Dreamers of the Dark: - Research Commons - The University of ...

once sacrificed a toad to Satan, and called for the destruction of Christianity,
Crowley did not consider himself a Satanist in any real sense except as a public
persona. Crowley, through his infamy and along with some very real
accomplishments (such as mountaineering in Tibet and trekking through Burma
and China during the 1910s), as well as an impeccable occult pedigree, provided a
role model for generations of occultists who embraced, or certainly did not shy
away from, activities which have been traditionally associated with the
blasphemous inversions of religion. The great gift of Crowley was, however,
using blasphemy as a path of transcendence or liberation away from constraining,
constricting and unthinking societally enforced habit patterns. This ethos of
challenge and the seeking of intellectual and spiritual emancipation became the
fundamental idea which inspired a new generation of Satanists. To such eyes,
society forced on individuals behavioural patterns that were essentially
conditioned, unnatural and unthinking, which stultified their reasoning and
repressed their True Self. By challenging such culturally defined patterns of
behaviour (especially the consequences of religious orthodoxy), one can free
oneself from its ‘negative’ hold and become liberated into a whole new
understanding of the human condition. Satanism had become therapy.
In 1964, Anton Szandor LaVey became the next great influential figure in
Satanism, effectively becoming the ‘founder’ of modern Satanism and responsible
for its development as a sophisticated and comparatively public religiophilosophic
system. LaVey founded the Church of Satan (CoS) in San Francisco
on April 30, Walpurgisnacht, 1966 and through the church articulated his
understanding of what it means to be Satanic 24 . One distinctive and influential
feature of LaVey’s Satanism was the premise that the secular-scientific worldview
was essentially the correct one and that religious world-views are
fundamentally wrong and to be rejected 25 . As such ‘Satan’, as a real
individualized spiritual figure, does not exist and supernatural powers are simply
24 LaVey famously said in the introduction to his Satanic Bible (New York: Avon, 1969) that
founding the church enabled him to “follow the magical formula of one part outrage to nine parts
social respectability that is needed for success”
25 Ibid. p.49
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