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The Satanic Bible: A Religion Without a Devil

In the archive

Held
Published by Avon Books, New York, 1969; in print ever since
Date evidence
Published December 1969
Era
Era IX · The Modern Age
In the archive
Satanism

On Walpurgisnacht, 30 April 1966, in a black-painted Victorian house on California Street in San Francisco, a former carnival organist and occult lecturer named Anton Szandor LaVey shaved his head and declared the founding of the Church of Satan. Three years later, in December 1969, the paperback house Avon Books published his Satanic Bible. Its cover carried a goat's head inside an inverted five-pointed star: the Sigil of Baphomet. The book has never gone out of print, and it remains the core text of the Church of Satan.

Inside the book

Its four books, its principles, and its sources. Turn each card.

  • The Book of Satan (Fire): A fierce prose poem attacking conventional morality. Most of it is adapted from Might Is Right (1896), by the pseudonymous 'Ragnar Redbeard'.
  • The Book of Lucifer (Air): LaVey's essays: Satan as a symbol of human nature, indulgence instead of abstinence, and a critique of Christianity.
  • The Book of Belial (Earth): LaVey's account of ritual and 'greater magic', treated as a psychological tool.
  • The Book of Leviathan (Water): Invocations and the Enochian calls of the Elizabethan magus John Dee, taken from Crowley's printing and rewritten with Satanic wording.
  • The Nine Satanic Statements (the opening creed): Nine short statements beginning 'Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence', the most-quoted part of the book.
  • Satan as symbol (an atheist religion): LaVey did not worship a literal devil. The Church of Satan describes itself as atheistic; Satan stands for pride, carnality and rebellion.

Study the object

The Satanic Bible is in copyright; only brief phrases are quoted.

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The book

It is divided into four "books", each linked to an element and a figure of hell:

  • The Book of Satan (fire): a furious attack on conventional morality and "the Golden Rule".
  • The Book of Lucifer (air): LaVey's essays on human nature, sex, love and hate, and the Church's philosophy.
  • The Book of Belial (earth): ritual and "greater magic", which LaVey presents as a psychological technique.
  • The Book of Leviathan (water): invocations and the nineteen Enochian calls.

It opens with the Nine Satanic Statements, beginning "Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!"

What LaVey meant by Satan

LaVey did not believe in a literal devil or God. In the book Satan is a symbol of human nature, pride, carnal desire and rebellion against religious restraint; the Church of Satan describes itself as atheistic. Its ethic combines individualism, self-interest and responsibility to those who deserve it. It rejects the crimes attributed to "Satanists" by Christian polemic (see The Witch Trials, ch32).

Its sources

  • The Book of Satan is largely adapted from Might Is Right (1896), a social-Darwinist tract published under the name "Ragnar Redbeard", usually identified as the New Zealander Arthur Desmond. LaVey named Redbeard among the book's dedicatees but did not mark the borrowing. The text was out of copyright; critics call it plagiarism, and the Church of Satan disputes the charge.
  • The Enochian calls are those of the Elizabethan magus John Dee and Edward Kelley, taken from the version printed by Aleister Crowley and rewritten with Satanic wording.

Symbology and sacred encoding

The Sigil of Baphomet. The goat's head in an inverted pentagram, with the Hebrew letters of Leviathan (לויתן) around it, combines Éliphas Lévi's Baphomet and a design from Stanislas de Guaita's La Clef de la magie noire (1897). The Church of Satan adopted it as its emblem.

Inversion. Much of the book's imagery reverses Christian symbols (the inverted star, the black mass), used as theatre and psychodrama, not worship.

The elements. Assigning the four books to fire, air, earth and water borrows the structure of Western ceremonial magic.

Connections

Satanism (ch39), and Theosophy & the Occult Revival (ch37) for Lévi and Crowley. Compare the Book of the Law (V73) and the Codex Gigas (V09), the "Devil's Bible" of an earlier age.

✦ The evidence, honestly

What's well supported by the evidence

  • A book by Anton LaVey, published in 1969, the founding text of the Church of Satan (founded 1966), which describes itself as atheistic.
  • Its extensive borrowing from Might Is Right and its adaptation of Dee's Enochian calls.

What is not supported

  • That the book teaches the worship of a literal devil, or the crimes attributed to Satanists in popular panic.

What's genuinely open

  • How far the borrowing from Might Is Right amounts to plagiarism, which the Church of Satan and its critics dispute.
  • The accuracy of parts of LaVey's own biography, which his biographers have questioned.

Sources

The book

Studies

  • J. R. Lewis, "Diabolical Authority: Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible and the Satanist 'Tradition'", Marburg Journal of Religion 7.1 (2002)
  • A. Dyrendal, J. R. Lewis and J. Aa. Petersen, The Invention of Satanism (Oxford University Press, 2016)
  • R. van Luijk, Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism (Oxford University Press, 2016)

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/satanic-bible.html

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