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

for the consequences of their actions, beliefs and lives on the grounds that they
were only following their desires.
However, despite these critiques, LaVey’s philosophy came to broadly dominate
Satanists’ understandings of what it was to be Satanic, even if there was
disagreement in the detail 47 . Normative Satanic understandings see Satanism as a
path of individualism and is as much a psychological process as it is a religious
one. Satan himself, whether he is real or imagined, is the archetype of rebellion
and the first one to cry ‘no more!’ This act of defiance encapsulates social and
psychological maturity not only to individualise oneself from God (parents,
society), but also to critique the established order, to forge a new modus vivendi as
well as teaching important lessons in taking personal responsibility for the
consequences of such a process. Satan is a figure “representing pride, self interest
and self gratification” and as such normative Satanism has strong social Darwinist
overtones 48 . For Satanists, the concept of ‘evil’ is understood as a fictive social
and psychological mechanism that is created and perpetuated by social and
cultural authority figures to prevent challenges to their authority. The use of
counter/anti-cultural/shock images or ideas, such as the figure of Satan himself, is
what Satanist Vixen Crabtree calls the ‘Enema Image’ which is legitimized as
making “people think and force them to abandon assumption or dogma [which] is
good in the eyes of the Satanist” 49 . As such, normative Satanic beliefs lionises the
position of the outsider, the critic and the non-conformist. In short, self identity is
explicitly or unconsciously associated with the image of ‘the heretic’, a theme or
archetype that was to be developed by the Order of the Left Hand Path.
Given that Satanism embraces the ‘forbidden’, the outré, and the iconoclastic, it is
unsurprising that some Satanists have been drawn to National Socialist Germany
47
For a wider discussion on LaVey’s influence, see James R. Lewis, ‘Diabolical Authority’: Anton
LaVey, The Satanic Bible and the Satanist ‘Tradition’’ in Marburg Journal of Religion 7/1 (2002)
48
Graham Harvey, ‘Satanism: Performing Alterity and Othering’ in Syzygy: Journal of Alternative
Religion and Culture 11 (2002), p.60
49
Vixen Crabtree, ‘The Enema Image’ on Satanism: Descriptions, Philosophies and Justifications
of Satanism at http://www.dpjs.co.uk/enema.html (accessed 3 Sept 2007)
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