Satanism, a religion started by humans and worshipped by humans. The term pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? When you first heard this word, chances are that an image of people covered in behemoth, black clothes, complete with nose, tongue and other piercings on various parts of their body and a weird sense of doing their hair crosses our mind. If you spot one, you’d probably assume that they’re gonna slaughter a lamb and make sausages out of it and drink its blood like they’d drink soup.
Contrary to popular belief, Satanism teaches individuals to focus on the self and allow others to be as they are. So does Satanism advocate violence? According to a satanic verse out of the nine that were published by Anton LaVey, Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek! So no. They don’t really persuade worshippers to be violent. There’s one exception to their rule of non-violence –Revenge.
It all began with the founding of the Church of Satan. A man named Anton LaVey founded the church in the 20th century. People who follow Satanism are called Satanists. These Satanists are predominantly found in America. Though, with the miracle called internet, Satanism is now found all around the globe.
Satanists are said to perform strange rituals including murders, sexual abuse. In a case, a teenager was first impregnated during a satanic ritual, and after the baby was born, it was killed and its heart was eaten as the cult members merrily watched. Satanic ritual abuse was a subject of moral panic in the United States. Such cases of murder, torture, abuse, incest, paedophile, etc. had caused alarm in the entire nation in the 1980s.
Popular beliefs are that Satanism is the means to hide anti-human forces within society. This commonly involves a belief in witches, a group of individuals who invert the norms of their society and seek to harm their community, for instance by engaging in incest, murder, and cannibalism
According to what I concluded, Satanism is a self-religion. It focuses on self-spirituality and persuades a person to put himself/herself first. This religion is literally based on the saying we’ve all heard – “self-help is the best help”. This self-help might be moral or immoral, they don’t seem to care. It ranges from doing charity for one’s own satisfaction, to drinking the blood of a dear one for contentment. Anything that makes you happy.
Sigmond Freud suggested Id, the super impulsive part of our psyche that gives us immoral thoughts, the SuperEgo, the well behaved, law-abiding, moral part of our psyche and the Ego, the part that helps the id part of the psyche to calm down and behave well. I believe that in Satanism, the SuperEgo is suppressed, beaten and made to shut up while the egoistic, evil Id takes over. Classifying all Satanists as violent beasts with nasty needs would be wrong. There exist morally correct Satanists too.
There exists a Satanic Bible too. It’s not considered to be sacred scripture though. This Bible talks about the most controversial topics like ritual, magic, hate, lust, etc.Talking about Satanists, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Jay-Z and a few other celebrities are accused of being followers of Satanism.
The world is huge, and so is the number of people and their ideas. These ideas can be way different than those of the ones we hear or know about. If we choose to go deep into each one of these unusual ideologies and practices, we’d definitely fall short of time. The world is a weird place with weird beings. But don’t forget, there are human beings outside who find your ways of life weird, just like you find theirs!
(Article that I wrote for a blog - themixedsack.wordpress.com)
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