Issue 3
Are we Adversaries or just Baphy plushies?
The Satanic Citizen newsletter is an irregular missive of thinking, recommendations, and site updates. Warning: opinions.
First Thought
If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power.
— Carl Sagan
A dictator’s position is fundamentally premised on the centralization of power, the imperative to grow reach and influence, and of follower subservience. A one-legged system is precarious. The authority must, by its very nature, perpetuate inequality through increasingly arbitrary rules and punishments.
The more arbitrary the authority, the less respect it deserves.
Curiously, modern Satanism does not rush to reject this. The Church of Satan and The Satanic Temple are built on cults of personality; the former explicitly, the latter subversively. Their Statements and Tenets, respectively, do not openly encourage us to challenge arbitrary authority.
This omission is quite a choice by CoS and TST.
Challenging and rejecting arbitrary authority is the absolute core ethos of Satanism, as essential as Christ on the cross for Christians. Christ died because God demanded it. Satan was cast out because he told God to go fuck himself. One bends the knee in submission. The other lifts their chin in defiance. What’s more fundamental than that?
Instead, TST (and other orgs) serve nutrition-free abstractions like “the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit” as well as heaping scoops of bodily autonomy, individual sovereignty, and self-governance. That’s important. Domain over one’s physical self doesn’t just scratch the Western itch of individualism (satisfying everyone from far left anarchists to flaccid centrists to Randian libertarians) — it’s a valid and necessary ideal of being human.
But. It’s a far cry from explicitly, loudly, collectively calling out the bastards who are fucking with you to begin with.
Some other modern Satanic organizations remedy this. United Aspects of Satan’s first value: “Rebellion against arbitrary authority”. Assembly of Light Bearers gestures at it with phraseology like “the Adversary symbolizes the spark of consciousness which questions everything”. Outsider Satanism offers us “our veneration of Satan empowers us to continue this rebelliousness against arbitrary authority and the uninspired status quo”.
This is in no way an indictment of individual Satanists. In fact, our best examples come from local chapters taking the spirit of The Adversary to the front line: voting, marching, protesting, speaking, organizing, fundraising. That is Satanism living its #bestlife. Their efforts remind us that to declare yourself a Satanist without a mindset toward challenging authority, especially arbitrary authority, is just self-actualization with Baphy plushies.
— Agonist
July 2024
New Citizen Resources
Chapter
France Satanique et Francophones
Podcast
GOSPod
Misfit Links
Erik Baker @ Defector
The Ghosts Of New Atheism Still Haunt Us
Deborah Netburn @ LA Times
What is the ‘shadow self’ and why is everyone talking about their hidden desires?
The Last Note
Set Your Pussy Free by NOBRO
Raucous riot grrrl from Canada, ripping through themes of sexual liberation, drugs, and the miasma of this modern bullshit life.
