The Church of Satan is a religious body that most people don’t actually understand, and so many stories have cropped up around it that it’s hard to separate the myth from the truth. The best place to start is by reading the Satanic Bible, a book written by Anton LaVey who was the founder of the Church of Satan.
To begin with, Anton LaVey was a carnival worker. In the forward of the Satanic Bible it describes how LaVey would see men lusting after women who danced at the carnival one night, and then see them in church the next day begging for forgiveness. This cycle happened over and over again, which lead LaVey to the realization that, “the Christian Church thrives on hypocrisy!” Therefore on Walpurgisnacht (the last day of April in 1966 which is supposed to be a mystically important day) LaVey shaved his head ritually and officially founded the Church of Satan. Other versions contest that the church was founded later that year, but there’s no hard evidence one way or another.
The Satanic Bible is a book that was meant to lay out the philosophies and guiding principles of the Church of Satan as a religious body. Despite the name of the organization and the book, the Church of Satan really has nothing at all to do with the Judeo-Christian version of Satan, and most Satanists are either athiests or agnostics. Satanists, in the sense layed out by LaVey, do not pray to a being named Satan, nor do they attempt to woo dark powers from hell. Rather the Church of Satan and the Satanic Bible are about trying to fight against a religious organization that runs off of guilt over desire, and instead teaches people to embrace desire and physical pleasure. The feeling, according to religioustolerance.org, has a very pagan sensibility, gaining power through physical pleasure and through embracing desire and sensation.
If you actually get a copy of the Satanic Bible and sit down to read it, most of what LaVey has to say is about the mindset someone who wants to be free from the tyranny of another faith should have. The person should put themselves and their own power first, making themselves in essence the god figure in their lives. Additionally the idea of Satan as the rebel against a tyrannical Christian church is an image that plays into a lot of the statements on Satanism in its traditional sense as presented by LaVey.
It’s important to note that the Church of Satan is but one organization, and other have been started by those who’ve followed Satanism (such as the Temple of Set, begun by a man named Michael Akino). Satanism in its traditional sense is also different from witchcraft, Wicca and other pagan religions that are commonly found by teenage dabblers. Most devoted followers of Satanism are adults who remain as devoted to their faith as anyone else. It’s all there, if you can follow through the Satanic Bible and cut through the philosophical language and see the real church that LaVey set out.
The Church of Satan,” by Anonymous at Religious Tolerance
“What is the Satanic Bible?” by Anonymous at Got Questions?
