The Occult Underground: Dispelling Disastrous Delusions

It is natural for people to have some superstition. We have our favorite-gig-t-shirt, or a lucky pen, or we're sure we were in a house that was haunted at least once. We might have an attraction to vampires - we might find ourselves very firmly rooted in an old religious tradition - whatever it might be. So no matter how rational the individual, a person has some problems with their understanding of causation. "I always play a good gig in that t-shirt," or whatever it is.

Another note is that while our culture is not very religious by old standards, there is still a sense of, "nominal christianity." In other words, "I'm not Christian, but only crazy people talk that way." As a culture, we still hang on certain taboos, no matter how secular and scientific our world has become.

So let us start out with - Satanism. If you mention it, your nominal Christians get the willies, or people may assume you are making a threat, like, "I have Satanist connections, and hordes of Satanists are going to get you if you try to chump me." Whatever it might be. I've met a host of nuts not often found in the mixed nuts tin, and I've met some pretty interesting Satanists over the years. So let us start by dispelling the delusions about Satanism. Believe what you want, but in the counter-culture, this is the reality.

First off, most Satanists one runs into on the 'Net are what is called, "LaVeyan Satanists." LaVey was a New Age cult leader in LA of what was called the "Church of Satan," in the chaos of the late 70's, and his ideas are the core principles for the LaVeyan Satanist. The whole LaVeyan Satanist ideal could be summed up as, "I take care of myself and my own," and a sort of bare - yet magical - form of pantheism. Pantheism is the belief that the natural order is a deity of some sort.

Your big problem with LaVeyans is three-fold. First, LaVeyan Satanism is highly connected with the Aryan nation movement. Second, a lot of LaVeyans tweak. Third, even LaVeyans who can be trusted are, "muscle" types - hackmasters - and they can be meatheads - even when they are worth your time.

I understand here - okay? - we are discussing something that a religious conservative finds appalling offensive. Further, even if you are not a religious conservative, these are not mainstream ideas or behavior and it has a tendency of throwing people off. I'm not trying to encourage Satanism, but instead lay out a sort of anecdotal record of these nuts from my lifetime of mixed nuts tins.

The second broad form of Satanist is usually called the, "Simonist," Satanist. There was a book released maybe 10 years ago that took some ideas from Sumerian mythology and was published under the name of "The Necronomicon." The translation from Latin for "necronomicon," is roughly, "book of dead names," and the book was a central part of Lovecraft the H.P.'s "Cthulhu Mythos," stories, a group of his short stories where all of the short stories are staged in a very similar setting.

Many people argue with the Simonists as to the veracity of the Simon 'Nomicon. The basic arguments are that Simon borrowed rather liberally from Sumerian mythology and that Lovecraft's "Necronomicon," was a fictional book invented - as far as we can discern - by Lovecraft himself. Most Simonist's simply answer that while these things may be true, they find the Simon 'Nomicon to be central to their own counter-culture meta-religious practices, and that they aren't worried if the document has any real sources in antiquity - or further - any reality at all!

The third form is Luciferianism. What I've seen is that the two Luciferians I've met were entirely different, that both were oddballs, that both were real smart, and that both were incredibly ironic and shocking personalities. One of the Luciferians I've met was a woman in her late 30's, and the other was Luciferi. There is no central text for Luciferianism, and Konstantinos' "Luciferian Witchcraft," did not get high-marks from either of the Luciferians I met. This is a population of size 2, but that much was consistent for my population study.

The only other type of Satanism I've ever run up against is called, "Traditional Satanism." The simplest way of putting this is, "Christianity is right, but I side with the dark lord!" (RAHR!?) This doesn't make sense, since if Christianity is right, you are going to pay worse than you can imagine for serving the dark lord. Among the LaVeyans, the saying goes, "Never trust a traditional," and the LaVeyans with their self-serving, "might is right," - kind of mentality despise this and other more baroque versions of counter-culture meta-religious belief.

There is also traditional Satanism that looks more towards previous pagan beliefs as other Neo-Pagans might do, but with less emphasis on the fluff and more emphasis on the barbarism. That type of Satanism is extremely uncommon, but I've met one and only one worth talking to back when I was about 20 years old and nothing but a pup. I'll get to that in the next article as we have too many delusions to dispel for one article. So we will have to do a split.