant, MO 63032.

Chris Bray of the Sorcerors Apprentice Shop in England has led the fight in the U.K. against the fundies. After a particularly misleading, Geraldo-esque television program, called The Cook Report, linked his store with the promotion of Satanism, his shop was broken into and a fire was set. Mr. Bray has initiated and won a lawsuit against the network who produced this program which lead to the assaut on his establishment. He proved that several fundamentalists were involved with producing this smear program. Bravo! In addition to his retail business, he publishes a magazine entitled the Lamp of Thoth. For information regarding his business and publications send a self-addressed envelope and four IRC's to: The Sorcerors Apprentice, The Crescent, Hyde Park Corner, Leeds LS6 2NW, Yorkshire, U.K.

Church of Satan representatives will continue to dispel falsehoods promulgated by the media and debunk those with a vested interest in creating an anti-Satanism industry to line their pockets. We work with objective journalists, objective law enforcement officials, and other individuals who wish to see an end to the hysteria created by fundamentalist Christianity as a last ditch effort ot prevent its certain destruction. There are some neo-pagans who do understand the situation and will work with us to stem the tide of persecution fostered by Christian propaganda. We welcome them. Those who attempt to throw us to the bigots will find their ignorance rewarded by the full attentions of their strange bedfellows, a fate that they have won through their own stupidity.

Between two evils,

I always pick the one

I never tried before.

Mae West

Some People Are More Equal Than Others

by Reuben Radding

My roommate looked at me as you might look at a burned dinner.

"Do you honestly feel that you're better than most people?" she queried in disapproval of my attitude.

The answer was most definitely "yes" and I'll tell you why.

First, examine the question. The important word here is 'most,' since to imagine yourself the best person in the world would be unrealistic, unprovable, irrelevant to your life, and pretentious. So now let's define what we mean by 'most people.' Most people to me refers to the mass herd, the general public-at-large. Well, I've observed that these people generally go through their lives with with[4] no focus or purpose. They never seem to use their minds enough to see through their own façades erected for one another. Therefore, I can view the mass herd as being generally blind and without purpose. Now to judge this group as a group is to assume that they are all the same. Not so. So, if I examine individuals and find them to be blind and without purpose with terrible frequency, what does that tell you? I'm not yet even discussing intelligence, which I've found doesn't always prove anything.

During my experiences with school, I met a great many men and women who were intelligent, by common standards. They earned good grades, passed difficult tests of knowledge, and were looked upon as "bright" by their elders. The problem here is that all these people really mastered was the ability to memorize information. Once engaged in a verbal discussion requiring application of their facts to practical reality, they were often lost. In short, it is how you use your knowledge that counts. Common sense is all to uncommon!

Most Satanists have drive and purpose in their lives. Most Satanists are not blind to the ways of human nature. We are living by a philosophy. It is one thing to know that philosophy, and another to live it and strive to be vital. Most people never question their values, ethics, and ideas. We Satanists are questioning everything, all the time. This is the key to freedom. A free mind is a superior mind, and superiority is what was challenged with the question that began the article.

When someone presents an idea or opinion, they had better be able to qualify it. Saying you feel something is true doesn't prove a thing to me. I will simply ask "why?" Show me what makes it so. On this basis perhaps the most correct and preferable answer to my roommate's question would be, "I don't think I'm better, I know I'm better!" Now there's a Satanic statement!

Who is, or should be, more important to you than yourself? No one, that's who. Who is more important to me than me? No one, that's who. Who should view me as more important to themself than themself? No one, that's who. There is no room for egalitarianism in the philosophy of The Satanic Bible. We are selfish, honest, and unconcerned with being part of the conformist collectivism. I suggest that the proper response to the question, "Why did you climb that mountain?" should not be "Because it was there," but instead, "Because I was there!"

YOUR CHRISTIAN BLOOD

by
Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire

Your christian blood within this silver cup
Stains the metal to its very tip.
Mockingly I smile and drink it up,
The thick rich liquid smear'd across my lip.

With each silent and Satanic sip
I bless the glory of my Ancient Lord.
My fingers smooth the silver cup, then dip
Into the liquid, ruddy and ador'd

My fingers touch your body, cold and gored;
They touch the surface of your silly cross.
With your kind I find I'm never bored,
Imagination's never at a loss.

Then with your corpse I keep the promis'd tryst,
And when I come I whisper, "jesus christ."

UNDEFINING SATANISM

by Tanil Jantsant

People define and redefine Satanism, and argue or debate which is the TRUE Satanism. People who have the need to dissect it and classify it, even formulate it, are groping and therefore, they are NOT IT. Of these there are:

Catholic Satanist: This type worships Lord Satan as some unknowable, unfathomable Lord of the Dark. This Lord is reached through an intermediary, a demon. These demons come in ranks and each has a special purpose or gives certain favors according to the demon's title or rank. The worshipper has to give something to the demon in return, he has to sacrifice something of himself. The form of conjuration and worship is highly ritualistic and stylized.

Mohammedan Satanist: To these, there is nothing greater than to wage Holy War on what is the established norm, including the laws of the land. Regarded as being highly sociopathic, they will kill, rape, injure, harm, and even die for their Lord Satan and believe, in doing so, they will be rewarded in Hell by being made into a demon. They commit illegal acts believing that they wage a Jihad and will be blessed by Lord Satan for their actions.

Gnostic Satanist: These believe that the Chaos (Satan) was primal and it gave birth, or created, or manifested the Logos. They know Christians call the Logos "Jesus" and they despise this Logos. They often tend to extreme asceticism and denial of the body, often even refusing to procreate because all things in the world, including their flesh, are lies, or temporary, or made by that arrogant evil Logos in defiance of Lord Satan - Chaos, who is the most real thing. Unlike the Mohammedan Satanist, these wage no Holy War, but tend to isolate themselves into small groups or communities as a defense against being preoccupied with that evil lie, the mundane world of Logos.

Fundamentalist Satanist: These worship Lord Satan as the most high god, but unlike Catholic Satanists, they claim to have direct communication with their Prince of Darkness. Satan talks to them in English, usually only in their minds, even dictating entire books to them. These also tend to speak in demonic tongues as demons possess them and reveal unknowable truths. They also proselytize their Satanism, and tend to get into trouble as all martyrs do. They may regard this martyrdom as the ultimate expression of absolute allegiance to Lord Satan.

Protestant Satanist: These tend to be almost agnostic in their Satanism, preferring to live more moderately, within their means. They do not rely on Satan to better their worldly situations, they do this on their own. They tend to be practical and find excess repugnant or foolish. They may or may not dress for a ritual - if they have rituals. When they resort to magic for a result and get it, they maintain an open mind that maybe the result was coincidence or caused by something other than magic. They maintain a healthy skepticism in regards to any inexplicable happenings that may occur.

All these folks miss the mark. Satanism is not a robe that one can put on or take off, it is not a practice or belief, nor is it a ritual that one can repeat in mindless repitition. It is not something one "dedicates" oneself to, or makes sacrifices to.

A Satanist has a character, or state of being, that is entropic or chaos-like. The Satanist is this, innately, unconsciously, almost like a reflex. Everything he does is a reflection of this character, no matter what he says or believes. He has his own values, period. He may or may not be aware of the values of his country, friends, parents, but does not care about their values. He has his values. He probably never would conceive of an idea like "equalitarianism" because he know one tree is bigger than the other - obviously no two are alike. He has nothing in him that desires to make them alike, an act which would refute the real nature of things that exist, which he can see. He does not look below himself to "those beneath him," he simply rises up, goes forward - like entropy. He is not only aware of "a dark force in Nature" but he is like this force himself. He may or may not try to give this a name. He may call it God, or Satan, or Nyarlathotep, or Eternal Feminine, or the void, or the Black Flame, or entropy, or not give it any name. He is it. He knows himself without the need for self exploration and definition. He usually explores things other than himself out of a desire to know (curiosity), but not to navel-gaze. He may look at history and notice others like himself, or discover a philosopher writing about people like himself, but it does not matter to him whether he does or not. He may find in modern physics a physical definition of "the dark force in Nature" and immediately recognize it as something he knows from inside himself. And smile.

On the other hand, if a person is the type of character that truly wishes to help his fellow-man, help raise them, or cure their ills, then this person is like Mother Theresa or Albert Schweitzer in nature -- but he may want to be a Satanist and call himself that. His attempt then, to call himself and want to be what he is not, is self-refutation -- highly unSatanic! This is a person who looks back at others and joins in with others, for the purpose of helping these others. He is, by these deeds, self-sacrificing and perhaps genuinely kind-hearted. There is nothing wrong with this, if such is your nature. One might cure someone who will go on to cure cancer. No value judgement is being made here. But, this person is not Satanic. Entropy goes forward and rises up. It does not slow down, stop, look back or descend.

An entropic person is Satanic. Due to his cultural context, he may be part of a Buddhist system, a Christian system or he may be an atheist and mock Man's religions, but no matter, as he is still doing, being, willing this existence that is Satanism. One cannot become something that he is not. By copying a desired end in minute detail, one apes that goal, yet the true nature will out. Willing is not trying. Trying results in fanaticism, most unSatanic. The fanatic strives against himself and fears yielding to "temptation." A Satanist can not be tempted - he knows what he does and does not want, and Wills this. How can there be a temptation to do what you don't want to do, or eat what you don't like, or be what you're not? To a Satanist, integrated with his nature, this is incomprehensible.

All in all, it does not matter if you think you are a Satanist and are not, or if you think you are not a Satanist and are. You will become what you are, no matter how you deny it, fight it, or run from it. A Satanist knows who and what he is - and what he is not, regardless of nomenclature. Thus if one tries to alter his nature, he winds up aging or even dying without the realization that his life was wasted and he arrived at his true nature after all. That is why I love the Eternal Void, the utter mockery of Nyarlathotep, the driving chaos that pushes everything on, even when it does not want to go. And Satan drives on, ultimately, with no purpose.

Laugh! Play! Indulge! Enjoy! Celebrate! Be!

Whether you turn out to be a Satanist or not; life, being, existence, is a "free gift." Don't turn away from it and hide, don't clutter it up with fanatical ideas of some "purpose," don't refute the present with "hope." Embrace it, cherish it, love it.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of man as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Hellen Keller

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THE SATANIC WITCH

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THE SECRET LIFE OF A SATANIST: The Authorized Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey

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How to Win Enemies and Influence No One: A Satanist's Guide To Losing Personal Power

by Ipsissimus John Wayne

(Note: Here's an example of Satanic Sin #8: Counterproductive Pride, in action. Can you see yourself in this mirror?)

Just today it happened again! Some silly fool of a Satanist wrote me a polite and intelligent letter. The writer used words which had clear meanings and the flow of logic connecting his ideas was careful and complete. The writer used courtesy, didn't jump to unwarranted conclusions, admitted that he wasn't above making human error and, all in all, made me feel that it was a meaningful and thoughtful attempt at communication.

What an asshole!

Didn't he understand that Satanism is the path of vicious, mindless slurs directed against one and all? Didn't he realize that like a growling half-starved dog, a Satanist should always attack, attack, attack? Didn't he have the slightest awareness that Satanists are loners and not intellectual pipsqueaks, barbarians and not gentlemen? Didn't he ever watch The Dukes of Hazzard or other deeply Satanic TV shows?

Well, this was the last straw! After writing a threat letter and enclosing my total hatred for any pansy like that who would try to use courtesy on me, I decided to spell it out for the rest of you morons. It just grinds my guts to see this effete bullshit which passes for hard-core, redneck Satanism! Therefore I've included here a checklist you can use (if you've got the balls, which I doubt) to get tough and be truly Satanic.

CHECKLIST FOR REAL SATANISTS

1. Always insult everybody.

After all, Satan is the meanest sonuvabitch in the valley and as a Satanist you need to put everybody down. You're strong! You're tough! You don't need to put up with anything from anyone! Courtesy is for cowards and compliments are for coolies. Make them eat shit by directly and emphatically insulting every single person you meet, talk to, or write to. Let them know that you're just like Satan and give 'em Hell! This will make you lots of enemies and didn't The Satanic Bible say somewhere that everybody is your enemy already?

2. Always jump to conclusions.

Hey! You're a Satanist, a Master of the Black Arts! You can size up anything and anyone, anywhere at a psychic glance. You already Know all about what someone is really trying to say before you open their letter or meet them in person, so why wait around for the facts? Tell them what they're thinking (make sure it's an insult - see Rule #1) before they open their stupid mouths! Won't they be shocked at your godlike, Satanic psychic power of Knowing exactly what they really meant before they even breathe a word! That'll show them that they can't fool you! You're smarter than they'll ever be! Now that's Satanism!

3. Never define terms.

Kep 'em guessing! Dictionaries are for dolts and idiot who don't have a real grasp of Satanism. After all, you're the one using the words, so let them, mean any damn thing you want them to! Words are just ink on paper or noises in the air, anyway. Words can't be as real as a fist in someone's face or a finger up their nose! So make up your meanings as you go along. Be a real God. You're a Satanist! You make the rules! So when you want to say something, say anything. If the dimwits don't understand, insult them (see Rule #1)! After all, you already Knew they wouldn't understand anyway, (see Rule #2) right?

4. Never admit you're wrong.

There is only one side to any discussion: yours! Whaddaya mean "wrong"? A real Satanist can't make a mistake! We're gods, aren't we? And God is perfect! Obviously if any peabrain even dares to imply that you've made a mistake, it's his goof, not yours. Any Satanist with any sense at all would realize that since you are God, you are never wrong. Think about it! A real Satanist is perfect. So if anyone ever questions anything you say, write or do, that's proof that they are full of shit! Tell 'em so (see Rule #1) before they try to explain anything (see Rule #2) and use any words you want to (see Rule #3). Remember, everyone is an asshole, except you!

5. Never give anyone credit for anything!

You're a Satanist! Remember what that means! It means that if someone wrote something, you wrote it first! If someone said something, you said it first. If someone did something, you did it first! Why should anyone else get credit for something? You're a Satanist! Take it! It's yours. If you say so, it is so! Whadda're they gonna do, anyway? Nothin'! They're wimps!

6. Always resort to threats of violence.

This is the real power behind you so use it as often as you can! You already Know what the mini-minds are thinking, so move quickly! Tell them what you'll do to them before they try to say something! Only you can be a threat to them! You're not afraid of lawsuits for slander, libel, purgery, intimidation or other legal nonsense! You're not afraid of the FBI or the city, county, or state police! You're not afraid of SWAT teams! You're not afraid of judges and courtrooms! You're not afraid of prison! You're not afraid of someone taking serious offense and putting a contract out on you!

Hell No!

You're a Satanist! You can do anything.

...And never let anybody forget it!

That's all.

HAIL ME! ... and up yours!

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are are only consequences. Robert Ingersoll

Ode to Jacques de Molay

by Andre T. Soly

Darkness is my shrine
Flesh is my altar
The Night's breath is cold
My congregation's morale falters

Through the monoliths of wood
'Twixt Nature's loving grasp and Death's icy hold
'Fore the night is done my tale will be told

I have been defiled and cast out
The Mob follows the norm
Judge me by their rules accordingly
The charge is Heresy

They not their heads in consent; in their eyes I see a glimmer of doubt
Placing their thumbs on the scales of Justice, they view my crime as a harm to society

The Mob states that God is fair when Men make the rules
One must make a stand or play the fool

Insubstantial evidence was used, guilty I was found
To the stake I am tied, it is hard to think
The shout their indoctrinated sound

The black smoke wafts into the air
The crowd is still and the sun will still shine
Who is to condemn me? Who is to say my trial was fair?

SATANISM IN AMERICA

How the Devil Got Much More Than His Due

by Shawn Carlson & Gerald Larue

HERE IS THE COMPLETE, UNADULTERATED STORY OF A NATIONAL SCANDAL.

NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE BIZARRE TRUTHS ABOUT THOSE SPREADING THE SATANIC RUMORS CAN BE TOLD: THE CONNECTIONS WITH POLITICAL EXTREMIST LYNDON LAROUCHE AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT, THE DOCUMENTED SEVERE MENTAL ILLNESS OF MANY OF THE "SURVIVORS," THE WORKING OF EXTREMIST CHRISTIAN POLICE OFFICERS AGAINST MINORITY RELIGIONS AND MUCH MORE.

TO ORDER, SEND $14.45 ($12.95 +$1.50 shipping) TO: GAIA PRESS, P.O. BOX 466, EL CERRITO, CA 94530-0466

Hell's Kitchen Productions presents

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(NY residents add 8.25% sales tax) Please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery

ODDITORIUM

by Peggy Nadramia

The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey by Blanche Barton. (Feral House, Los Angeles, 1990; clothbound, 262 pages with 24 page photo insert, $19.95). Reviewed in uncorrected galley proofs.

An apocalyptic book for every Satanist and reader, because no one will find what he expects within its pages-- what he thinks he knows about LaVey and the Church of Satan will change forever.

With a nod to Burton Wolfe, armed with many more details and twenty years of perspective, Barton begins at the beginning with "Satanists Are Born, Not Made," and progresses through LaVey's childhood years, his pastimes and playmates, his literary and musical influences, certain key ECI experiences, his time with Marilyn Monroe, all the way up to "Walpurgisnacht 1966" - and that's only Section I. The author makes use of what must be hundreds of hours of interviews with LaVey, as there are frequent and lengthy passages where he speaks to us directly on the topics covered. His recollections of people and places are wry, often hilarious, sometimes damning. As Barton herself observes in her introduction, "LaVey is a complex, and in many ways a frighteningly deceptive man."

In addition to the juicily-detailed biographical chapters, including one all about St. Jayne Mansfield, LaVey analyzes films past and present ("Hell on Reels") and tells us about "Music as Necromancy." There are also several appendices, such as "How To Become a Werewolf " "Pentagonal Revisionism" and "The Hymn to the Satanic Empire." And LaVey speaks at length about a subject that often confounds Satanists and non-Satanists alike: "The Humanoids Are Coming!"

Those who crack these pages hoping or expecting to find an account of a charming old lion tamer with some strange obects in his creepy old house (and maybe a few toys in the attic) will be disappointed. Instead of mellowing out, to put it in popular parlance, LaVey is more hard-edged than ever. The unstated message here is that it's time to lay it all on the line, and if the shoe fits... "I'm people's worst nightmares... and more. I don't want to give anyone the satisfaction that they have me all figured out. If people only knew. I've always loved that ubiquitous Johnson-Smith Company ad copy, 'Imagine the expression on their faces!' It began in mystery. I want it to end that way."

Read this book to learn more about Anton LaVey than you may want to know; cozy, it ain't.

The Interrogation and The Lawyer's Clerk by Anonymous. (Ryder Publishing, London, 1990; softcover, 42 pages each, $12.00 each, with airpost).

Softcore S&M erotica for those whose fantasy life may include being dominated by strong male figures in authority positions, with maybe a little whipping on the side. Written with a certain delicacy that only makes the overt sex scenes more tantalizing. If you like to think about having a Master, or about being one, these little ditties may pop your cork. Send two International Response Coupons (IRC) for a catalogue which includes many more erotic scenarios to: Ryder Publishing, BCM/Box 3406, London, WC1N 3XX, England.

Dark Lily #11: The Reality of the Left-Hand Path (London, 1990; digest-sized, 28 pages, $4.00 postpaid overseas US rate). Also available via four-issue subscriptions for $16.00 postpaid: Dark Lily, BCM Box 3406, London WCIN 3XX, England.

Never has the Lily's tagline title been so accurate, as this issue sheds light upon both the Temple of Set and the Catholic Church: "The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a high-ranking Catholic official... told the New York Times that paedophilia is 'the most serious problem the Church has faced in centuries.'" Also includes a discussion of "Why Satan?" ("why not?" I always say) and lots of contact addresses for other publications, books, products and organizations of interest to Satanists. TBF readers will certainly enjoy DL #11.

Freaks: We Who Are Not as Others by Daniel P. Mannix. (Re/Search Publications, San Francisco, 1990; softcover, 120 pages, $11.99).

Re/Search's usual fine production, a big 8 1/2" by 11" with photos on almost every page. Mannix is an old acquaintance of Dr. LaVey's and he is quoted throughout. Originally published in 1976, Freaks owes a debt to the observations of LaVey and to William Lindsay Gresham's chapter on freaks in Monster Midway (Also worth searching for). There is much to learn here about human oddities in general and some famous freaks in particular.

There are clear, detailed photos of Frank Lentini, a man with three legs and two sets of genitals; of Aileen, a true hermaphrodite; of pinheads, the Lobster Boy, the Alligator-Skinned Man, and strangely-bonded Siamese twins as well as those with vestigial twins hanging from portions of their bodies (one lady dressed hers in matching outfits).

An interesting overview of some true Outsiders and how they played the hand Nature dealt them.

TRADI-SHUNS

by Max

One of our local young witches (white) recently cornered me to talk (on and on) about her new path, the use of Runic magic. I told her that I was pleased she had decided to follow a more diverse path than the all-white magic to which she was accustomed. She didn't understand. I explained that since World War II, Runic magic had been pretty much the staple of Odinists and travelers of the Left-Hand Path. Himmler was especially keen on it and attempted Runic magic with his elite group of the SS. I then explained to her that the author whose word she was taking for gospel was himself a practicing black magician.

"But he publishes with a New Age press," she sputtered.

I pointed out that the publishers are probably unaware of his magical interests and besides, their primary concern is selling books, not the color of their authors' magic. She refused to believe me, and I finally asked her why she bothered to attempt this type of magic. "I must follow my traditions," she whined, and I laughed.

At this point, I could probably just leave this story as it stands, except for the fact that I just keep hearing that stupid "T" word -- traditions.

I honestly believe that the main concern of almost all of the schools of magic practiced in the last century has been to sanction their practices with some link to pre-Christian history. Most of the time the group of practitioners will say that they are following the tenets of some magic that was practiced by a people who were wiped out by an oncoming civilization or just by natural causes centuries ago. Other tradition-oriented practitioners will follow a certain mage, and some will follow the mage's teaching so closely that they will almost attempt to ape the mage themselves. A third group will follow a tradition because they feel that this magic is their heritage.

To all of these groups, I say "Wake up and smell the coffin, er, coffee." Magic is a personal act that can be performed by an individual and only by that individual exclusively. In other words, only you can do your magic. I feel that a magician who wishes only to perform works that have allegedly been set down centuries ago is lacking in imagination. I always view magic as I would any piece of art. (Don't they call them the Black Arts, after all?) That which has already been done should be appreciated, but there is always potential for better things. The most successful magicians I know are those who take a page from here and a page from there and blend them into a personalized ritual. The principle of magic is, after all, to seek out that which stimulates your inner mind into manifesting your desired outcome. I think that to use someone else's rituals just because they are traditional is like wearing someone else's hand-me-down suit and pretending the suit was tailored especially for you.

This leads me to the tradition of following a certain mage. These people make me laugh the hardest, since they will quote almost everything the mage has written as if it is set in stone. They seem to think that if the mage were alive today, He/She would not have the option of changing his or her mind or progressing any further. I also feel that in copying the mage too closely, they cannot see the elements of their own school of magic that are borrowed from many other sources and mixed with the mage's own biases and personal fetishes. For example, Crowley combined Golden Dawn with Oriental and later Germanic magical rites and then added in ample helpings of drug use and bisexuality (some of Crowley's favorite pastimes). In spite ofthe protests of their followers, I think that almost all the mages would have felt that the magic they were producing was mainly experimental and none of it was meant to be considered an institution.

To the heritage traditionalist, I must say, "You're an American, damn it!" To condemn yourself to the ways of your ancestors is to live in denial of the reasons why they left the Old Country behind and moved here. The opportunity to create a new form of magical practice should always be the main priority in your magical mind. I believe that what we call magic will someday be expedited by scientific means and I don't want to think that I would turn down the opportunity to try a new method because it wasn't exclusively Germanic or Celtic. And if you tell me that I can't perform voodoo rituals because I'm white, you are asking me to limit my magic and my own personal sphere of understanding.

In conclusion, I must admit that Traditional magic does have a few words of wisdom to offer us. All of the traditions were made up by someone who was at the time creating something new and fresh in their magical journey. You are, as a magician, a citizen of the universe you create for yourself. Your magical tradition begins with you. Thou art a God. Let there be no magical (mage) gods before thee. Create...create...create!

ABRASAX

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MAGIC LANTERN SHOW

by Peggy Nadramia

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (now on videocassette and cable movie channels).

Based upon what my German sister-in-law tells me are well-known children's stories, this film is a rollicking adventure that goes from the bottom of the sea to the moon itself. The Baron steps onto the stage of a little theatre that is presenting, oddly enough, "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," and proceeds to make fantasy a reality. He has to save the city; it's being stormed by Turks. He teams up with the child protagonist, Sally, and they go off in a balloon made from the lacy underthings of all the generous ladies in town. The film is a visual hyperbole; the most outrageous claims to greatness and ability are instantly demonstrated to be true. The Baron even has a momentary dalliance with the most beautiful of women, Venus herself. There is a hilarious sequence involving the giant King of the Moon (played by Robin Williams in his inimitable style) and his wife; it seems they can take their heads off and get all intellectual, and mad at each other, while their bodies just keep doin' what comes naturally. This will be lost on the kiddies; they'll probably just thinks it's silly. But the rest of the film is (and I mean this) fun for the whole family. Director Terry Gilliam is at his best in the broad scope of a fantasy like this, and he lines up a superb cast, including Eric Idle, Oliver Reed, and John Neville.

Last Exit to Brooklyn.

Quite on the other hand, Last Exit interweaves several tales of life during the 1940's in an impoverished section of Brooklyn. This is indeed the City of Dreadful Night: we meet strikers, strike-breakers, rowdy boys who pimp for a young prostitute in order to roll her johns, the prostitute's idealistic sailor boyfriend who finally goes off to sea, a working class stiff and the chubby girl he knocks up, as well as a host of others living in quiet, and unquiet, desperation. Their stories are sad, paltry, but the filmmakers tell them in a style that is epic and somehow magnificent. The most interesting and tragic character is Harry Black, a typical working grunt who runs the union's strike headquarters, living off the fat of the land, distributing free beer and hoping the strike will go on forever. But something strange happens to Harry when a young gay man comes around looking for a friend of his, and Harry eventually gets drawn into a world of clever young homosexuals who smoke marijuana, dress up and go out on the town to their kind of places. Harry takes a lover, who later dumps him when the strike funds run out. In a drunken fit of sorrow and anger, Harry attempts contact with a young neighborhood boy who rats him out to the criminal roughnecks. Harry is beaten and left for dead, crucified to a[5] an alleyway fence.

Not a film to see when you've got the blues, but fascinating and unforgettable nonetheless.

The First Family of Satanism.

Magistra Zeena LaVey and Nikolas Schreck are interviewed by televangelist Bob Larson. The original interview was three hours long, and this tape culled an hour and a half from it. An even shorter version is now being marketed by Larson Ministries as his company nosedives toward well-deserved obscurity. You can inquire about the latest price for whatever version is now available at P.O. Box 36-C, Denver, CO 80236.

LaVey and Schreck do a good job of explaining the Satanic point of view on a variety of topics. Where you or I might say "Damn right!" or "Hear, hear!" Larson just gasps or looks pained, but he does let them get their say. Apparently we Satanists are so evil that no further questioning from Larson is necessary; he expects the audience will react as he does. "You mean you wouldn't help them?" he whines. "I'd help you if you needed help." That's your tough luck, sucker. Schreck says it himself: "As we move into the Satanic Century, we're going to see Christianity's last gasp. Satan is the god of the strong, of the powerful, and of the leaders of the world. We're getting back to our animal natures. We're beasts."

LaVey and Schreck are both attractive young people and speak well, but the relentless pressure of Larson's condemnation (after all, these people would like to put us all to the match, and it's not fun talking to them, believe me) has made them a little grim during this presentation. Combined with their diabolical black outfits, one gets an almost Quakerish impression. But when Zeena cracks a smile, it is a charming one.

Die Hard. If you're like me and tend to avoid action movies, or any movies with Bruce Willis, media hypester, you may have missed this one during its run in theatres and on cable TV. It's a great suspense thriller with the most clever, Satanic villains I've seen in a long time, and there's a stunt atop this office skyscraper you won't soon forget. Good fun.

THE PHYSICS OF MYSTICISM

by Nemo

The New Age mysticism has been having a joyride at the expense of the rational human mind. Again and again we are seeing statements to the effect that "Quantum Theory has proven that reason is a bust." We are being told that reality is stranger than we "can know" and that the pitifully weak and limited human mind is incapable of grasping the universe as it is.

Then the mystics pull out books written by (a hush falls over the room) physicists! These high priests of the super-religion of Science (spell this religion with a capital "S," please) state that there really isn't any "reality" (The Copenhagen Interpretation by Niels Bohr) or that reality is created by your mind alone (Taking the Quantum Leap by Fred Wolf is an example of this view) or reality is a "oneness" and any other "observer" is merely an illusion (The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra expounds on this interpretation) or there are many "realities" (so that each choice by any entity generates a universe for each possible choice) or "Quantum logic" (normal "logic" cannot understand reality and we need a "new" logic) or consciousness creates reality (as supported in The Fabric of the Universe by Denis Postle) or the duplex world of Heisenberg in which everything is an unreal potential until observed.

All of the above are models intended to explain in terms we can talk about, what Quantum Theory implies about reality. Each of the above models has one particularly serious problem. The problem is not over the question of whether or not Quantum Theory is true. A theory cannot technically be "true" anyway, only more or less useful. Quantum Theory has proven itself to be very useful and while, eventually, it will undoubtedly give way to a better theory in the course of time, it remains a very useful theory. No, the difficulty with these models is that they all undercut the possibility of human knowledge. In other words, for any of the above models to be correct, we could never know that fact nor anything else for that matter!

Knowledge relies upon reason as the non-contradictory identification of the facts of reality. If you undercut reason you cannot prove or disprove anything! If you cannot validate or disprove anything to be true or false, existent or nonexistent, then it is impossible for you to have anything but opinion. Knowledge becomes impossible and only arbitrary assertions can be made. This error has been called "The Fallacy of the Stolen Concept" by psychologist Nathaniel Branden in his early work with the philosophy of Objectivism. In essence the "stolen concept" is the use of an idea to prove itself invalid or the use of any idea to prove that its conceptual origins are invalid. For example, if I used the concept of "red" to prove that "color" did not exist, it would be immediately obvious that what I was doing was irrational. In precisely the same way, when a physicist claims to be able to "prove" that reason isn't reliable, he is stealing the concept of reason to disprove reason! "Proving" something presupposes a proof based upon reason. In the realm of knowledge you cannot pull yourself up by your own bootstraps without falling on your face!!

Beyond this inherent logical flaw, each of the above models denies that reason can handle the "reality" it postulates.

The Copenhagen Interpretation is the worst in that it basically shrugs and says "What reality?" An anti-realist position makes a mockery of explanation and is, instead, a useless apology for not pursuing knowledge.

The mind-reality model described by Wolf leaves us with a solipsism that undercuts the possibility of consciousness. If there is nothng[6] separate from you to become conscious of, then consciousness is not present. To be conscious is, by definition, to be concious of something. Capra's "oneness" leads to the same reason-undercutting conclusion as do the models of Postle, Heisenberg and Wolf.

"Quantum Logic" confuses logic with subsets of particularized mathematical situations called, incorrectly, "logic" (suchas Boolean logic, for example). Reason is not just the particular way our human nervous system juggles concepts. Reason relies upon a means of identifying these concepts (and the experiences which underlie them) and then validating these concepts. The alternative to a logic which validated the facts of reality would be to use a logic which invalidated the facts of reality!

Finally, the "many worlds" model reveals itself to be not so much an explanation as a failure to explain what reality is. Please understand that the "other realities" constantly being generated could never in any way have any information about each other to meet the needs of this theory. In other words, if this model of many realities ever did generate evidence to support it, it would be disproven! This is the rational equivalent of demanding that someone prove that UFO's don't exist!

Yet there remains one other model which does not condemn reason and the ramifications of this model have far-reaching consequences for the serious Satanist. The author is Albert Einstein and the model is called Neorealism. Neorealists hold that the foundation of reality consists of "ordinary objects." They reject the need for reality, as we know it, breaking down when we examine the ultimate building blocks from which all the universe is composed. Neorealists belive that the proponents of the other seven quantum models are guilty of failing to distinguish between abstract extrapolation and the simplicity of every other aspect of reality thus far investigated. The Neorealist school is opposed to the "mystification" and obscurity seen most blatantly in the Copenhagen Interpretation. As Einstein explained it, "I still believe in the possibility of a model of reality -- that is, of a theory which represents things themselves and not merely the probability of their occurrence." Neorealism, in essence, holds that our familiar "common sense" view of reality can and will extend to the quantum level given time.

What we do know, to date, concerning the implications of Neorealism is that due to Bell's Theorem (which is based strictly upon observation and thus is considered reliable) it must be possible for faster-than-light (FTL) communication to go on in our very real and objective universe. Whether this involves Rupert Sheldrake's hypothetical "morphic fields" or not, we do not know. What we do know is that of all the reality models of Quantum Theory only Neorealism meets all the known criteria and then additionally undercuts all of the mystical doctrines.

Why have so many physicists succumbed to the irrationalities of the other seven models? Perhaps you can guess this by considering the words of Prince Louis de Broglie who predicted the wave nature of matter and eventually abandoned the mystical models turning again to Neorealism. As he explained, "I realized that I had been seduced by the current fashion, and began to understand why I had been so uneasy whenever I tried to give a lucid account of the probability interpretation." The truly astounding thing about these other seven perspectives is that it does not require a degree in subatomic physics to uncover the hatred behind this need to invalidate the rational human mind. You have only to understand a few rudimentary concepts involving logic.

The complete answer is simple for the Satanist to understand if we listen to the Satanist who formulated the Neorealism model: "The Heisenberg-Bohr tranquilizing philosophy -- or religion? -- is so delicately contrived that, for the time being, it provides a gentle pillow for the true believer from which he cannot very easily eb aroused. So let him lie there." So said Einstein and so he held to his dying day.

What are the implications for us today? First, the best understanding we have of the nature of reality denies all mystical cosmologies whether they are Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Shinto, Hindu, etc. There is no room for contradiction in the universe such that causality does not exist. However cause and effect may just possibly be able to move across what appears to be time. In other words, it may be possible to have a future cause for a past event. (Shades of the ECI!) Causality is validated but not tied to our one-way linear conception of time. In all of this there is no loophole possible for "God" or mystical reality.

For the Satanist this is a reaffirmation of the truth of his mind's ability to understand reality and the comprehension of yet another avenue for exploring paranormal phenomena, our "Greater magic." For the religious mystic, waving the latest paperback swill of Quantum Ignorance, it is a total condemnation of their beliefs and of the minds which weakly attempt to hold those beliefs.

HAIL EINSTEIN!

HAIL SATAN!

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ED GEIN, AMERICA'S SECRET HERO

by James Sass

Who's your favorite psycho killer of the silver screen? Norman Bates? Leatherface? Well, you no longer have to flip a coin. No reason to tear your black heart in two, because you are about to meet all of your favorite cannibalistic, necrophilic psycho killers in one man, and better yet, he's not a figment of B-movie dreamland. He's real as grandpa. Meet Ed Gein.

Ed was a quiet man with a smile for everyone. He and his brother, Henry, worked the 160 acre farm and tended their mother until her death in '45. Ma Gein looked after her two boys, kept 'em under her wing so to speak, and convinced 'em early on that they should stay away from them no good women and keep to tendin' the farm, which they did. After all, mother knows best.

Sometime later on, Ed's brother burned to death in a forest fire.

Ed took to deep thinking and decided to seal off his mother's room and parlor. (Sound familiar?) When the government provided him with a subsidy through the Soil Conservation Plan, Ed found himself with plenty of time on his hands and started taking a keen interest in anatomy, devouring many books on the subject.

Around this time, Ed got another bored farmer named Gus to help him dig up graves. It seems that Ed the Anatomist needed female cadavers for "experiments." "Hello Gus? This is Ed. Get on over here as soon as ya ken, an bring yer shovel. I needs some more specimens."

Little did Gus know that secretly, Ed wanted to study the structure of female genitalia in preparation for some sort of do-it-yourself transsexual operation. Ed knew it was best to keep quiet about such things; after all, he didn't want old Gus to think he was some kind of a sissy.

Gus, it seems, never knew of the ultimate fate of their grave loot. He just helped Ed dig 'em up and cart 'em back to Ed's shed. All in the name of science, no doubt. Who knows what Gus would have thought had he peeped into Ed's kitchen window late at night and saw him pacing the floor in his custom-tailored leather leggings, vest and mask.

After the good parts were removed (head, heart, liver, intestines, genitalia, strips of flesh, etc.) Ed burned the excess meat and fat and buried the bones in a secret place. After old Gus was carted off to the retirement home, graveyards just didn't hold the same charm for Ed. Polishing up his old .22 pistol, Ed walked up to the saloon in Pine Grove, shot the barmaid, Mary Hogan, in the head, and carted her body back to the farm on a sled. All in the name of science.

Ed frequented the old hardware store in Plainfield (it was probably where he bought his surgical tools) chatting with the son of the woman who ran the place. Ed asked the boy when he planned to go hunting next. The boy (who also happened to be Deputy Sheriff) said he was going out the next morning. For some reason Ed told the boy, Frank Worden, that he was coming to the store the next morning to score some antifreeze.

So. while Frank was out hunting, Ed walked into the hardware store, bought some antifreeze, and shot Mrs. Worden in the head with a .22. Ed promptly absconded with the body and the cash register (he was curious to see how it worked) and locked up the store behind him.

Later that afternoon, Deputy Frank returned from his hunt to find the store locked and Mommy gone. Upon entering the store, Deputy Frank finds the space where the cash register used to be and a pool of blood where Mommy used to be. On the counter was a receipt for one can of antifreeze! Two plus two equaled four and Deputy Frank hit the road to find Ed Gein at a diner Frank knew he frequented, but not before dispatching the Sheriff to the farmhouse.

Deputy Frank put the question to Ed: "Where's my Mommy?"

Ed answered, "Gosh, Deputy Frank, I don't know."

Deputy Frank didn't buy it and took Ed back to the stationhouse to wait for the Sheriff and hear what he had to say.

Before too long the Sheriff returned, glassy-eyed and pale, and told of what he had found in the Gein farmhouse: bracelets made of human skin, four human noses in a cup on the kitchen table, a pair of human lips dangling from the windowsill on a string, a tom-tom made from human flesh and a coffee can, Ed's special vest, leggings and nine masks in all, a human heart in a pan on the stove, ten female heads sawed-off at the eyebrows, another head made into a soupbowl, and a refrigerator filled with frozen body parts. All together the various pieces added up to at least fifteen women.

Poor Ed spent the rest of his life in Wisconsin's Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

For years the old Gein farmhouse was the target of rocks and snowballs for the neighborhood boys, until one night it was torched. Its charred remains stood for many years as an evil landmark to the people of Plainfield. It's said that the older residents, who still remember the incident, refuse to drive past the Gein house. They take another route.

With the miracle of home video, we can bring the spirit of old Ed Gein to our homes in such great flicks as "Deranged," "Psycho" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacres" Parts I, II and III.

Ed Gein will live forever on the silver screen, our collective memory -- America's secret hero.

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NOW YOU WILL WITNESS THE GRISLY AFTERMATH OF SADISTIC TORTURE, UNSPEAKABLE MURDER, AND UNIMAGINABLE SEX CRIMES...AND YOU'LL SEE MAJOR HOLLYWOOD STARS TAKING THEIR FINAL BOW BEFORE THE CORONER'S LENS IN EXCLUSIVE TABLEAUS OF SUICIDE AND SELF-ABUSE!

THE CASUAL VIEWER WILL LONG BE UNABLE TO PURGE THESE GRIM, STARTLING IMAGES FROM THEIR MEMORY.

TO TOP OFF THIS SPELLBINDING PRESENTATION IS A RARE APPEARANCE BY ONE OF THE WORLD'S FOREMOST AUTHORITIES ON THE MACABRE... THE EVER-FASCINATING DR. ANTON SZANDOR LAVEY! THE FORMER CRIME SCENE PHOTOGRAPHER AND CONTROVERSIAL AUTHOR OF "THE SATANIC BIBLE" IS THE HOST AND NARRATOR OF "DEATH SCENES"... THIS IS THE DEFINITIVE NO-HOLDS-BARRED IMMERSION INTO A CRUEL, SAVAGE REALITY MOST CHOOSE NOT TO ACKNOWLEDGE. "DEATH SCENES" FORCES IT'S[7] AUDIENCE INTO A FACE TO FACE CONFRONTATION WITH MAN'S MOST INHUMAN ATROCITIES!

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THE CHURCH OF SATAN

by Blanche Barton

A History of the World's Most Notorious Religion!

(available late August, 1990 C.E.)

Where Satanism has been, its present state, and where it is going, plus a guide to ritual magic and formation of groups and grottos.

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SATANIC ROOTS (Part II)

by Philip Marsh

SOCRATES & PLATO

Socrates and Plato are linked historically. Judeo-Christianity and Humanitarianism have both sought to perpetuate this connection in order to conceal the Satanic cast of the Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic tradition by mixing it and confusing it with with the Socratic-Aristotelian tradition. Only by ripping Socrates and all he represented cleanly away from Plato once and for all, which scholars who fancy themselves "moral" resist, can the Satanic cast of the Platonic-Hellenic tradition stand out.

In Plato's dialogues, Socrates is almost invariably the principle speaker. A departure from this only occurs in Plato's later dialogues, like "Timaeus," in which the principle speaker is the eponymous Pythagorean astronomer (Freeman, p. 240).

Plato met Socrates and listened to him. Since Socrates wrote nothing, almost all we know about him comes through Plato, in whose dialogues one must seek the ideas of both. Plato and Socrates are so easy to mix up, that one can mistake Plato's Theory of Forms as "Socrates' Theory of Forms."

Socrates hollow boast is famous: he claimed that, unlike his fellow Athenians, at least he knew that he knew nothing! Yet he repeatedly evinces, in the early dialogues, sheer faith in the immortality of the soul, and an unshakable, yet never satisfactorily justified conviction that goodness, virtue and justice exist and make men happy (Plato's "Gorgias," translated by Donald J Zeyl). His obedience to civil authority, despite having no convincing reasons for it, have won him the admiration of Christian, Jew, Marxist, and moralist alike. Meanwhile, Plato's Pythagorean outlook with its effort to rip off nature's disguises and seek deeper explanations, quietly, but not without immense resistance, became the approach of physical science. We shall see why Christian writers have extolled Socrates as a forerunner of Jesus Christ, the book about whom (The Holy Bible) is still the best selling book in the Western World. It is a little known fact, that as of 1961, the second best selling book in the Western World was one that continued the tradition of the mathematikoi: Euclid's Elements (The Main Stream of Mathematics, Edna P. Kramer, p. 47)

The problem of which beliefs are Socrates' and which are Plato's is referred ot by students of the subject as "The Socratic Question" (Plato, Pontagoras and Meno, Introduction by W.K.G. Guthrie, p. 16). This can be a difficult problem for new readers, but there actually is almost complete agreement on the subject among scholars. In fact, there is almost complete agreement as to exactly at what point in each dialogue Plato first breaks off from Socrates and begins to speak his own ideas through Socrates.

As already mentioned, Socrates was not Hellene, but rather of the tribe of Antiochus [Antioch was in Phrygia which is now in Turkey] (Plato, "The Apology" in Great Dialogues of Plato, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, p. 438). He was described as short, ugly, and snub-nosed (Plato, "The Theatetus" in The Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett, p. 144). His character was not only different from Plato's, but quite different from the Hellenes in general. He was utterly un-Satanic.

He had nothing to say on one of the educated Athenians' favortite[8] topics: the nature and origin of the Universe. He was more intertested in Man's ethics, laws and customs (nomos) rather than in nature (physis). He could not discuss the apeiron, nor the origin of the Universe. He concerned himself with disputing ethics and political matters with clever imposters. Robert Graves believes that myths frightened or offended him, especially Pelasgian cult ideas and symbols (Graves, The White Goddess, pp. 10-11). In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates says "But I have no leisure at all for such matters; and the cause of it, my friend, is this: I am not yet able, according to the Delphic precept, to know myself." (Graves, p. 11). Socrates is referring to the priestess at Delphi, who commanded him to "know thyself," a task he embarked upon. The oracle priestess seemed to know Socrates better than he knew himself, and she appears to have mocked him. She apparently knew that he considered the study of nature and the cosmos as irrelevant to self-knowledge, i.e., that Socrates was someone cut-off from nature, in mind, spirit and body. He was a confirmed city man, who confessed to Phaedrus that "fields and trees will not teach me anything, but men do." (Graves, p. 11). Socrates was the prototypical Judeo-Christian and humanitarian ethicist, for whom man is the "element" of the Universe most deserving of thought and attention. This is opposed to the Pythagorean idea that man, beast and plant are akin and merely part of nature, which deserves study. Socrates' words are in direct contrast to those of a medieval Pythagorean, Bernard of Morlaix, 1140 C.E., of N.W. Europe who said "trees and stones will teach you more than you can learn from the mouth of a doctor of theology" (Graves, p. 238). Bernard was not a nature-worshipper, but according to Graves "held that the mythical qualities of chosen trees and chosen precious stones, as studied by Pythagoras, explained the Christian mysteries better than Saint Augustine had ever been able to do" (ibid).

The celebrated concept of "Platonic Love," which prudes use to rationalize their contempt of their own sexuality, was really Socratic Love. Socrates turned his back not only on Hellenic science, poetry and myth, but also on the All-Mother goddess. It will be recalled that "to apeiron," the dark force infused in nature, was considered by the Pythagoreans to be dark, unlimited, female, the source of the daimones, and the cause of all creation, generation, enduring and inspiration. Socrates was in romantic homosexual love (but refrained from touching him with self-restraint) with Alcibiades, an Athenian youth, as attested to by Alcibiades himself in Plato's "Symposium." Socrates turned his back on the Goddess who sent the daimones as intermediaries so men could commune with the gods. Socrates practiced a kind of intellectual homosexuality, a hardened failure to respond to the female principle in nature, whether the response demanded was sexual, emotional, or intellectual. Diotima of Mantineia, the Arcadian witch we have already met in connection with Plato's theory of the daimones, cursed Socrates for this. She warned him that a man's love should be directed toward women, that three female Muses (the Hellenic Triple Muse) presided over all acts of creation and generation, whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual. She told him the goddesses Cybelle and Ishtar in the Temples of Attis tolerated sodomy between men in their temple courts, but she warned him that the ideal of intellectual homosexuality, or the severance of a man's psyche, thoughts and feelings from the female principle in nature, was a far more serious aberrancy and offence. She was referring to Socrates' efforts to make his intellect spiritually self-sufficient, to cut himself free from what Goethe called "the eternal feminine principle" and what Carl Jung called "a man's anima." She warned him he would not escape the power and wrath of the All-Mother in her many forms: Leucotheia, Hecate, Athena (Graves, pp. 10-12).

As a result of her curse, Socrates got Xantippe, a peevish, scolding shrew of a wife. His beloved Alcibiades became a self-destructive, vicious, treacherous ruinator of Athens. Socrates died under a death sentence from a court of Athens by drinking hemlock, a leaf sacred to Hecate, perfecting the delicious revenge of the All-Mother prophesied by Diotima.

Denial of the Dark Principle, as Nietzsche pointed out, results in what he called the Apollonian (ordered, logical, mechanical, rational), completely severed from the Dionysian (intuition, instinct, passion, inspiration), which results in Akatharti, or Thanatos: a man who is a head with no body, or a man whose head is at war with the rest of his body. Hence we have the Christian and other mind-body dualisms wherein "the evil body" is always causing "the pure mind" to have "evil thoughts." These so-called "evil thoughts" are in fact basic biological human natural instincts! This dualism is "the Apollonian at war with the Dio-nysian, or severed from the Dionysian," as if the person is utterly cut-off from Nature, even his own Nature, as in Socrates. Pythagoreans, with their measurement of interval, measurement of harmonies, and their profound logic with their inspiration and Katharsis, is an example of a perfect blend of Apollonian and Dionysian which results in "Zoös" and "Eros." The Dionysian can exist in a person by itself will still be Zoös-Eros (health of mind, body, and spirit), however one might consider such a person "stupid." There is also the case of a totally Apollonian person who is also Thanatos, who intellectually decides (!) to "become Dionysian;" and he makes a pathetic attempt to intellectually bring out his instincts (instead of just "let go," feeling which he is unable to do). The result is the inverse-Christian, still exclusively Apollonian, that is, Thanatos; and now thoroughly self-deluded.

It is no wonder then, that the exclusively Apollonian and Thanatos type of person finds the Pythagorean type, or Plato's Philosopher type, to be "mystical." It is no wonder either, that the Thanatos type despises, fears, ridicules, and battles what he can never be.

This martyrdom of Socrates, which is understood in the Judeo-Christian world to be some sort of self-sacrifice made for "freedom of speech and thought," enabled his influence to rise, contributing to the disrepute of myth, magic and science. According to Graves, the myths and their language survived "purely enough in the mystery-cults of Eleusis, Corinth, Samothrace and elsewhere, and when they were suppressed by the early Christian Emperors, they were still taught in the poetic colleges of Ireland and Wales, and in the witch-covens of Western Europe." (Graves, p. 12). This article will trace them as they survived in a Platonic form of magic called Theurgy that was forced underground by the Christian Emperors after they had destroyed, by Imperial edicts, the finest works of the Pythagorean tradition.

Socrates' formal legal charge was one of corrupting the youth of Athens. To the young Plato, Socrates seemed only to be disabusing smug teachers and pretenders to virtue of false ideas they had about their reputed knowledge of politics, ethics and the pursuit of the good life. Socrates' refusal to escape his death sentence when offered an opportunity to do so, is taken by some moralists who advocate "turn the other cheek" to be an exemplary instance of submitting to the will of bad men. Others extol Socrates' self-sacrificing obedience to legal and civil authority and its judgements rather than committing what Socrates argued in his final moments of life, to be the "greater evil" of disobeying, escaping and thereby breaking the law willfully. His absolute faith in an afterlife expressed moments before he drank the hemlock, with not one shred of evidence or science to back it up, and his unshakable conviction as to the virtue of his accepting the death sentence, has led some commentators to compare him directly to Jesus (Five Great Dialogues, translated by Reverend B. Jowett, in the introduction by Louise R. Loomis, p. 7.)

Undoubtedly the pride Judeo-Christian and humanitarian intellectuals feel about Socrates' death is first and foremost augmented by the fact that the only time Socrates ever got bitter or ill-mannered in any dialogue was in Plato's "Gorgias," in which he had the ill-luck of a head-on encounter with a Satanic personality named Callicles. Callicles presented to Socrates the Satanic idea that customs and laws are purely matters of mutual agreement and convention, and are contrary to nature. The correct thing to do, Callicles says, is to follow nature, and if one's nature is above or outgrows petty convention and morality, that man should put himself above the law and be his own law. Callicles says it is his natural right and even duty to do this, and to seek to dominate and use what he can for his own personal gratification. Callicles further states that suffering what is unjust is certainly more shameful than doing an injustice. He says that nature dictates that it is just that the superior have a greater share of things than the inferior. A superior man, he says, does not seek to restrain his pleasure or appetites, he devotes his courage and intelligence to maximizing his capacities for these. Finally, Callicles states that laws were devised by the weaker to restrain, as much as possible, the stronger (Plato, "Gorgias," translated by J. Zeyl, pp. 52 and ff).

Socrates launches into a well-argued refutation of hedonism, but not until after he unexpectedly loses his usual tolerance, wit and oft-times humor. That this tantrum in which Socrates comes as near to blows as we ever see, is genuinely Socrates' response to Callicles and not Plato's is attested to by the fact that the "Gorgias" is one of the dialogues belonging to Plato's early period, in which he was more concerned with presenting Socrates' views than his own. It does not belong to the later group in which Plato uses Socrates and others to relate his Pythagorean ideas (Plato, "Gorgias," translated by D.J. Zeyl, introduction, note 2, p. xii). We shall later deal briefly with Plato's idea, one that has stuck painfully in the soft craw of the Judeo-Christians and humanists for two-thousand years, that the philosopher-king is "above the law."

The young Plato seems to have regarded Socrates much as did other Athenians, as a fascinating, but unusual bird. Socrates certainly did exercise a fascination on Athenian youth, and even old folks are said to have thrown blankets on the ground in fair weather just to see him go into one of his cataleptic trances wherin he stood motionless for hours, an activity more than one historian, such as Nietzsche, found "morbid." Socrates claimed to be under the influence of a daimon (demon) himself, who was obviously unable or unwilling to teach him anything. Socrates claimed the demon warned him whenever he was about to do something unvirtuous! He received no such warning before drinking the hemlock (which killed him) - so he drank it (Plato, "The Apology," translated by F.J. Church, p. 47).

In Plato's early dialogues, which are generally accepted as a true representation not of Plato's own thoughts but of what Socrates actually said and did, Socrates states that he engages in a two-step process in his conversations with pretenders to virtue and ethical "knowledge."

In the first stage, Socrates disabuses or rids them of false ideas and smug convictions. Many of his verbal victims showed appreciation for this, and the young Plato, already innately Pythagorean (Freeman, op. cit. p. 18), seems to have regarded this step of the process as a form of Katharsis, a release or purging from lies and falsehoods. This state is called the Socratic "elenchus" (Plato, Protagoras and Meno, W.K.C. Guthrie, see his intro. to the "Meno," p. 108). In this stage, one discovers that one is really like Socrates: one knows only that he knows nothing! (Let us hope Satanists do not look inside themselves and discover that they know nothing, that could be dangerous!).

Socrates himself called the second stage of the process "mental midwifery" (maieutic), in which he aided his students in delivering, or giving birth to ideas already locked inside themselves, as if they were pregnant. Socrates' method intended to assist Athenian youth in defining and redefining moral, political, or religious terms like courage, justice, and piety according to their own insights. The young Plato, we shall see, interpreted this as an example of the Pythagorean anamnesis or recollection, an awakening from the forgetfulness that comes with rebirth. But instead of remembering former existences, Plato focused on the remembrance of the deeper laws of nature and the cosmos, not merely moral or political notions.

PLATO

There is a great deal of agreement as to exactly when Plato takes over and begins to use Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own ideas in the dialogues. This occurs in the "Meno" at Section 81A (Plato, Protagoras and Meno, W.K.C. Guthrie, p. 129 and ff). The tone of the dialogue changes abruptly and "Socrates" suddenly refers rather atypically to the view of certain "priests and priestesses" and "poets who are divinely inspired" (ibid. p. 129). He then proceeds to introduce the Pythagorean notion of anamnesis.

There are many oblique references to the Pythagoreans in Plato's later dialogues, in which characters other than "Socrates" begin to be used as Plato's mouthpieces. More than one scholar has noticed how wary Plato is of mentioning Pythagoras by name (he does so only once !) and how careful he is not to identify the Pythagoreans by name (which he also does only oncel) (Burnet, op. cit. p. 85). In the "Theatetus," "Socrates" is made to say, immediately before a Pythagorean doctrine is introduced, "Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now, by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence." Theatetus answers, "Yes, indeed Socrates, they are very hard and impenetrable mortals." "Socrates" continues, "Far more ingenious are these brethren whose mysteries I am about to reveal to you." (Plato, "Theatetus," translated by B. Jowett, p. 157).

These later dialogues are separated from the early ones by what puzzled and perplexed Plato scholars have called a "wide interval of philosophical speculation." (Jowett, op. cit. p. 709). The real "interval" is that the Pythagorean Plato takes over. His youthful fascination for Socrates seems gone.

The evidence that Plato was a Pythagorean is indirect. Much of Plato's knowledge is said to have been transmitted to him from a Pythagorean book he obtained. The book was written by the Pythagorean Philolaus, who was the first Pythagorean known to write anything down. The story of how Plato purchased this book through a man named Dion of Syracuse is preserved by Iamblichus (this fragment appears in Kirk and Raven, op. cit. p. 221). This book perished in the general Christian destruction of the authentic Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic tradition, but a copy of it was preserved by Plato's nephew and successor as head of the academy Plato founded. The dialogue, "The Meno," in which scholars see the first incidence of Plato spouting the Pythagorean doctrine of anamnesis, was written after Plato met a Pythagorean named Archytas of Tarentum, a pupil of Philolaus. Written correspondence between Archytas and Plato has survived, and Archytas once intervened to save Plato's life (Freeman, p. 233 and ff). Archytas was the inventor of mathematical mechanics (ibid. p. 237). Plato was about 40 years old at this time. Plato's dialogue "The Timaeus" is so purely Pythagorean that the claim was made in the ancient world by Diogenes Laertius, that Plato plaigerized "The Timacus" from the lost book Philolaus wrote (Kirk and Raven, op. cit. p. 308).

A complete account of Plato's philosophy will not be given here. Instead we will pursue only what is relevant to the Satanist and what is relevant to the Judeo-Christian cover-up.

As stated earlier, the notion Plato presents in "The Meno" is not the Pythagorean doctrine of anamnesis as a key to recollecting prior existences, but rather a type of anamnesis wherein one recollects or rediscovers, deep within oneself (if one is what Plato called a "philosophos") knowledge of the order of the cosmos, of nature. Thus one can recollect it if one has it! This knowledge is rather blandly and evasively referred to today, by academicians as "a priori" knowledge. The search within oneself for clear definitions of ethical ideas à la Socrates is abandoned.

A dramatic example of a priori knowledge was the case of Pascal, the French mathematician, whose Christian father forbade him to study geometry. On his own, the brilliant boy drew on his floor, and was up to the 32nd theorem of Euclid's Elements before he got caught. Plato would have said that Pascal remembered this.

Plato has a proof of this, which may have been used by Pythagoras himself in teaching the mathematikoi. In "The Meno," "Socrates" (as Plato's mouth- piece) interrogates an unschooled slave boy about the sort of thing which Socrates (the real Socrates) himself never quizzed anyone on: mathematics. He asks the slave boy how to make a square double in area to any square you might give him to start with. The boy incorrectly says "you double the sides." "Socrates," by asking him the right questions, gets the boy to discover that such a doubled square really has four times the area of the original. By continuing to press the issue, the boy discovers that to make a square double in area, you have to make its sides equal to he diagonal of the original square. Like this:

This may be obvious to some readers who have already studied Euclidean geometry, but, the boy has studied nothing. "Socrates" never gives the boy a decent clue; he just pressures the boy to ferret out contradictions and falsehoods that his wrong guesses logically lead to.

By this example in "The Meno," Plato believes he has convinced a reader that certain men are not born a "tabula rasa" (blank slate for a mind). The idea that all men are equally, by birth, blank of mind and get filled up with knowledge and teaching to their capacities, is a humanistic, environmentalistic, and egalitarian falsehood that has become a dogma. The latter doctrine (blank slate) comes from Aristotle. Leibniz, the inventor of the Calculus, already quoted above, should be someone who knows something about where newmathematical ideas come from (he had them). Leibniz said Plato's proof in "The Meno" of the doctrine of recollection was "excellently well considered, a fine experiment." Leibniz referred to the interrogation method used on the boy as "animadversion" - a kind of strict, critical questioning procedure. He stated that Aristotle's conception of the soul as a "blank slate" at birth is "vulgar - a popular notion." He said "Plato goes deeper. Aristotle's influential ideas on this subject (and in general) are good for ordinary usage of life, for there it serves no purpose to go further." (Leibniz, op. cit. pp. 44-46).

This idea of innate ideas or knowledge surfaced again in a new form in the last decade when the world's leading entomologist, E.O. Wilson, collaborated with a mathematician and physicial named C.J. Lumsden, to formulate a "new" science they called "sociobiology." This science attempts to formulate, in the light of the revolutionary discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick, how genetic imprinting at the moment of conception determines one's cast of mind, abilities, and even the kinds of social systems and choices that individuals, entire societies, and races will make. (Genes, Mind, and Culture, C.J. Lumsden and E.O. Wilson). E.O. Wilson has since returned to private curating at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, due to the fact that abuse and even water and coffee were consistently thrown at him when he lectured on this science - thrown by egalitarians claiming to be "anti-fascist." Dr. Lumsden has continued with new associates at the University of Toronto where there is more academic freedom than in the U.S. (Author's note: All studies of identical twins separated at birth and raised in vastly different environments, who are later found, brought together, and studied, prove these data to be true. The identicalness in character, thinking, IQ, etc. of these twins is genetic, having nothing to do with the environment). Plato's notion of inborn or innate knowledge not common to all men, remains deeply offensive to many.

Plato states that when a "soul" overcomes the forgetfulness which shrouded it at birth, it may (if it is the soul of a philosopher) discern within itself what Plato called The Forms ("Idea" in Greek). This is Plato's controversial Theory of Forms, and will be dealt with here because it is commonly thought to be some sort of "other-worldly nonsense" or a pernicious dualism of "heaven wherein the Forms reside, versus an earth in which mere sense data reign."

This sort of dualism can actually be found in Parmenides, one of Plato's Hellenic predecessors (see Kirk and Raven, chapter X). Parmenides had a dualistic epistemology: there was the "Way of Truth" by which one obtains knowledge of the "One Reality" versus the "Way of Seeming" which is never knowledge, but falsehood, and is about the objects of the world of the senses (Kirk and Raven, ibid.).

Contrary to this, Plato presents in his Republic, Book VI, and in his "Theatetus," the notion that there must be at least four levels or degrees of knowing characterized in the Republic as 1) ignorance or conjecture, 2) opinion or belief, 3) understanding and 4) reason (Five Great Dialogues of Plato, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, p. 309). Those who misunderstand this theory Plato presents very simply out of courtesy to the unfamiliar, are those alluded to above in "Theatetus" as "hard and impenetrable," i.e., those lacking the spirit of the philosopher, those who can never know because it is not "within their spirit," as Leibniz put it. Plato likens them to benighted men trapped in a dark cave who can see only shadows on the walls of the cave, but are too distant themselves for the cave-dwellers to even suspect as existing. These people live without ever knowing what really exists, mistaking shadows for realities, and only some are ever able to transcend this predicament (Plato's Republic, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, p. 312 and ff). The philosopher or "talented" individual finds his way out of the cave and perceives the Forms of which the shadows cast inside the cave are but pale imitations.

This cave of ignorance is left behind not by abstinence, prayer or good works, but by the study of arithmetic, geometry, music and harmony, astronomy, etc. (Republic, Book VII).

Plato is oftentimes considered to be the first Greek philosopher to have consciously thought anything could exist otherwise than in space, i.e., that something could exist without occupying or taking up space (This is the opinion of Kirk and Raven, op. cit. p. 250). Plato's favorite example is one that comes readily to mind: numbers; but he said that none of the other Forms exist in space.

Virtually all of the problems and objections intelligent people can come up with against this Theory of Forms were known to Plato himself, and are argued in his later dialogues. This lead the 20th century mathematician and process philosopher A.N. Whitehead to quip that all philosophy in the West ever after was but a "series of footnotes to Plato" (quoted in the introduction to Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, by Plato; introduction by Robert D. Cummings, p. vii).

The Forms, then, are one of the kinds of things the soul remembers when it overcomes amnesia and emerges from Plato's allegorical "cave of shadows."

In presenting the Theory of Forms in his dialogues, Plato at first implies to the uninitiate that everything known in the world of sense has a Form it "participates" in or mimics (methexis), much as a shadow mimics, in a deficient, incomplete fashion, the object casting it. What makes a baseball, Plato seems to be saying, is its imitation of, and participation in, a Form "Baseball" in the Realm of Forms which do not exist, at least as a whole in space. But in later dialogues, Plato seems to say that the only Forms he really perceived to exist, are mathematical, structural, and moral Forms. An example is the Forms of Right and Wrong. For example, Dr. LaVey, in The Satanic Bible, characterized certain unreleased emotions as "malignant." This clearly implies that he has an innate sense of Right vs. Wrong, a sense which is utterly lacking in many people, usually referred to as sociopaths or psychopaths; and certainly innately deficient in most Christians.

Plato seems to have held, likewise, that a baseball, for example, does not participate in an Eternal Form "Baseball," but indubitably does participate in and mimics the Form Sphere, the number PI, and other such Forms.

Two comments are in order: 1. Sociopaths, psychopaths and many so-called "moral" people considered legally sane in Judeo-Christian society can never seem to learn or have instilled in them any ideas of right vs. wrong, no matter how much one threatens, rewards, or teaches them. Many revel in the emotions Dr. LaVey characterized as malignant, and even seem to prefer being unreleased or pent-up emotionally (akatharti), to being released. Plato would have said they are truly ignorant and they can not be taught. But he also stated the obvious: they can be made to obey, in many cases, and should be made to - that is "justice." 2. Regarding mathematical Forms: the concept may seem too technical, but it is necessary to elaborate as these Forms were of primary interest to both Plato and his mathematikoi predecessors.

Most readers will understand that any baseball is never truly a sphere, yet they will admit they have an idea of a true sphere - a Form Sphere. Someone who has left the cave, as Plato would say, has seen the Form Sphere in a clearer way than most, and may even be able to define this Form as "all points in a three-dimensional space that are exactly the same distance from a central point." Remarkably, some may even be able to define and discuss a hypher-sphere, such as a four-dimensional sphere. When mathematicians discuss these arcane subjects, does anyone ever wonder where they have gotten these ideas?

An interesting further example is the realm of irrational or incommensural numbers, such as PI or √2. The Pythagoreans called such numbers "alogon," meaning they could not be spoken or written, and they were correct as to write out these numbers would require an infinite number of digits. A bar stool with a square seat of 1' per side has a diagonal which can be represented as √2', an irrational number. A mathematikoi or Platonist is apt to see this infinite, "apeiron" which is in fact in the everyday object.

Some people can directly see the infinite in the finite without any mathematical training, just as easily as some people can directly hear the differences in musical intervals without any musical training. It is known to these people the same way: by direct awareness, direct perception. There are those who cannot directly perceive these things who would dictate to the ones who can, what "can or what can not be perceived" and argue the fact that anyone can perceive it at all, or just outright attack the person as a "mystic." The most insidious thing these "can not know" types do is learn all the correct words of those who can perceive, and then proceed to declare themselves "the experts." As you will see later, this is exactly what Christian theologians did with Platonism. The only ones fooled were the ones who do not have the innate ability to Know. The ones who can and do Know have never been fooled - and are not fooled. These insidious parasites of knowledge cannot fool the knowers but they can and do persecute them, which only drives it all underground - again.

The Pythagorean dictum "all things are numbers" was a puzzle to Aristotle. He never could grasp, any more than the akousmatikoi could, how number alone could make the difference between lead and gold, or heavy and light in weight. He ridiculed these notions, implying that Plato and the Pythagoreans were making the nonsensical assertion that numbers exist outside space, and yet have weight, or as if they were saying some numbers are gold, others are lead, etc. Modern mathematical physics has completely vindicated the Pythagoreans and Plato. The Schroedinger Wave Equation and other equations describe perfect attunements, intervals and harmonies in detail. In certain of these equations, a number like one can be plugged in at certain variables and the equation collapses or reduces to a detailed description of the shape of a hydrogen atom. But if the number two is substituted in these equations in the same places, the equations reduce instead to a detailed description of the shape of a helium atom. Such numbers are called "atomic numbers," and the same can be done by substituting 79 for gold and 82 for lead, though the mathematics with such high atomic numbers gets too difficult for the best human brains.

So it is indeed number (atomic number) and harmony or attunement that determines "goldness" and "leadness." Number alone also determines heavy or light in the laws of celestial mechanics as formulated in Isaac Newton's Principia.

Aristotle persisted in the method of Socrates, which has no value at all in the realm of natural science. Aristotle used a method of seeking to define some sort of obscure, mystical "essence" of gold and lead, a method that Socrates applied in his favorite area of "research": Morality.

The Hellenistic atomist, Democritus, a predecessor of Plato, appears to have attributed to the atoms (which he said constituted all things) various random shapes, like pebbles on the shore, but much tinier. Plato, on the other hand, insisted that atoms must conform to regular shapes, such as the five regular three-dimensional solids, as in modern chemistry (Freeman, op. cit. p. 223). Platonic misrepresentation, in modern times, can go to great depths. (See Hogben, Mathematics for the Millions, pp. 229, ff)

Not only Aristotle, but other ancient writers, like Plutarch, appear to be a source of the wrong idea that Plato refused to have "recourse to the visible" and instead "relied upon pure reason." (Freeman, p. 237). What Plutarch should have said is that Plato was condemning ad hoc ways of studying astronomy (ibid.).

Plato's entire dialogue, "The Parmenides," seeks to reconcile logic and thought with sense perception (Freeman, p 152). This is obviously never a problem for those already characterized as not having Forms in their "spirit" to begin with. What they "see" with their senses is all they can know!

Plato was not a dualist, but held to an hierarchy of kinds of "knowing," or degrees of truth (recall levels of hearing: tone-deaf all the way to perfect pitch). His position on the ideal Forms was not an assertion, but an inference based on direct sense perception, combined with intuition, from the obvious perception of "more real than" to its limit. Gifted and intelligent people have no lack of ideas that some things are more permanent or real than others, more independent of sense perception, and more or less capable of being described. Most people lack any such awareness. To most people, such thinking is strange and alien, even puzzling and "mystical." Plato's whole epistemology, unlike Parmenides', is one of gradation to ideal limit. G.C. Field, the most understanding Plato scholar, stresses the naturalness of the transition from the "more or less" concepts to the "absolute" ones (G.C. Field, ThePhilosophy of Plato, Oxford, 1949). Plato and Pythagoras both would have reminded him that this is natural only to someone born with the Forms in his "spirit," no matter how dimly imprinted. No amount of teaching, as Leibniz said, can confer on someone an idea that is not already in his "spirit" (one might read, "in his genes"). "Platonism is a natural philosophical inclination of mathematicians, in particular those who think of themselves as the discovereers of new truth, rather than of new ways of putting old ones or making explicit logical consequences that were already implicit." (S. Korner, The Philosophy of Mathematics, p. 15).

Over and over again, creative, productive scientists and thinkers side with Plato and Leibniz, like Heinrich Hertz, the discoverer of electromagnetic or "wireless" waves: "One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and intelligence of their own, and that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers, that we get more out of them than was originally put into them." (Kramer, op. cit. p. 90). The scoffers at Plato, those who abused Pythagoras as "mystikos logos" or "mystic," have been the intellectually barren, sterile souls who can only conserve, criticize and analyze, but not create. And, they conserve it inaccurately! It is as if, even when told, they just can not know!

Plato admitted that, in some cases, things are what they appear to be ("Theatetus," translated by B. Jowett, pp. 153-154). He refutes dualism succinctly (loc. cit. p. 250 & ff). Yet, he insists "the true lover of knowledge strives after being. He will not rest at those multitudinous phenomena whose existence is appearance only." (quoted in The Universe and Dr. Einstein, Lincoln Barnett, p. 113). This drive or love (Eros) for knowledge remains a puzzle to those characterized (above) by Leibniz and Plato as vulgar, hard and dense.

Plato's approach is that of science at its best today. Einstein said, "To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness." (Barnett, op. cit. p. 108).

If the reader pursues Plato's theory of knowledge in greater depth, he will be surprised at how many of Einstein's own terms (in the above quote) recur in Plato: "highest wisdom," "most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive 'forms' (sic!)." Note that Einstein rightly characterizes this as knowledge but also a feeling.

If you can understand this, you will correctly understand what Plato meant when he called the world of eyeball sight a "prison house." Otherwise, you will interpret this as a dualism, some sort of fore-runner of the demented Christian defamation of the senses, material things, the body and nature. The Christians themselves, desperate to borrow from a sound philosophical system to give foundation to their silly, untenable theology of monotheism, interpreted Plato this way to themselves.

Plato founded a school called the Academy, wherein the lost book of the Pythagorean Philolaus was preserved. This school continued in existence, despite the persecutions, for over 900 years, until the Christian Emperor Justinian closed it in 529 C.E., but not before it produced the most eloquent enemies the Christians ever encountered, as we shall see in the final section to follow next quarter. Friedrich Nietzsche, who had little to say in approval of anyone (!), cast his final judgement on Plato as being one of those who wanted to see "how far his strength will reach. But they do it as individuals....how far man might be driven in his evolution....where has the plant "man" hitherto grown up most magnificently." (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, translated by Kaufman and Hollingdale, p. 511).

In the following section we shall very briefly cover Neo-Platonism in the Christian era, the deadly enemies of Christianity it produced, how Platonism was co-opted or absorbed by Christian theologians, and how magic survived in the early Christian era as a Platonic prerogative or occupation in the form of Theurgy, Hecate devotion, and knowledge through "demons."

(Next quarter Part 3, Neo-Platonism)

The Fine Art of the Nasty-Gram

by Jayne Wayne

Letters, we get letters. Lotsa letters. And most of them are quite pleasant and polite. Honey LaSalle gets the most interesting letters (along with some gifts - lucky girl!) and Nemo gets some quite profound. But we all get the occasional ...Nasty-Gram!

Here's how to recognize a nasty-gram. It's not just an insult letter, or a letter of complaint, or even a letter arguing a point. Those are often amazingly civil. It's a letter from someone who's trying to ask a question, or answer one, or merely give some necessary information, and its[9] incredibly and unnecessarily nasty. The author could have been polite, pleasant, or even distantly businesslike, but instead he decides to burn the bridge of communication and put himself forever on your (s)hit list by dropping some venom along the way.

Many Satanists, or those along for the ride, are incapable of simply ignoring or politely rebuffing another, and instead jump all over people without wisdom or foresight. What happened to Lesser Magic? What happened to reserving your opinion until it is sought? (Satanic Rule of the Earth #1!) What's wrong with being nice when it won't cost you anything, and might even get you a thing or two?

You'll catch more flies with honey - wontcha, Honey?

CHURCH OF SATAN

FOR INFORMATION: send a self-addressed, stamped envelope or four IRCs to: P.O. Box 210082, San Francisco, CA 94121

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