The Satanic Bible

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The Satanic Bible Page 14

by Michael A Aquino


  However even if granting for the sake of

  argument that incidents-as-claimed in fact occurred,

  it would simply mean that the existing definition of

  NL in each case was inadequate and needed

  expansion accordingly. NL “violation” is neither

  required nor probable; once again the “proof of El”

  fails tautologically.

  And in the complete absence of anything the

  least substantive to the contrary, no, it is not

  necessary to “prove a negative” to dispense with El.

  Let his eradication be as that of one of H.P.

  Lovecraft’s particularly abhorrent villains:

  It can be compared in spirit only to the hush

  that lay on Oscar Wilde’s name for a decade after

  his disgrace, and in extent only to the fate of that

  77 Cf. Lockyer, Sir J. Norman, The Dawn of Astronomy.

  Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964.

  - 159 -

  sinful King of Runazar in Lord Dunsany’s tale,

  whom the gods decided must not only cease to be,

  but must cease ever to have been. 78

  3. Eastern Mandalogical

  Buddhism, while based on the principle that all

  [OU-separate, conscious] existence is a bummer. To

  ensure disciples got this, the Buddha made it his

  first Noble Truth:

  Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of

  suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering,

  illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with

  what is displeasing is suffering; separation from

  what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one

  wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates

  subject to clinging are suffering. 79

  It may not be as intentionally sadistic as El’s

  inflictions, but Buddhists are stuck with it anyway;

  suicidal release will only trigger retributive karma

  and reincarnate you as a centipede or an attorney.

  Buddhists’ only permitted relief consists of

  exercises to dull and starve one’s consciousness into

  the incoherent haze of nirvana. While mythically

  permanent for the Buddha and bodhisattva, it is a

  mocking illusion for the ordinary adherent, who

  obviously cannot escape the continuous demands of

  his body and environment.

  In Hinduism suicides are additionally

  condemned to an undead, ghostlike torment on

  78 Lovecraft, H.P., “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” in At the

  Mountains of Madness. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1964, page

  #139.

  79 Buddha, Gautama, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta.

  - 160 -

  Earth, until such time as they would “naturally”

  have died.

  Hinduism and Buddhism are cyclical, not

  linear. The line of time keeps moving onward in a

  “Great Mandala” 80, to which souls keep returning in

  endless up/down reincarnations, until/unless

  they’re nirvan ically-perfect enough to escape it into

  Eternal Bliss ( Ānanda).

  B. Subjective Universal

  The Satanic religion is based upon the Principle

  of independent, self-aware consciousness external to

  the OU and thus able to both perceive it and act

  upon it [as well as independently of it].

  In its most ancient apprehension by humanity,

  this was the Egyptian “neter not of the neteru” Set.

  As later seen through the lens of Judæo-

  Christian iconography, this Principle was identified

  as Satan.

  Here follows an introduction to each of these

  visualizations. Within the accustomed J/C culture of

  contemporary Western societies, Satan will be the

  most familiar image, with Set reserved to formal

  initiatory contexts and environments.

  1.

  Egyptian Set

  No records of the ancient Priesthood of Set

  survived first the Osirian-dynastic persecution and

  later the more general vandalism of the Christian/

  Islamic eras. We know of it only by its reflection,

  both in the character of Set as he was portrayed

  80 ... with an appreciative, sentimental nod to Peter, Paul, and

  Mary.

  - 161 -

  symbolically and mythologically and in the nature of

  Egyptian priesthoods in general. Three significant

  facts are known about the Priesthood of Set:

  (1) Together with the Priesthood of

  Horus [the Elder], it was the oldest of the

  Egyptian priesthoods. If we date it to the earliest

  predynastic images of Set found by archæologists,

  we can establish an origin of at least 3200 BCE.

  Working with the Egyptians’ own astronomically-

  based records, we may approximate 5000 BCE. 81 If

  we are to assume the final eclipse of the Priesthood

  at the end of the XIX-XX [Setian] Dynasties ca. 1085

  BCE, we are looking at an institution which existed

  at least two thousand and possibly as many as four

  thousand years. “In the early dynasties,” observes

  Budge:

  Set was a beneficent god, and one whose

  favor was sought after by the living and by the

  dead, and so late as the XIX Dynasty kings

  delighted to call themselves “Beloved of Set”. After

  the cult of Osiris was firmly established and this

  god was the “great god” of all Egypt, it became the

  fashion to regard Set as the origin of all evil, and

  his statues and images were so effectively

  destroyed that only a few which have escaped by

  accident have come down to us. 82

  One may note that Set was by no means the

  only “fabulous” creature ever portrayed by Egyptian

  artists. But he was the only one represented as a

  principal neter, as opposed to a purely-animalistic

  monster of the Tuat.

  81 Lockyer, J. Norman, The Dawn of Astronomy. Cambridge:

  MIT Press, 1964, page #215.

  82 Budge, The Book of the Dead, page #181.

  - 162 -

  ( 2 ) S e t w a s t h e n e t e r w h o w a s

  “different” from all of the others. Too often

  this is simplified into his being the “evil” slayer of

  Osiris, hence the personification of “evil”; yet any

  but the most cursory study of Egyptian religious

  symbolism is sufficient to dispel this caricature. He

  was rather a neter “against the neteru”: the entity

  who symbolized that which is not of nature.

  This is a very curious role for a neter in

  Egyptian cosmology: to be a presence and force

  which alone could not be apprehended by

  perceptions of the natural senses. Set thus

  represents the nameless “thing” whose existence we

  know of by the shadow it casts on things

  apprehended and things perceived by it: the non-

  natural “presence of self” ( telos) in individual

  intelligent life.

  V a r i o u s p o s t - E g y p t i a n c u l t u r e s h a v e

  generalized the vehicle by which this presence is

  manifest as the spirit, psyche, or soul, but increased

  precision is possible. We must subtract from such

  crudeness what is “life force”, and focus our

  attention on that which remain
s: the very

  awareness of self. In doing so we have in one

  sense retraced the path of Descartes to the cogito

  ergo sum proposition. Unlike Descartes, however,

  we see this phenomenon to be a “thing totally

  apart” which is not an extension of “God” or

  anything else. Set is the conceptualizer of this

  principle: the designer. To rewrite the crucial

  sentence in the above quote from the point of view

  of a neter: “A thing created in the mind thereby

  exists.”

  This is delicate ground to tread, so much more

  so for an ancient Egyptian civilization whose entire

  - 163 -

  “natural” cosmology was based upon the perfection

  and harmony of the Universe.

  (3) Despite this unique and disturbing

  image, or perhaps because of it, Set became

  the patron of the two most powerful

  dynasties in Egypt’s long history, the XIX

  and XX. Herein there is an interesting “theological

  succession”:

  The early XVIII Dynasty (ca. 1580-1372) was

  that of the great Amenhoteps, during whose reigns

  the Priesthood of Amon at Thebes was preeminent.

  The dynasty disintegrated during the “Amarna

  period” (ca. 1372-1343) of Akhenaten, during which

  the solar disk of Aton was considered supreme if not

  indeed all-inclusive of the neteru. When the new

  XIX Dynasty arose under Rameses I and Seti I, the

  state role of Amon was restored - but the pharaohs

  directed much of their efforts towards Set. Recounts

  Sauneron:

  The new dynasty in power, careful to appear

  to be “restoring everything to order”, had many

  reasons for mistrusting the Amonian priesthood.

  Descendants of a military family of the eastern

  delta, the new pharaohs were traditionally devoted

  to a god little esteemed by the masses because of

  the role that he had been assigned in the death of

  Osiris. But they preserved nevertheless, here and

  there, the temples and priesthoods of the god Set.

  The Amarnian experience had demonstrated

  the cost of too abrupt a break with the beliefs

  central to the entire nation, and of entering into

  open warfare against a priesthood practically as

  powerful as the throne itself. Thus the politics of

  Seti I (1312-1301) and of Rameses II (1301-1235)

  were infinitely more subtle than those of their

  predecessors. There was no rupture with Thebes;

  the constructions continued, and magnificent

  edifices were raised to the glory of Amon at

  - 164 -

  Karnak, Gourna, and Ramesseum. But it was from

  the [Osirian] center of Abydos that Rameses

  appointed the High Priest of Amon. Then he

  installed two of his sons, Merytum and Khamuast,

  as the High Priests of Ra at Heliopolis and Ptah at

  Memphis, and demonstrated by further

  monuments and political favors his public support

  of these gods. But finally, wearied of Thebes and

  its ambitious priests, he departed to build a new

  capital, Pi-Rameses, in the eastern delta - where he

  could quietly worship the god dearest to him, with

  Amon occupying a secondary prominence.

  The provincial cities where Set had been

  worshipped from all eternity - among them

  Ombos, Tjebu, and Sepermeru - gained new

  preeminence from the favor accorded by the

  Ramesside leaders to the god of the Eastern Delta.

  Above all, Pi-Rameses, the new capital, brilliantly

  restored the worship that Set had formerly

  received in the Avaris of the Hyksos. 83

  Following the passing of the two Setian

  dynasties, the increasing influence of a priesthood

  not courted by the Ramesside pharaohs - that of

  Osiris - boded ill for the Priesthood of Set. The

  Osirians recast Set as Osiris’ treacherous brother

  and mortal enemy of Osiris’ son - for whom they

  appropriated the neter Horus. Not content with

  attacking Set personally, they further appropriated

  his consort and son from the original triad of his cult

  - Nepthys and Anubis - whom they now described

  respectively as a concubine of Osiris and a son of

  Osiris by Nepthys. Comments Budge:

  Between the XXII and the XXV Dynasties, a

  violent reaction set in against this god [Set]; his

  statues and figures were smashed; his effigy was

  83 Sauneron, Serge, Les pretres de l’ancienne Egypte. New

  York: Grove Press, 1980, pages #183-184.

  - 165 -

  hammered out from the bas-reliefs and stelæ in

  which it appeared. 84

  Various reasons for this reaction have been

  proposed by Egyptologists. It is been suggested that

  Set fell into disrepute through being associated in

  the popular mind with the Sutekh of the invading

  Hyksos. Possible, but improbable, as the Hyksos

  invasion occurred prior to the XIX-XX Dynasties

  when Set was preeminently in favor - and the

  presiding neter over Egypt’s greatest period of

  imperial glory.

  Set’s eclipse may well have been due to a more

  subtle, yet pervasive sentiment sweeping Egypt. As

  Sauneron and many other Egyptologists have

  acknowledged, Egyptian philosophy was based upon

  a millennia-old conviction of the absolute presence

  and influence of the neteru, and in the virtue of a

  social system in which the preservation of cyclical

  harmony was all-important. While the New Empire

  of the XIX-XX Dynasties extended Egypt’s influence

  to Palestine and Mesopotamia, it also made the

  Egyptians aware that there were many other

  functioning cultures in which the neteru were

  unknown [at least by their Egyptian names].

  Moreover the concept of Egypt as just one among a

  number of nation-states competing for power and

  influence in the Mediterranean, rather than as the

  one civilization at the center of existence, must have

  been a most unsettling one to this ancient culture -

  which previously had been able to discount its

  neighbors as mere uncultured, barbarian tribes.

  Egypt’s solution to this problem was to turn

  gradually away from a glorification of this life and

  84 Budge, The Mummy. New York: The Macmillan Company,

  1973, page #276.

  - 166 -

  towards an orientation on the afterlife, where such

  disturbing dilemmas could be assumed not to exist.

  This would explain the growing influence and

  popularity of the Osiris cult during the post-XX

  Dynasty Egyptian decadence; Osiris was an afterlife

  neter.

  As the Osiris cult portrayed Set as Osiris’

  nemesis rather than an independent and preexisting

  neter with no particular interest in Osiris, this would

  also explain the simultaneous wave of Setian

  p e r s e c u t i o n d e s c r i b e d b y B u d g e . I t w a s

  characteristic of ancient Egypt that each new

  dynasty, in an attempt to establish its own

  “timelessnes
s”, often doctored monuments and

  records to eliminate inconvenient inconsistencies.

  Presumably the Osirian dynasties followed suit,

  defacing or rewriting all references to Set that did

  not support their portrayal of him as a “Devil”. 85

  And that was the distortion of Set which survived in

  later Mediterranean legend - principally through

  Plutarch, who described it in some detail in his

  Moralia. 86

  2. Judæo/Christian Satan

  a. “Please Allow Me to

  Introduce Myself ...”

  In the earliest Hebraic mythology of the “Old

  Testament” in the Holy Bible, Satan was neither

  85 Ions, op.cit. , pages #72-78. The Osirian legends on this

  subject are treated comprehensively in J. Gwyn Griffith’s The

  Conflict of Horus and Seth (Chicago: Argonaut Publishers,

  1969).

  86 Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, Volume V in Moralia.

  - 167 -

  disloyal to El nor an all-encompassing advocate of

  evil, or even a Paradisian playboy. Rather he was

  something much more loathsome: an art critic. After

  El devoted seven days to creating Adam & Eve to

  fornicreate a vast Earthrace, it was Satan who

  suggested that he had somewhat overestimated his

  competence and undertook to prove it by tempting

  everyone from Eve and Jesus to Marilyn and Jack.

  This was par for the course with Hebrews, who

  quickly realized that they’d picked a God who

  already had it in for them without any prodding

  from a staff angel.

  But things got more complicated after Satan

  and Jesus had it out in the wilderness. Now every

  Christian was expected to emulate the Christ and

  denounce the Devil (to which Satan was now pro- or

  de-moted depending upon one’s point of view.

  But one thing was also clear: He was much

  more fun.

  Anyone who has gaped at Walt Disney’s

  Fantasia or Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, been

  earavished by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring or

  Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, or heard

  Mick Jagger singing Sympathetically knows that in

  whatever his guise the Devil is, well, a party animal.

  The first thing that members or guests noticed about

  Church of Satan Grottos in the 60s-70s was that

  they were a bit friskier than their righteous rivals:

  Ritual chambers looked like sets from

 

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