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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.satanism,alt.politics.satanism,talk.religion.misc,alt.christnet
From: boboroshi@satanservice.org (SOD of the CoE)
Subject: Hoax-Fire Satanism Truly De-Factos (Ashe?? Legendizer?)
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 04:59:43 GMT

50020626 VII om

just got "The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality"
and I'm looking through it for historical usage of the term
'Satanists'.  haven't found it yet, but I did find a sure
connection should the stories about pacts with the Devil 
yield any truth to them (hard to know at times with Ashe).

here's the text:

	Edinburgh had at least one club that arranged pacts
	with the Devil. 
	----------------------------------------------------
	"The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti Morality",
	 Geoffrey Ashe, Sutton Publishing, 2001; p. 63.
	====================================================

hey, Sutton Publishing. they do history of magic things also.
so if we have *organized* pact-facilitation, that's certainly
a kind of practical Satanism, but never a reference to it as such.
 
Geoffrey Ashe appears to buy some stories about Anton LaVey. that 
he cursed Jayne Mansfield's manager, Sam Brody, before they 
both died in an automobile accident. I thought that was unconfirmed
and probably a fabrication. evidence?

Ashe left open to question the veracity of LaVey's claim (Ashe
characterizes this assertion of LaVey's as having been made "with
doubtful veracity) of playing the Devil in "Rosemary's Baby" 
(you don't have to see the film to look up its credits). I've 
got a copy of the film, LaVey isn't associated with it from what 
I've seen. there have been other stories about him doing things 
at the theatres when this was in town.  I'm not aware that any 
of them have evidence to back them up, but would appreciate 
someone from the CoS who knows setting me straight.

Ashe seems to have done quite a bit of research in this book. he has
a nice bibliography for those interested in pursuing a study of
hell-fire clubs, and there are lots of names and dates which I'll
be considering for de facto status in a history of Satanism generally.

of note while looking for the subject of Satanism therein (but having
more to do with modern Satanism than anything previous to LaVey), is
his use of LaVey and the Church of Satan in an apparent example of 
amoral secret societies which followed on (or were equivalent to?)
other transgressive cults such as those surrounding Crowley and LaVey.
 
he moves from the Church of Satan to the Manson Family. this doesn't
paint LaVey and Co. in the best of lights (depending on how you wish
to interpret it :>), but it makes for interesting reading, I think
(I tend to enjoy Ashe's writing style). right near the end of the
book, after having already covered Crowley's and Rabelais' Abbes and
many other subjects as well, which I may quote in another thread):

	[In America] Hell-Fire clubs reappeared under new names,
	and sometimes with an explicit commitment to what society
	regarded as evil. In 1966 the Church of Satan was founded
	in San Francisco. Its president Anton Lavey, or LaVey as
	he spelt it, held satanic baptisms, weddings and funerals,
	and published a Satanic Bible. His Church was a crude
	adaptation of earlier occult orders. It taught that 'Man
	must learn to properly indulge himself by whatever means
	he finds necessary' and that the Seven Deadly Sins are
	life-enhancing virtues.
	--------------------------------------------------------
	Ibid., p. 240.
	=====================

interesting, "president". what about "High Priest"? Council of
Nine? perhaps this was written earlier (Ashe makes note of the
potential datedness of this last section in a final author's
note). of greater insight is probably the following a bit later
in the Ashe's terminal pages:

	With the Church of Satan, and still more with the Family,
	the old syndrome recurred: the confinement of doing-what-
	you-will to a clique, whether rich or drop-out. LaVey
	vetoed the formation of branches [?}, and the Family was
	largely a web spun out of Manson's all too magnetic self,
	embodying an autocratic daydream like some of Sade's. 
	Manson's talk of an outgoing movement made no more sense
	than it did with the Divine Marquis. To say this is not
	to condemn the wider cult of alternative living, which
	was truly liberating for many, but the satanic factor
	never had much to do with this. The beneficiaries were
	among those who experimented with genuine communes,
	do-it-yourself social services, radical publishing. In
	such settings, Doing Your Thing was more than a mere
	nose-thumbing gesture. It was bound up with much that
	was creative, and even, in a more or less ordinary sense,
	moral.

	...

	[The New Age] was a medley of unconventional mysticism, 
	oriental religions, neo-witchcraft, ecology, astrology, 
	mythology, alternative medicine, Goddess-worship, and 
	supposed spiritual transformation. The New Age was a
	multiple dissent from various orthodoxies, and in some
	degree it continued the tradition of living and thinking 
	differently, but it was not revolutionary and its 
	manifestations tended to be personal rather than social. 
	While it sometimes expressed the thelemic spirit after
	a fashion, it was too heterogeneous to count as a move-
	ment. The story, for the moment, ends here.

	What emerges? ...outright anti-morality is something of 
	a dead end. As a way of life it does not liberate or 
	fulfil outside a privileged circle, the select company 
	of Theleme who are in a position to practise it. 
	Whether in sunny Rabelaisian or decadent satanic forms, 
	that is its logic. The Castle in Hell remains a castle, 
	it has no way of expanding into a housing development.
	-------------------------------------------------------
	 Ibid., p. 241.
	==================

I left out the finale which asks whether Crowley's expression of
his Thelemic Law might be valuable to consider beyond his magic.

is LaVeyan Satanism anti-moral? even with all that stuff about
not hurting animals and children, the whole 12-Point Program, or
Nine Statements or whatever? doesn't this constitute a morality
of a type, even if controversial or intentionally ambiguous? I've
not looked deeply enough to know if Mr. Ashe has something quite
particular in mind when he speaks of anti-moralism (i.e. society's
predominant dictates in its laws and religious persuasions).

comments and corrections welcomed. I am not affiliated with
Mr. Ashe or with Sutton Publishing, though my attention has
recently been drawn to this publisher by multiple routes. :>

blessed beast!

boboroshi@satanservice.org: Satanic Outreach Director
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