La Vey, Anton Szandor. The Satanic Bible. New York, NY: Avon Books, 2005.
Today I’m reviewing an absolute seminal classic, one far better-known than the previous book I reviewed (Lords of the Left-Hand Path). It’s such a recognizable title that I almost feel ridiculous reviewing it at all—who would even need to read my review of a book like this? It is a near-certainty that most of my current readers have either already read it themselves or made up their minds long ago that they never intend to do so. That’s how powerful this book is.
There’s a method to my madness, however. As I mentioned in my previous book review, I’ve decided to review mainly books that I find relevant to the Word of Hermekate, and this book is indispensable in understanding the greater “Logos-centric” magic(k)al tradition in which the Word of Hermekate is rooted. This is a tradition emphasized most heavily by Temple of Set which focuses on “Words of Power” uttered by Magi, though the tradition originates with Aleister Crowley’s Word of Thelema. It also includes Frater Achad’s Word of Ma-Ion and Nema Andahadna’s Word of Ipsos. The Satanic Bible and the philosophy it describes are arguably outliers from this tradition in the sense that Anton LaVey largely panned Crowley’s esoteric ideas and did not see himself as partaking of the tradition; however, the Temple of Set’s founder, Michael Aquino, did come up within the Church of Satan as a student of LaVey, and so the Logos-centric tradition of magic(k) as it persists in the present day has inescapable roots here. More Words have been formally uttered within Temple of Set than outside of it, and the Temple would not have Come Into Being if it were not also for the work of Anton LaVey. Although he named himself a Magus, LaVey did not personally declare his Word of Indulgence in the sense that other Magi have declared theirs. “Indulgence” was instead recognized as a Word after-the-fact within the Temple of Set.
The connection between this book and The Word of Hermekate is characterized by contrast; although the ideas espoused in The Satanic Bible played a critical role in the modern conception of the Left Hand Path (LaVey was the first to use the term in a way roughly analogous with the widely-accepted understanding of the term in modern occulture), one major way of understanding the function of The Word of Hermekate is as a direct counter-balance to LaVey’s teachings. While Michael Aquino’s Word of Xeper played an important role in developing and refining the Left Hand Path as described by LaVey, it has done very little to contradict many of LaVey’s ideas in a forthright way. This undoubtedly has a lot to do with the closeness of the Temple of Set to the Church of Satan—not only in that its founder was LaVey’s student, but in the fact that the Temple was basically born of a schism from the Church, and even in the fact that LaVey’s own daughter, Zeena Schreck, served (very briefly, almost “momentarily”) as the Temple’s High Priestess. There are also likely some residual hard feelings between the two organizations over the schism, though most of the vitriol I have seen tends to run against the Temple rather than from the Temple—that is, some Satanists seem to delight in maligning the Temple as a whole, while most of what comes out of the Temple of Set are straightforward and factual criticisms of various actions that have been taken by LaVey. Even Peter Gilmore himself, Church of Satan’s current Magus and Anton LaVey’s successor, went out of his way to write a hit piece about the Temple.
I can add such organizational beefs to the list of reasons it is probably for the best that the Word of Hermekate is being uttered outside of the Temple or any other avowed Left Hand Path organization; if I had uttered the Word from within the Temple, its criticisms of LaVey would likely have been chalked up by many to this rivalry, and may not have been taken solely on their actual merit as a result.
Like Lords of the Left-Hand Path, this is another book I’ve read before—except this time, my last reading of The Satanic Bible was all the way back in high school. I thought it would be prudent to study it again more closely with the current understanding I have of the Left Hand Path so that I can properly treat various matters of concern in the revisions I’ll be making to the manuscript for my forthcoming book.
I didn’t have a lot of fun re-reading the book, in part because there are aspects of its message that I have never found pleasant, and in part because, let’s be real—I’ve been pretty hard on LaVey in my writings. I’ve talked a lot of shit about him even though I’ve also acknowledged some of his contributions in a more positive light. I still stand by my opinions about him as a person, but there was another dimension that weighed on my mind as I evaluated the book this time around: The fact that I know of other people who look up him, and that some of the things they admire about him are simply a matter of personal taste as opposed to being related to some of the more substantial ethical and philosophical concerns I have about his work. Some people just like his style. Also, they may admire some of the more valid points LaVey made—value he holds which I myself overlook, mainly because I don’t necessarily see them as all that unique. I’ll address those later, but basically, in those cases, I think I may have inadvertently alienated some people who otherwise enjoy and/or see value in my work by “yucking” their “yum,” and that’s not necessarily my goal.
That being said, LaVey was ruthlessly condescending and pretty judgemental himself about certain things—an entire section of this book was basically a justification for trampling or even eradicating those he considered to be weak—so in that sense, I don’t mind being overly harsh in my own critiques because he kind of deserves it.
And this might just be a good point at which to delve formally into the review proper.
The printing of The Satanic Bible that I’m reviewing opens with a mini-biography of Anton LaVey written by the above-mentioned Peter Gilmore, current Magus/High Priest of the Church of Satan (though the term “Magus” in this case should not be confused with the initiatory sense of the term in which I’ve been using it on this site—he most certainly does not have a Word and I honestly doubt he has a truly magic(k)al bone in his entire body, from a purely initiatory standpoint). It’s largely from things like this introduction and his comments about the Temple of Set in the article I linked to above—both of which contain blatant lies and other severe distortions of truth—that I form many of my strong opinions about the Church of Satan and of Satanism as a whole. Basically, such a willingness to “indulge” in utter falsehood is a despicable characteristic in my estimation, one which renders many of Satanism’s assertions utterly hypocritical. Satanists say they value personal qualities such as strength, and frankly, truly strong people don’t need to resort to lies. Strong people can stand in truth. At any rate, this opening spiel about LaVey’s life essentially repeats a long string of claims about his life that are highly dubious at best (such as his alleged affair with Marilyn Monroe) while directly accusing his detractors of being the real liars.
This is a lot of he-said, she-said in the end, but simply put, the only substantial biographies that have been written about Anton LaVey have been penned by people biased toward upholding his lies, while others have attempted to investigate various “facts” of his life and found no evidence to support many of his claims about himself. These are matters treated thoroughly in Lords of the Left-Hand Path by Stephen Flowers. Even as Flowers clearly lays out that LaVey’s biography is largely fictional, he is also much more sympathetic about it than I’m inclined to be, taking a seeming tack that such grandiose fiction and legend-building are relatively endearing traits, all a part of Anton LaVey’s charm, even part of his “magic(k).” As someone who aligns with the principle of Ma’at, which embodies truth, I’m obviously not interested in such an interpretation. I suppose I get why some people might consider it fun and games, and if it weren’t for various other aspects of LaVey’s ideas, I might even be inclined to agree with them.
However, as someone who’s supposed by Michael Aquino to have been “deputized” by The Prince of Darkness, I hold LaVey to a higher initiatory standard than being a glorified con-artist. I just do.
The Satanic Bible is divided into four separate “books,” each named after one of the four Arch Demons: Satan, Lucifer, Belial, and Leviathan. The Nine Satanic Statements (almost like the Church of Satan’s answer to The Ten Commandments of Christianity) are listed just before the opening of The Book of Satan. Statement #3 reads, “Satan represents undefiled wisdom, rather than hypocritical self-deceit!” Given how much he lied about his life, the fact that he himself chose the word “hypocritical” to include in this Statement was probably a major Freudian slip, because I don’t know anything more self-deceitful than making up most of your entire biography in order to make yourself seem more impressive to the public. As the book unfolds, critique of the hypocrisy of religion becomes a recurring theme, again something I find extremely ironic coming from such a hypocritical man…who founded a religion…
I’d find this all at least partially respectable if it turned out the whole thing was a self-aware joke, something he did very much on purpose as some kind of deeper artistic twist. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I think this was the case. I could see it being so, because it’s not like LaVey wasn’t clever. I could also see him being utterly blind to it all. Perhaps the fact that it’s so hard to tell is a sign of his success in accomplishing his goals.
The Book of Satan
The first section, “The Book of Satan,” subtitled “The Infernal Diatribe,” is by far the most controversial section of the book. This is mainly because it was this section for which LaVey pretty blatantly plagiarized the white supremacist tract Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard. The point of this section is to serve as an “opening volley,” a commencement of hostilities against Christendom. As he wrote in the introduction to this section:
The first book of the Satanic Bible is not an attempt to blaspheme as much as it is a statement of what might be termed “diabolical indignation.” The Devil has been attacked by the men of God relentlessly and without reservation. Never has there been an opportunity, short of fiction, for the Dark Prince to speak out in the same manner as the spokesmen of the Lord of the Righteous.
p. 29
This section also stands out in some significant ways from some of the more humanistic values that LaVey expresses in other parts of the book, which leads to a conclusion I’ve been reluctant to admit to in most of my critical statements about his work:
It’s quite likely he wrote The Book of Satan the way he did largely for shock value, that he just wanted to make it really “spicy” and provocative.
However, one of the reasons I don’t consider this a sufficient mitigating factor is that, based on my observations, many who adopt the label of “Satanist” or claim allegiance to the Left Hand Path seem to largely agree with the supremacist content of this book. In fact, it seems to me that for many people, the whole appeal of the Left Hand Path is that it seems to give license to their otherwise socially unacceptable supremacist views; they hold the antinomian impulse of the Left Hand Path as a “permission slip” to be bigots since breaking society’s rules is so strongly emphasized, and this is probably the one aspect of the Left Hand Path that does make it potentially dangerous to the rest of society in an undeniable way. Almost everywhere else, even the most antinomian impulses of the LHP have nothing to do with being a true menace to society and other people, and instead has everything to do with acknowledging the sovereingty and freedom of individuals.
If it weren’t for the fact that supremacist ideals are so explicitly encouraged in “The Book of Satan,” I think it’s likely that more people (maybe even most people) on the Left Hand Path would innately understand that in order to truly adhere to those principles of individual freedom and sovereignty, some form of mutual respect also needs to be upheld in principle; in other words, if you truly believe, as was written in “The Book of Satan,” in the principle of “Death to the weakling! Wealth to the strong!,” then you don’t really believe in a fundamental individual right to freedom. The two views are inconsistent (although, as we’ll see, this is a trademark of LaVey’s thought in general). It seems to me that this is a conclusion most mature individuals would reach, and this is one of the main reasons I find LaVey’s apparent lack of maturity in the extent of his showmanship and flamboyance to be unacceptable: He was careless enough about this that people have gotten hurt. This Book basically reads like an invitation to white supremacists to use the banner of Satanism to justify their views.
Many of the statements in this section are impassioned and hyperbolic, and with that kept in mind, not all of them are things I find disagreeable. Section II is basically a challenge to the hegemony of established world religions and a calling-out of their knack for twisting morality around to serve their aims while being relatively devoid of truth—but again, in light of some of the other statements LaVey makes in this chapter, many of these same statements could also apply to Satanism itself. Section III is basically a challenge to the New Testament principle of “Turn the other cheek,” but is thus also just a reaffirmation of the Old Testament formula of “An eye for an eye.” It’s less a valid critique of religious hypocrisy writ large and more a cherry-picking of extant religious doctrine. But at any rate, I tend to agree that people shouldn’t roll over for injustice—any injustice—on mere pious principle. That’s the basis of most of the objections I make in this review, after all.
That being said, I can’t get on board with stuff like:
Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth—Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!
Blessed are the powerful, for they shall be reverenced among men—Cursed are the feeble, for they shall be blotted out!
Blessed are the bold, for they shall be masters of the world—Cursed are the rightouesly humble, for they shall be trodden under cloven hoofs!
p. 34
I particularly enjoyed including that last line here, mainly because I’m sure LaVey would count me among the “righteously humble” who “shall be trodden under cloven hoofs.” Oh well. A man can dream, I suppose.
One thing that stood out most in this section, although it was also apparent elsewhere, was LaVey’s clear love of the exclamation point. He dropped those bad boys everywhere! He must have been very excited about his ideas. I can’t hold this against him, though—I’m the same way with em-dashes.
The Book of Lucifer
While “The Book of Satan” was assigned the element of fire (fitting), “The Book of Lucifer” is assigned the element of air, and it consists of a collection of essays that do the “heavy lifting” in The Satanic Bible of explicating Satanic philosophy as LaVey saw it. It’s a definite mixed bag, but I can say this much: It was far more worth my time reading it than the previous book.
This is where perspective comes into play, and it’s in this section where I found most of the mixed feelings rising that I mentioned in the intro to this review: Reasons I am likely harder on LaVey than many other people would be.
One of the major focal points of LaVey’s work was to attack conventional religion and especially Christianity, and as I pointed out above, regardless of how ironic it was given his own blind spots and indiscretions, one of LaVey’s biggest pet peeves regarding religion was its hypocrisy.
This function of actively attacking the merits of religiosity was valuable enough—probably even more so back in 1969 when this book was first written than it is today. LaVey made some good points about it, deconstructing religious ideology, poking holes in fallacious religious reasoning, and best of all, leveraging applied psychology to unmask religious manipulation as well as hidden motives.
The problem, for me, is that by the time I first dug into this book around the age of 15, I had already figured out most of what he was saying for myself. I stopped going to church when I was 13, soon after I first started learning and practicing magic(k). For this reason, I take many of his critiques for granted and don’t really process those parts of his message as hallmarks of his philosophy.
Another reason for this is that, truth be told, even he wasn’t really the first person to make all of these observations…many other people have sharply and skillfully critiqued religion, and many others have done so with greater wisdom and less collateral damage than LaVey. As such, I have often tended to view Anton LaVey as a relatively inferior source for something that I think is much better sought elsewhere.
He wasn’t special just because he thought religion was bogus. The only thing special about this aspect of his work was his signature style, which, as I’ve pointed out, I think is more a liability than an asset.
That being said, I found myself, as I read this section, putting myself in the shoes of someone to whom such ideas just might have been new. I am sure there are many people who got their first dose of “religious vaccination” from Anton LaVey, and will be forever indebted to him as the man who opened their eyes. Honestly, I sympathize with that, and it is only for the sake of such people that I kind of felt bad for being so hard on LaVey in my writings.
There was thus a bit of nostalgia value in reading this stuff again, and it made me slightly more sympathetic to LaVey and what he was doing. Oh, to be young again…
One of the other strengths of Satanism that came across well in The Book of Lucifer is its emphasis on carnality. According to Peter Gilmore in his introduction:
Concerning his role as founder, he said that, “If he didn’t do it himself, someone else, perhaps less qualified, would have.”
I agree wholeheartedly with this. Satanism fills in an important gap in the religious, spiritual, and philosophical ecosystem of humankind and this is one thing about it which can’t be denied. LaVey’s thinking was largely atheistic, and atheism was certainly nothing new to the world when he came along, but prior to LaVey, atheism was largely a perspective of negation. It’s in the very structure of the word: A-theos or “without God.” Although I’ve often said the atheist stance is also a positive assertion that matter is the only reality, and that this amounts to a belief, nonetheless the atheist perspective by itself makes no real assertion about what should abide in the place of God and religion. Some have offered science up as the thing to fill that gap, but science isn’t a belief system or a philosophy; it’s a truth process. It doesn’t really offer guiding principles for our lives.
In founding an actual, fully-formed religion out of the principles of material, carnal life and the rejection of God, LaVey recognized that human beings nonetheless have an innate thirst for many of the trappings of religion. He recognized humankind as the meaning-making animal that it is—he only wanted to free humans to make their own meanings as opposed to being shunted into those provided by mainstream religion. But we still need rituals, we still need observances like holidays, we still need symbolic frameworks even if they are completely recognized as mythic in essence. In this, I think LaVey was not only justified, but quite visionary. This was a need, and he filled it admirably.
Although I left Catholicism at a young age, I can relate wholeheartedly to his eager proclamation that carnality is, in fact, sacred in its way, because the time I spent in The Theosophical Society was every bit as laden with self-denial of this aspect of my being as staying in the Catholic Church would have been—perhaps, as LaVey observed of Eastern religiosity, even more so. As such, this is another area where I can see many people finding a great deal of benefit in Satanism if they were coming from a religious background, or even a background in various other esoteric currents. Even in Ceremonial Magic(k), I remember encountering the same preference for spirit over matter, an outlook that nearly demonized the pleasures of the flesh. LaVey’s gospel about saying “Yes!” to these things is a sorely-needed answer to such spiritual and religious influences.
But again, there are traditions—they’re rare, but they exist—which also affirm these carnal realities while striking a different, less extreme balance than Satanism…and once more, while LaVey said something that needed to be said here, he wasn’t the only one saying it, and he wasn’t even the one who said it best.
What he did well that hadn’t yet been done was to synthesize the various elements that he brought together in Satanism. And this is where I have to admit that for those who look up to him…this was a worthy reason. I often overlook the fact that many people might enjoy the better aspects of his teachings while using their own discernment regarding his more ruthless supremacist ideals.
Nonetheless, if there’s one other prominent aspect of The Satanic Bible, that I disagree with, it’s LaVey’s tendency to see things in starkly-polarized, often grandiose, black-and-white terms. Subtlety was not his strong suit. This was an aspect of his thought that was also pointed out by Dr. Stephen Flowers in Lords of the Left-Hand Path. As an example, he was probably right to point out that the religious enshrinement of principles such as selflessness and humility were very often manipulative means to disingenuous ends, but in plastering religion with such accusations, he also missed the point that humility can still be a virtue, even to the strong…that some people are genuinely empathetic in nature, that not all altruism is a total sham. I’d agree with him that altruism is usually more self-serving than many would like to admit, but think he went too far in being utterly skeptical of its actual existence. I don’t think his cynicism was a positive worldview conducive to living one’s best life.
The Book of Belial
Moving from the element of air to the element of earth, “The Book of Belial” lays out LaVey’s Satanic magic(k)al theory. This section was the most fun to read…because I’m such an occultizoid nincompoop and all.
And as an occultizoid nincompoop, I’ve certainly struggled with this, but one of the best aspects of LaVey’s views on magic(k) was his pragmatism. He was keenly interested in cutting the bullshit and getting down to the serious brass tacks of what makes magic(k) work. One of my favorite passages of the entire Satanic Bible was this one from the opening paragraph of “The Book of Belial:”
The greatest appeal of magic is not in its application, but in its esoteric meanderings. The element of mystery which so heavily enshrouds the practice of the black arts has been fostered, deliberately or out of ignorance, by those who often claim the highest expertise in such matters. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, then established occultists would do well as maze-makers.
p. 109
It’s true.
In LaVey’s views on magic(k), I found a bit of redemption for myself. To be completely honest, there are times when I get down on myself and think that I’m not much of an occultist because I haven’t logged endless hours of experimentation in my Magic(k)al Diary about all sorts of different magic(k)al systems, and probably couldn’t write a book about that kind of stuff or teach an existing comprehensive magic(k)al system to others. However, the flip side is that I’ve gotten some serious results with the experiments I’ve done and the idiosyncratic techniques that I’ve used; if anything, my story proves that one need not necessarily jump through all these convoluted ritual hoops if their actual goal is initiatory development. This trimmed-down, pragmatic approach is one of the things I have always appreciated most from the teachings of The Temple of Set—it’s one of the things that makes me feel like I would have felt so at-home in the Temple—and it’s something Aquino inherited from working so closely with LaVey.
LaVey boils effective magic(k) down to a few basic principles that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand, and he roots his magic(k) deeply in the body and its functions. He acknowledges the role played by highly-charged emotional states and dispenses with a lot of the baggage that comes with some other magic(k)al systems.
Though in so doing, he also dispenses with much of the fun, as he himself acknowledged in those opening lines.
If there’s one critique I have about LaVey’s magic(k)al theories, it’s this—the same one I had when I read this book in high school: It’s what appears to be his inconsistency. He says over and over elsewhere in the book what a materialist he is, but then he turns around and nonchalantly describes magic(k)al processes in The Book of Belial that utterly defy the principles of known science. To be fair, he also flat-out states at one point that magic(k) will never be fully explained by science and that it doesn’t have to. I understand much better now than I did at age 15 that this stance isn’t necessarily as ontologically inconsistent as I thought it was at the time.
However, later in the Book when he’s praising the virtues of a strong ego (a viewpoint with which I don’t necessarily disagree, although this calls into question just what different people mean when they use the term “ego,” because it’s clear not everyone is talking about the same thing), he goes as far as to say that the key to immortality is essentially to develop an ego so strong that it persists after death, clinging to the earth plane…
…and if that isn’t a metaphysical statement rooted in some kind of spiritual realm, I don’t know what is.
To be frank, this was the point at which I tossed this book aside when I was younger. But then again, I was talking to invisible dragons, so what do you expect?
The Book of Leviathan
I really don’t have a lot to say about this Book, the one associated with the element of water. That’s because this Book basically takes the principles from The Book of Belial and applies them by offering the reader a “Satanic frame rite,” with guidelines for how to perform rituals of lust, destruction, and compassion in a Satanic magic(k)al framework and to be honest, I’m not all that interested in using them. Some day, I might give one a spin just to see what happens, but I’ve never really felt drawn to LaVey’s particular system.
The Satanic Bible closes with its longest single section in terms of page count—though certainly not in terms of actual content—”The Enochian Calls.” This is where LaVey offers his personal, “Satanized” translations of the 19 Calls of the Enochian Magic(k)al system. I didn’t really dwell on these and won’t review them because honestly, I haven’t worked with Enochian magic(k) yet and thus don’t really feel qualified to evaluate the worth of his translations.
That being said, Enochian practice is coming up on my to-do list, and I will probably work with several different versions of the Calls, including LaVey’s (not to mention the Setian versions written by Michael Aquino). I look forward to this.
I’ll wrap this review up now. In a way, I feel bad about the length, especially in comparison to my review of Lords of the Left-Hand Path, which is a far superior book in my opinion. It’s kind of a shame that I spent more words on a book I wouldn’t necessarily recommend except for the place it holds in the greater LHP lore. That being said, I also wanted to give a more nuanced critique of LaVey’s ideas, mainly to illustrate that I’m not engaging in what I’d call a shallow prejudice of his work. My feelings about LaVey are deep and heartfelt, and not at all the result of catering to popular opinion. Looking back, I really can’t deny that despite its shortcomings, his work played some kind of crucial role in paving the way for my own work, as well as the work of other people I admire. As I acknowledged, it fills a niche that was likely bound to take shape one way or another, and in this sense I can hold a somewhat honorable view of LaVey as a Magus playing his respective role in the development of the Aeons; I’ve compared him to a rebellious teenager, and much like adolescence, I regard Satanism as a necessary, but noisome stage of Aeonic and esoteric development that had to happen, but I also think it’s the kind of stage that people on an individual level should eventually pass through and grow out of.