Star Trek Into Darkness, The Key of Solomon the King, and Save Me

Jewish date:  24 ’Av 5773 (Parashath Re’eh).

Today’s holidays:  Feast Day of Ignatius of Loyola (Roman Catholicism), Lughnasadh Eve in Northern Hemisphere/Imbolc Eve in Southern Hemisphere (Neopaganism), Feast Day of St. Bill Gates (Church of the SubGenius).

Greetings.

I know posting on this blog has gotten irregular. Sorry about this.  Life is busy.

I would like to comment on a number of different things relevant to this blog:

1) Star Trek Into Darkness:  Preemptively, your humble blogger would like to note that he eventually wants to write a great grand review of religion in Star Trek, all series and movies, but as he saw it recently, he would like to jot down some thoughts on it now so they do not get forgotten.

Much ink (or rather the electronic equivalent thereof) has already been spilled on what is right and wrong with this film.  Considering the focus of this blog, I will note that what Harrison did with the photon torpedoes is such an obviously bad idea that he should never even considered it (duh!) and proceed to discussing religion.  This is not an especially religious film, but like Star Trek in general, it touches on it.  The movie starts out on the planet Nibiru, which is inhabited by humanoids who have not yet developed warp technology and thus, according to the Federation’s Prime Directive, must not be contacted at any cost.  Spock gets quickly trapped in an active volcano with a device meant to freeze the molten lava so the volcano does not erupt and kill the natives.  Due to the Enterprise being hidden under water—something which everyone says makes no sense—Kirk faces the dilemma of whether he uphold the Prime Directive, in which case Spock dies, or get the Enterprise out of hiding and where the transporter will work properly to save Spock, in which case the natives will probably see the ship—a clear violation of the Prime Directive.  Kirk being Kirk, the natives see the Enterprise rising out of the ocean.  The natives’ behavior soon afterwards suggests they believe they have seen a divine being or have had a prophetic vision.  To say the least, Admiral Pike is not happy.  

Religious misinterpretation of Federation activity actually has been done at least once before in the Star Trek universe.  The Star Trek:  The Next Generation episode “Who Watches the Watchers” revolves around someone on a technologically primitive planet inhabited by Vulcanoids mistaking Captain Jean-Luc Picard for a god known as the Overseer.  That episode deals with the consequences of such a mistake and how to deal with it—not to mention religious epistemology—in far greater length and detail than Star Trek Into Darkness, which says nothing about what, if anything, Starfleet does to clean up the mess on Nibiru.

Your humble blogger is not aware of anything quite like either of these fictional incidents happening in reality, though cargo cults approximate them to some degree.

Also noted is a little peek into the Vulcan belief system.  Whether Vulcans believe in the supernatural or not has never been discussed, albeit Mr. Spock once claimed to specifically not believe in angels.  However, the Vulcan belief system includes things like monasticism and mysticism which would normally be religious on Earth.  There is some arguing in this film over whether the needs of the many really do outweigh the needs of the one (reflecting Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III:  The Search for Spock).  Also, Spock claims that war is “by definition” immoral, which sounds like an all-too-human attempt to skirt the problem that morality is intrinsically a matter of opinion.  Certain properties, such as weight and temperature, are matters of objective fact.  But whether an action is good or bad cannot be objective in the same way; no matter how hard one looks, one will never find goodness particles or evilness waves.  Spock seems to be trying to make morality objective by defining what is and is not moral.  One can argue about whether some action objectively fits this definition.  (And your humble blogger assumes that Spock, being no mental slouch, has a definition for war and every other relevant term.)  However, since the definition is not rooted in objective reality, it remains an opinion.  Klingons just as easily can claim that war is by definition moral (and act on this presumed morality, too).  Defining what is moral or immoral does not make it objectively so.

Also:  Considering that Vulcans have been depicted at times waging war, the Vulcan belief system appears to have a priority system.  Vulcans may consider war immoral, but they may well consider other things, such as being murdered by enemy soldiers, to be worse, thus making war the lesser of two evils.  Real humans tend to agree on this issue, though there are a few true pacifists.

2) The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis) translated by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers:  This is a grimoire repeatedly mentioned as source material in your humble blogger’s previous reading on Neopaganism.  It certainly looks like the source for Gerald Gardner’s High Magic’s Aid, the procedures for working magic being largely the same.  Unlike High Magic’s Aid, The Key of Solomon deals with working magic in a Jewish (or pseudo-Jewish) context.  There is none of the Neopagan business of duotheism, polarity of the sexes, or ritual nudity.  Magic instead is presented as an exercise in manipulating spirits for one’s purposes.  Much emphasis is put on the necessity of piety to work magic.  Consistent with this is the lack of any procedure for divination; after all, the Torah explicitly forbids several kinds of divination.

And, no, there is no convincing reason to believe that King Shelomoh (Solomon) actually wrote this book.  There is nothing in the Hebrew Bible to suggest he practiced any form of magic.

3) Save Me:  This gem of a show showed up recently on Hulu.  It is story of a woman with poor moral habits (such as drunkenness, petty theft, and embarrassing behavior) named Beth who accidentally chokes.  She survives, though feeling like she died in the process.  Reborn, she finds herself religiously moved and believes that God communicates with her.

One major issue that this show deals with is how would someone who experiences a sudden conversion would behave.  (This sort of thing does happen in real life at times.  See The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.)  Given the profundity of Beth’s conversion, she tends to go to extremes—absurd ones, as this is a comedy.  Having no previous religious experience, Beth frequently has no idea how a religious person is supposed to behave and makes some very strange mistakes.  For example, in one episode she prays constantly.  She also embraces love for her fellow humans and other creatures to the point of loving her husband’s ex-mistress Carlise and a spider.  At one point, she decides to read the (Christian) Bible, but finding the King James Version too hard, she turns to The Children’s Bible and proceeds to misinterpret the parable of the Good Samaritan.  (Come to think of it, she never seems to get very far in either version.)  In another, she “honors” her parents by calling them excessively.  Trying to “honor” her daughter Emily into honoring her back proves socially embarrassing for the latter.  Despite everything being played for laughs, religious behavior Beth undertakes on her own really is no stranger than what a lot of converts do.

(And to be fair to Beth, none of the other main characters displays much knowledge of Christianity or religion in general, which is sadly normal for Americans these days.  (See Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero.)  Emily even hollows out a Bible to hide marijuana in.)

The other major issue is the nature of prophecy.  For Beth, this is something in the way of a comedic version of the sorts of things one would expect in Ezekiel and Jonah (or Evan Almighty):  She is told to do all sorts of strange actions in a gender-neutral voice, and she is not allowed to shirk her duty.  Refusing to do what God demands only results in pain for Beth, and compliance is quick.  Beth is assumed to be some sort of crackpot for claiming prophecy, though with the lack of theological sophistication of the characters, none of them ever thinks about empirically testing whether she can consistently make correct predictions.  This is despite that around Beth periodically occur unusually well-timed events (lightning striking Carlise, Beth’s car hitting a squirrel, various injuries to Beth, rain falling, the power in various houses going out, etc.) which serve to progress the plot, tie up loose ends, and bring Beth together with her family and friends.  Beth’s husband Todd is unusually generous in interpreting what happens to Beth and chalks her prophecies up to intuition.  Untraditionally, Beth prophetically has access to knowledge about people which she should not have.  Semi-traditionally, she actually has two visions of God, once in the form of Betty White(!) and the other as a black man.  (For comparison, YHWH or some suitable representative has a form which looks like it is practically on fire in Ezekiel.)  Less traditional is God claiming to have taken corporeal form when Beth was a child and played friend with her; while Christians generally regard Jesus as God somehow become corporeal, your humble blogger is not aware of them promoting the idea that He has made a habit of pretending to be human.  Then again, God in this series never claims to be the god of Christianity or any other religion, so some flexibility is warranted.

All in all, an enjoyable effort in theological fiction.  I am saddened that its run seems limited to just seven episodes.  I hope NBC changes its collective mind and continues the series.

’Aharon/Aaron

Review of The Golden Bough

Jewish date:  19 Tammuz 5772 (Parashath Pineḥạṣ).

Today’s holidays:  Feast Day of Augustine Zhao Rong and companions (Roman Catholicism),  Martyrdom of the Bab (Bahá’í Faith), Day of Unn the Wise person (Heathenism), Caprotinia (Roman Religion), Feast Day of St. MojoDick Nixon (Church of the SubGenius).

Review of The Golden Bough:

Sir James Frazer was a respected anthropologist, and in The Golden Bough he sets out to explain the logic in much magical and religious thinking.  The style is reminiscent of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.  There are a lot of points to make, and for each one Frazer gives multiple examples from around the planet.  He strives to be objective and treat the material he discusses without making moral judgements.  (And this is quite an achievement, considering much of what he discusses.)

There are two basic principles on which magic purportedly works.  The first, sympathetic or homeopathic magic, is that like affects like, whether realistically or symbolically.  For example, consider the clichéd simulacrum (“Voodoo doll”).  Someone makes a figure resembling his/her enemy, and any torment inflicted on the doll is supposed to happen to the enemy, too.  The second principle is that of contagious magic, that is that anything which was ever part of or in contact with a person or object continues to affect that person of object.  Returning to our example, the Voodoo doll should work better if it contains the enemy’s hair or nail clippings.  Frazier explains this very extensively and argues it to be the reason for many unusual practices.

Religion as depicted by Frazer is primarily tribal religions and folk religions, not the formal Abrahamic religions of Western civilization.  Thus much of what he discusses is absent or downplayed in Christianity, the presumed religion of most of his readers.  In formal Abrahamic religions, religion traditionally is at least overtly normally conceived as service of (usually) one god, the god having the power and humans being at His mercy.  But in the religions Frazer concentrates on, worshippers can exercise a great deal of influence on their gods.  For example, consider fertility cults.  The point of their practices is to cause the gods to bestow fertility on the crops, animals, and people.  A formal Abrahamist would consider this a blurring of religion and magic.  Furthermore, followers of Abrahamic religions tend to make large distinctions between deities and created entities.  Even Christians, who in their standard theology hold that Jesus of Nazareth was a god or an aspect of a god, shy away from the idea of depicting Jesus as too human.  (E.g., note the negative reaction many had to The Last Temptation of Christ.)  In the religions Frazer discusses, the natural world and anything in it can be deities.  In particular, a human may become the embodiment of a god.  This notion is still current in Nepal in the institution of the kumari, a girl who is believed to embody the goddess Durga until she reaches puberty.  However, while kumaris go on to become ordinary women and live ordinary lives, Frazer’s human gods tend to have less desirable ends.

Remember how your humble blogger once discussed Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, which included the notion of a sacrificial king who ruled for a while and then was killed?  This is where that idea comes from.  The human king and the god he embodies are linked, as are the king and his kingdom.  (Rule of contagion.)  If the king starts to weaken, so does the god.  Naturally, the god weakening would be bad for the kingdom, so it is better to kill the king while he is still strong than to allow him to ever grow weak.  Thus one ends up with a series of murdered kings so that the kingdom may prosper.  Like Graves and Margaret Murray, Frazer holds by the development of substitute victims for the sacred king and his symbolic rebirth.  This is apparently the source for Anton Szandor LaVey’s bizarre claim that religions other than Satanism kill their gods.  Like Graves, Frazer links this sacred king cycle with the yearly cycle of the seasons.  (This should not be surprising.  The Golden Bough was published between The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and The God of the Witches, and it was published 26 years before The White Goddess.)

How correct is Frazer in his claims?  Having a background in statistics, I find myself asking how normal what he claims really is.  Are their people whose magic purportedly work on other principles?  How common really are such notions as the sacred king, animism, fertility cults, and nature gods?  And do people who hold by these notions really conceptualize them in the same way that Frazer claims they do?  Clearly not everything he claims is correct.  Frazer argues that human society progresses in thinking from magic to religion to science.  However, this is unlikely, even as a general rule.  Religion is still very common among humanity, and while openly secular people are more common now than ever, religion shows no sign of going away.  It even has become more openly popular in currently and formerly officially atheist countries, such as the former Soviet Union and China.  Magic never went away either.  It is not merely away from the West, such as parts of Africa, that magic thrives.  Even in the West, there are still psychics, astrologers, alchemists, purveyors of all sorts of pseudoscientific medicines based on magical ideas (such as homeopathy), mediums, and diviners.  And then there are modern occult and magical organizations and movements, such as the Golden Dawn, Ordo Templis Orientalis, Wicca, and other modern Neopagan religions.  Frazer’s claims also seem conspicuously absent from (more recent) archaeological and historical works I have read, suggesting that his ideas in the long term did not gain acceptance.

What is the significance of The Golden Bough to Neopaganism?  While Frazer did not advocate any magical or religious belief or practice he wrote about, he provided a lot of material for those interested in magic and pagan revivals.  Thus Neopagans have taken over the whole theory of magic wholesale, and many of the festivals Frazer discusses have been adopted.  In Wiccan rituals one can find temporary embodiment of a god in a human being, the whole sacred king cycle, deification of nature, and ritual sex.  Expect these ideas to recur in future installments of this series.

Peace.

’Aharon/Aaron

The Three-Ring Circus of Satan: a review of eight books about LaVeyan Satanism

Jewish date:  14 Siwan 5772 (Parashath BeHa‘alothekha).


Today’s holidays:  Monday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Werner Klemperer (Church of the SubGenius).

The Three-Ring Circus of Satan:  a review of eight books about LaVeyan Satanism

by Aaron Solomon Adelman

I know the title sounds a bit like mockery, but the relevance will be revealed later on.

The books examined in this review are:

1)  The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey (LaVey The Satanic Bible), describing the philosophy and basic rituals of LaVeyan Satanism (what LaVey claims as his lifelong belief system) and the Church of Satanism (founded April 30, 1966 by LaVey).

2)  The Satanic Rituals by Anton Szandor LaVey (LaVey The Satanic Rituals), which expands on LaVeyan Satanic rituals.

3)  The Satanic Witch by Anton Szandor LaVey (LaVey The Satanic Witch), an extending discourse on magic.

4, 5)  The Devil’s Notebook by Anton Szandor LaVey (LaVey The Devil’s Notebook) and Satan Speaks! by Anton Szando LaVey (LaVey Satan Speaks!), books of essays on various topics on LaVeyan Satanism and whatever else LaVey felt like writing about.

6)  The Secret Life of a Satanist by Blanche Barton (Barton), a biography of LaVey by his last wife.

7)  The Satanic Scriptures by Peter H. Gilmore (Gilmore), a book of essays by the current high priest of the Church of Satan.

8)  Satan Wants You by Arthur Lyons (Lyons), a history of various things called Satanism.

As LaVey is the founder of LaVeyan Satanism, with Barton and Gilmore merely following in his footsteps, this review will focus heavily on LaVey’s work.

Theology and moral philosophy:  Before actually discussing these books, it is imperative to note what these books are not.  The classical idea of Satanism is a paranoid Christian fantasy of the worship of Satan.  LaVeyan Satanism is not Satanism in the original sense.  Much like Ayn Rand (Rand The Virtue of Selfishness, a New Concept of Egoism. With Additional Articles by Nathaniel Branden; Rand Atlas Shrugged; Adelman "Faking Reality: A Moral Review of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged"), Anton Szandor LaVey is rebelling against Christianity—or rather his vision of Christianity—and taking a 180-degree turn.  The result, LaVeyan Satanism, is unconventional so far as traditional religion is concerned and strongly resembles Rand’s Objectivism on many points.

1) Like the theology of Objectivism, the theology of LaVeyan Satanism is atheistic without the least bit of proof.  While rejecting God in the Christian sense of the term (LaVey The Satanic Bible 40-43), he embraces another “god”:  himself (LaVey The Satanic Bible 44-45, 96).  LaVey believes that all people should treat themselves as their own deity, the exact religious equivalent of Objectivist selfishness.  This axiom forms the core of his personal morality.  LaVey has worked out a system of how to be selfish, not in an idiotically short-sighted fashion, but in an organized manner to bring one the most benefit and indulgence possible (LaVey The Satanic Bible 25).  This includes being compassionate and loving to those one considers worthy of compassion and love (LaVey The Satanic Bible 64), and there is also a variant on the golden rule:  “Do unto others as they do unto you” (LaVey The Satanic Bible 51).

2) LaVey sees those who annoy him as worthy of destruction.  He views religious people in general and Christians in particular as possessing even trait he despises; he sees them as a bunch of stupid, hypocritical doormats who hate life and pleasure, that are unjust, and that never create anything new or improve this world (LaVey The Satanic Bible 23, 25, 29-43, 46-52, 54-57, 61-65, 76-77, 82-86, 92-95, 110-11, 20, 35, 38-39; LaVey The Satanic Rituals 14, 17, 26-27, 31-35; LaVey The Devil’s Notebook 56, 84-88, 93-94).  Rand has essentially the same views about non-Objectivists.

3) LaVey does not preach to convert others to his moral system; rather he reaches out to those who already believe as he does.  The style of his writing is so insulting to those who do not agree with him that those who disagree are likely to quickly stop reading  Likewise, Rand insults those who do not agree with her and preaches to the choir in Atlas Shrugged.

4) Both LaVey and Rand are interested in recreating the world around them to their own liking.  Rand dreams of destroying the world to let the “superior” Objectivists taking over, while LaVey dreams of a stratified society with “superior” Satanists lording it over their “inferior” opponents.  LaVey also promotes the creation and usage of “artificial human companions”.

5) Both LaVey and Rand ground their moral systems in the naturalistic fallacy (LaVey The Satanic Bible 51).  Both contrast their systems repeatedly with other moral systems and religions—or rather their visions thereof.  Though while Rand cannot be bothered to name her opponents’ moral systems, LaVey harps frequently on Christianity.

Now, if this were all there were to LaVeyan Satanism, anyone reading this should be yawning.  A clone of Rand’s Objectivism naturally has all the problems of Objectivism, compounded with the fact that the clone is plagiarized.  However, what else there is to LaVeyan Satanism is anything but yawn-worthy.

Salesmanship:  Despite the logic behind it, being selfish, no matter under what name it goes, is not an honestly marketable philosophy.  Those who are not selfish usually have no interest in becoming selfish (or are unlikely to admit it), because people usually hate those who are selfish, and those who already are selfish have no need for someone to tell them how to be selfish and are unlikely to pay anyone for the privilege.  To make such a moral philosophy more salable, LaVey has wrapped up being selfish with other ideas that are easier to sell.  When people try to sell an ugly philosophy, they wrap it up in whatever righteousness and talent in their background they can.  Thus Ann Coulter, a lawyer, plays the lawyer to push extreme conservative paranoia (Adelman "Review of Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter"; Coulter); Richard Dawkins, a scientist, makes his claims of atheism in the name of science (Adelman "Delusional Victory:  A Review of Richard Dawkins’s the God Delusion"; Dawkins); Bill Maher, a comedian, pushes atheism by dredging up everything he finds ridiculous in religion (Adelman "Appeal to Ridicule: A Review of Bill Maher’s Religulous"; Charles); and Ben Stein, who wrote speeches for Richard Nixon, plays politics to defend creationism (Adelman "No Honesty Allowed: A Review of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"; Frankowski).  LaVey has a different background; he learned the art of showmanship in the circus and the carnival (Barton 29-43).  And so to the idea of selfishness LaVey adds the prestige of religion, controversy, and magic, and the result is the Church of Satan.

The prestige of religion:  While Rand dresses her moral system in the trappings of formal philosophy, LaVey dresses his in the trappings of religion.  Formal philosophy has never been popular.  It is an intellectual pursuit, one for which few people ever receive training.  Unlike science, formal philosophy has few, if any, people doing public relations to tell everyone that it a great and wonderful field.  In fact, even scientists, who are smart enough to understand philosophy, usually pay little attention to what philosophers have to say.  Religion, on the other hand, has a massive following, with the majority of humanity following a religion.  As a philosophy, Objectivism is something that elitist snobs follow.  As a religion, LaVeyan Satanism is something that more ordinary people can practice.  Furthermore, religion has the advantage that most countries at least pay lip service to freedom of religion.  An Objectivist cannot claim “freedom of philosophy” to act antisocially and get away with it.  But a LaVeyan Satanist can justify unusual behavior on the grounds of “freedom of religion” and get accommodation in the West, especially the United States.

Controversy:  Controversy is a great way to attract attention, and the more controversial, the better it works.  As such LaVey has created something deliberately controversial, and it is clear that the controversy is meant for attention and not the quest for actual knowledge, because LaVey has no interest in associating with anyone who will contradict him (LaVey Satan Speaks! 37-38)—something dangerous for anyone interested in knowledge above being right.  In all of the reviewed books, footnotes or specific references of any sort are rare.  A few verses from the Christian Bible are noted, and Arthur Lyons is especially nice in citing his sources when he quotes someone.  (Most of the LaVeyan Satanist literature seems to be propaganda.  Lyons seems to be thinking more academically.)  But for the most part, the books reviewed are littered with offense-inducing nontrivial claims.  For example:

1. “All religions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man” (LaVey The Satanic Bible 44).  (As noted before, no proof of invention of religions—or that atheism is correct, for that matter—is ever given.)
2. “Sexual activity certainly is condoned and encouraged by Satanism, but obviously the fact that it is the only religion which honestly takes this stand, is the reason it has been traditionally given so much literary space” (LaVey The Satanic Bible 85).  (No proof is given that Satanism is the only pro-sex religion.  Therefore any conclusion based on the unproven premise is premature.)
3. “Satanism does not sacrifice its god, as do other religions” (LaVey The Satanic Bible 138).  (Your reviewer is not aware of any religion sacrificing its god.  In many, if not most, religions, this is outright impossible, and it is difficult to imagine that if such an action were possible that it would be looked upon with favor except by a truly masochistic god.  The nearest your author is aware of is the crucifixion of Jesus, but this is a forced interpretation.)
4. “There is not a person on this earth who is completely devoid of ornamentation.” (LaVey The Satanic Bible 46)  (LaVey ignores the existence of nudists.)
5. “There has never been a great ‘love’ movement in the history of the world that hasn’t wound up killing countless numbers of people, we must assume, to prove how much they loved them!  Every hypocrite who ever walked the earth has had pockets buldging [sic] with love!” (LaVey The Satanic Bible 64).  (Sarcasm about the Nazis, Stalinists, and Maoists being full of love would be appropriate here.  Sarcasm about Flower Children massacring millions would also be appropriate.)
6. Attempts to link Jews and Zionists with Nazism (LaVey Satan Speaks! 20-22, 69-72; Barton 56-57), especially claims of cooperation between Zionists and Nazis during World War II (LaVey Satan Speaks! 70-71; Barton 57).  (Anyone who does not understand why this is a priori unbelievable and requires solid proof to be worthy of being taken seriously is incompetent with regard to logic and reason and has no business making arguments of any kind.)

Given the utility of controversy, The Satanic Bible is not merely an exposition on LaVey’s moral philosophy; it is also a rhetorical attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular.  (He claims, in contrast, that Satanism is an “un-religion” (LaVey The Satanic Bible 14).)  As noted above, he makes charges frequently of religion uniformly supporting a caricature of Christianity:  opposing pleasure in all forms, denying humanity’s animal nature and needs, and turning people into sheep—charges he never gives sources for.  LaVey also plays the antiquity card by claiming that Satanism existed before him (LaVey The Satanic Bible 171) and makes insinuations about people tried for witchcraft (LaVey The Satanic Bible 111), various evil historical figures (LaVey The Satanic Bible 104-05), Galileo Galilei and Leonardo da Vinci (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 32), the Illuminati (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 78), the Knights Templar (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 54-55), the Yezidis (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 54-55, 51-155), post-Christianization Russians (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 131-36), H. P. Lovecraft (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 175-79), the Jews (LaVey Satan Speaks! 20-22, 69-72), and practically any writer or artist he likes (LaVey Satan Speaks! 61, 64-65).  Given the sparse sourcing in LaVeyan Satanic literature and the fact that many of the alleged facts which LaVey presents are not blatantly obvious, any sensible reader should be (metaphorically) hearing alarm bells indicating that LaVey either does not care if anyone believes his version of history or not, so long as he gets the attention he needs to sell his books, or he is deliberately targeting the uncritical antireligious.

Note:  For the record, were LaVey still alive, he would be chewed out for his mischaracterization of religion by the unconventional Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of Kosher Sex (Boteach), who is unquestionably sex-positive.

Evil:  LaVey is not content to stir up controversy in claims about history and other people’s religions; how he frames his own religion is also deliberately controversial—and in a way which is a serious break with Rand.  Throughout LaVeyan Satanism books, “evil” is the term used for what LaVeyan Satanism stands for; in essence, to a LaVeyan Satanist, “evil” is the new “good”.  Strictly speaking, this is a huge terminological blunder.  “Good” is the term conventionally used for morally correct behavior, regardless of the moral system involved, and “evil” is used for morally incorrect behavior.  To use “evil” to denote what is morally correct is to sow confusion and controversy—exactly what LaVey wants.  LaVey also misidentifies his ideology with evil as defined in Christianity (or probably any other religion with a moral code), when in reality his “evil” is not identical with the Christian notion of evil (or the notion of evil propagated by probably any other religion with a moral code).  The Satanic Bible does not advocate murder,  rape,  theft (for the most part),  child abuse,  abortion,  slavery,  bestiality,  senseless or counterproductive cruelty,  or breaking the law.  Such dishonesty is apparently not sufficiently effective, as in the later Satan Speaks! he makes the blatantly outrageous claim of finding nothing wrong with the plan for world conquest laid out in the infamous forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (LaVey Satan Speaks! 71).

Symbolism:  Another publicity tactic in LaVeyan Satanism is the use of Satan as a symbol.  Now, it is perfectly possible to use an entity one does not truly believe in as a symbol.  E.g., in the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman sings, “I’d be friends with the sparrows / and the boy who shoots the arrows / if I only had a heart”, and no one seriously thinks that he is truly seeking a closer relationship with the Roman god Cupid or even believes that Cupid exists (Fleming).  But LaVey pushes symbolism to a new level.  Despite his claims of quasi-atheism, on practically every page of The Satanic Bible LaVey talks about Satan as if he were a real entity instead of merely a symbol of everything LaVey finds praiseworthy.  He also frequently makes use of God as a symbol for everything he finds detestable.  Taken out of context, much of the book could easily be interpreted as promoting the actual worship of the Christian Satan.  LaVey also has no qualms about using the alleged evil deities and quasi-deities of all religions in the same manner as and as virtual synonyms for his version of Satan (LaVey The Satanic Bible 56, 58-60, 145-46).  Such confusing and counter-conventional symbolism can only help to sow confusion and controversy.

Magic:  Anyone can be selfish or misuse words and symbols for free.  In order to get people to pay attention and buy his books, LaVey offers something no one else—not even Rand—can provide:  magic, not the tongue-in-cheek kind, but the kind that magicians only pretend that they do.  (It may be safely assumed that LaVey never was able to truly work magic, as he poorly rationalizes not using magic for the sorts of “minor” feats that would be expected in proper testing of magical efficacy (LaVey The Satanic Bible 121-22).)  Ritual in LaVeyan Satanism is not for worship, but rather is a method of creating the right emotional state so that the participants can use it to accomplish something in the real world (LaVey The Satanic Bible 111).  At the very least, LaVeyan ritual is supposed to provide an emotional release, but it also has magical aims, such as love spells and curses to cause the downfall of enemies.  The descriptions of how to perform magic are extensive and nontrivial—especially The Satanic Witch, which details how women may use magic to manipulate others for their own benefit—thus providing motivation for the selfish to buy LaVey’s books.

Recycling and plagiarism:  LaVey considers all rituals fantasy (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 15).  Since one fantasy is as good as another, logically one may use whatever fantasy one feels will accomplish the chosen task—any fantasy.  E.g., he cites the case of a wizard who quoted a poem of Rudyard Kipling for a spell (LaVey The Satanic Bible 143).  The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals thus freely borrow (in reality or LaVey’s fantasy) from the Enochian Keys of the mystic John Dee (LaVey The Satanic Bible 153-272), the Black Mass (LaVey The Satanic Bible 99-105; LaVey The Satanic Rituals 31-53), The City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 54-75; Thomson), pre-Christian Russian paganism (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 131-50), the Yezidi religion (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 151-72), The Island of Dr. Moreau by Jules Verne (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 76-105; Wells, chapter 12), bad science-fiction movies (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 106-30), and the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 171-202; Lovecraft).  Recycling rituals serves to create an illusion of a Satanic history that never really existed, thus creating prestige among the uncritical, not to mention saving LaVey a lot of effort in composing rituals.  However, LaVey’s dishonesty is deeper than that.  The ritual borrowed from The Island of Dr. Moreau is done so without correct attribution; he claims the ritual was borrowed by Wells from the Illuminati (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 78).  Plagiarism is also not limited to rituals. John Smulo also correctly notes that in The Satanic Bible, LaVey clearly plagiarized the (possibly parodical) radical tract Might is Right (Redbeard; Smulo 28).

Ignorance of Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible:  LaVey uses the “magic” word “Shemhamforash” as an exclamation in his rituals (LaVey The Satanic Bible 130, 34, 48, 50, 52; LaVey The Satanic Rituals 43, 45).  This is a Hebrew term, hashShem hamMeforash, which refers to the Divine name YHWH.  Considering LaVey’s unapologetic hatred for the God of Israel, invoking YHWH should be the last thing he wants to do.  Likewise problematic is his use of the Hebrew term Liwyathan (Leviathan) in the LaVeyan Satanic Baphomet symbol (LaVey The Satanic Bible 136), found on the covers of The Satanic Bible, The Satanic Rituals, The Satanic Witch, The Devil’s Notebook, and The Satanic Scriptures.  The most positive reference to Liwyathan in the Hebrew Bible is as YHWH’s pet sea monster (Psalms 104:26); other references depict Liwyathan as being destroyed by YHWH (Isaiah 27:1; Psalms 74:14).  The symbol therefore backfires, giving the impression of something less powerful than YHWH and not a real threat, perhaps even something amusing.  One could even make such an argument about the use of Satan as a symbol.  In the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, the Adversary (hasSaṭan) is never depicted as anything anywhere on par with YHWH or the Trinity; one cannot really expect anyone to have any hope when fighting against an immortal, transcendent creator deity.  Given LaVey’s emblematic use of a symbol which signifies something vastly inferior to what his archenemies believe in, he might as be wearing an “I AM A LOSER” T-shirt.

Also:  LaVey believes that saṭan (“Satan”) means “opposite” (LaVey The Satanic Rituals 13), whereas it only means “adversary”.  Furthermore, LaVey claims that beliyya‘al (“Belial”) means “without a master” (LaVey The Satanic Bible 109), an interpretation without any etymological sense.  The actual meaning is probably closer to “useless”, which is an accurate description of the utility of LaVey’s work for understanding Hebrew.

Was LaVey crazy?:  Probably not.  LaVey makes no secret that he does not care to be around people in general (LaVey The Devil’s Notebook 139-42).  However, unless they are willing to live in isolated places away from all the comforts of civilization, even the worst misanthropes have to deal with other human beings.  What LaVey seems to have done is use LaVeyan Satanism as a way of dealing with other human beings on his own terms.  With the aura of selfishness and evil he created around himself, people would naturally tend to avoid him.  Those who did go near him, whether willingly or out of necessity, would naturally feel the need to treat him with deference, fearing what he might do.  (Angering someone with real magic powers would be a bad idea.)  Even his followers fit into this scheme.  They would have to honor him and do his bidding to learn from him or advance in the Church of Satan.  E.g., he expects those around him to agree with him, and there are incidents of LaVey taking bribes for people to advance in the Church of Satan.  The Satanic Witch especially reflects this.  Women learning from him how to be “witches” would have to look and act the way he wanted; despite it all allegedly being for their own benefit, he would get to be around women dressed according to his tastes—like whores—and being liable to “accidental” wardrobe malfunctions.  How much LaVey believes of what he claims is unclear, but he seems to have arranged everything for his own benefit.

Setting a bad example:  Barton follows LaVey’s example closely in The Secret Life of a Satanist.  Though the style of a biography is naturally different from a philosophical tract or a book of rituals, she nevertheless faithfully reflects the bad attitude that LaVey and all who agree with him are great and that everyone else is not.  Gilmore’s The Satanic Scriptures reads like a lower-quality version of LaVey’s books of essays.  He falls in line with LaVey in practically everything and even rationalizes away predictions of LaVey that turned out to be wrong; this book is not worth delving into except by those who wish to become scholars of LaVeyan Satanism.

Much of the bad example set by LaVey (and Rand) is echoed more recently by the likes of Ann Coulter, Richard Dawkins, Ben Stein, and Bill Maher.  The reader may remember that all of these people rated an F on the Adelman theological rating system.  There is not necessarily any direct connection between LaVey and Rand on one hand and Coulter, Dawkins, Stein, and Maher on the other.  However, everyone using unjustifiable rhetoric makes it easier for others to get used to it and come to consider it acceptable.  This does not make for a more harmonious society.

Conclusion:  LaVeyan Satanism appears designed for publicity and selling literature.  There is a consistent pattern of deliberately controversial claims in all books examined other that Lyons’, with little to back up said claims and much disregard for truth.  LaVey also used other people’s material without proper (or any) attribution.  These books are highly recommended for anyone with a strong stomach who wants to know how not to write religious tracts.

Overall classification:  Religious/philosophical literature meant to attract the selfish and scare off everyone else.  On the bright side, at least LaVeyan Satanic literature, once one gets past the bluster and aura of evil, can be amusing.  (Except for Gilmore’s The Satanic Scriptures, which is not as fun as LaVey’s work.)

Theological rating:  F, prefiguring other Fs.  The entire Church of Satan is hereby banned from theology for life and afterlife.  LaVey may make for amusing reading, but amusing bad is only good when it comes to fiction.

Bibliography:

Adelman, Aaron Solomon. "Appeal to Ridicule: A Review of Bill Maher’s Religulous."  (2009).  .

---. "Delusional Victory:  A Review of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion."  (2009).  .

---. "Faking Reality: A Moral Review of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged."  (2012).  .

---. "No Honesty Allowed: A Review of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."  (2009).  .

---. "Review of Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter."  (2007).  .

Barton, Blanche. The Secret Life of a Satanist:  The Authorized Biography of Anton Lavey. Los Angeles, CA: Feral House, 1990. Print.

Boteach, Shmuel. Kosher Sex:  A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 1999. Print.

Religulous. 2008. DVD. West, Palmer, et al., 2008-10-03.

Coulter, Ann. Godless:  The Church of Liberalism. New York: Crown Forum, 2006. Print.

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006. Print.

The Wizard of Oz. 1939. DVD. LeRoy, Mervin and Arthur Freed, 1939-08-25.

Expelled:  No Intelligence Allowed. 2008. DVD. Craft, Logan, et al., 2008-04-10.

Gilmore, Peter H. The Satanic Scriptures. 1st ed. Baltimore, MD: Scapegoat Publishing, 2007. Print.

LaVey, Anton Szandor. The Devil’s Notebook. Portland, OR: Feral House, 1992. Print.

---. Satan Speaks! Venice, CA: Feral House, 1998. Print.

---. The Satanic Bible. New York: Avon Books, 1969. Print.

---. The Satanic Rituals. New York: Avon, 1972. Print.

---. The Satanic Witch. Venice, CA: Feral House, 1989. Print.

Lovecraft, H.P. "The Call of Cthulhu".  1928. Web page. Weird Tales. 2006-07-26. .

Lyons, Arthur. Satan Wants You:  The Cult of Devil Worship in America. New York: Mysterious Press, 1988. Print.

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York:  Random House, 1957. New York: Signet, 1957. Print.

---. The Virtue of Selfishness, a New Concept of Egoism. With Additional Articles by Nathaniel Branden. A Signet Book, P2602. New York: New American Library, 1964. Print.

Redbeard, Ragnar. "Might Is Right".  1896. PDF file.  Loompanics (partial): 2008-05-20. .

Smulo, John. "Christ’s Advocate:  An Incarnational Apologetic to Satanism".  2001. PDF file. 2008-06-06. .

Thomson, James. "The City of Dreadful Night".  1880. Project Gutenberg Release #1238 (March 1998). 2008-07-06. .

Wells, H. G. "The Island of Doctor Moreau".  2004. Project Gutenberg EText #159.  (2004-10-14):  Project Gutenberg. .

Child abuse as magic, divorce vouchers for Christmas, and Jewsmas

Greetings.

Jewish date:  3 Ṭeveth 5770 (Parashath Wayyiggash).

Today’s holidays:  Fourth Sunday of Advent (Roman Catholicism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “MoveOn.org Political Action: Block the bill until it's fixed”.

Topic 1: “Brazil police: Needles in boy reportedly a ritual” and “Brazil needle victim recovers, outrage at cruelty”.  I have already been bugged about this story.  Thus is it written what this is about:

A Brazilian toddler is making a good recovery after surgery to remove the first of 31 sewing needles pushed into his body by his stepfather in a cruel act that has enraged locals, the hospital said on Saturday.

The 2 1/2-year-old boy, underwent a nearly five-hour procedure on Friday to remove two rusted needles from near his heart and two more from one of his lungs.

His stepfather, 30-year-old Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, has been arrested and confessed to putting the needles in the boy's body at the behest of his lover who said the act would help the two to stay together, police said.

The pair were guided by a local practitioner of an African-Brazilian religion, candoble, and Magalhaes inserted the needles into the boy at his lover's home.

I frankly do not know much about Candomblé, but I am rather puzzled how this acupuncture gone horribly wrong is supposed to work.  If the stepfather wanted to be together with his lover, he should have divorced his wife, the boy’s mother.  Using the boy as a pincushion did nothing to get rid of the mother and has done rather a lot to enrage large numbers of people who have found out about it.  If anything, the ritual has horribly backfired.  The mother may well now divorce the stepfather, but that does not help him be together with his lover if he ends up in jail.

Topic 2: “Happy Christmas honey - here's a divorce voucher”.  Thus is it written:

Stuck for Christmas gift ideas? Is your marriage or a friend's going through a rocky patch? How about a divorce voucher?

In an unusual take on the season of giving, a London law firm is offering Christmas gift vouchers for divorce advice.

I do not suppose these people have read Matthew 19:3-12, in which Jesus displays a severely anti-divorce attitude.  It is an attitude based on questionable exegesis and nullifying any claims that Jesus might have to being a true prophet, given that he claims that Mosheh falsified the Torah.  But still Jesus’s attitude is dead-set against divorce for anything except perhaps adultery, and thus there is something very odd, if not downright anti-Christian, about pushing divorce vouchers as presents for a holiday celebrating Jesus’s birth.


Topic 3:  Jewsmas.  This site, suggested to me by Erin, complains about any and all attempts to interpret Ḥanukkah as “the Jewish Christmas”.  In this it is correct, because Ḥanukkah and Christmas has little in common other than they both fall at roughly the same time of year.  Ḥanukkah celebrates a Jewish victory over an attempt to impose a Greek way of life on Jews.  Christmas is supposed to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  In an attempt at humor, this site proposes that instead of forcing Ḥanukkah in a role that does not fit (e.g., through giving presents and putting up “Ḥanukkah bushes”), we should institute a true Jewish Christmas.  The proposed holiday, Jewsmas, from its description comes off as rather shallow.  Participants play a dreidl drinking game, refuse to eat ham, mumble carols, and ogle non-Jewish women.  Noticeably none of these practices have anything really to do with each other; three of them are just things people might like to do and one is completely pointless.  (Why bother buying a ham if you are never going to eat it?)  If anything, this is a commentary on the sad state of Christmas in the United States.  On television, in the movies, and in people’s front yards the emphasis is on bright, shiny things, commercialism, presents, Christmas trees, Santa Claus, snow, and carols.  Some people put up Nativity scenes, but the birth of Jesus, what Christmas is really supposed to be about, is easily lost or ignored completely among the glitz.  Even if Judaism did not have any problem borrowing from idolatrous and polytheistic religions (which Christianity is a little of both), a version of Christmas which is all sugar and no substance would be a holiday completely unworthy of borrowing.

Peace, and may whatever holiday you celebrate at any time of year be a meaningful one.

Aaron