Manny the Satanist

I still see this on the Church of Satan's Twitter's comments sections but it's also been showing up A LOT on my personal Instagram's post's comments section in the last several weeks.  I'm going to settle this once and for all and I'm staying silent on the matter from now on unless someone really pushes my buttons. "Why is (The Satanic Temple/literally any other organization that claims to be Satanic or that claims to be theistic Satanism) not a legitimate Satanic organization just like the Church of Satan?" I'm going to try to explain this in the simplest way that I can. Prior to the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966, there was no evidence of the existence of any above/below ground Satanic groups.  The term "Satanic" was/is used by Christians or any other ignorant groups and individuals that describe things and people they considered "evil" or things they plain don't like.  Many people who went along with being ac...

Today’s my birthday and it’s been around a year since I first read The Satanic Bible .  I have some personal history with birthdays. As I’ve mentioned in my very first blog entry, my mom tried raising me as a Jehovah’s Witness (with no success, obviously; the complete opposite.  Not her fault, though.  Kind of).  I remember all those sermons I heard over the years that discussed birthdays and why the Witnesses were vehemently against them.  During the first couple of years in the Kingdom Hall, it didn’t make sense to me; I just thought this religion was run by prudes and that God was some boring asshole who didn’t want people to have fun.  I remember being invited to birthdays by friends and classmates and I’d have to decline because (my mom’s) religion forbade birthdays.  I was denied the chance to live like a normal person. If you want to hear something sad, I didn't have my first official birthday celebration until I was 21.  A coworker had to ...

Earlier today as of this writing, I just read the chapter “From Hallowed Halls” in Blanche Barton’s We Are Satanists: The History and Future of the Church of Satan .  In this chapter, there’s a section (pg. 339-40) where Barton discussed that when talking about Satanism, using the term “LaVeyan” is basically giving acknowledgment and equal leveling of other pseudo-satanic groups as also being Satanists. Anton LaVey himself said that that “there are Satanists and there are nuts.”  Magus Gilmore has also stated in his book that no other groups can be acknowledged as Satanic. I wholeheartedly agree with this.  If an individual or group isn’t abiding by the principles of The Satanic Bible , they’re not Satanists.  There were no Satanic groups prior to 1966.  Anyone else after that isn’t a Satanic group or individual, either.  Anton LaVey’s bible is the one sole authority on Satanism. So why do I personally keep using the term “LaVeyan?” I mainly do this on soci...

June is Pride Month.  On this month 6 years ago, the United States Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide.  Ever since then, every June has been Pride Month. Now, when it comes to Satanism and gay marriage, our stance should be obvious: we fully support it. Basically, our philosophy is all about individual liberty and we generally support politics that help champion our individual freedoms.  So if two adults of the same sex want to marry each other, let them be!  It’s their choice to do so. Out of many religions I’ve seen over my 30 years on this planet, Satanism is the first religion I’ve seen that actively accepts people of all sexual orientations.   The Satanic Bible  explains this stance where Anton LaVey states that “Satanism encourages any form of sexual expression you may desire, so long as it hurts no one else” (pg. 69). The following quote is the one that I feel shows that Satanism supports gay marriage in The Satanic Bible .  In this...

https://www.newsweek.com/decapitated-gutted-animals-found-texas-linked-satanic-ritualofficials-1590378 Recently I saw an article posted by Newsweek on 5/11/21 that reminded me of the Satanic Panic from the 80’s.  The media technology is different today but the false narratives about Satanists are the same. It irks me that even 40 years or so after the Satanic Panic was done with, people still believe in this theistic bullshit. For 55 years, the Church of Satan has made it very clear that Satanists don’t sacrifice children and animals.   The Satanic Bible  states this clearly and if people would take the time to understand our religion, they’d open their eyes.  Anton LaVey simply states in The Satanic Bible that “under no circumstances would a Satanist sacrifice any animal or baby” (pg. 89).  Clear as the sky is blue and this stance has been the same since the beginning. The explanation for why we don’t sacrifice animals and babies is because they’re the only fel...

So I have just finished reading this book recently.  The book took me about 13 days to read due to work and school and all.  I just read the last 140-something pages within 24 hours. When I started going through this book, I started with part of Magus Gilmore’s introduction to this book.  He explained a lot of information about how Anton LaVey read this book and used a lot of parts of its content and structure to write The Satanic Bible .  Much of the beginning of Might Is Right  reads a lot like The Book of Satan  in The Satanic Bible . In fact, LaVey had actually used several of Redbeard’s quotes in The Book of Satan .  Many people would say that LaVey had plagiarized Might Is Right  but Redbeard was also accused of the same thing.  But it didn’t take away from the experience of reading this book. Many reviews about this book that I read have mentioned that this book has a lot of anti-Semitic, sexist, and racist content in the book.  R...

This is another opinion blog post that I’m doing here.  I’m going to be basing this on what I’ve read in Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing The Way We Talk About Religion (2020) by Joseph P. Laycock.  I wish the TST had something akin to The Satanic Bible or The Satanic Scriptures but I couldn’t find anything like it on their website page of list of literature, so Speak of the Devil is what I’ll be going by. This is based on my best interpretation of what TST is like in my perspective, and I really tried my best to learn when I read Speak of the Devil .  Anyways, here it goes. The main thing to remember is that The Satanic Temple and The Church of Satan are not the same thing.  These two groups are often confused for one another all the time and it’s gotten a bit annoying for both organizations and its people.  The CoS was started in 1966 by Anton Szandor LaVey while TST was started in 2013 by Malcolm Jarry and Lucien Greaves.  While...

55 years ago today, the Church of Satan was founded.  Anton LaVey started the world’s first carnal religion and started a church in the name of Satan, thus shocking the world and bringing opposition to spiritual dogma. The CoS has survived many things during these 5 and a half decades, like the Satanic Panic and the death of its founder.  But a lot of good things have happened throughout this time.  Individuals who felt they were outsiders in their society found a religion with people who thought just like them.  They have used Satanism to be the very best versions of themselves possible. People think that the CoS and its philosophy would die out after a matter of time and that it would dissipate.  But this religion continues to get stronger each and every day.  More Satanists will continue to come across The Satanic Bible  and discover who they’ve been their whole lives.  The people who have run the organization for decades continue to do what th...

  Like a lot of Satanists, I read up on the rituals in The Satanic Bible  and looked at videos of rituals done by other Satanists.  I saw that many Satanists had awesome ritual chambers and rooms dedicated to conducting rituals. But what happens if you can’t afford to build your own Satanic ritual chamber or if you’re in a situation where you can’t afford or hide certain kinds of large materials or lack a proper space for ritual?  Well, there are ways that you can still have a Satanic ritual. For those who can’t even get the materials or can’t seem to have the time or privacy to use materials for a Satanic ritual, no problem!  Magus Gilmore states that “...you don’t really need any of the suggested implements, since the most important tool for ritual is your own imagination” (p. 227).  All you need to know are the lines and imagine that you are in a room with all the materials required for the ritual.  Kids play pretend and use their imaginations all t...

“ Satanic Rule of the Earth Number 5: Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.” -Anton Szandor LaVey (1967). I want to start this blog by talking about an incident I witnessed on 3/25/21. My girlfriend and I had just come out of a café and we were waiting for our Uber ride.  While we were waiting, this woman walks by us and she’s on the phone.  Then some man drives by her slowly trying to hit on her.  She showed no signs of interests towards him.  Then the man drives his car ahead to park into a gas station and then gets out of his car to sort of get in her space and hit on her again.  She keeps walking and crosses the street to get away to where he couldn’t drive into.  The man drove away when he knew he was defeated. Oftentimes, people think Satanists are the ones prowling the streets to harass and assault innocent women for perverted and ritualistic purposes but you have Christians and regular folks doing what the man in my sto...

LaVeyan Satanists do not have actual Church buildings where people meet once or twice a week to congregate.  There used to be grottos back in the early days of the CoS but those disbanded quickly.  Having churches and places of meeting would be in contradiction to our individualistic philosophy and wouldn’t make us different than the herds and spiritual religions we oppose.  Also, because we are individuals, there are Satanists with various different outlooks on life.  Things can happen when you put those kind of people together in a building.  Individuals have different kind of opinions and other kinds of philosophies and sometimes there can be clashes.  Lots of Satanists go their whole lives without meeting another Satanist.  Some join the CoS but choose to remain alone in order to have success and peace in their personal endeavors. Some Satanists who do meet each other and become friends through mutual interests in Satanism and other activities do g...

Any real Satanist who has done plenty of study knows this: Satanists are born, not made.  Satanism isn’t for everyone. After you read The Satanic Bible , you saw a reflection of yourself, your ideas, and your philosophies that you’ve naturally had through most of your life.  You don’t just read the book and say “I like these ideas; I’m going to adopt them and ‘become’ a Satanist.” To use an example I saw on a Facebook post, it’s like saying a heterosexual person suddenly decides they are attracted to the same gender.  It doesn’t work that way.  You’re born heterosexual.  You don’t just suddenly change your attraction out of the blue.  You were born this way. So it irks me whenever I scroll through YouTube videos or news articles where the person being interviewed says they’re an “ex-Satanist.”  Now, I haven’t gone through those videos and articles because of the point I’m trying to make here.  But being a Satanist means you abide by a certain code...

Satanic Statement Number 9: Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years! (Anton Szandor LaVey,  The Satanic Bible , 1969). This is something to think about.  Remember my blog posts on personal responsibility and rock/metal music?  Satan is the one to scapegoat when they’re caught committing injustices and Satan is used to scare youth away from certain types of music.  These are tactics used by the church and used by their followers.  Blame Satan and utilize him for the needs of the church. It all comes down to using Satan as a fear-mongering control tool.  For thousands of years, Satan was used as a control device and a fear tactic by the Christian church in order to keep their followers in line.  The threat of eternity in hell with a demonic being who’d torture you for eternity was used to scare people into avoiding being human and living their lives the way they wanted to.  I remember all...

When people think of Satanism, they think of a cult that worships an anthropomorphic devil.  They think of black robes, drinking the blood of babies, sacrificing animals and virgins, sex orgies.  Well, that’s all wrong.  That’s basically all the crap that’s been fed by the Christian church and entertainment outlets for thousands of years. Satanism is a religion and a philosophy.  For starters, we are atheists.  This may come as a surprise to many people.  We are a carnal religion rather than a spiritual one.  We don’t believe in a literal God or a literal Satan.  In fact, we don’t even believe in or follow the Christian interpretation of Satan.  Satan is more of a symbol and mascot for individualism, freedom, individual liberty, pride, and the dark force that exists in all of nature.  Satan is the role model for what we Satanists are about. In Hebrew, Satan means “accuser, opposer, adversary,” so in that sense, we Satanists are the accus...