Customer Rating: 
Summary: The Foundation For Modern Satanic Belief
Comment:
Ah, Satan the old nemesis, the great rebel, the stand-by rouser and the trigger point of the superficial, the ignorant, the rabble and the narrow-minded...
The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey was conceived in 1969 three years after the man's public conversion to Satanism in California. With the founding of the Church Of Satan in San Francisco came the need for a volume encapsulating the beliefs and the agenda of the development, which lead to the creation of The Satanic Bible. Seeking to introduce man to a more natural and unaffected way of life congruous to humankind's nature, LaVey sought to not only launch a new level of discourse regarding life and religion, but also to free Satan from its Christian/Luciferian pigeonhole into a more honest and vital force.
The Satanic Bible is essentially made up of two parts. The first part enlightens man on his true nature, free from predisposition and ingrained ignorance. The second part - collects from the past and philosophers like Nietzsche, John Dee and Aleister Crowley - to teach symbolic rituals and rites, as well as the devil's own Enochian language in which the nineteen keys have been written.
As controversial as the text is today one can imagine how it would have been received 30 years ago. Anti-hypocritical, open and pioneering the book is obviously mischievous as it tries to awaken the reader and his senses. The devil is not occult or evil, as these themes are demystified - unless man wants it to be. Inspiring and fresh, the bible corrodes conformity as it casts aside uniformity in contradiction of its own name. Rites and words are given symbolic power that is only alive in the will of the practitioner. Satan is not about animal sacrifice, virgins or harm - unless one wants it to be. Free sex and unencumbered intercourse are not endorsed as Satanic - unless the reader wishes it for himself. Those fables are reserved for the devil of the major mainstream religions. That is where LaVey's major thrust lies, a fact obfuscated often by the majority and the organized.
The Satanic Bible requires just a little bit of an open mind. With the door left ajar, the teachings resonate easily given their direct appeal to man's true nature. Therein lie the problems. Such willingness is not easy in a society rooted in ...isms and ...ity. To live free one has to acknowledge the uncomfortable and the absence of good or bad. What will a society free from guilt and a population unrestrained by self-denial mean? The answers explain why the book is of limited appeal and the cause of worry and scare-mongering to this day and surely many more years to come.
Being written by a man and acknowledged with pride as such, The Satanic Bible is both imperfect and inconsistent. Nevertheless, being free from hypocrisy and in touch with a higher level of intellectual honesty, The Satanic Bible is the path to a world free from 'good' and 'evil' and living a life worthy of man's taste for honesty.
Now, if only LaVey had told us about Yankee Rose...
Customer Rating: Summary: The most difficult review I've written.
Comment: Hmmmmm........
Up until now I've been reviewing movies, music, and Steven King.
This is a hard review to write.
Do I give the book one star for its selfishness?
Do I give it three for its humanistic points?
I decided to give it five.
Six would have been more appropriate.
What did I like about this book?
As a gay man who was force fed Catholicism from birth I can appreciate the rage LeVay feels towards Christianity.
I have a lot of these same feelings and I felt great relief reading his words.
Are his beliefs derived from Ayn Rand, etc...?
I don't know, I've never read any of those books. Where LeVay started to lose me was with the magic aspects of his religion.
Do any of these spells even work?
I've read numerous books on the occult and magic looking for some decent answers.
Every single one of them seem to be, dance naked around a pentagram and throw some chicken bones in the air.
Complete drivel, have any of you read the The Key of Solomon???
"In order to successfully complete spell # so and so, please wear a red cloth that was made by a virgin on the twentieth day of Jupiter etc..........
Yeah, ok.... Good luck finding that on e bay!!!
LeVay's magic seems no different as it is mostly imitative magic.
If you believe strongly enough, it MIGHT happen. Rubbish!!!
On one hand LeVay dismisses religion as nonsense then he goes on to create his own.
Why?
LeVay states man needs his rituals. Um.....you might, I don't.
I guess even after his tirade against Christianity, I have a hard time completely turning my back on all that I was raised with.
On the other hand I tire of seeing other gays, gay Catholics in particular BEGGING to be accepted by the church.
I feel like telling them, to turn your back on them and their god that will never accept or love you.
Then again.......maybe the church is wrong. Maybe, God isn't the bad guy we've all been led to believe.
Maybe God hates his own followers as much as we do?
Who could blame him, their mostly liars and hypocrites who have done nothing but distort his overall message.
(Sigh) I guess I'm tired of all of it.
Looking for answers and finding nothing, everyone just guessing and grabbing blindly in the dark. Then come the "holy men" and their words of worthlessness, and all the blind sheep that follow them till the end thinking they have the answers, when they in fact had nothing.
I told you this would be a hard review to write, and it's even harder to wrap it up.
I'm giving the book five stars because, the rage, the hate, the anger, the vengeance........it's all there for you to read and enjoy.
I know I did.
That said, don't think this book will give you any long term answers to the next life which LeVay claims does not exist.
I guess even with this book read, I still have faith that all rights will be wronged and the people who are punished will be those who truly deserve it. While the persecuted the lowly and the shunned will be amply rewarded.
LeVay's selfish religion starts out as a great idea that ultimately fails.........why?
I don't believe the imitative magic to be legitimate.
I don't believe his religion to be one that allows for personal growth.
I don't believe the constant hate and vengeance will accomplish anything but an ulcer.
So where does that leave us?
Still blindly groping in the dark looking for answers that no one really has.
