Manny the Satanist

Technically this happened this past April, but as of this third week of May, I have finished my graduate program and I now have my Master's Degree in Library and Information Science.  By all intents and purposes and consideration by my librarian peers, I'm now considered a librarian. I have Satanism to thank for this.  Why?  I'll try to explain this the best way I can. As some of you may know, I grew up going to the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall.  This is a religious Christian organization that suppresses individual freedom and they expect you to dedicate your whole life to Jehovah, the Kingdom Hall, and to gathering more members for the Kingdom Hall until the day you die. One of the topics of sermons that I would keep hearing over the years is about how one should basically avoid going to university because it was considered the "Devil's Playground of Sin" (well, they didn't use those exact words but that was basically the idea they were trying to co...

Alrighty, I have not written anything in this blog for a little while.  Happy Belated New Year.  Time to kick things off where I left off with the first blog entry of 2022. Most of us already know what goes through many people's heads when the name "Satan" comes up: a scary-looking red guy who is the cause of all the bad things that are wrong with this planet.  He's responsible for all the evil caused by human beings, at least according to other people. However, many people have not bothered to look further.  In this blog, I want to discuss what I learned about Satan and what he means to me. Satan means many things but I want to go over some of the core basics. In Hebrew, the name "Satan" means Opposer, Adversary, and Accuser.  So when we call ourselves Satanists, that means that we are the opposers, adversaries, and accusers of all spiritual religions, religious hypocrites, and philosophies that would get in the way of our carnal pleasures and personal phil...

Happy Independence Day, whoever reads this blog. I appreciate living in a country where I can say whatever I want, do whatever I want, and follow whatever philosophy that I choose.  I don’t get to do that in many parts of the world, so I never take these freedoms for granted. I’m happy that Satanism was born in America.  When I think of Satanism, I also think of Americanism.  Satanism is essentially Americanism.  I see the Sigil of Baphomet, I think of the American flag and vice versa. Our forefathers founded this country for many reasons, including to have the separation of church and state and to promote freedom, liberty, and individualism, as well as to be free from tyranny, whether it be political, social, or religious tyranny.  Those things to me are Satanism.  Those things are Americanism. Yes, I acknowledge that America is not a perfect country.  We have flaws that we need to work on, which we are doing to this day.  But here, I’m free to b...

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...

“ 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...