Who is Satan? by Don David Scott, the Raven -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------- "I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff." ------------------------------- Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), British occultist. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, ch. 5 (1929; rev. 1970). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perhaps the dictionary definition of Satan will shed some light on this subject: (perhaps not): "Satan ... noun Theology. The profoundly evil adversary of God and humanity, often identified with the leader of the fallen angels; the Devil. [Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin Sat'n, from Greek Satanas, Satan, from Hebrew satan, devil, adversary, from satan, to accuse.]" The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition. ----------------------------------------- The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia says: "Satan [Heb., = adversary], in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the principle of evil conceived as a person; also called the Devil. In Christian tradition Satan was the leader of the angels who rebelled against God and who were cast out of heaven. He and his followers are seen as tempters of humanity and the source of evil in the world. He has numerous other names, such as Lucifer, Beelzebub, Evil One, and Prince of Darkness." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dictionaries attempt to provide us with basic definitions, defining words in their broadest sense. One purpose of a dictionary is to supply the speakers of a language with meanings common to all, thereby allowing us to understand each other. Encyclopedias also define terms of common usage, but they go a step farther by providing essays on subjects which words invoke. The philosophies from which Satan arose sprang from the distant past, and from a clash of cultures. We will need to descend (as from the Gate to Hell) deeper in to the chasm of history. -------------------- "Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated." Milan Kundera (b. 1929), Czech author, critic. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, pt. 2, ch. 4 (1978; tr. 1980). --------------------- Philosophies in general and this subject in particular require diligence to comprehend. Dedication to truth, not an acceptance of the teachings of others but rather a scientific study of reality, is required. Logic should be your tool of choice in any study. Many Scholarly works have covered this subject and I do not claim to do more than scratch the surface of Satan's origin. My intent is to stimulate the need for knowledge. I hope that my casual essay will arouse the desire in others to study this subject in more depth. In the future, I will expand my essay in greater detail. Now, let's get our hands dirty... In the beginning, the Hebrew god was without form and void. His people, the Hebrew tribes, were primarily hunter-gatherers; if you had it, they hunted you down and killed you for it. They took from others and then made it their own. When the "walls of Jericho" came tumbling down, as you can see in the Torah, the Hebrews killed every man, woman and child. Then, by direction of their "god," they severed the heads of the fallen and pounded them to the tops of stakes for display. This was to serve as a warning. It also provided the Hebrews with an income. The idea that only "our tribe" is human and everyone else is "not human" is not unique. Actually, it is common among tribes even today in "primitive," for lack of a better word, societies. Yet their violent adherence to their god was noted by other tribes. Noted, and dealt with. Civilization after civilization used them as slaves after winning the war against them and thus saving their own heads from the stake. Hebrew philosophy has, throughout recorded history, been eclectic. They often absorbed the ideas of their "oppressors" into their religion. "We are being punished by god" the holy men would say, "why are we being punished?" The answers to these questions usually took the form of "god is teaching us..." During the years 586-538 BCE the Hebrews entered a period historians call the BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY, where the Persians used them as slaves. The Persians believed in two basic gods, the god of night and the god of day, a god of light and a god of darkness. Since you could pull off unscrupulous behavior at night, the god of darkness seemed less-than perfect to the Hebrew captives. They reasoned that the god of light must be JHVH, their god, and that the god of darkness must be his adversary. "Satan" in Hebrew means "adversary," and thus, Satan was born. Shortly after Satan's "birth" the idea of Hell gained acceptance. Prior to this, the official doctrine was that all people (Hebrews) who died went to Sheol. Sheol was a place of shadows where the world still existed but remained forever out of your grasp, a phantom world that you walked for eternity. You went to Sheol despite your blasphemy or holiness. Our idea of ghosts emerged from this belief. The Persians also are responsible for the doctrines of a final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, a scheme of world history, new beliefs about the end of time, and a more involved and extensive set of beliefs concerning angels. Frankly, the Hebrews did not come up with much on their own. Their belief system reminds me of a well-organized pawn shop. ----------------- "We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. A person who has for untold centuries maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order." Mark Twain (1835-1910), Concerning the Jews, in Harper (New York, Sept. 1899; repr. in Complete Essays, 1963). ------------------ A survey of the Bible will yield no explanation of Satan's origin. Further, no explanation of gods' reason for allowing Satan to exist is given. The christians, who built their religion on a reinterpretation of Judiastic thought, further elaborated on the origin and nature of Satan. Most christian theology personifies Satan as god's real opponent, who is an entity, a real being. This idea is nowhere to be found in the christian bible or Hebrew torah. In the bible, he is only a "principle" in a "created order," not a real being. The title "fallen angel" was also appended by christianity. The belief in a master of the powers of darkness belonged to many ancient cultures, most notably the Chaldeans, the Persians, and the Babylonians. Zoroastrianism's Ahriman and the Egyptian God Set, all possessed similar characteristics to Satan. Satan has been called many things, in the New Testament he is named "the tempter," "the slanderer," "the enemy," "the liar," terms which the Hebrews undoubtedly used for Jesus. A survey of the teachings of Jesus next to the doctrines of the Torah, would provide an excellent case for proving the Hebrews correct, at least with regards to Judiasm. With the preceding in mind, we will return to the original meaning of "Satan," adversary. To me, as a Satanist, Satan represents the opposer to all judeo-christian ideals and ideology. Satan is the personification of Evil, where Evil means fleshly, unspiritual, and ungodly. Satan represents the fulfillment of the fleshly life, the enjoyment of the here and now, and the liberation of the psyche from the chains of judeo-christian guilt. Who is Satan? Oh hear the names He has been given: Archfiend, Prince of Darkness, Prince of this world, serpent, Old Serpent, Tempter, Adversary, Antichrist, Common Enemy, Enemy of mankind Diabolus, Father of Lies, fallen angel, rebel angel, evil genie, Shaitan, Eblis, spirit of evil, principle of evil, Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, the Foul Fiend, the Devil, the Evil One, Wicked One, Old Nick, Apollyon, Abaddon, Satan, Lucifer, King of Hell, angel of the bottomless pit... Who is Satan? He is the mighty adversary of the inhuman death-cult religions. He is the light springing from the darkness of history. He is the true friend of mankind. But most of all.... "The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman." (William Shakespeare in King Lear, act 3, sc. 4. Spoken by Edmund the Bastard.) Hail Satan! Don David Scott -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Birth Of Hell from "The Highest Altar" by Patrick Tierney -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hell was born just outside the walls of Jerusalem, in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. The prophet Jeremiah dubbed this "the Valley of Slaughter" (Jeremiah 19:6) because so many children were immolated here in a deep pit known as the Tophet- "Place of Fire." Even kings of Judah burned their sons and daughters at this Tophet. Eventually, the sacrifices ceased. But the memory remained, as the Valley of Ben Hinnom was turned into Gehenna, the Hebrew word for "Hell," where sinners suffered the eternal torment of fire. Having heard so much about Hell in Catholic grade school- and seen frightening pictures of children consumed in these flames- I wanted to see the actual spot where the dreadful notion began. I expected something awful in "the Valley of Slaughter," so I was taken aback by its beautiful, deep ravines and verdant olive groves, just outside the white, turreted walls of Jerusalem's Old City. It looked more like paradise than Hell. "If this is Hell, then Hell is a pretty nice place," archaeologist Gabriel Barkay told me. Barkay, a professor at Tel Aviv University, admires the valley for its topography and its rich past. "The valley has gotten a bad name because of the burning which went on at the Tophet here," he says. "Jeremiah equated this place with the kind of activity which goes on in Hell- bodies burning forever. But you have to remember that those who performed these sacrifices regarded their activities as wholly innocent." There's direct Biblical testimony that child sacrifice continued until the seventh century B.C. at the Tophet in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. The prophet Jeremiah says, "they have built a shrine of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, at which to burn their sons and daughters" (Jeremiah 7:31). King Ahaz of Judah worshipped at this Tophet. "He also burnt sacrifices in the Valley of Ben-hinnom; he even burnt his sons in the fire according to the abominable practice of the nations whom the Lord had dispossessed in favor of the Israelites. He slaughtered and burnt sacrifices at the hill-shrines and on the hill- tops and under every spreading tree" (2 Chronicles 28:3- 4). King Manasseh likewise "made his son pass, through the fire" (2 Kings 21:6). According to most Bible translations , these child immolations were made to the terrible god Moloch. Although Moloch has become one of the great demons of Judeo- Christian literature, there's strong evidence that Moloch was not a demon at all but simply the name for child sacrifices dedicated to Yahweh. This new understanding comes from Phoenician settlements in Sicily and North Africa, where Tophets, like that outside side of Jerusalem, have been excavated. The Phoenicians were close relatives to the Hebrews- the Bible refers to the Phoenician coastal peoples as Canaanites. They spoke a mutually intelligible language, and the Hebrew alphabet, like all modern alphabets in the Western world, came from the Phoenicians. So did the fire sacrifices of the Jerusalem Tophet. Curiosity about Yahweh's sacrificial Tophet leads one to Carthage, near the city of Tunis, North Africa. Here there is a pleasant, overgrown garden, shaded by pomegranate and fig trees, which once served as the Carthaginian Tophet, the most prolific known place of child sacrifice in the ancient world. The wild growth of weeds is rivaled by the abundance of sacrificial stelae, popping up everywhere, with their stick-figure representations of Baal Hammon and Tanit-Ashtarte. Queen Dido of Tyre brought these familiar gods from the Phoenician homeland, much of which is now a part of Israel, when she founded Carthage about 800 B.C. A UNESCO archaeological team uncovered hundreds of urns filled with the cremated bones of children and sacrificed animals, often mixed with beads and good- luck amulets. Many of these jars were buried under the pointed limestone stelae, with their dedications to Tanit and Baal-Hammon. One stela records a priest in long, flowing robes, holding a child in the act of sacrifice. The Carthaginian Tophet has many layers, the bottom level dating back to 750 B.C. At this earliest period, animal sacrifice was more frequent than later, although it never constituted more than a third of all ritual killings here. The most primitive burial urns and stelae show wider variety in color and design. Later, as the number of human sacrifices increased along with Carthage's burgeoning population, the burial urns became a uniform, nondescript orange color, and the stelae were also standardized. There are some twenty thousand urns in all. Archaeologists Lawrence Stager and Samuel Wolff concluded that the Carthaginian Tophet is "the largest cemetery of sacrificed humans ever discovered." But in spite of the many written accounts of child sacrifice at Carthage, coupled with the physical evidence, some scholars don't admit that child sacrifice occurred here. The connection between the Jerusalem Tophet and the Carthaginian Tophet is what makes the issue so controversial. One of the most disconcerting pieces of epigraphic evidence is that the Carthaginian sacrifices were called "mulk offerings." There was no Moloch god at Carthage or any other Phoenician settlement. The implication is that the proper translation of mlk (the Hebrew text of the Old Testament doesn't have vowels, which makes the translation so difficult) should be "human sacrifice," not a deity named Moloch. If this translation is accepted- and a large number of Biblical scholars now favor it- it would mean similar rituals of child sacrifice took place as part of orthodox Yahwism, perhaps on a large scale. "A lot of traditional Bible scholars are getting angry about this," says one of the anthropologists who excavated the Carthage Tophet. "They don't want to face the skeleton in Judeo-Christianity's closet." But the skeleton comes alive and does an ecstatic dance of death in one of Isaiah's greatest poems, a religious song meant to accompany a human sacrifice at the Jerusalem Tophet. Isaiah began preaching in Judah at almost the exact time that the first sacrificial urns were planted in the Carthaginian Tophet. Such shall be your song, as on a night a feast is celebrated with gladness of heart, as when one marches in procession with the flute, to enter the mountain of Yahweh, to the Rock of Israel. Yahweh has made heard the crash of His voice, the down-sweep of His arm he has displayed, with hot wrath and flame of consuming fire, cloudburst and flood and hailstones. Yes! At the voice of Yahweh Assyria will cower- with His staff He will beat him. Every passage of the rod of His punishment which Yahweh will lay upon him will be to the sound of timbrels and lyres; with battles of offerings He will fight against him. For his Topheth has long been prepared, He himself is installed as a victim [molek]. Yahweh has made its fire-pit deep and wide, with fire and wood in abundance. The breath of Yahweh, like a torrent of sulphur, sets it ablaze! - Isaiah 30:29- 332 What's amazing about Isaiah's song is its explicit ritual content, and the undeniable authorship of Yahweh in the torture and immolation of the Assyrian victim, who is probably the great Assyrian conquerer Sennacherib. The Assyrians were threatening the existence of Judah during Isaiah's lifetime, and they succeeded in annihilating the northern kingdom of Samaria (Israel proper). These verses served as the centerpiece of Paul Mosca's Ph.D. thesis at Harvard in 1975, "Child Sacrifice in Israelite and Canaanite Religion." The translation used above is borrowed from Mosca, with a few slight changes. It is more explicit than the New English Bible or any other popular text, because Mosca translates mlk as molek that is, sacrificial "victim." In most traditional renderings of these verses, mlk was translated melek- king. Perhaps Mosca is right in suggesting that Isaiah was creating a deliberate pun, since, in this nocturnal rite, the victim (molek) is the Assyrian king (melek). But even if this technical term is rejected, Isaiah's poem is clearly about a ritual killing. According to Mosca's analysis of Isaiah's poem, "we begin with the fire- the lightning- of Yahweh's storm theophany and end with the fire of ritual sacrifice." All of the mountain god's weather powers- over lightning, thunder, hail, rain, and wind- become weapons by which Yahweh conquers Sennacherib and then sacrifices him. Thus, the roles of storm god, warrior, and sacrificer converge in this frightening portrait of Yahweh, just as they do in the mythologies of the fierce Andean mountain gods. It can be argued that Isaiah is speaking allegorically, that these verses are really nothing more than a war song. But, given the exact parallels between Isaiah's war song and the known human-sacrifice rituals of other Canaanite peoples, it is an allegory the Assyrians would have taken literally. Isaiah's Tophet sacrifice takes place at night, around a deep fire-pit, to the sound of music, just as the Phoenician rites did. The main difference between the Tophet ritual extolled by Isaiah and the human sacrifices practiced by the Phoenicians is that Isaiah's victim is offered to Yahweh, whereas the Phoenician victims are given to Tanit and Baal. Significantly, Isaiah didn't criticize his contemporaries, Kings pV Ahaz or Manasseh, both of whom sacrificed their children at the Jerusalem Tophet. Paul Mosca concludes from his study of Isaiah 30:27- 33 that "the rite of the Jerusalem Tophet- though in hindsight viewed first as unorthodox (Deuteronomist) and finally as idolatrous (Jeremiah and Ezekiel)- was, in fact, part of the official Yahwistic cultus. Isaiah himself seems to have had no particular objection to Yahwistic 'passing into the fire.' Isaiah's views of the Tophet and those who sacrificed there are in stark contrast to the later authors of Chronicles and Kings, who saw Ahaz following "the abominable practice of the nations." The difference between Isaiah and Jeremiah is even greater since, while Isaiah praises the Tophet as Yahweh's liberating weapon against the Assyrians, Jeremiah blames the Tophet for the fall of Jerusalem, which he ascribes to Yahweh's anger at idolatrous human sacrifice. Between the time of Isaiah's ministry in the early seventh century B.C. and Jeremiah's preaching in the early sixth century B.C., Jewish thinkers radically redefined Yahwism and suppressed human sacrifice. Until this time, Yahweh had been worshipped by shaman-prophets on "every high hill" in Israel. But King Josiah of Judah chose to destroy all the hill-shrines in one of the most drastic religious reforms in history. "He brought in all the priests from the cities of Judah and desecrated the hill-shrines where they had burnt sacrifices, from Geba to Beersheba, and dismantled the hill-shrines of the demons... He desecrated Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so that no one might make his son or daughter pass through the fire in honor of Molech" (2 Kings 23:8- 10). Josiah also razed the hill-shrine at Bethel erected by Abraham, and went throughout Samaria to slaughter" on the altars all the priests of the hill-shrines" (2 Kings 23:20). Apparently this reversal of age-old custom caused great consternation. When an earlier king, Hezekiah, attempted to suppress some of the hill-shrines, he was accused of destroying Yahweh's legitimate places of worship. (Ironically, the Assyrian King Sennacherib made this accusation against Hezekiah [Isaiah 36:7].) But Hezekiah's grandson, King Josiah, cleverly rewrote history to make Moses the author of his sweeping reforms, whose effects were to fill the temple's coffers with contributions from all over Judah at the expense of the once-independent local shamans. Obviously, the High Priest was one of the principal beneficiaries of this centralization. And it was the High Priest Hilkiah (father of the prophet Jeremiah) himself who, while collecting tribute from all over Judah and Israel, "discovered the book of the law of the Lord which had been given through Moses" (2 Chronicles 34:14), which revolutionized the rules of Hebrew worship. No one had ever heard of this book of Moses before, so Josiah had to consult a prophetess about its authenticity. She wisely confirmed the divine origin of the newly discovered book. Not surprisingly, the High Priest's book of Mosaic law (perhaps Deuteronomy) supported Josiah's reforms to the letter. One of the most transparent anachronisms of the new rules was the requirement that all hill-shrines be destroyed outside of Jerusalem. Moses built such altars himself, and gave instructions to Joshua to build more of them. Another anomaly in these new teachings is Moses' repeated attacks on human sacrifice, although, as we've seen, Moses attempted to sacrifice his own son, sacrificed a group of leaders to avert an epidemic, and once offered to sacrifice himself. By the new "book of Moses," the old Moses was a heretic. But with the new book of Moses the human-sacrificial rites that once defined the most sublime degree of piety became abominations. And the Valley of Ben Hinnom, or Gay ben Hinnom, where the Jerusalem Tophet received these sacrifices, became a synonym for "Hell," Gehenna, a word that worked its way into several languages. Josiah's methods were drastic but effective. With the help of Hilkiah, Jeremiah, and other reformers, he succeeded in eradicating human sacrifice for perhaps the first time in history. Animal sacrifices continued at only one place, the Great Temple on Mount Moriah. Although this centralized power in the hands of the Jerusalem priesthood, it had the paradoxical effect of reducing the influence of blood sacrifice outside of the Great Temple. Instead, a new breed of rabbis, or lay teachers, arose. At their local synagogues they created the conception of an ethical God, one bound as much by His covenant as the Jews were bound to Him. Within a remarkably short time- six or seven centuries- the wrathful Yahweh of Isaiah, a storm god burning with desire for revenge and human sacrifice, had become the God of Hillel, whose maxim was "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the entire Law; the rest is commentary." Human sacrifice was inconceivable for Hillel's God. Thus we have a precious still shot of cultural evolution in the making: a new book is written and ascribed to Moses, and a new path of religious thought unfolds. The Bible is a portrait of sacrificial thinking in various stages of growth. Like the Aztecs and the Incas, who both evolved solar cults to co-opt the local mountain gods, the Hebrews reworked sacrificial mythology, a conscious adaptation of the oldest rituals to changing circumstances. No society has existed without some form of sacrificial myth and ritual. But, whereas both the Incas and the Aztecs made human sacrifice even more prominent, in the fantastic panoply of the Incas' empire-wide capacocha offerings and the elaborate mass slayings of the Aztec state, the Jews made a unique decision to abolish human sacrifice as the centerpiece of culture. The Romans, Greeks, and Hindus diminished its importance, replacing it gradually (though never completely) with symbolic human sacrifices. But the Jews evolved a system in which the concept of human sacrifice was inherently abhorrent. Still, these remarkable reforms came at the cost of another type of violent suppression- an internalization of sacrificial fear. Anyone who disobeyed the new rules would go to Gehenna, the Hell where they would burn forever, as the bodies once burned in the Tophet. The prophet Jeremiah vividly depicted this unquenchable fire, and It became a part of popular religion. Apparently only a drastic inhibition like this could free people from the captivity of human sacrifice. Ironically, the means of liberation was the old method of ritual death itself, projected into a nightmare: what men had practiced from the beginning of time became a punishment meted out by God for all eternity. Gehenna and the burning that went on there became identified with the demon Moloch. As we've seen, this great demon was also born from changing attitudes toward the Tophet fire-pit, since the original molek was just a pious human-sacrifice offering. "Thus, between the Josianic reform and the closing centuries of the pre- Christian era, we may catch a glimpse of the rarest of all events the birth of a god- a god whose cult had, happily, long since been abandoned." Gehenna burned itself into the Christian Gospels: "It is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than to keep both eyes and be thrown into Hell [Gehenna], where the devouring worm never dies and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:47- 48). Here we see the Tophet wedded to the serpent, which Jesus calls the "devouring worm." Originally Moses set up a bronze effigy of this serpent (Numbers 21:9), which was worshipped until King Hezekiah tore it down six centuries later (2 Kings 18:4). But now the serpent has been changed into the devil, just as the Mapuche leviathan Cai Cai Filu and the Aymara mountain serpent were converted to "devils" by Christian missionaries. And just as Cai Cai Filu and the monster snake on Mount Kapia are thought to be ravenously hungry for human flesh, here, too, the Christian serpent demon is pictured devouring people. One of the reasons that Aymara shamans can easily adapt satanic rituals to their own practices of mountain worship is that Satan, "that serpent of old" (Revelation 12:9), is an ancient relative of their snake god on Mount Kapia. In spite of John Milton's vivid picture of the blood- smeared Moloch in Paradise Lost, there was no demon Moloch, just as there was no Paradise lost. No serpent spoiled the Garden of Eden. Eden belonged to that old serpent. And Eden, as the children buried beneath the lovely, overgrown garden in Carthage know too well, raged with the fires of Hell. The process by which the fantasy of Eden became the nightmare of Hell claimed its own victims, too. It's no accident that the fifth-century theological battles over this man-made Hell took place near Carthage, spearheaded by Saint Augustine and the African bishops who followed him. Together they enforced a new doctrine that any infant who died without baptism would go straight to Hell- a teaching meant to intimidate pagan parents into surrendering their age-old custom of dedicating newborn children to Tanit, who by this time was called Dea Caelestis. Such Tanit dedications were symbolic, though the Church Father Tertullian claimed that child sacrifice in North Africa secretly continued well into the Christian era. Julian of Eclanam, an Italian bishop, ridiculed Augustine's doctrine of Hell, asking him: "Tell me then, tell me: who is this person who inflicts such punishment on innocent creatures... You answer: God. God, you say! God! He Who commended His love to us, Who has loved us, Who has not spared His own Son for us... He is the persecutor of newborn children; He it is who sends tiny babies to eternal flames." Julian's question "Who is this person who inflicts such punishment on innocent creatures?" is a profound one. Does God send babies to Hell? Or is Augustine's God, as Julian suggests, really a demon in disguise? Peter Brown, one of Augustine's biographers, says that, "Augustine had always believed in the vast power of the Devil: God had shown His omnipotence most clearly in restraining this superhuman creature." Julian, however, suspected that Augustine had given this superhuman devil power so vast that Satan had become more than God's equal. Originally, Satan was God's messenger, a messenger with the unpleasant job of testing God's faithful servants, as Satan tests Job, for instance. The Samaritan folktale about the milhaj, or bad angel, testing Abraham through the sacrifice of Isaac puts an other divine messenger in a similarly ambiguous position. But Satan's new role as Moloch- king of the eternal realm of Hell and recipient of burning children- usurped Yahweh's former position as the warrior-priest who presided over the Jerusalem Tophet and the immolation of child victims. Not surprisingly, Satan soon acquired the horns, serpents, and magical staff that were once the possession of the storm god Yahweh on Mount Sinai. The devil who grew out of these mythological distortions is a direct descendant of Yahweh the mountain god, just as the tiu of Illimani springs from the defamed mountain deities of the Andean past. As we've seen in the Andes, each new victim of sacrifice becomes another guardian spirit in the sacrificer's army of spiritual slaves. And since Satan was capturing all unbaptized souls in his Gehenna- along with a great many Christian souls as well- his legions were constantly increasing, and his power, quite naturally, grew to fantastic proportions in both popular religion and formal theology. Julian of Eclanum accused Augustine of being a Manichaean heretic- a believer in a divided universe where the powers of darkness were greater than the powers of light. Julian contrasts the God 'Who has not spared His own Son for us" with the God who consigns tiny children to flames, as though the two figures were irreconcilably opposed to each other. But it seems to me that the God who is willing to sacrifice His own child through the agony of crucifixion is precisely the same figure who throws the children of others into Hellfire. Both act as Lords of the Sacrifice, deriving their enormous powers, like Jephthah or the Inca ruler, from the ritual deaths of children. God the Father's sacrifice of Jesus is a divine parallel to King Ahaz's immolation of his own son in the Jerusalem Tophet. This type of child sacrifice, outlawed by King Josiah in the seventh century B.C., was revived as the centerpiece of Christian faith. Satanism: Religious Blasphemy or Natural Wisdom? My goal in writing this essay is to hopefully make people understand and agree that Satanism is not a "Devil Worshipping," animal mutilating, child scarifying cult organization and to help the UAOD newsletter! The psychological thing comes in when people say Satanism is wrong or bad, they hear the word Satan and automatically assume that it must be bad. They make these assumptions without even taking the time to find the facts and understand them. I'll start off by saying that Satanists do not worship the devil! A Satanist believe that he or she as an individual rule their own destiny and are the god of their own lives. Satanism is a religion based on the reality that man is an animal, like all others and sometimes worse!. They choose to separate themselves from a society where natural behavior is suppressed and the strong support the weak. The average Satanist disagrees with much of Christianity. In many ways Christians are considered the enemies. Christians say Satan is a fallen angel, not a God. All religions have gods and demons, some of which are forbidden by a typical society. Satan is one among these, originally conceived by the Hebrews, long before the birth of Jesus, during their exile in Egypt. Most Satanists are familiar with the teachings of Christianity, and have read the Bible or part of it. They simply consider the Bible to be false and disregard it much like Christians would disregard books which represent the foundation of another religion. Satanism is not considered a religion for the white race and should not be confused with or grouped together with skinheads, the KKK, Nazi's, or people who support race discrimination. Satanists are not teenage vandals, not gang murderers, not psychopathic murders, not child molesters or vicious rapists. Satanists do not sacrifice young children or animals. The ninth and tenth of the Eleven Satanic Rules of The Earth forbid this, in fact, animal sacrifices are primarily used in the Afro-Caribbean syncretistic religions such as Voodoo, Candomble', and Santeria. Child Sacrifices are used in Television and by journalists to improve ratings. A Satanist does not practice baby breeding for sacrifice or child molestation for ritual. Evidence does not support what is said to occur. If the number of murders said to be committed by Satanists' was accurate some bodies would have been found by now. Members of the Church of Satan are involved and advanced exactly as their own desires, abilities, and accomplishments dictate. There are no set activities, meetings, or contacts. A new member comes into the organization ideally with his or her own goals and plans of achieving them. When being brought to the church of Satan new members are told to not let anyone tell you what to believe or what to do. Advice or recommendations are one thing; orders or commands quite another. Remember that you are a free being, not a pawn in someone's power fantasy. They believe the weaker elements of society should step out of the way of the stronger elements of society or perish. Satanists support any means of returning to the order of Darwin's Natural Selection Process, this is inclusive of elimination of welfare to selective sterilization or destruction of those weaker elements (Eugenics). Weak elements are determined by performance and intelligence, not race or religion (although Christians can be very ignorant!). So where does Satan come into all of this? Satanists believe Satan (along with other "gods" or "previously demonized gods") is not so much an entity as a force of nature. These gods are not all concerned with the life of mortals. Satan is a very powerful word that serves as an isolation between Satanists and society. It is this separation that a true Satanist appreciates and holds dear. the separation of a society where the strong and willing work for what they want but are forced to support the weak through welfare and charity. Satanists know their opinions may not be politically correct, but they still obey the laws governing man on this planet and they expect the same protection under the laws as other minorities, races and religions. There is one thing that most groups do agree on and that is the Satanic Bible. It is possibly the most relevant piece of Satanic Literature to date! The Satanic Bible is a a piece of literary history by Anton LaVey (1930-1997), founder of the church of Satan. If you don't have it GET IT! It lays the foundations for a whole Satanic reform. In the end you are free to believe what you want and understand. That is the way of the Satanist:- Lex Satanicus! Ave Satanas! Rege Satanas! Hail Satan! ~If a man smite thee on one cheek, SMASH him on the other!~ Loki999 SS "Writer after writer, in efforts to state principles of "white and black magic", has succeeded instead in clouding the entire issue so badly that the would-be student of sorcery winds up stupidly pushing a planchette over a Ouija board, standing inside a pentagram waiting for a demon to present itself, limply tossing I-Ching yarrow stalks like so many stale pretzels, shuffling pasteboards to foretell the future which has lost any meaning, attending seminars guaranteed to flatten his ego - while doing the same to his wallet - and in general making a blithering fool of himself in the eyes of those who know!" -Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible (Preface, p21) "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," Said then the lost Archangel, "This the seat That we must change for Heaven, this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now sovereign can dispose and bid What shall be right: farthest from him is best, Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, Where joy forever dwells! Hail, Horrors! hail, Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell Receive the new possessor; one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, The associates and copartners of our loss, Lie astonished on the oblivious pool, And call them not to share with us their part In this unhappy mansion, or once more With rallied arms to try what may be yet Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?"