History Of Satanism - Alternative View

History Of Satanism - Alternative View
History Of Satanism - Alternative View

Video: History Of Satanism - Alternative View

Video: History Of Satanism - Alternative View
Video: The Church's Best Friend: Understanding Satanism | Mikayla Loffredo | TEDxYouth@OCSA 2024, March
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In the Middle Ages, people were burned at the stake on the mere suspicion of intercourse with the devil. In the early nineteenth century, Masonic and other near-religious structures spread throughout the world, demonstrating that the Lord's authority is not as strong as it was before. Today, the Church of Satanism quite officially exists: being a devil worshiper is socially acceptable. For example, the Royal Navy of the British Armed Forces officially has its own Satan pastor. In 2005, the United States Supreme Court debated the protection of the religious rights of prisoners who identified themselves as Satanists - and ruled that they have the same rights as other religious denominations.

You probably didn't know that true Satanists cannot sacrifice anything. Their rules strictly prohibit harming any living creature, with the exception of two cases: killing an animal for food, or killing a person in self-defense, or for example, which is the most Satanist among Americans. According to a 2001 FBI report, the typical Satanist is a white male from the lower middle class. By 1990, there were only about 50,000 Satanists in the world. At the moment, there are already half a million official Satanists. This is not much, but the trend is alarming.

Let's find out more about this flow …

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According to the ideas of primitive people, the whole world is inhabited by spirits that personify various forces. Every natural phenomenon is caused by a corresponding spirit. Its spirit dwells in every living being and in every thing. Spirits live their own lives, and the desires of people are of little interest to them. They are strong, they can bring good luck, and send sickness and death. Spirits are not divided into good and evil; from the point of view of a modern person, they are all evil, since they are much stronger than a person and are not inclined to indulge his desires. The power of spirits causes fear in ordinary people.

But there are people who know how to communicate with spirits - shamans. They not only convey the requests of people to the spirits, but can also compete with the spirits on equal terms, summon the necessary spirits and drive out the unwanted ones. Since everything in the world relies on the will of the spirits, the shaman becomes a universal keeper of knowledge: he is both a healer, a weather forecaster, and an advisor for all occasions.

However, at a certain stage of development, such ideas cease to satisfy a person. Perhaps this is due to the accumulation of knowledge about nature, or with the emergence of the state, or maybe shamans begin to abuse their position.

Paganism appeared - a religion that, although it contains elements of shamanism, differs significantly from it. Among the spirits, several dozen of the most powerful stand out, who are now called gods. But the most important difference is that not only priests, but every person strive to come into contact with the gods in paganism. On the one hand, this is human progress: he practically ceased to be afraid of the forces of nature. On the other hand, the degradation of the priest's profession: if the shaman is independent of ordinary people and, if necessary, could justify any of his actions, referring to the spirits, then the priest in paganism is more dependent on both the mood of the crowd and those in power.

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But, since the "spheres of action" of some gods are far from the life of ordinary people and from the interests of power, the priests of these gods retain their independence. There is a division of the gods into light ones, from whom people expect protection and fulfillment of their desires, and dark ones, whose activities have little contact with the life of an ordinary person. Accordingly, mass cults of light gods and closed esoteric societies around the dark gods arise. These societies can be considered the predecessors of Satanism.

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The division into light and dark is not too sharp at first, some gods have both light and dark features. But it is gradually increasing, and purely light mass religions appear. At first it was Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Judaism, later Christianity, Islam, Krishnaism and others arose.

However, the dark element displaced by new religions could not disappear anywhere. In contrast to purely light religions, purely dark ones arise: the Yezidis in Iran, worshipers of the dark Babylonian, Phoenician and Egyptian gods in Palestine. They can already be called the first Satanists.

So, Satanism arose as a result of the consolidation of supporters of various dark gods, who had no place in the new light religions. However, the goal of the Satanists is and was not to fight against these religions, but simply to practice what the light religions do not provide for a person: a different attitude to the world, an independent way of life, the preservation and augmentation of accumulated knowledge.

Not all of the early Satanists used the name Satan. They used the names of various pagan gods, but in fact it was He who was meant. The origin of the name Satan is still not clear, there are several different versions. According to one of them, this is the name of one of the gods of some people who lived in Palestine, who was subsequently exterminated by the Jews and information about him did not reach us, and the Hebrew interpretation of "enemy" was invented later. According to another opinion, Satan is a modified name of the Egyptian god Set. Finally, there is a version that the name of Satan is of Indo-European origin and means "Lightbringer" (ie the same thing as Lucifer in Latin).

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The delimitation of light and dark gods greatly weakened paganism. Light cults degraded (a particularly vivid example is the cult of emperors in Rome), and talented and independent individuals left for dark esoteric societies. As a result, those citizens gathered around the light gods, who, in general, did not care which religion to profess. The semi-literate layman did not see much of a difference between Mithra and Yahweh. As a result, paganism fell into decay, and new light religions were able to supplant it.

Many of them (in particular, Christianity) did not stop there and decided to establish their complete spiritual monopoly, starting the persecution of dissidents. Someone got scared and joined the ranks of the dominant religion, but for Satanists this was absolutely unacceptable.

It is even difficult to calculate how many dissidents were destroyed by the Christian Church. In any case, the bill goes to the millions. Since the most capable and educated individuals have always opposed church dogmas, the establishment of Christianity in Europe had disastrous consequences for European science and technology. There has been a giant rollback that can be seen in architecture. The architecture of the early Middle Ages in its technical level roughly corresponds to Ancient Egypt (buildings without a frame, with solid walls), and Gothic - Greece to Alexander the Great (buildings with the simplest frame of repeating elements). Only in the 15th century did Europeans learn to build domes again, and only by the 18th century did they achieve the mastery of the Romans in architecture during the heyday of the empire (multi-storey buildings, large domes, free-form frame).

Satanists in Europe have gone underground. Some of them formed secret magical orders, others infiltrated church structures to engage in magic and other research under the cover of the church. It should be noted that not all of them considered themselves Satanists. But they preserved ancient knowledge in the field of magic and occult philosophy, thanks to which Satanism in Europe was able to revive in modern times. Even in completely inappropriate times of the Middle Ages, a number of new ideas arose in magic (for example, Enochian magic, discovered by J. D. Dee) and the occult sciences. Although many of the most valuable ancient knowledge were lost forever.

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In addition to physically destroying their opponents, the clergy conducted a parallel disinformation campaign. Satanists were credited with slavish worship of the Christian devil, an inexplicable desire to harm people (evil), wild orgies with the senseless murder of babies, etc. In the end, this backfired: all kinds of pseudo-Satanist societies began to appear, embodying the fruits of the preachers' imaginations into reality. As the modern media picked up the baton from medieval fairy tale writers, mentally unstable people continue to reproduce their inventions in real life.

Gradually the darkness of the Middle Ages dissipated. Since about the 19th century, Satanists have been able to act almost legally, at least without fear of being burned at the stake. The revival of Satanism begins, many new magical orders appear, which already openly mention Satan in their philosophy. At this time, spiritualism and necromancy developed, and in addition, European magicians became familiar with the occult knowledge of other peoples.

The 19th century is a very interesting time, marked by the emergence of new, previously unseen in the history of knowledge, phenomena. The first is the dogmatization of science. Scientists for many centuries fought with the dogmas of Christianity, but as a result they adopted some of their bad habits from the churchmen, namely, they declared science to be absolute truth and denied the existence of phenomena that have not yet been explained by science (in particular, magic). Subsequently, this led science to such phenomena as Lysenkoism.

Another product of the 19th century is the profanation of the occult. People are no longer afraid of being burned at the stake for their connection with the Devil and are beginning to take an active interest in everything that was previously prohibited by the church. As a result, a lot of low-quality books "about magic" appear, and parodied spiritualistic sessions become an obligatory element of secular parties. Similar phenomena continue to this day.

Despite all the remnants of the medieval past, the 19th century was an important milestone in the history of Satanism. Satanists get the opportunity to legally exchange information, the first serious books on magic begin to be sold openly, and the works of F. Nietzsche formulate Satanist philosophy.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, another figure appears, which it is impossible not to mention in this article. Aleister Crowley. He did not consider himself a Satanist, but his works are of great importance for modern Satanism. The system of magic he developed contains elements of a wide variety of traditions. That is, Crowley proved in practice that there are no serious contradictions between occult knowledge from different cultures, that magic is one. Crowley influenced many 20th century Satanists.

The 20th century was marked by the rapid progress of science. As a result of the development of psychology and psychoanalysis (primarily thanks to the works of C. Jung), some magical techniques received an explanation that satisfies the official science. Magic also did not stand still. European magicians learned Voodoo techniques, something new appeared on European soil (Chaos magic, etc.). Official science is also interested in the so-called paranormal phenomena. The rapprochement of science and magic has been outlined.

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Things were moving towards the legalization of Satanism, and in 1966, Anton Sandor LaVey created the first organization that openly calls itself Satanist - the Church of Satan. LaVey has done a great job of articulating the foundations of the Satanic worldview in his books. Following the Church of Satan, other legal Satanist organizations arose in Western countries.

One of the most common books among Satanists, reflecting the basic concepts of their activities, is the "Satanic Bible" (or "Black Bible") by Anton Sandor La Vey, the leader of American black magicians, written by him in 1968, in which "there are satanic thoughts and they are expressed from a satanic point of view."

Here we discussed this version of the DEVIL'S BIBLE, and you can also download it there.

Satan, LaVey believes, nicknamed by many of his followers "Black Pope", is the concentration of all the dark sides of human nature. “Satan sits in each of us, and the task is only to identify and know him. The Satanic principle, contained in people, is the main and most powerful. They should be proud of them, not burdensome. It must be cultivated, which we are doing in our temple with the help of various magic spells, "LaVey said.

“The afterlife does not exist, at least a heavenly one,” he stated. “Therefore, one must hurry to enjoy earthly joys. In fact, we are preaching what has long been the American way of life. It's just that not everyone has the courage to call a spade a spade."

The book itself was structured as an antipode to the real Bible:

“Blessed is the one who scatters his enemies, for they will make a hero out of him - cursed is the one who does good to those who mock him, for he will be despised!”;

"… cursed are the humble and humble righteous, for they will be crushed by artiodactyls."

“No matter how you knock on the door, it will not open for you, so knock the door yourself”;

“Love your enemies and do good to those who hate and abuse you - isn't this the contemptible philosophy of the flattering dog that rolls on its back when it is beaten? So hate your enemy with all your soul and with all your heart … and if someone hits you on the cheek - give him a good one on the other”;

"Cursed be the meek, for they inherit oppression";

"Blessed be the mighty, for they will own the land."

The entire book is written in a very thoughtful and sophisticated style and is aimed at potential cult members. Its purpose is not to immediately lead the reader to the explicit worship of Satan, but to plant deceitful seeds of doubt in his soul and mind: “What you see here may not always be to your taste, but, most importantly, you you will see!.

The question of full legalization of Satanism in Russia is still open.