Satanic Bible by Anton La Vey, Anton Szandor Lavey

From the Publisher

Called "The Black Pope" by many of his followers, Anton La Vey began the road to High Priesthood of the (lurch of Satan when he was only 16 years old and an organ player in a carnival:

"On Saturday night I would see men lusting after halfnaked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing the organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday night they'd be back at The carnival or some other place of indulgence.

"I knew then that the Christian Church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out!"

From that time early in his life his path was clear. Finally, on the last night of April, 1966 — Walpurgisnacht, the most important festival of the believers in witchcraft — LaVey shaved his head in the tradition of Ancient executioners and announced the formation of The Church Of Satan. He had seen the need for a church that would recapture man's body and his carnal desires as objects of celebration. "Since worship of fleshly things produces pleasure," he said, "there would then be a temple of glorious indulgence . . ."

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• ISBN: 0380015390
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Pub. Date: December 1976
• Condition:

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Chapter One

THE BOOK OF SATAN

1. In this and wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you my hear. To the Fast and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign proclaiming: Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!
2. Open your eyes that you may see, Oh in= of miIdewedminds, and listen to me ye bewildered millions!
3. For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world;to interrogate the "Iaws" of man and of "God"
4. I request reasons for your golden rule and ask the whyand wherefore of your ten command&
5. Before none of your printed idols do I bend in arquiescence, and he who saith "thou shalt" to me is my mortal foe!
6. I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad redeemer, and write over his thorn-torn brow: The Tama prince of evil — the ling of the slaves!
7. No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stiflingdogma shall encramp my pen!
8. I break away from all conventions that do not lead tomy earthly success and happiness.
9. I raise UP in stem invasion the standard of the strong!
10. I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and pluck him by the beard; I uplift a broad-axe, and split open his worm-eaten, skull!
11. I blast out die ghastly contents of philosophically whitedsepulchers and laugh with sardonic wrath!

II

1. Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree
2. I question all things. As I stand before the festering and varnished facades of your haughtiest moral dogmas, I write thereon in letters of blazing Korn! Lo and behold" all this isfraud!
3. Gather around me, OM ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold!
4. Too long the dead hand has be- Permitted to sterilize living thought!
5. Too long right and wrong, good and evil have been inverted by false prophets!
6. No aced mug be accepted upon authority of a "devine" nature. Religions must be put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted — no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!
7. He that is slow to believe anything great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all wisdom.
8. The chief duty of ,cry new age is to upraise nm men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards material success — to rend the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories and ideas that may have meant life and hope and (-edfor on, ancestors my now mean destruction, slavery) and dishonor to us!
9. As environments change, no human ideal standeth sure!
10. Whenever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of an inconvenient falsehood, no one cart prosper.
11. Let established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they are a standing menace to all true nobility of thought and action!
12. Whatever alleged "truth" is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!
13. The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie — the lie everyone believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is a hydra-headed tree of unreason with a thousand roots. It is a social cancer!
14. The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons accept as fact-the lie that has been inculcated in a little child at its mother's kneeis more dangerous to contend against than a creeping Pestilence!
15. Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them: Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers. Exterminate them root and branch. Annihilate them, or they will us!

III

1. "Love one another" it has been said is the supreme law, but what power made it so? Upon what rational authority does the gospel of love rest? Why should I not hate mine enemies — if I "Love?' them does that not place me at their mercy?
2. Is it natural for enemies to do good unto each other — and WHAT IS GOOD?
3. Can the torn and bloody victim "love!' the blood-splashed jaws that rend him limb from limb?
4. Are we not all predatory animals by instinct? If humans ceased wholly from preying upon each other, could they continue to exist?
5. Is not "lust and carnal desire" 2 more truthful term to describe "love" when applied to the continuance of the race? Is not the "love" of the fawning scriptures simply a euphemism for sexual activity, or was the "great teacher" a glorifier of eunuchs?
6. Love your enemies and do good to them that hate and use you — is this not the despicable philosophy of the spaniel that rolls upon its back when kicked?
7. Hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on, one cheek, SMASH him on the other!; smite him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law!
8. He who turns the other cheek is a cowardly dog!
9. Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom — with compound interest liberally...