The Enemies of Our Enemies
2.9.6
or
Welcome Satanists? — Are You Crazy?
Copyright © 1990, 2003 c.e.,
Isaac Bonewits
This article can be found it its original form
and location at http://www.neopagan.net/Enemies.html
Toleration over Common Sense?
Like most Neopagans, I believe that toleration in
general is A Good Thing. Unlike some, however, I
also think it can be foolish, when exercised too
much towards those who would like to destroy us.
For example, when I go to a Pagan festival, I don’t
mind Buddhists, agnostics, or liberal monotheists
showing up to check us out. Yet I feel violated
when Christian fundamentalists arrive with intent
to spy upon us, to convert us, or to interfere with
our activities. I have much the same reaction when
I see Satanists at our festivals or in “our”
bookstores trying to recruit new members.
Some Satanists/Setanists
(or “Setians”) will claim from time to
time that, like Neopagans, they are an “oppressed”
religion, that they are “misunderstood,”
that they are the victims of the Christian press.
They will quote the old saying, “the enemy
of my enemy is my friend,” and argue that we
should become their allies. All of which makes sense
only if you are ignorant about both Satanism on
one hand and Paleo-, Meso- and Neopaganism on the
other.
Varieties of Satanic
Belief and Practice
As I have written elsewhere, there are several kinds
of Satanist: One type is the Liberal Heterodox or
hippie/punk/gothic Satanist. These are the anarchist
sorts, generally young, who stress the revolutionary
or Luciferian side of the Satan myth. They are essentially
rebelling against subservience to the Christian
God, the sickness of Christian morality, and their
parents. A sizable proportion of them might have
become Neopagans if they had heard of us first,
and some of them do so later on. Some of them alternate
between calling themselves Satanists or Pagans,
depending on whom they are addressing, much to the
annoyance of real, adult Pagans. As far as I can
tell, they seem to grow out of being Satanists when
they finish adolescence (which can, alas, take decades
for some).
Another type of Satanist
is the Conservative Orthodox or fascist sort: generally
middle-aged, uneducated, and unsuccessful (the basic
vigilantee or militia type), though their leaders
can be quite clever and successful. These are the
right wing Satanists who like to stress the might-makes-right,
dictatorial side of the Satan image. Major denominations
would include the Church of Satan (“COS”)
and the Temple of Set (“TOS”), both of
whom are careful to distinguish themselves from
the other types. Note that right wingers (whether
Satanic or other Christian sorts) often present
themselves under more appealing terminology, such
as by calling themselves “Libertarians.“
A third kind of Satanist
is the sincere sociopath or crazy kind. These folks
are obsessed with the death, torture, rape, and
madness parts of the Christian Satan archetype.
Usually from extremely dysfunctional families, these
people have grown up being told that they are evil,
so they try to fulfill everyone’s expectations.
They tend to commit various horrible crimes in Satan’s
name, and sometimes belong to one of the other sorts
of Satanism as well. Right wing Satanic leaders,
when speaking for the public record, always deny
that the sincere sociopaths are “real”
Satanists, much as other Christians disown criminal
behavior by people calling themselves Christian.
A fourth kind of Satanist
is the smooth-talking (or sometimes just whiney)
Internet Satanist, of which there are a couple of
dozen or so (posting under multiple psuedonyms)
in the world. This sort relies on the short memories
of Internet surfers and the ignorance of beginning
Neopagans to slip into their minds a wide variety
of shallow, ingenuous arguments (usually based on
deliberately blurring the distinctions between Mesopaganism
and Neopaganism) that “Satanism and Paganism
are really the same thing.” This is usually
combined with declarations of personal and group
innocence, pious denunciations of criminal behavior
by “psuedo-Satanists,” and sanctimonious
appeals to their freedom of religion — none
of which has anything to do with Neopagan polytheology.
If you don’t fall for their nonsense, or even
worse, argue with them, their veneer of civility
vanishes swiftly in a firestorm of invective, slander,
and occasional email bombing.
Of course, being the
Christian Dualists that they are, most Satanists
of the four sorts I’ve mentioned so far insist
that, “There are no categories of Satanists
— there are Satanists and nuts” (Tony
Levy, aka “Anton Szandor LaVey”). In other
words, “us real ones” vs. “all those
other fake ones.” Sound familiar? Each Satanic
organization and individual insists that it and
it alone is the arbiter of who is or is not among
the elect and actively despises all the others.
That “all” is important, for while members
of any religion may want to know who is or isn’t
a fellow religionist, and may even have a low opinion
of some other faiths, the wholesale dismissal of
all other paths as evil or inferior is perhaps the
defining characteristic of a Christian (or Islamic
or Zoroastrian) Dualist. Keep this in mind, especially
when reading the Aquino quotes below.
Imaginary Satanists
and Ritual Abuse Accusations
Another category of Satanists is the imaginary global
conspiracy of child-molesting, kidnapping, human
sacrificing, cannibalistic, multigenerational criminals
who haunt the dreams of fundamentalist Christians
and third-rate tabloid journalists — I’ve
even been accused of being one myself! The primary
evidence for this conspiracy comes from people who
believe themselves to be “ritual abuse survivors”
and from Christian preachers who claim to be ex-leaders
in the Conspiracy. Of course, the accusations of
incestuous orgies, human sacrifice, and cannibalism
come from an ancient urban legend and have been
falsely laid against many minority religions over
the centuries, including the early Christians, Jews,
“witches,” and various heretical groups.
These claims have always served to whip up public
hysteria against the chosen target groups (see Satanic
Panic by Jeffrey Victor). Today the targets are
modern Neopagans, New Agers, and Satanists, all
of whom are deliberately equated with each other
by fundamentalist preachers.
Some of the people
who call themselves “survivors” do appear
to have been through some kind of horrible experiences
that their minds have chosen (perhaps with help,
see next paragraph) to interpret as Satanic rituals,
just as others with similar stories have interpreted
their experiences as encounters with UFOs. However,
verifiable evidence of organized Satanic abuse activities
has yet to be found. Some, of course, will insist
that the inability of law enforcement agencies —
from the FBI and Scotland Yard down to the smallest
local constabulary — to ever discover tangible
evidence of the Global Satanic Conspiracy just “proves”
how powerful the Conspiracy really is! It doesn’t.
The conspiracy can’t be found because it is
imaginary!
According to those
who believe in the “False Memory Syndrome”
explanation, claimed abuse survivors of fantastic
events may be “Therapeutic Abuse Survivors”
— having been misled by therapists and/or hypnotists
accidentally or deliberately implanting false memories,
sometimes on top of accurate or imagined events
of abuse happening to oneself or one’s friends.
Recent brain research supposedly indicates that
false memories are fairly easy to create, since
even true memories consist of tiny fragments of
perception (an eyelid shape here, a nose dimple
there) routinely combined by our minds into the
full images we think we “remember.” Indeed,
a growing number of people who were formerly claiming
to have been ritual abuse survivors have in recent
years recanted their claims and sued their former
therapists for the damages such claims have caused
to their families, friends and communities. Visit
the Satanic Ritual Abuse Page for details on all
the arguments.
One reason the “False
Memory Syndrome” theory, which is also invoked
in discussions of non-fantastic claims of abuse,
is so controversial is that it’s all too easily
cited by both the innocent and the (presumed) guilty.
Indeed, the sorts of crimes suspected of being committed
by “Satanists” are, in fact, well within
the “might-makes-right” and “do as
thou whim” attitudes that many modern Satanists
do have and promote. I’m sure that more than
a few Satanists over the years have taken advantage
of their “moral freedom” to commit crimes,
even against their own children. I just don’t
believe that these jerks and psychos constitute
an organized conspiracy. Considering how much difficulty
the Satanists who post on the Net have agreeing
or cooperating with each other about even the most
trivial issues, the odds of Satanists ever having
a successful conspiracy to order a pizza, let alone
to “rule the world” as they and others
fantasize, are slim to none.
As for the professional
“ex-Satanic High Priests,” they seem to
be short on evidence of their claims too. Oddly
enough, although some of these preachers have confessed
to multiple felonies on widely broadcast radio and
television shows, and in “best selling”
Christian books, it seems that none of them has
ever been arrested, nor have any of them gone to
local police and confessed their crimes. Subsequently,
none has ever served prison time for deeds that
would normally put them away for the rest of their
lives. Apparently, if you claim to have reformed
yourself and become a good Christian, you no longer
need to pay your debt to society, no matter how
terrible the crimes you’ve admitted committing.
Any of you attending public lectures by supposed
“ex-Satanists” might want to bring this
up with local law enforcement officers and insist
that they be arrested — I for one would love
to see such liars forced to testify under oath in
a court of law. At this point, all of the major
“ex-Satanists” and “ex-baby-breeders”
have been exposed by Evangelical Christian journalists
as frauds, in such books as Selling Satan (about
Mike Warnke) and The Todd Phenomenon (about John
Todd aka Lance Collins). Unfortunately, little matters
like facts don’t stop the fearmongers from
repeating their lies.
This brings us to
the last, and by far the largest, category of Satanists:
the fundamentalist Christians themselves, who spend
all their time inflating the image of Satan, feeding
psychic energy into the archetype, and publishing
detailed descriptions of the sorts of evil acts
that devil worshippers are supposed to engage in
— descriptions that some other sorts of Satanist
are only too eager to imitate. Ironically, the attribution
of godlike power (as in, for example, the supposed
ability to perform “counterfeit miracles”)
to their Satan by fundamentalists, who pride themselves
on being so orthodox, is historically a sign of
Christian heresy — monotheists are not supposed
to admit that their Evil God is as powerful (or
even nearly as powerful) as their Good God.
The Unwisdom of Welcoming
Satanists
Neopagans are constantly having to explain to the
general public that Satan is a figure in Christian
and Islamic (and Zoroastrian) mythology, that our
deities are far older and more powerful than their
Satan/Shaitan, and that you have to be a Christian,
a Moslem, or a Zoroastrian in order to worship or
even respect the Devil because nobody else believes
in him. We know full well that many Christians actively
try to blur the distinctions between Satanism and
Paganism in the public mind, and we should know
that having a cozy relationship with Satanists is
going to play right into such Christian smear campaigns.
So why are some Neopagans
tolerant of obnoxious, unethical, or nasty behavior
when the people involved are calling themselves
“Satanists” when we wouldn’t cut
other fundamentalist Christians engaging in the
same kind of behavior so much slack? Granted, Satanism
is a part of the occult community — being the
“occult” or hidden side of Christianity
— and many Satanists do practice various sorts
of ceremonial magic. As we know, however, the occult/magical/metaphysical
community comprises a wide variety of organizations
and individuals — good, bad, ugly, and just
plain weird. We don’t have to be friendly to
all of them, nor do we have to accept them all as
equals or allies. Neopagans have enough trouble
interacting with Mesopagans (such as the Thelemites,
Odinists, and Voodooists), many of whom engage in
activities of which many Neopagans disapprove, without
allying ourselves with and defending a bunch of
jerks, fascists, and psychopaths who have publicly
and proudly announced their allegiance to the supreme
figure of Evil in Western mainstream culture.
I don’t care
if it’s possible to come up with superficial
arguments that the Devil “isn’t really
such a bad fellow,” or to claim that you’re
really worshipping the Norse deity Loki, or the
Egyptian god Set (who supposedly was “originally”
a Not-Completely-Bad Guy 4,000 years ago), or various
Lovecraftian critters, and that all these spirits
were “victims of bad public relations.”
Such arguments don’t change the subconscious
images that most people (including the Satanists
themselves) have of these entities, nor the nature
of the psychic energies that they tap into. Nor
does it matter that public representatives of Satanic
organizations are frequently charming and charismatic
indviduals — most con-artists are. If some
Satanists are really “proto-Pagans,” we
can give them the information they need to mature
without having to pretend that their juvenile sophistries
deserve respect.
Speaking of juvenile
sophistries, lets review the facts about the origins,
philosophy, and character of Satanism and its practitioners…
The Origins of Satan
and His -isms
Satan as a demigod was created by the early Christians
to slander the Paleopagan horned gods and to fulfill
the necessary role of the Evil God who fights their
Good God. They took the ancient Jewish prosecuting
attorney of Yahweh’s royal court, made this
“tester” a metaphor for the Jews who didn’t
accept Jesus as their Messiah, then for the secular
authorities of the Roman Empire who considered the
Christians to be “atheists,” then still
later for differing Christian sects opposed to the
forces of orthodoxy. See The Origin of Satan by
Elaine Pagels, and Satan: The Early Christian Tradition
by Jeffrey Burton Russell for details (though Russell
willingly plays the theologians’ ingenuous
games as described below).
In order to explain
why the early Christians were being successfully
perscuted by the traditional Jews and those few
Roman Paleopagans who considered them treasonous
threats to the Empire, Satan’s nature and power
had to be continually inflated until he essentially
became the Evil God. This mythic role was one of
several ideas “borrowed” from Zoroastrianism’s
dualism via the cult of Mithra, Christianity’s
primary competitor for political control of the
Empire, and that dualism’s influence on Jewish
(Essene) and Paleopagan Gnosticism. Although early
Church theologians were careful to never call Satan
a deity, and indeed to insure that those who more
honestly considered him one got labled as “heretics”
(the most famous of whom were the Manichaeans and
later the Cathars), they nonetheless treated Satan
(as they did the Virgin Mary) as divine in all but
official title.
A deity of absolute
evil makes no sense in a polytheistic system, only
in a dualistic one — which is why all the other
ancient Zoroastrian deities had been reduced to
subordinate status to the Big Two, and why the Christians
tried to turn all the Paleopagan deities they encountered
into either “saints” or “demons.”
Indeed, that Evil God is critical to the Christian
worldview. As Alan Watts put it in Myth and Ritual
in Christianity, “A Christianity without the
Devil is, then, lacking in something which is of
the essence of the Christian consciousness.”
Two important polytheological
principles need to be mentioned in passing here:
(1) don’t confuse “dualism” with
“polarity” — the former assumes hostility
between opposed principles, the latter assumes harmony
and mutual dependence — and (2) don’t
assume that dangerous or tricky deities and spirits
in Paleopagan religions were viewed by their peoples
as being cosmically Evil or in any other way similar
to how Christians and Moslems view their Satan/Shaitan.
All the different
forms of Satanism now active in the West are branches
of conservative Christianity, whether they will
admit it or not. “Satanism” as an organized
concept (an “-ism”) was created by the
Roman Catholic Church as an inverted version of
itself, with a little help from leftover Gnostic
heretics (see Jeffrey Burton Russell’s A History
of Witchcraft, for details), in the process of justifying
the European Crusades against the Albigensians and
Cathars, and later the Witchhunts. It was the Roman
Catholic Christians who defined the symbols and
beliefs of Satanism in the first place, and who
invented rituals for them to be supposedly performing,
based on the ancient urban rumours mentioned earlier.
Christian ceremonial magicians then elaborated these
into actual rituals, mostly for the purpose of entertaining
wealthy and jaded nobility with “depraved Satanic
orgies,” rather like people today who run “S&M
supper clubs.” The writings of modern Satanists
have merely given a “blackwash” to the
fundamentally Christian worldview involved —
they are still allowing the most repressive forms
of Christianity to define the universe of discourse!
The Temple of Set and its doctrines were created
to give Satanists another name (Set) to use in public,
while still calling their deity Satan in private.
The many “independent Satanists” who post
on the Net that they don’t actually believe
in Satan as a real spirit, nonetheless show that
their atheism/agnosticism/existentialism, like that
of their fellow Secular Humanists, is saturated
with Scientism and Social Darwinism — both
of which are offshoots of Christian Dualism. Which
leads us to…
Satanic/Setanic “Philosophy”
vs. Neopaganism
Satanists/Setanists are obsessed with forcing everyone
into simplistic Christian/Islamic Dualism, just
as other fundamentalists are. That’s why they
insist on lumping the “White Witches”
(Wiccans) and Neopagans in with their official enemies,
the Christians — that is, whenever they’re
not trying to recruit us as allies. In The Church
of Satan, supposedly by “authorized biographer”
Blanche Barton, Tony Levy actually went so far as
to denounce several well known Neopagans (including
yours truly) by name in the same paragraph with
the “ex-Satanic High Priest” fundamentalist
Michael Warnke and Setanic competitor Michael Aquino
(who had stolen much of LaVey’s membership).
As for Aquino himself,
not too many years ago he was denouncing Neopagans
and other Goddess worshippers as being worthy only
of his contempt. Here are some exemplary excerpts
from Nevill Drury’s book, The Occult Experience
(NY: Avery, 1989):
However, where [Aquino]
differs from Christians, mystics and Pagans —
whom for this purpose he lumps together — is
in his belief that the psychic dimension separates
mankind [sic] from the rest of Nature. Mystics and
occultists alike are content to subsume their individual
self-hood in a wash of cosmic consciousness —
a type of surrender to a higher force. Christians,
he feels, are bogged down with feelings of guilt
and hypocrisy, endorsing “hackneyed moral standards”
in an effort to appease God…” (p112).
“Other religions,”
says the Temple’s introductory screed, are
“erroneous in principle and therefore unworthy
of peer status.” If this seems arrogant, Aquino
has his reasons: “All conventional religions,
including the Pagan ones, are simply a variation
on the theme of reunion and submergence of the self
within the natural universe. So from our point of
view it really makes no difference whether you pray
to a father god or to a mother goddess — or
to an entire gaggle of gods and goddesses! You’re
still wishing for their acceptance. You’re
waiting for them to put their arms around you and
say, ’You belong. You are a part of us. You
can relax. We will take care of you. We approve
of you. We endorse you…’ The Satanist
or black magician does not seek that kind of submergence
of the self. We do not seek to have our decisions
and our morality approved or validated by any higher
god or being. We take responsibility unto ourselves.”
(p112-113).
“We consider
Set to be our activating force and the entire notion
of good and evil is something which is determined
by human beings themselves. We cannot pass the responsibility
to any god, whether it is a so-called benevolent
god or a so-called evil god” (p113).
Now, these are Aquino’s
own words, captured in print and on videotape. They
make it very clear that, however erroneous and shallow
his understanding of Paganism might be, (1) he clearly
does not consider Satanism and Paganism to be “the
same” and (2) that he considers “Setians”
to be Satanists — as he also states directly
in quite a few internal TOS documents — and
so I will refer to them for the rest of this essay.
Among the references cited by Drury are: Aquino’s
own “The Crystal Tablet of Set,” p. 23;
“Runes,” Vol. II: 6, 1984; “Runes,”
Vol. I:2, 1983; and Aquino’s monograph, “The
Church of Satan,” 1983, p. 193.
Of course, when Satanists
want to ingratiate themselves with (or just annoy)
the Neopagan community, they publish letters or
newsgroup posts that deliberately ignore the important
distinctions between Paleo-, Meso-, and Neopaganism,
so they can show how much “like” Paleopaganism
or Mesopaganism their versions of Satanism supposedly
are. The similarities to Mesopaganism shouldn’t
be surprising — most Mesopaganism is Christianity
mixed with Paganism. The fact that Paleopagans often
had customs that modern Neopagans would consider
bad ideas, doesn’t mean that ancient Pagans
were “proto-Satanists” worshipping Forces
of Evil — and only a fundamentalist Christian
would believe they were. These deliberately deceptive
Christian Dualist arguments lead some Satanists
to claim that Neopaganism “should” include
Satanists in their ranks, “because we’re
really the same.“
Long-time members
of the Norse Pagan community may remember when Stephen
Flowers (aka “Edred Thorson,” author of
several books on runes), acting as Aquino’s
second-in-command (head of the “Order of the
Trapazoid,” yet another idea stolen from Anton
LaVey), tried to convince them that Odin was “really”
just another name for Set, and so they should all
join the Temple of Set and do Nazi rituals with
him (I have copies in my files of the letters he
sent out). This opinion got the Satanic Runemaster
thoroughly (and rightly) rejected by the majority
of the Norse Mesopagan community; rightwing and
racist as they were, this was too much for them
to swallow. (Supposedly, Flowers is no longer making
these claims and is now calling himself an “Odian,”
though he is still within the Temple of Set.) Today,
it’s Loki rather than Odin who gets pointed
to, along with other trickster deities, as “evidence”
that our Paleopagan ancestors supposedly worshipped
Satan under other names. This, of course, entirely
ignores the fact that trickster deities are “good,
weird, horny, whimsical and/or confusing” as
often as they are “evil,” and shows once
again the Christian Dualist habit of shoving all
spirits into airtight Good and Evil pigeonholes
while ignoring ambiguity and complexity in non-Christian
systems.
What about people
who call themselves “Pagan Satanists“?
Well, they may exist, just as other “Christo-Pagans”
do. But these Mesopagans no more represent the mainstream
of Neopaganism (or Paleopaganism, for that matter)
than the Jews for Jesus represent Judaism or the
Theosophists represent Buddhism. We wouldn’t
accept arguments that Christianity is the spiritually
superior fulfillment, or even a logical variation
of, either Taoism or Buddhism, so why should we
accept that the “flip side” of Christianity
— Setanism — is somehow just another kind
of Paganism? For that matter, do these “Satanic
Pagans” even exist outside of the Net? Or are
they just another set of masks for old-fashioned
Christian Satanists to wear when talking to Neopagans?
Lately, Setanists
have taken to misquoting Jung and other modern psychologists
about the “shadow side” of human nature,
erroneously equating it and what they call “Dark
Side” deities and impulses (based on the words
of that famous theologian, Darth Vader) with Evil.
Then they claim that we are supposed to “embrace
it” (rather than understand and calmly control
it), and all become Satanists.
Most other Satanic
“philosophy” simply consists of turning
Catholicism or other forms of conservative Christianity
upside-down and inside-out (as if that’s going
to be an improvement), advocating hedonism, and
adding some warmed-over quotes from Hitler and misquotes
from Crowley, Nietzsche, Darwin, etc. and a dash
of Scientism to the mix. Way down deep inside, it’s
shallow.
The “Heroic”
Character of Satanists
Blanche Barton, in the Introduction to The Secret
Life of a Satanist, described Levy as “cynical,
bitterly misanthropic, and violently determined
in his role as founder” of the COS, as “a
frighteningly deceptive man,” with a “seething,
brutal side,” and “at times, an almost
unbearable oppressiveness to his intolerance and
anger.” While the rest of the book consists
of fawning admiration and total acceptance of Levy’s
biographical claims, he hardly comes off as a noble
or heroic person. Aquino, on the other tentacle,
who is the brains and money behind the TOS, is an
ex-Military Intelligence officer (so you know just
how much you can trust anything he says) who brags
about the ritual he did in a Nazi ceremonial chamber
in Germany.
Face it, most Satanists
actively approve of various types of behavior, both
magical and mundane, that Neopagans consider to
be unethical and immoral. A few Satanists are just
as evil — at least in their own imaginations
— as the members of the Inquisition, Hitler’s
stormtroopers, Stalin’s secret police, or Central
American death squads. Most, of course, are no more
evil than the average street corner con-artist,
though they try to impress us as being far more
dangerous. However, it’s important to remember
that there is nothing in Setanic doctrine (left
wing, right wing, or sociopathic) to separate the
genuinely evil from the merely obnoxious, for anything
you can get away with is approved of by their God
of (“Beyond Good and”) Evil, on the grand
old theological principle of “might makes right.“
Neopaganism is only
fourty years old. We can add another twenty years,
if we count the early Mesopagan Wiccans. Many of
us have consciously identified ourselves with historical
victims of Christian persecution (witches, magicians,
heretics, and heathens) as a way, among other reasons,
to extend our psychic history. So it’s a tempting
argument to say that we also should identify with
every other group that gets denounced by fundamentalists.
After all, they frequently target members of other
minority groups that many Neopagans belong to, approve
of, or at least have learned to tolerate, such as
gay men, lesbians, transgendered people, polyamorous
triads, feminists, science teachers, Planned Parenthood
counselors, yoga teachers, crystal healers, psychics,
astrologers, etc. Of course, Christian fundamentalists
also denounce gamblers, drug dealers, thieves, murderers,
rapists… whoops! Do we really want to defend
anyone and everyone whom fundamentalists have ever
denounced? Should we, going right to the heart of
the Satanist toleration issue, offer support to
individuals and organizations who advocate ideas
and actions we consider evil, just because we have
no legal proof that they have yet acted on their
proclaimed beliefs?
Over the years, I
have met scores of people who called themselves
Satanists — I even called myself one for eight
months when I was a teenager (see My Satanic Adventure
elsewhere on this website). I learned back then,
and subsequent experience has reiterated the lesson,
that most people who practice Satanism are Christian
fundamentalists in drag. Once in a while I would
meet a genuinely nice, if confused, person in a
Satanist group, but they usually wound up dropping
out and joining some other path. The overwhelming
majority of Satanists I have known were sleazy,
manipulative, parisitic and unethical. I can’t
think of a single reason why we should make them
feel welcome in our community, or why we should
make their activities any easier, or why we should
help their groups to grow and prosper. If the Setanists
were ever to conquer the world (Goddess forbid!),
they would herd us into ovens just as quickly as
the other fundamentalists would.
The Religious Freedom
Issues
Now, I firmly believe that people are entitled to
have whatever religious beliefs they wish, no matter
how wrong or foolish I might consider those beliefs,
because I want other folks to extend the same freedom
to me and supporting religious freedom is more important
to me than living in a world where everyone practices
a religion I like. Therefore, I don’t believe
that members of any faith have a right to enshrine
their religious beliefs into civil law or to force
religious minorities to live according to the majority’s
theological opinions. Nor, however, do members of
any religion or quasi-religion have a right to use
their beliefs as a cover for committing what criminologists
refer to as “crimes with victims,” such
as murder, rape, stealing, and polluting, for example
(as distinct from “victimless crimes”
covered by most sex, drug, and gambling laws). The
basic “don’t kill, rape, steal, pollute,”
etc., sort of moral code, necessary for the physical
welfare of any group of humans (and the Earth) is
not a specifically religious one but is (or should
be) a universally agreed-upon set of survival principles
for post-barbarian cultures.
After some long, emotional
discussions with a former spouse (who is a fervent
civil libertarian) I’m forced to reluctantly
admit that exactly the same reasoning holds whether
we’re dealing with Satanists or other Christian
fundamentalists. We don’t have the right to
exclude them from our public events, nor to prevent
them from shopping in our stores, nor to keep them
from talking to the media, much as we might like
to. We must honor their constitutional rights to
practice their religion. But we don’t have
to be helpful to them in the process.
If a Satanic group
or individual is being discriminated against in
such a way as to make legal action appropriate,
they can ask the American Civil Liberties Union
for help. If they are just having a public relations
problem, on the other hand, they can bloody well
hire their own advertising agency to explain that
up is down and Evil is “really kinda Good.”
Either way, there is no reason for us to spend our
limited funds on defending them.
How exactly can we
make it clear to Setanists that they are not wanted
in our community? As Deborah Lipp puts it, “How
do we express our disapproval, and give it clout,
without violating their rights?” Her solution:
“We do it just as our Pagan ancestors did —
by shunning. We don’t have to be respectful
or friendly to Satanists. Shunning is ethical and
legal, and no one has a civil right to be liked.“
What does shunning
as a tactic mean? Here’s an example, one that
drives the more mercenary members of our community
wild: Neopagans who own occult shops should not
sell copies of Satanic literature, provide tools
that can normally only be used for Satanic purposes
(granted, a tricky judgement sometimes), nor allow
local Setanists to use our stores to teach classes
or to recruit new members. Of course, we can’t
keep Satanists completely out of Neopagan shops.
We have to allow them to come in and buy other books
and products, just as we would allow Christians,
Jews, or Buddhists to do so, because to discriminate
against them economically would violate their constitutional
rights (besides, some of those proto-Pagans might
be among them). But we don’t have to make the
practice of Setanism easier for them. Satanists
are perfectly capable of opening their own shops,
and shopkeepers who insist on selling Setanic materials
can justly be asked where their loyalties lie. Will
this policy cost Neopagan owners who take an anti-Satanist
stand money? Yep. Which means that the Neopagan
public has a moral obligation to support anti-Satanist
occult shops, even if less ethical stores have lower
prices.
Unfortunately, we
can’t simply exclude Satanists from attending
public Pagan festivals, for reasons both constitutional
and practical. As Ms. Lipp puts it, “What are
you going to do, have attendees all sign oaths that
they aren’t Satanists?” Setanists would
hardly be bothered about taking a false oath, now
would they? But we don’t have to go out of
our way to make Satanists feel comfortable or respected,
and we don’t have to give them space on our
program schedules. If a group of Setanists want
to set up a recruiting table at a Neopagan festival,
an anti-Satanist table should be set up right next
to it, with large signs indicating that the festival
organizers do not approve of Satanism. Knowledgeable
people should talk to anyone who seems taken in
by the Setanists. The same procedures would hold
for other conservative Christians showing up at
public Pagan festivals. (As I understand it, the
only way in the United States that you can legally
prevent attendance at an event on the grounds of
religion is when that event is a private, invitation-only
party. Those of you with a background in civil rights
legislation may be able to determine if there really
is any way to exclude fundamentalists from Pagan
festivals in your country.)
Those of us who interact
with the mainstream media can and should refuse
to ever defend Satanism. We can and should publicly
take the stand that Satanism is stupid, unimaginative,
ugly, banal, and often evil — and that just
like the Christian fundamentalism of which it is
an integral part, Satanism is the enemy of the Goddesses
and Gods we worship.
We sure as Hades shouldn’t
join in public relations or civil liberties coalitions
with Satanists any more than we would with the Inquisition
or the Ku Klux Klan. Such coalitions can only benefit
(1) the Setanists who will cheerfully hide behind
the (very slightly) superior public image that years
of hard work have won us, and (2) other fundamentalist
Christians who will point to such coalitions as
further “proof” that Neopagans and Satanists
are identical. We have absolutely nothing to gain
from letting the Satanists ride on our coattails,
and much to lose.
The enemies of our
enemies are our enemies’ enemies — not
our friends. It’s time the Neopagan community
closed our ranks against them. As pluralists, we’re
usually willing to let our members, friends, and
even our clergy, belong to a wide variety of other
religions. But Christian fundamentalists, whether
they are wearing crosses or goat heads, are simply
not welcome, and never will be.
Copyright © 1990, 2003 c.e., Isaac Bonewits.
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(P. E.) Isaac Bonewits, Adr.Em./ADF
Email: [email protected]
Snailmail: PO Box 1010, Nyack, NY, USA 10960-1010
This webpage is copyright © 2001-2003 c.e.,
Isaac Bonewits
Most recently updated: January 15, 2003 (formatting)
This page’s URL is http://www.neopagan.net/Enemies.html
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