My prayer I offér are to the essences of life, the Universe and Everything. I seek to articulate my focus and intention and bring my environment into balance with myself and myself in balance with my environment. Once someone obsevered me and said " You are chanting to be one with the Universe.". I felt half offended " and the Universe one with my I silently screamed in my mind.". Your thoughts?

Just a thought that popped into my head- let’s say someone is a COS member and has been for a while. This person goes through some hardship and slowly sinks into a pattern of acting very non-Satanically. Won’t take personal responsibility, isn’t performing proper self care, is letting others walk all over them, is complaining about their life instead of making things better, etc. At what point does this person go from “Satanist going through a hard time, perhaps struggling with mental issues” to “This person clearly isn’t a Satanist”. How long would un-Satanic bad behavior be tolerated by Central COS, if this person wasn’t acting nefariously, being an ass to other members, or lying about Satanism? No major offenses here is what I’m saying. And then removing the official COS higharchy from this, how would WE feel about that person? Was he never truly a Satanist to begin with if his behavior was like this for say, 5 years without changing? Or can a Satanist still be a Satanist if he’s caught up for a long period of time in bad habits and bad mindset? What if he knows deep down that he’s lost himself, like an alcoholic, but has lost motivation to resume being powerful?

I am a Church of Satan member, and I believe in freedom of thought. That said...

Fuck The Satanic Temple, for not only failing to pay respects to the forerunners of the new Satanic Age, for failing to grasp (if not embrace) the harsh, often unpleasant reality of Satanism and for trying to make a liberal grift off of LaVey's work.

The Church of Satan putatively strives for an apolitical space (if such a thing is even possible), and extends it, at times, to this message board. I have begun, after decades of apprehension, to read "The Satanic Scriptures." I fear that, through possibly no fault of his own, Gilmore attempts to grandfather Ayn Rand's explicit politics AND a slightly uncomfortable fetishism for Asatru-esque ethnopaganism into Satanism. As essentially the CoS press secretary and LaVey's successor, he has the right / duty to maintain a stratified Satanism as it and the world develops, preventing it from becoming a liberal, feel-good, de-facto Christian entity like The Satanic Temple. I feel there are moments of over-stepping, however, and it feels like this spokesperson for the CoS is really promoting Objectivism over the Satanism that I gleaned from the Satanic Bible when I read it in 1996 and again in 2019 (and semi-regularly since then).

I LOVE Satanism because it allows for hyper-individualism. The Satanism that would embrace a Sammy Davis Jr. and a Tiny Tim, NOT just the Aryan warriors that strive to be "Prime Movers" while listening to NoN's "Total War" and fantasizing about Fenris and the Valkyries. I personally would cite the Sagas of Icelanders as one of my favorite things in all of literature (as well as Samuel Delany's "Dhalgren" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man"), but if I were The High Priest, writing "The Satanic Scriptures," I would keep certain culturally specific references out of my rituals and diatribes, aware of the weight of my platform and that I am seen to be speaking for Satanism.

Thoughts / opinions?

Since everything I find on google is about "Satanic ritual abuse" and "demonic possesion" related to Satanism and mental health, I'm asking this here. I am an atheist, and I don't believe those things.

What I want to know is what the actual Church of Satan thinks about mental illness.

I came across a YouTube short where someone joined a satanistic zoom meeting or something, and they were devil worshippers. Not satanists. So they actually spoke in Latin (I think it's Latin) and tried to curse the person that joined the meeting, basically the person that joined the zoom meeting was harassing them a lot and reading stuff out of the Bible (if I remember correctly) and it was just the most stereotypical and bad view of "satanists" ever. She said (the devil worshipper) "oh my god" and all the comments were like "saying oh my god is crazy for a satanist" like sir, that's literally blasphemy I don't know what you're talking about😭 anyways, I don't think people the worship the actual devil and do rituals and just go around being toxic should be called satanists because they're not. They're devil worshippers.

And as for the person the joined that zoom meeting, literally get a life. 😭

Cute tattoo done by sinistersparkleink in NYC 🔥

I'm not sure how widely known this was going back to 2017, but Nicolas Winding Refn released a promo trailer for his "Too Old to Die Young" series featuring a T-Rex bouncing to LaVey's reading of chapter 3 in The Book of Satan from the Satanic Mass album. The recent posts of Satanism in movies made me remember this diabolically pure homage. Seems like it went under the radar (maybe for obvious reasons) LINK

Not that you should care, nor does it matter, I'm just curious why one would take up Satanism rather than just be an atheist? Is it for a sense of direction?

EDIT: all fantastic answers, thank you.

Hello everyone!! I live in Italy and, as most of you know, Italy is a very Christian country. I usually get angry when people ask for my religion and, when I don’t say I’m a Christian (but a satanist), they start treating me like I’m a bad person and wanna cast evil spells on them. I would really like to know why people r so against this religion and so scared of people who really don’t wanna cause any harm!

I names my car Azazel. I'm not theistic, but I thought it was appropriate :)

What Satanism (or Satanism-adjacent) names have you given cars/pets/children/etc?

There's a scene in this movie where one character is listening to a radio station of a guy talking about psychic vampires. When I listened more closely I realized the radio station host was reading directly from the actual chapter on psychic vampires in The Satanic Bible. Ironically, the character listening to that station in the scene happens to be a narcissist and a questionable caregiver. The whole thing seemed very tongue-in-cheek but it was pretty cool to recognize some satanic literature in an unexpected place.

https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/bennett-braun-the-psychologist-who-fueled-the-satanic-panic/

I'm looking for a new job and I've seen opportunities as various kinds of companies/orgs that have a religious background (mostly Christian). I've denied job offers at places like Chik-fil-a and Salvation Army. You know, the ones that are openly homophobic/transphobic, use their profits to back theocratic legislation, etc.

However, I might have an opportunity to get into management at Habitat for Humanity. As far as I know, they don't do any of that bullshit and they don't care about your personal views on religion as long as you're not doing some shit like openly criticizing Christianity at work. And they do good things for people. Of course they have a lot of room for improvement, but overall I think they help people and that's something I'd like to do in my career.

I'm looking into other non-profit organizations, too, but a lot of them have some connection to religion. I'm not really looking for opinions on Habitat for Humanity specifically (though ofc you can chime in on that if you want), but moreso your opinions on working for organizations like this in general.

So would you work for an organization like this?

So yeah, doing a 7-8 minute presentation on satanism in front of 100 classmates (19-27 years old). I’m doing it voluntarily because I’ve gotten so many questions about it in the 4 months I’ve been here. It’s a very left wing school, so thankfully no one has been as ass about my religious beliefs.

Of course, 7 minutes is not a long time, so I really want to make it count. Obviously I’ll start with “no we don’t drink blood or eat babies” and all of that, but besides that, what would you say are good points to mention? Like, some things that people who’ve never heard of real satanism would find interesting or go “ahhh that makes sense!”?

Thank you in advance

HAIL!

If I am in someone's lair, and they are actively trying to harm me, am I correct for treating them with cruelty?

Ooof.. well I feel like I could’ve done better but an artist is his own worst critic here.

Loves Ghost
into the darkness too I dwell,
came to drink from witches well.
abundancy of light order to GOD I fell,
see you again if ever I will.
Satan Universal Forever My pill.

GD, Matthew

Hey, hey...

My friend in prison is a Luciferian. He wants to connect with any established Luciferian "churches"(?) / organizations, or at least see what they are about before he does his own thing when he gets out (in about two years). He's likely to be in the Midwest.

As those of you who know me know, I am a CoS member. This is the only place I could think to go for these resources (given that I am not on ANY social media, and am pretty selective about the company I keep), and though he and I relate VERY differently to matters of the religious / spiritual, I do love him and want to assist him as best I can... Any info is appreciated!