The Satanic path always seems simple on the surface, but it gets increasingly complex the further you progress. One begins with atheistic LaVeyan Satanism or the activist
humanism of the Satanic Temple,
both of which are more closely related than either group would like to admit. Their beliefs generally go like this:
individuality and freedom are important; hedonism is a positive practice; and “Satan”
is a symbolic ideal representing these things as well as self-development and
opposition to unthinking conformity. Well
and good. But those philosophies are “starter”
Satanisms.
Eventually, deeper thinkers find they need something a bit
less social and more philosophical. This
is when one encounters the Temple of Set. Filled with artists, poets, and actual academic
philosophers—as well as the usual sort of disaffected proletarians who made up
the original rank and file of the Church of Satan in the 1960s and ’70s, the
Temple of Set has a coherent Left Hand Path philosophy of personal horizon building
and occult insight.
The ToS can legitimately claim to be the inheritor of many
of the initiatory practices of Theosophy, the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn, and Thelema as well as carrying forth many of the finer points of LaVey’s
Church up to at least 1975, when Michael Aquino split from the CoS to found the
organization. Instead of the ToS, one
might seek out the Dragon Rouge,
which is very similar to the Temple of Set in many ways but with a decidedly
Northern European aesthetic and emphasis, as it is based in Sweden.
One of the primary things that makes the ToS and the DR authentic
Left Hand Path organizations is their emphasis on the refinement of individual
consciousness, as opposed to group the consciousness of Right Hand Path spiritual
organizations (and, by extension, that of conformist culture at large). Just as one could explore the humanism and
hedonism of LaVey for a lifetime, one could also devote oneself to plumbing the depths of Setian and Dragon Rouge philosophies.
But perhaps these groups are not “extreme” enough and, for
whatever reasons—whether the individual is self-destructive, disaffected, or
committed to a vision of Satan as the embodiment of pure evil in the traditional
Christian sense—one might seek out so-called “acausal” or “anti-cosmic”
Satanism, popularized
by black metal groups and organizations like the Misanthropic Luciferian
Order (aka Temple of the Black Light) or the Order of the Nine Angles
(abbreviated as O9A or ONA).
The most philosophically articulate of these is the ONA,
which follows a complex mythology and philosophy that can be (over-) simplified
as: one attempts to live in a way all that is contrary to social norms, not
excluding overt criminality and destructive, anti-social behaviour, as doing so
is believed to result in self-insight and social acceleration toward a new Aeon. Again, well and good, except for the inevitable
consequences of such a path.
Setting aside questions of right and wrong (it’s worthy to
note that non-acasual Satanic groups mentioned here have a strong ethical
tradition integral to their humanistic and self-developmental philosophies), the
undeniable necessity of self-preservation remains at the root of all esoteric
programmes. Seriously practicing the anti-social
philosophy of a group like the ONA drastically increases the likelihood
of winding up dead, behind bars or, at best, permanently alienated from
society.
In the beginning, novices might simply shrug. The reason such ideas resonated with them in
the first place probably had something to do with them feeling powerfully
alienated from society, disenfranchised and disaffected. Unlike the novices and adepti of, say, the
Church of Satan or the Temple of Set, anti-cosmic Satanists do not
seek idiosyncratic or self-determined means of satisfaction within existing
social groups or constructs. Rather,
they seek to do as much damage to those groups and constructs as possible,
operating on the assumption that this will accelerate social collapse and
reposition them as greater figures in the coming new order.
Parallels to certain far-right ideologies are obvious and
many such groups have been highly influenced by the acausal Satanism of the ONA
and similar orders. This is not to say
that these extreme philosophies are completely without merit, but the seeker
eventually must make a choice between satisfaction through a humanistic,
mystical, and / or philosophical path or that of nihilism and likely self-obliteration. “Likely” because it is not impossible to lead
a long meaningful life as an acasual Satanist—the odds are just very much
against it.