Theistic Satanism

Most self-identified Satanists seem to be of the Laveyan variety. I realize there are organizations like Left Hand Path etc that might follow theistic Satanism, but has there ever been a movement in any portion of the world of any stature that actually resembled the Theistic Satanism that soccer moms feared actually existed in the States in the 80s? Have been curious but my research thus far usually just turns up metal band GISs and random crazies with geocities websites. just kind of curious as to the makeup of these groups.

my friend dean used to be a theistic satanist in the 1990s

he's a laugh though is dean so no way of telling if he was taking the piss to be quite honest!

pretty sure we have a Satanic Panic thread that maybe talks about this...?

(I'm guessing the short answer is no)

Reminds me of the guy in Silicon Valley who said he was a “LaVeyan Satanist with theistic tendencies”.

there's one that Aerosmith posted in that discussed Michelle Remembers et al but I recall it mostly focusing on that specific panic rather than the actual proliferation of real groups like this.

xpost

was acting under the assumption that institutional satanism was a trope for crime dramas to exploit and not a legit belief system that actual humans subscribed to but people will believe anything so who knows

dean was big into his red dwarf at the time

It's pretty hard to arrive at theistic Satanism via agnosticism or atheism, so the broadest available path would be starting from monotheism. There are a ton of True Believers in Satan out there, but the only ones who are proclaiming it loudly ime are evangelical Christians. The residue who are not specifically Christian are usually Jungian types more into Satan as an archetype than as a theistic deity. Then there are the piss-takers...

I remember you talking about Dean. Scarcely could he see a church without feeling a strong compulsion to burnett

lol

haw

i lold

good ol' dean

g.o.d.

hmmmmmmm....................

maybe the best thread i ever started

why would you want to worship satan?

There has been some movements where they worship what appear to us to be horrific demons, sometimes with spilling blood. There are cults in India where they still sacrifice many goats. I found this too:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/05/india.theobserver

But saying these are the Devil may be simply misunderstanding an eastern culture and imprinting my western religious tradition onto it. I am reading medieval history and it goes into many church reforms that led to the kind of beliefs described in the OP. If you read the OT or NT they don't say much about demonic beings. Important to remember that the spread of Christianity was not a simple corporate-wide policy change, but a war-torn and constantly changing landscape of prior traditions cultures and populations being pillaged raped feudalized malnourished etc. As kings and nobled grabbed more and more power, it necessitated assimilating cultures and folklore, which is a main reason why these things exist.

Another reason is for propoganda purposes. It was not difficult to scare the populace back then. Keep in mind they were malnourished and just as likely to die at birth as die at 20 from the plague, which surfaced somewhere in Europe at least every generation. Medical care was nil, or actually incredibly harmful, and the church or any authority was unable to do anything about this. Disease and medical malpractice (and wars and crusades and whatever environmental hazards there were) killed off the rich and the poor. You had wandering bands of madmen everywhere, convinced the world was going to end. If you read the book of Revelations, and then read what actually happened when the people who wrote it were living it, it makes total sense.

The church, unable to do anything, was basically working as a mafia, violently crushing out descent, selling Indulgences, colluding with big banking families to install their friends into positions of power. The Pope was ordered by his advisers to sit between two giant fires, that this would protect him. He eventually refused and went out to care for the poor, blessing the river so that bodies (which had begun filling over the graveyards and cemeteries -- the dead literally rising from the grave) could be dumped in the river and given a consecrated send off.

You probably didn't want to drink from these rivers.

So in the midst of this you had everyone fearful of each other. Rumor was that the plague arrived from the East, from traders in the direction of China. So outsiders were persecuted, different races were feared, families turned against each other, the mentally ill were perceived as possessed by the devils. Christianity was not a monolithic entity but encompassed many crazed and feverish wanderers who whipped themselves publicly and were shunned by everybody. They wanted to stop the plague but actually spread it.

There is a book called "Compendium Maleficarium" that I have, which is an instruction manual/rerference guide written by a Franciscan Inquisitor. It talks about demons and was I suppose officially sanctioned by the church. The sad and scary truth is that demons and witches and all the horror movie monsters associated with Christianity is sort of unconscious expressions of the great fears of patriarchy. Due to a lack of general knowledge common problems we deal with every day today were seen as evidence of evil that must be removed at all costs. Mentally ill people were "possessed and howling subhumans crying at the church doors", menstruating women were tortured and experimented upon.

Nowadays you can go to a rock n roll show or art gallery and see some people stand around, making noises, get naked, do weird "challenging" shit. Back in the day if people did that, it was in the woods at night, in order to have some privacy (and maybe get away from the piles of dead bodies). Image what an Inquisitor would think if we came upon a Polyphonic Spree concert in the forest one night?

So many people considered themselves Christian and yet were targeted by their church as demons, necromancers, occultists, etc. just for practicing seemingly "bizarre" rites, or having a mental condition, or disability, or being a woman, or a minority. This created many extremist and anarchist versions of Christianity - evangelical peasant revolts, the aformentioned goth rock flagellates. To these groups, the official Church was the Anti-Christ. The selling of Indulgences had meant the church was literally turning Christ's sacrifice into prostitution. It had become mired in idolization and greed, it had exploited the starving peasant class, and it was the incarnation of evil.

Then you have Luther, Protestantism, etc. It seems like these reform movements were proto-progressive movements. Keep in mind the poor could not save themselves, but a rich man could buy absolution. Protestantism seems to hearken to a more pure version of religion, where faith in Jesus was all that was needed. The church eventually came around to this, and now we have a pop Christianity where the significance of it in reaction to the idolatry that came before has been more or less forgotten.

Luckily we are much kinder to each other now!

Laveyan is more like 60s conceptual art, I like it a lot. It's very punk rock. By owning Satan he is saying "We are not like Christians saying God made everything but this bad stuff is Satan's fault". It's sort of a "we are all sinners" approach, which is ironically more true to a Jesus spirit than mainstream evangelical Christianity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Episcopi

More reading from official (Catholic) channels on folk spirits. This is sort of ground zero for condemning/defining witchcraft.

Ran it through Google Translate. Latin -> English

Bishops and their ministers to work out all the powers of a situation as dangerous and invented by the devil witches and sorcerers art completely obliterate from their parishes, and if a man or woman of any kind of crime they find pursuer, shamefully belong out of their parishes. For the apostle says: that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is. That are destroyed, and they are held captive by the devil, who had been left to his Creator, the votes they seek from the devil, the holy Church, and for this reason it ought to be cleansed from such a pest. Again, this is not to be neglected, that certain wicked women, turned back after Satan, the demons, illusions, and images of the led astray ', they believe that they profess, and during the hours, when Diana was the goddess of the pagans, or with Herodias and an innumerable multitude of women, to ride upon certain beasts, and many of the countries in the dead spaces night pass as masters to obey his commandments and to his service on certain nights damaged. But these alone would have been lost in the treachery of his own, and there were many in the destruction pertraxissent infidelity. For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe these things to be true, and believing in the faith, it deviates from the straight line, and in the error of the pagans rolled away when something of the divinity, the existence of God or of the gods, is outside the one to have noticed. For this reason, the priests, with all perseverance to preach to the people entrusted to him must be the churches, that they may see this in every way to be false, and not from the Divine, is cast upon the minds of the unbelievers, but from the power of the evil spirit was of such phantasms. If the man himself Satan, which is transformed into an angel of light, when the mind of any young woman has taken, through their unbelief and lack of faith, and that this will be subjugated, and immediately transforms himself into the images of the different kinds of persons, and thus deceiving the mind, than they are held captive in a dream, now joyful, now sad only adjudicated only unknown persons, showing the detours which concludes. And when the spirit alone will not permit it, these things are not in the mind of the mind, and the unbelieving, but in the body of the opinion that to happen. In a dream, and the visions of the night, without him, who can not be brought out, and seems to be much one to sleep, things that we never dreamed of when he was awake? And who is so dense as a fool, and that all these things are done in the spirit only, which, in the body, too, will think that to happen? When the prophet Ezekiel saw visions of the Lord, in the spirit not in the body. And John the Apostle, in the spirit not in the body, he saw the mysteries of the Apocalypse, and heard it, just as he himself says: 'As soon, he says, I have been in the spirit. And Paul said that he does not dare to say, that was caught up in the body. Once all have been announced to the public, it is, that those who do such and such like things, believes, faith; and he who does not have the right faith in God, he is none of his, but of him in whom it believes, that is, of the devil. For it is written about our Lord: Through him all things were made. Whoever, therefore, something he believes to be able to be made, or a new creature to be changed for the better or for the worse, or transformed into another species, or likeness, except by the Creator Himself who made all things, and through whom all things were made, and a pagan, without doubt, is worse than an unbeliever.

xxpost Lavey's movement makes sense but I find their group lamentable for the usual reasons trotted out ("he plagiarized a lot", "replacing one form of 'religion', with another", etc.....

was glad when I got my last pentagram tattoo that I opted for a variant whose existence predated the one that Lavey copyrighted for his church.

will read that first article you posted, that's kinda what I was looking for, thx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period

also cf Santeria & Voodoo. cultural clash/ fusion/ superimposition of "gods"

also interesting, William Blake's idiosyncratic use of "Satan"

This is a pretty amazing nsfw painting from 1410. Crazier than any metal album cover:

http://www.romantisme-noir.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Giovanni-da-Modena_Inferno-4.jpg
http://www.poderesantapia.com/art/giovannidamodena.htm

...has there ever been a movement in any portion of the world of any stature that actually resembled the Theistic Satanism that soccer moms feared actually existed in the States in the 80s?

No. The Satanism that certain Christian groups fear is a conspiracy theory. It imagines a hidden world operating beneath the surface of our own, visible only in coded signs and traces. The Devil and his agents, like God, can only be perceived by agency of faith. And whatever part of it seems to lie in plain view must necessarily be the smallest.

Indeed.

The people who wrote about demonology approached this as if they were modern scientists, and the presence of an aberration in human behavior or appearance could signify unseen causes. There were great 'advances' made by people insisting that demons were not responsible for bad weather or the death of a child, they merely had occult knowledge about the science and workings of nature, and could manipulate these to their own affect. They genuinely tried experimenting - with alchemy, with trance-inducing rituals, with smoking opium and hallucinating encounters with spiritual beings - to find out how things worked. The idea that you could manipulate nature to affect things, which was called magic, is now called science. Conjurers would invoke a demon or learned archetype (such as Egyptian god of knowledge and writing Thoth) and ask them for the procedure. Like an intense cosplayer they would dress up like them, chant their name, chant their favorite phrases, draw portraits of them, write fan fiction, perform dances, decorate the setting a certain way, etc. trying to invoke that spirit by manipulating their appearance and behavior. Familiars could embody physical properties, such as moisture, dryness, heat, etc.), so in a way this was an early form of trying to solve a problem using physics. Like any modern scientific undertaking this meant working through a hierarchy/bureaucracy of managers and sub-managers (Princes, Superior Princes, and Servitors). Through all of this the conjurer would write down a strange science, which included more ridiculous things for them to do to invoke further beings. None of this was successful in any practical application, but it did lead to the discoveries of many mineral and plant forms, and basically planted the seeds for the methodical and peer-driven Renaissance science.

I don't think there were many conjurers though. They seemed to have been big self-promoters and due to the nature of their work, prone to getting chased out of towns, having their publishings burned, and ending up poor and insane from alchemy-induced Mercury poisoning.

Also: neither "Lucifer" nor "Satan" are found in The Bible. Orthodox Christianity just can't help but George Lucas the Bible.

One popular form of the devil was Faust, who was named after business partner of the famous Gutenberg. Faust was thrown in jail and charged of witchcraft for copying the Bibles - nobody had seen a copied text before, everything was hand written. Imagine how strange and disarming to see an exact duplicate of something for the very first time in history. Faust/Gutenberg were the first Information Pirates, the first Wikileaks, Medieval Hackers.

Underneath all of this manipulation and horror going on in the Middle Ages is also a hopeful story of the start of the Information Age. One of the reasons authorities used demons to scare people is because nobody could read the Bible and the church/ruling class spoke Latin.

Gutenberg Press : The Philosopher's Stone (opium?) :: The Apple Macintosh : LSD?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ro4zscyE0

c.1610
Better than 1080p 30fps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzOgsaXO7BE

This is off topic but I am geeking out here.

"About 40 people at Casale in Western Lombardy smeared the bolts of the town gates with an ointment to spread the plague. Those who touched the gates where infected and many died. The heirs of the dead and diseased had actually paid people at Casale to smear the gates in order to obtain their inheritances more quickly." -From The Deceptions of Demons, 1583

Weyer criticised the Malleus Maleficarum and the witch hunting by the Christian and Civil authorities; he is said to have been the first person that used the term "mentally ill" or melancholy to designate those women accused of practicing witchcraft.[2] In a time when witch trials and executions were just beginning to be common, he sought to derogate the law concerning witchcraft prosecution. He claimed that not only were examples of magic largely incredible but that the crime of witchcraft was literally impossible, so that anyone who confessed to the crime was likely to be suffering some mental disturbance (mainly "melancholy," which was at that time a very flexible category with many different symptoms).

Some scholars have said that Weyer intended to mock the concept of the hellish hierarchy that previous grimoires had established by writing those two books and entitling his catalogue of demons Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (The False Kingdom of the Demons).

Nevertheless, while he defended the idea that the Devil's power was not as strong as claimed by the orthodox Christian churches in De Praestigiis Daemonum, he defended also the idea that demons did have power and could appear before people who called upon them, creating illusions; but he commonly referred to magicians and not to witches when speaking about people who could create illusions, saying they were heretics who were using the Devil's power to do it, and when speaking on witches, he used the term mentally ill.[3]

Moreover, Weyer did not only write the catalogue of demons Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, but also gave their description and the conjurations to invoke them in the appropriate hour and in the name of God and the Trinity, not to create illusions but to oblige them to do the conjurer's will, as well as advice on how to avoid certain perils and tricks if the demon was reluctant to do what he was commanded or a liar. In addition, he wanted to abolish the prosecution of witches, and when speaking on those who invoke demons (which he called spirits) he carefully used the word exorcist.

Weyer never denied the existence of the Devil and a huge number of other demons of high and low order. His work was an inspiration for other occultists and demonologists, including an anonymous author who wrote the Lemegeton (The Lesser Key of Solomon). There were many editions of his books (written in Latin), especially Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, and several adaptations in English, including Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584).

Weyer's appeal for clemency for those accused of the crime of witchcraft was opposed later in the sixteenth century by the Swiss physician Thomas Erastus and the French legal theorist Jean Bodin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Weyer

I have been reading The Lesser Key of Solomon, which was published by the OTO and has an intro and illustrations by Crowley. Like anything they produce it is esoteric and abstract in its writing, you feel like you kind of need to be an Initiate in order to understand some of these pages. Like looking at an instructional manual written in another language perhaps. Japanese video games seem to reference this book a lot (they always are ahead of our time in Japan), and it is a really comprehensive list of spirits, instructions, charts, symbols, and all sorts of tools to use in conjuring. This intro is really interesting

I am not concerned to deny the objective reality of all "magical" phenomena; if they are illusions, they are at least as real as many unquestioned facts of daily life; and, if we follow Herbert Spencer, they are at least evidence of _some_ cause.
Now, this fact is our base. What is the cause of my illusion of seeing a spirit in the triangle of Art?
Every smatterer, every expert in psychology, will answer: "That cause lies in your brain."
English children are taught (_pace_ the Education Act) that the Universe lies in infinite Space; Hindu children, in the _akasa_, which is the same thing.
Those Europeans who go a little deeper learn from Fichte, that the phenomenal Universe is the creation of the Ego...
Magical phenomena, however, come under a special sub-class, since they are willed, and their cause is the series of "real" phenomena called the operations of ceremonial Magic.
(1) Sight.
The circle, square, triangle, vessels, lamps, robes, implements, etc.
(2) Sound.
The invocations.
(3) Smell.
The perfumes.
(4) Taste.
The Sacraments.
(5) Touch.
As under (1).
(6) Mind.
The combination of all these and reflection on their significance.
These unusual impressions (1-5) produce unusual brain-changes; hence their summary (6) is of unusual kind. Its projection back into the apparently phenomenal world is therefore unusual.
Herein then consists the reality of the operations and effects of ceremonial magic, and I conceive that the apology is ample, so far as the "effects" refer only to those phenomena which appear to the magician himself, the appearance of the spirit, his conversation, possible shocks from imprudence, and so on, even to ectasy on the one hand, and death or madness on the other.
But can any of the effects described in this our book _Goetia_ be obtained, and if so, can you give a rational explanation of the circumstances? Say you so?
I can, and will.
The spirits of the _Goetia_ are portions of the human brain.
Their seals therefore represent...methods of stimulating or regulating those particular spots (through the eye)....

Crowley, -pp 17-18

He goes on to explain in detail some more of this, not exhaustively, but using metaphors. Because conjuration is largely an esoteric art, the true meanings of the operations are not what they literally say. On the operation to "destroy our enemies" Crowley says:

Here we come to an interesting fact. It is curious to note the contrast between the noble means and the apparently vile ends of magical rituals. The latter are disguises for sublime truths. "To destroy our enemies" is to realize the illusion of duality, to excite compassion.

Crowley, -pp 18

is death worship related to satanism, or its own brand of nihilism? is thanos a satanist?

satan isn't related to death afaict

Thanos is a Breatharian

well satan himself is related to judgement after death but isn't the op question asking whether satanism generally has much to do w/ the literary Satan at all? (nb i know nothing about satanism.)

well the theistic Satanism of satanic panic is mostly drawn from that intersection of hysterical fundie Xtians and heavy metal shock tactics (I thought you were pretty familiar with the latter?) But Satan for Xtians is never particularly about death (Xtians love death! leads to eternal life dontchaknow) but about punishment, damnation etc. Death is kinda not relevant.

Kind of. I was mostly curious if "devil worshippers" in the classic Christian definition really existed anywhere or if Satanism truly is just indulgent humanism with Satan as a figurehead for 99% of them.

Mostly cos I would find it hard to rectify believing in God and the Devil, being threatened with Hell, and choosing Satan anyway. No matter how much you hate you some God, most would grin and bear it rather than be flambeed.

But I suppose that's why most of them don't exist outside of soccer mom fantasies re: satanic panic.

Xpost

if Satanism truly is just indulgent humanism with Satan as a figurehead for 99% of them.

yeah it's this

Death worship mainly seems to be for those who favor pro-capital punishment while wearing the image of a man publicly executed on a crucifix and pretending to drink his blood on a weekly basis.

do actual death cults exist in history, not worship of a death-related deity but an actual theology of annihilation? or is this just something ppl use to describe theologies (like ISIS, which Obama recently called a death cult) that they don't like?

America as a country seems pretty death cult-y tbh

but no I believe it's the latter

pro-capital punishment != death cult behavior imo, except in the histrionic partisan sense, since they don't call for inmate execution as itself a valorous fulfillment of death, but as punishment/justice.

I don't really see how a theology of annihilation would actually propagate, one would assume all of its adherents would shortly be dead

http://vhemt.org/

pro-capital punishment != death cult behavior imo, except in the histrionic partisan sense, since they don't call for inmate execution as itself a valorous fulfillment of death, but as punishment/justice.

― Mordy, Wednesday, May 27, 2015 1:56 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not interested in the justifications behind anti-human practices. Killing is killing, I thought God said that was bad.

God said murder was bad. He mandated death penalties in the Torah for a variety of crimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capital_crimes_in_the_Torah

God kills a shit ton of people

not breeding /= death cult imo

oh don't be a disingenuous shit contenderizer, you're smart enough to understand the distinction

but not the same in that there aren't dozens of countries worldwide today where the salem witch trials are commonly accepted as true

But there are dozens of countries worldwide today where women are butchered daily for acting weird or looking at someone funny. Plus ca change...

I may be a shit, but never disingenuous. Being a delicate flower, I find such tales offensive.

u could just be like yeah i could see how making a movie about a book that is still a best seller in a number of countries is maybe a bridge farther than a fictional version of the salem witch trials that assumes it's true. you know, like this one

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI3MDI2NDc3Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNDQ2MzQyMQ@@._V1_UY1200_CR103,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg

http://images.redbox.com/Images/EPC/Kiosk/4934.jpg

Yeah, my pearl-clutching definitely occurs on a sliding scale.

in a way hocus pocus is even worse for making light of the terrible tragedy of the salem witch trials -- and intended for children too, which obv a horror film would not be

i think modern depictions do add to the general culture and sometimes in a bad way. look at how people were upset True Detective didn't "follow through" on its cult ambitions, all that stuff is just made up, yet people intuited there was some truth to it. also we can shrug off theism/satanism as things of the past but let's not ignore many of the lunatics running the country believe in this stuff literally and use it (whether the Scalia-style "the devil exists and is real" or "Hollywood/liberals are evil and have no morals") to oppress those typically oppressed by the long history of Satanic panic. reading through a primary source witch hunting book is a first-hand look at horrific abuse of state/patriarchal supremacy through the ages and a cultural status quo that still has its grip on the world, as many here have noted.

it isn't simply that women were targeted as witches, it underlines much greater and culture-wide problems with anyone outside the status quo. it is not limited to "witches" killed any more than modern state corruption is limited to unarmed people killed.

all that stuff is just made up, yet people intuited there was some truth to it.

that wasn't really the issue there, the issue was with shitty storytelling/plotting

i think we shouldn't make anymore movies that involve/use themes about culture-wide problems, esp horror films.

For stuff like Hocus-Pocus, more that it's kind of gross and embarrassing, sticks happy baby bunny flowers on a misogynist trope with unpleasant historical associations. I don't have to chortle my way through Song of the South, either.

xp lol

I don't mind horror movies about real-world whatever, but as with comedies, I prefer that they punch up.

u kno what tho i remember that they had to drag u kicking and screaming into the brave new tumblr world so i guess it'll take you twice as long for it to wear off as well

historically (its roots in official church witch-hunters rather than local/regional lynch mobs like Salem) it feels like the "they were a witch" functions similarly to "they were armed". as a cover-up for state abuse.

if you have any interest in this stuff i highly recommend "Compendium Maleficarum", a manual written for the Franciscan order in 1608, detailing many reports and cases. once you resolve the fantasy elements and realize what they are actually describing, it is horrific stuff far worse and far more common than the Salem Witch Trials.

u kno what tho i remember that they had to drag u kicking and screaming into the brave new tumblr world

Tumblr world, tumblr world... I geddit, I is become a SJW! I hear a lot about those guys in the comments under news stories. Apparently they are a problem of our modern age.

Naw, the evil witches thing has bothered me since I was a kid. I don't like the reliance on ugly/old/deformed/dark-clad (or dark-skinned) monster villains in fantasy, either ¯\(°_°)/¯

Adam Bruneau OTM

https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-1bbfbd0e7b1d6d8084082d0b728d0cf1?convert_to_webp=true

there's def uncomfortable race stuff in the way Tolkien describes his hordes of "swarthy" bad guys

something else that owned - KKK grand wizard gandalf leading the charge against a bunch of savage hottentots in Rotk, i swear some of those shots were straight out of birth of a nation

― the shitbirdification of america's youth (cankles), Friday, July 24, 2009 12:38 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's something royally fucked up about all fantasy stories wherein an entire race of sentient beings is irredeemably evil by dint of birth tbh

jfc we really are re-living the 80s

http://nypost.com/2017/03/03/gang-members-charged-with-killing-woman-in-satanic-ritual/

(I can't find the 80s Satanic Panic thread - I thought there was one?)

the totally insane true story behind the 1970s film and book Sybil

ah right. yeah that thread drifted a bit from its title lol...

I've been reading Dan Barker's God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction and I'm curious whether any metal bands ever played straight with the sociopath from the Torah. You know, all the good news like Psalm 137:9 "How blessed will be the one who seizes your young children and pulverizes them against the cliff!"

jfc we really are re-living the 80s

El Salvador was called "the world’s most homicidal country" by the Guardian in a 2015 story, noting that "Even Iraq – with its civil war, suicide bombings, mortar attacks and US drone strikes – could not match such a lethal start to the week." i imagine these gangs do worse things than collecting Satanic statues. this story doesn't tell us about drugs or human trafficking.

which is par for the course for Satanic panic. i tried looking up Madonna Kabbalah videos and was flooded with "jewish black magic" youtube shit-tier anti-NWO propoganda.

Sanpaku, that particular psalm is by an enslaved people about the overthrow of their oppressors. what context does Barker take it in?

Barker is an ex-evangelist preacher whose been a avowed and very public atheist for decades. His book is essentially a once source shop for all the misogyny, racism, genocide, etc. in the OT (maybe he gets to the NT later in). However, the sheer mass of remarks from YHWH that would be considered rather evil in the modern context is certainly enough for a few albums of verbatim death metal.

so this guy has made his career preaching those bad things and now he's making a career off them still. good for him. he doesn't sound like a very spiritual person to me.

God does seem to have his darker side. this only makes since, if He is everything, then of course he is the bad stuff too. the root of all demonic lore is in the esoteric post-Christian OT DLCs

P sure there are OT death metal bands (even Jewish ones!) But I'll defer to Mordy on this pt.

Barker is an ex-evangelist preacher whose been a avowed and very public atheist for decades.

Places him among what could be the most cynical group of people on earth.

I'd place the root at Zoroastrianism, and its cosmic battle between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, which certainly had its influence during the Achaemenid period in Palestine from 539 BC to 330 BC. That's were the monotheistic religions obtained the devil, afterlife, heaven, hell, messianism, and free will, of which there's little evidence prior to the Babylonian captivity. Shaitan was just a court servant of YHWH in Job.

Aside: the Achaemenids are *such* a fascinating period. Cyrus the Great as the first emperor of a multi-ethnic/multi-cultural empire and arguably the first liberal. Jesus of Nazareth was speaking the lingua franca of the Achaemenid empire (Aramaic) five centuries later (and after 3 centuries of Greek/Roman rulers).

I LIEK SATAN

There is a crossover Jewish band called Christkiller that is p dope. Their first album was called Nailed It. They are that kinda band

Xxxxxxpost

Awesome tracklisting:

http://www.allmusic.com/album/nailed-it%21-mw0002832945

Track Listing
1
Christ Killer
2
Legacy of Hebrewtality
3
From The Dreidel To The Grave
4
Yom Kippur/Bong Ripper
5
Ignorance Is Bris
6
Mazel Tov Cocktail
7
11: Thou Shalt Thrash
8
Repentless

I'm curious whether any metal bands ever played straight with the sociopath from the Torah. You know, all the good news like Psalm 137:9 "How blessed will be the one who seizes your young children and pulverizes them against the cliff!"

― Sanpaku

Funeral Mist - Blessed Curse. Lyrics are all verbatim Deuteronomy verses, and the sample is from an exposition of Psalm 75:8.

I'd place the root at Zoroastrianism

That's were the monotheistic religions obtained the devil, afterlife, heaven, hell, messianism, and free will

since we are leaving Satanism and the that heirarchy of spiritual beings / magical knowledge, you can easily look past Zoroastrianism. Akhenaten instituted a monotheistic cult in Egypt a thousand years before your date, and had existed for a thousand years before then. the religion of the ancient Egyptians features heavily in the OT, famously as Moses had a showdown vs Egyptian magicians, who could pretty much match everything YHWH can do. clearly the people who wrote the Books of Moses were studied in the Egyptian mysteries. the Egyptian religious tradition itself date back to at least 3000BC. The Book of the Dead dates back to 2400BC and includes a heaven (The Field of Reeds or The Horizon) and afterlife with a final judgement (the weighing of the heart by Ammit the Eater of Souls) as well as complex metaphysical cosmology with evil forces battling good. Osiris is the sort of central Christ figure, the son of God, a virgin birth who is betrayed, killed, and brought back to life.

when discussing Theistic Satanism imo the monotheism/polytheism dichotomy becomes meaningless. once you accept a heirarchy of multiple supernatural entities all w unique personalities interacting w one another then is it really monotheism anymore?

Adam can you rec some book(s) on these Egyptian-Old Testament crosscurrents? (Well not crosscurrents I guess... currents).

Egypt was the hedgemon over Palestine for much of the Bronze age, so I wouldn't discount an influence, but the scholars seem to think the OT arose from the Canaanite tradition, with El as the father/sky god, Asherah his consort, Baal as the Osiris/Christ-like son and reborn character. Each locality had its patron that syncretized El with local flavor: Chemosh in Moab, Bethel in Tyre, Yahweh in Edom and thence Judea. The priests of the Jerusalem temple took the unusual stance forbidding worship of other members of the pantheon, but the populace largely ignored this until after the priestly castes returned from Babylon in 539 BCE.

However, the question for this thread is where did a devil, a force of evil, come into the picture. Its largely absent from the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, or Canaanite pantheons. No such creature appears in the older parts of the Torah. ha-Satan was a member of El/Yahweh's court, a legal adversary, but not a force of evil. Only with the 2nd century BCE Septuagint is "ha-Satan" translated as the Greek diabolos (slanderer). So, somewhere between when most of the OT was redacted in the 6th century, and sometime in the 2nd century, did a force of evil come into its interpretation.

Egypt was week during this period. Achaemenid Persia was the suzerain. And the state religion of Persia had a devil like entity, Ahriman.

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm100761259/book-dead-e-a-wallis-budge-hardcover-cover-art.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61iTLcVVr%2BL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

These are pretty good. I don't know what people think of E. A. Wallis Budge, many of the esoteric writers were of questionable character, but I find his translations pretty intriguing. Any book on late dynasty Egyptian art will probably have good stuff on Roman-Christian influences and conquests. Coptics and other groups gouged away at temple carvings, destroying entire walls of art and culture thousands of years old, as well as placing Coptic graffiti on top of the Egyptian artwork. In some temples this messy mix of cultures creates and interesting layered effect, looking through time, akin to looking at a cross-section of the Earth in the Grand Canyon.

I don't think where did evil come from is the question of this thread. There has been different forms in cultures all over the world. It is a universe thing, just as a creation myth.

I thought this thread title dealt with specifically: age-old Satanic death cults, the boogey man that the Inquisition, Ronald Reagan, and Geraldo warned you about: are they real?

No, they aren't, and never were.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51NeZf9XSnL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

This should be required reading for the thread. Compendium Maleficarum is a witch-hunter's manual written in Latin by Francesco Maria Guazzo, and published in Milan, Italy in 1608. It's like the worst police blotter ever, all crimes stamped with "Unsolved".

I do not like green eggs and ham
My soul belongs to Abalam
Hell's fire pit will soon emerge
You'll feel the sting of Apollyon's scourge
Behold the Antichrist's rebirth
His armies shall invade the Earth
Fire, screaming, gnashing teeth
Our future home, it lies beneath
As for your delicacy
It is a triviality
Put down that plate of eggs and ham
And lead the Horde, oh Sam-I-Am

This American Life 666: The Theme That Shall Not Be Named

Goat blood taste like shit

goat blood: not the greatest of all time

I'm just gonna leave this here:

https://goatsmegma.bandcamp.com

What a name

Every time this thread gets bumped I'm reminded of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YErFwJX0HKE

Notice me!