2026.09.17
The opening immediately left a bad impression -- using familiar, biblical language such as "As Satan fills our souls with fire, we shall know his infernal grace, he shall shepherd us, and guide us through the darkling night of immortal devilry". If you have (A) and you want (A) to be its own system, and even unique from (B), it has to be unique -- it's the classic inversion issue of inverting process X (making Y) but now process Y relies of process X and exists solely as its inverse. That is, process Y cannot exist without process X -- but X can exist without Y. It's abhorent.
The book continues in such a modern way -- no thought required. Part of the lovely nature of the occult is the journey. Things are not said so bluntly and without imagination. I dislike Crowley's overuse of poetry and metaphor but his style -- divorced from his ethos and ideas -- is much better, the mind must be stretched and time must be spent in absorbing the information and making an analysis of it, possibly doing a lot of cross-referencing. It is time consuming, in a good way and for a good reason.
There are five tenets given. The author says if you disagree with any of them, you need to reassess your moral compass. The tenets are similar to the 7 tenets of The Satanic Temple -- vague, subjective wordings which sound reasonable but amount to nothing. It re-iterates many times throughout the book the libertarian idea of something not being bad if it doesn't (directly) affect/hurt someone else -- and if it does then it is bad. It uses a lot of wordings from a Leftist mindset -- that Satanism is about "finding your voice" and standing "with courage against tyrants".
"While Satanism does not condone violence it does support self defense -- this religion forges warriors from victims and rebukes the threat of oppressors"
The second Appetite (i.e. virtue) is called Pestilence and amounts to pondering death. Every virtue listed is contrasted with the supposed condemnation by an obscure "Abrahamic faiths" archetype. It mentions Catholicism more than any other. Interesting. During my beginning monastic peregrination into Orthodox Christianity, death was almost central. In icons, there are often skulls, skulls on schemas (the clothing of adept monks), many hymns speak of death (my favourite was Душа моя прегрешная). The third virtue is desire, painted as something shunned by "Abrahamic faiths" and indulged in responsibly by Satanists. This again shows a lack of understanding of Abrahamic faiths as they would say the same. Discernment and boundaries are not the same as shunning and avoidance.
In the sections of Satanic sins (again with the usage of Christian terms without understanding what they mean), the sins are: false judgement, arrogance and malice. Already, there are examples of this book breaking all of these.
The book frames Satanism as a social club. That it's about how others perceive you, that you ought not harm others, that if you break the rules then you'll be seen in a pariah and expelled from the club of sophisticated Satanists. This is my main issue with this book, I won't quibble over the actual contents too much as they don't really matter -- they are just expressions of a faulty worldview.
The information about the altar is generally good. Typically, in these books the ritual aspects are useful and the only reason to engage with the material.
Again the book gets into philosophy and says the most ignorant things like who are we to judge Christians since they are irrelevant. Yet every other paragraph can't help but mention them. The book then shows its true genius by asserting its interpretations of events using Christian scripture -- a classic tactic used by Muslims to show that Christ was Muslim by isolating verses and (i) assuming Sola Scriptura (ii) ignoring exegesis and commentaries (iii) ignoring the wholistic nature of the/a religion and only focusing on one moment (and misrepresenting it).
This book is on par with The Satanic Bible in its ignorance and juvenile philosophy, misunderstanding of history, contradictory passages, etc. but at least it doesn't use awful Latin like LaVey did.
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