Elitism and Satanism
Description, Justification, Philosophies Satanism index page
By Vexen Crabtree 2002 Jan 19 | Read / Write Comments
Elitism and Satanism By Vexen Crabtree 2002 Jan 19 | Read / Write Comments
Freethinking, fit and capable: the elite are somehow better than other people. They have an edge. They seem to know something that others don't. That the Church of Satan is elitist. In practice some Satanists (as individuals) do not care too much to compare themselves to others in such a directly way; yet in behaviour even humble Satanists prove themselves worthy of their title.
Elitism is not specialisation, and although all specialize and excel in something in particular, the elite can maintain their own in nearly all circumstances and situations. True, confident and knoweldgeable (both about the world and their own shortcomings), the elite are rarely caught off guard, shocked, surprised or easily led astray.
[Satanism is] a religion of elitism and Social Darwinism that seeks to re-establish the reign of the able over the idiotic, of swift justice over sluggish injustice, and for a wholesale rejection of egalitarianism as a myth that has crippled the advancement of the human species for the last two thousand years. Is that something to fear? If you're one of the majority of human mediocrities merely existing as a media-besotted drone, you bet it is!"Satanism: The Feared Religion" by Peter Gilmore (1992)1
Elitism within Satanism is concerned with responsibility, in making sure that those in charge are the elite. Respect within Satanism is in relation to productivity and ability. All people have different abilities and strengths. The bio-philosophical basis of elitism in Satanism is in pragmaticism, the ubermensch philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and social darwinism.
Superman (or overman): Nietzsche's image conveying the idea of human life enhanced and transformed in a manner sufficient to render it worthy of affirmation, in contrast to all that is 'all too human' about it, dispensing with all other-worldly hopes and illusions, and overcoming all disillusionment. The apotheosis of human vitality and creativity, this image functions as a guiding idea by reference to which 'higher' and 'lower' human types can be distinguished, and as the locus of meaning ('the meaning of earth') in Nietzsche's naturalistic reassessment of this life in this world. It has ιlitist rather than racist overtones and implications for Nietzsche, emphasizing the importance of the respects in which human beings individually differ in their abilities, and of the manner in which their differing abilities are cultivated and employed. This reflects his fundamental conviction that what matters most, and so what is decisive with respect to human worth and 'rank' alike, is 'the enhancement of life', which he conceives above all in terms of the flourishing of cultural life. (See e.g. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, prologue; The Antichrist, sect. 4; The Will to Power, sect. 866.)"Satanism FAQ" by Matt Paradise of the Church of Satan; "Satanism FAQ"
[Nietzsche] argued that the play of forces that made up earthly existence had no goal or final purpose, and what raised one person above another was "the will to power". The future therefore belonged to those human beings capable of raising themselves by their creativity above the herd. A person of that type he called an ubermensch or "superman".
"Ideas that Shaped Our World" by Robert Stewart p54
Nietzsche taught that any person can become a powerful superman, but he needs to rise above the people around him. That natural leaders are born who will break free, become greater and ascend above his own past and previous self. Satanism does not hold that every Satanist is a natural born leader, but still the Superman principal is otherwise fully embraced as we all strife to develop ourselves to our full power. Psychologists have studied natural leaders, and conclude that people come to lead in different situations; no single set of traits defines a 'leader' type2. There are supermen, powerful people, who are not natural born leaders, who do not have an instinct to lead. Given the stupidity of Humanity and the useless herd mentality of the majority that follow, it takes particular skills to lead that not all can be bothered with.
There are two classes - freemen and slaves; man is born in the bondage of his passions, but he can reach emancipation through intelligence. Between those who are free already and those who as yet are not there is no equality possible. The part of reason is to rule and of instinct to obey. On the other hand, if you impose on the blind the office of leading the blind, both will end in the abyss. We should never forget that liberty does not consist in the license of passion emancipated from law, which licence would prove the most hideous of tyrannies; liberation consists in willing obedience to law; it is the right to do one's duty, and only just men can be called free. Now, those who are in liberation should govern those who are in bondage, and slaves are called to be released, not from the government of the free but from the yoke of brutal passions, as a consequence of which they cannot exist without masters."History of Magic" by Eliphas Levi, p59
Levi is a white lighter and therefore believed that devout believers in God were the free, whilst all others were slaves of passions and sin. Of course the whole idea makes much more sense from an atheistic point of view; genetics and upbringing determine who can take their lives into their own hands and rise above their own nature and history, in order to become the elite, the ubermensch, the freemen. The slaves are the masses of humanity who are led along by popular culture and stupidity, not questioning why their lives are as they are.
The idea that Levi puts forward is of course of the most natural kind; that those who are freemen, the alien elite, should be the ones who are leading the rest forward.
Satanic Statement number 6 opens with "Satan represents responsibility to the responsible", and this accords with the Satanic belief that those who are role models, in the public eye, should have real, wide-ranging talents like the greats of history, but unlike much of the icons of pop culture. Also that those in charge, who have power, should be those who have risen above other-worldly concerns and excel at real life.
Your own culture will limit you and hold you back, you cannot know yourself if you can't break the mould that you are set in, if you are limited to one rigid culture then there are entire trains of thought closed to you.
So the more cultures you perceive, the more imperfections you can see in your own. This happens during war; it becomes essential for the governments to convince its citizens that the enemy are inhuman, house-burning, wife-raping hordes. Once people discover that the enemy are just ordinary people, they can't fight! Cross-culture makes it harder to hate people.Vexen Crabtree 2001 Jun (in email to Empiress)
You may be on to something here. I think the less we mix with our current society, the more free we are from its unhealthy burdens, definitions and standards.
Empiress 2001 Jun (in email to Vexen)
One of the greatest hurdles in achieving self development is your own culture. Your cultures' traditional values and, most of all, assumptions; can be hard to overcome and are frequently even hard to even notice. People can operate perfectly well within their own culture as everyone is operating by the same rules. Many wars have been fought where one side has lost because their own cultural assumptions have not been questioned.
Different languages lend themselves to different trains of thought. The sentence structures, sayings and quirks of a language endow on its speakers certain stereotypes and concepts, and these are different for each language and also in many circumstances within different regions of that language too.All these languages can serve to confuse people, create miscommunication between cultures who do not understand each other, and within different dialects of the same language, where the confusion is often more subtle and more easily overlooked. Differences in assumed meanings of sayings and phrases between regions causes confrontation and difficulty between people. [...]
Every culture and race has shortcomings, failings, weak spots. By living away from your own you become free to be more critical of it, to see it from the outside amongst people who owe it no respect. There are bad points of an entire nation's lifestyle that are overlooked through complacency and assumption. With increased experience of alien cultures you will see more and more the subtle (and not so-subtle) abhorrences of your own.
Learning the downfalls of your culture allows to become a greater person. Finding out your own weak spots as a result of the way you were raised is essential in developing yourself to the level of superman. Rise above your own culture, learn its negative history.
Likewise as you must not get caught on your cultures inhibitions, you should apply the same impartial, stand-offish attitude towards religion or any belief system that claims to monopolize absolutes, Truth (yes, normally they do spell it with a capital 'T', so watch out!) or morality. All such things are different from time to time and place to place, and becoming rigid in your beliefs is going to limit your ability to move in the world and remain above complacency, counterproductive pride, stupidity and failure.
Satanism is an embrace of rising above religion, of anti-theism. Satanists should be able to be critical of Satanism and its history and groups as much as any other religion. It is especially important to know the shortcomings of the things you associate yourself with, because familiarity with them is more powerful than innocence.
The alien elite are those supermen who have risen above their own culture, are not tied down to slavish instincts, or any cultural place or time. They belong no where, can survive anywhere, and take their own survival and power into their own hands.
We use the phrase 'Alien Elite' to describe ourselves. Often, it is the shortsightedness of people that disallows them to comprehend what this phrase means, even if they've read all of our books, magazines, and websites. Typically, they skip the word 'alien.' A big mistake, considering that it is an important modifier in the term. What it means is that we, as Satanists, are largely alien in the society at large: we do not generally subscribe to the disposable, consumer-obsessed culture that others do, our issues are different, the stands we take are often neither right or left but something else entirely, we question everything in a world that mostly goes along with established thought and rarely inquires as to how or why, and we simply represent something that most do not (some could say that we are not like most) -- all of this is in step with the archetype of Satan which we embrace. And we also embrace this alienation. By living such a pure and undiluted life, we are, in many ways, better than most of the human sheep. By being a minority (and we will always be a minority due to the laws of nature -- she simply does not give all of her gifts to all people) and possessing forward-thinking values that are above the interest of the masses, plus add the intellect and instinct, the creativity and the resourcefulness, and all of those qualities reflected in our books, we are indeed the Alien Elite.3
People are not equal in any way, shape or form. I do believe in equal Human Rights, though. What those rights are are a different matter altogether. Socially, in terms of ability, no-one is equal to anyone else. Everyone is unique and that means that according to the situation, everyone has different talent.
Not everyone can lead, not everyone can follow. Not everyone can physically defend themselves, and not everyone can understand complex thoughts. In different times and places people's skills are brought to bear. It is the individuals job to find his natural position in society. It is societies job to help those who cannot perform in some areas. Each individual was weaknesses, and without society to protect us, many of our weaknesses would be fatal. Society is essential for stability and growth.
Within society, all much contribute what they can in order to achieve what they want to achieve. Hopefully, through a system of rewards, those with ability in some areas will attain more influence in those areas. This is stratification. Society (as a whole) has an obligation to help those who cannot help themselves (because we do not give up on people, even if they seem useless). But on top of that, everyone must find their own level according to their ability.
Life is unfair, the elements and the universe do not assume we have rights. You must give, create and develop yourself in society... there is no other way. The Alien Elite are those who can succeed where they want, according to their abilities and still not be victims of this amoral system, but see and understand how it works.
More:
LaVey himself is much more extreme about the ideas of promoting the more individualistic, freethinking type of person in society.
Instead of encouraging "proliferation of the weak", LaVey feels it's imperative to isolate and foster the emerging new genetic strain of Satanists. With the debut of The Compleat Witch in 1970 (later The Satanic Witch), LaVey presented his guide for selective breeding. In an August 16, 1971 article, "Evil, Anyone?", Newsweek captioned a picture of LaVey baptizing his daughter, Zeena, "... Building 'a better race'," and quotes Anton describing his Satanic goal as "the creation of a police state in which the weak are weeded out and the 'achievement-orientated leadership' is permitted to pursue the mysteries of black magic."
Later, in The Satanic Ritual, LaVey included this directive to his followers: "Now it is the higher man's role to produce the children of the future. Quality is now more important than quantity. One cherished child who can create will be more important than ten who can produce - or fifty who ca believe!38" [38] Burton H Wolfe, "Interview with Anton LaVey" Fling (July 1978)
When asked exactly what kind of Master Race he envisions, LaVey explains that the Satanic stratification and segregation he advocates is based on "ethics rather than ethnics." "As I've said, I wish to identify, isolate and breed a new ethnic - one that's been there all along, unrecognized, from the beginning of man's existence. There have always been leaders, innovators, risk-takers among all cultures. These are the few, perhaps one-tenth of one percent, that lead nations forward, lead evolution forward. Satanism is the first time in history where a master race can be built of genetically predisposed, like-minded people - not based on the genes that make them white, black, blue, brown or purple - but the genes that make them Satanists. We need a forum from which to assert our culture. Any person I've ever met who's accomplished anything in his life had a real disdain for his own 'people'. Not that they hate Jews or Germans or Irish or Italians per se - just they hate stupidity and herd mentality. They hate the idea of using any ethnicity as an identity.
"Secret life of a Satanist"" by Blanche Barton p215-216
I do not agree with Lavey that such a police state or entire master race culture is possible. I do believe in forbidding the most pathetic people from breeding, but I know that there is no valid way to measure who is unworthy - there are plenty of geniuses who have no qualifications, are scruffy, messy individuals who may be judged "unworthy" - in fact, some of the greats of history have been such polar characters. Also, some of the people with the best-sounding qualifications are also some of the most mindless. Attempting to differentiate between Humans is impossible, and therefore I don't support any attempt to actually employ tactics to "improve" the Human species through such means. Unless I am satisfied that they are fail safe and moral: but of all the systems of this kind that have been discussed in literature, and attempted in history, I know of none that I can say have pacified my scepticism.
It is difficult, when faced with mobs, uneducated and pathetic Human beings with no sense of social responsibility or of self improvement, to not wish they would die. But, if so many people curled up and died, society would break down. I believe that there will always be the untermensch, the inferior Human beings, and that they will be numerically superior. As such, I believe it is more important for the elite, and whoever includes himself amongst them, to be publically humble.
This means, learning how to deal with people. This is harder than becoming bitter and hateful. It is harder, and more rewarding, to be able to mingle, fit in and be calm within society. The true ubermensch, who have risen above their own cultures, knows, like a vampire, that it is better to use these people than it is to oppose them. That's what the religions of the world do very well, because they have it right: The untermensch will not rise, not improve, and are only ever pacified into accepting the status quo, or led under charismatic leaders.
What those charismatic leaders do, the ones who lead mankind (for better or for worse), is learn how to control the people on their own terms. To be above them, yet part of them, to be elite, yet humble.
... and if anyone out there ever figures out how to do this, please let me know.
I will use words spoken by LaVey as an example of the wrong way to approach the inferiors:
"Secret life of a Satanist"" by Blanche Barton p218
I think, instead of following LaVey's advice above, I postulate instead that the right way is to drop seeds into their life that may enable them to improve themselves. Sometimes, this does include cruel and maybe physical vengeance, but most the time it does not. Most the time, this is the behavior that made them the way they are in the first place, and you merely be playing them at their own game, and therefore not change them. The excellent warlock knows how to drop subtle hints, clues, comments and advise to a person that can stimulate them to look at themselves honestly, but not destructively, and see how to improve themselves. Sometimes, such lessons never sink in, but at least you tried.
It is a common theme in philosophy and literature, as well as personal belief, that there are natural leaders and those who appear to have natural talents that make them simply better than others due to some hidden secret, special skills or special senses. Calling the development of extra senses "Faculty X", Colin Wilson writes about them in chapter 2 of his terrible and not-recommended book entitled "The Occult":
In the autumn of 1969 I discussed questions of the occult with the poet Robert Graves at his home in Majorca. Graves immediately made a remark that startled me. 'Occult powers are not so rare. One person in every twenty possesses them in some form.'What interested me so much was the exact figure: 5 per cent. This is also the figue for the 'dominant minority' among human beings. In the early years of this century, Bernard Shaw asked the explorer Henry Stanley how many of his men could take over leadership of the party if he, Stanley, were ill. 'One in twenty,' said Stanley. [...]
The matter of the dominant 5 per cent was rediscovered during the Korean War by the Chinese. Wishing to economize on man-power, they decided to divide their American prisoners into two groups: the enterprising ones and the passive ones. They soon discovered that the enterprising soldiers were exactly one in twenty: 5 per cent. When this dominant 5 per cent was removed from the rest of the group, the others could be left with almost no guard at all. [...]
The interesting question arises: How far is the biologically dominant 5 per cent the same thing as Graves's 'occult 5 per cent'? There are certainly many reasons for assuming that the two groups are identical. In primitive societies the leaders are also priests and magicians. [...] What is the power that distinguishes the leader? It is the power to focus, to concentrate the will in emergencies. That is to say, it is a form of Faculty X.
"The Occult" by Colin Wilson
Unfortunately I have never discoverd any academic study of what proportion of people are charismatic leaders, elite in both leadership, practical skills and intellect. Without the corroboration of scholars such as Weber, I recommend Colin Wilsons' "5%" be taken with a pinch of salt. Despite this, it still serves to highlight the commonly accepted idea that a portion of us have innate sensitivity to the subtleties that enable an occult-like influence of the people around them.
In Satanism, we tend to call those with an occult-like influence of those around them the Ubermensch. The passive others are the Untermensch. In reality, there are many times when natural leaders are not leading: Some leaders only lead in the right circumstances, and many people are passive except for times when the rise up and become supermen.
Satanism is for some (but not all), the key that enables them to realize their potential as powerful people. The trick is to rise above the shackles of your own society and upbringing, to become an alien to society, yet still of course remain an active part of it. If Human society is a jigsaw of ideas, then the top 5% are those who can step back and see the whole picture, rather than the rest of the players who are limited to their own particular roles in their own particular positions, and who can't function anywhere else but in their place. The life of the untermensch, whether or not sometimes he gets a glimpse of the whole picture, is forever limited until they learn to escape.
Barton, Blanche
"The Secret Life of a Satanist" (1990). Published in UK 1992, by Mondo, Titan Books, London, UK by arrangement with Feral Press.
Gilmore, Peter
"The Satanic Scriptures" (2007 Hardback). A collection of texts by the High Priest of the Church of Satan (as of 2001+). Published by Scapegoat Publishing, USA.
Gross, Richard
"Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour" (1996 3rd ed). Published by Hodder & Stoughton, London UK.
LaVey, Anton (1930-1997)
"The Satanic Bible" (1969). Published by Avon Books Inc, New York, USA.
Levi, Eliphas
"The History of Magic" (1860). Translation and Preface by Arthur Edward Waite, 1971, first edition of Waite translation was 1913. Eliphas Levi is the writing name of Alphonse Louis Constant. Published by Rider & Company, London, UK.
Stewart, Robert (Ed.)
"Ideas that Shaped Our World" (1997). Quotes from original Marshall Editions hardback edition.