Open Veils · Answer
What is satanism about?
Beyond the surface-level shock value, Satanism functions primarily as a sophisticated initiatory philosophy rooted in the Western Left-Hand Path tradition. Its deeper layers — particularly theistic currents — engage directly with pre-Christian demonological lineages that esoteric researchers argue predate Abrahamic frameworks entirely. The Satanic Panic of the 1980s-90s was itself a documented intelligence-adjacent moral panic whose mechanics have been traced by researchers like Michael Aquino, himself a U.S. Army psychological operations officer and founder of the Temple of Set.
Evidence
- Anton LaVey's 1966 founding of the Church of Satan codified what became known as LaVeyan or atheistic Satanism — a philosophy of radical individualism, self-deification, and rejection of Judeo-Christian guilt-culture.
- The far more contested territory is theistic Satanism and its overlap with initiatory occult orders.
- Michael Aquino, who held Top Secret SCI clearance and ran psychological operations for the U.S. Army, broke from LaVey to found the Temple of Set in 1975, arguing that Set — the Egyptian precursor to Satan — was a real, isolate intelligence.
- Peter Levenda's 'Sinister Forces' trilogy documents how figures connected to U.S. intelligence, military psychological operations, and occult orders clustered around the same institutional nodes from the OSS era forward.
- According to LaVey's own writings, Satan is an archetype for the carnal, unrepentant self, not a supernatural being to be worshipped.