Michael Aquino - The Satanic Bible: 50th Anniversary ReVision

The Satanic Bible 50th Anniversary ReVision - by Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D. Magister Templi IV-II Church of Satan <1975 CE - 2 - 3 2018 by Michael A. Aquino Barony of Rachane Post Office Box #470307 San Francisco, CA 94147 U.S.A. http://www.rachane.org ISBN-13: 978-1724693259 ISBN-10: 1724693255 - 4 - 5 Dedicated to my Devil-Father Anton Szandor LaVey Magus V and High Priest The Church of Satan - 6 - 7 Foreword - by Satan What is, or should be, a bible? A collection of fantasies to impress, entice, seduce, threaten, terrify? It would seem so from the many scattered about this world. Not so this one.

My Bible is, one might say, a sacred gateway: to the discovery of oneself and ones powers and prerogatives in both the physical and metaphysical realms of conscious existence. It is a tool, a key, the very Grail awaiting the awakened, purified, and consecrated in the Castle of the Seven Stars. And like the Grail it cannot be seen by those not so disposed and determined. They will pass it blithely by, as the very last and least tome in any library. But you have noticed, taken up, opened, and are now perusing it. Whether you yet suspect it or not, you have thus commenced a personal Rite of Passage, an adventure into a universe - indeed many universes - beyond the one you think you know.

To discover also your own self, your soul if you will. And as with those universes, it is far greater than you assume when confined to the pedantic of physics, the seeming security of your animal senses. - 8 And so who am I? The Satan of this book, certainly: a book and a name aligned to your culture, idiom, and associations. Were it otherwise. were you elsewhere or of another time. I might be known by any number of other names, from the Egyptian Set to the Northern Odin or the Aztec Quetzalcoatl.

But for you, here, now, I am Satan. You may think you know who this is, but until you have read my Bible you really dont. So welcome to my house: Enter freely and of your own will. As one of your poets so presciently reflected: We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of Earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree. So lets go climb some trees together, and perhaps meet God.

No, not the old, grouchy one of the Hebrews, but a friendly, fascinating, occasionally funny one, whos staring at you right now. Over there. In the mirror. Satan 1 Eliot, T.S., Little Gidding (1942). - 9 Michael A. Aquino

ReVision Golden Jubilee Before the ink was dry on Anton LaVeys original Satanic Bible (1968), it was already obsolete within the rapidly-evolving Church of Satan, as no one knew better than the author. When three years later he asked me to write a new Introduction for the books 1972 hardcover & paperback editions, he was adamant that this was just preliminary to a complete revision. But, as recounted below, he never got to it, and twenty years ago in 1997 CE he set aside his material body, making his own revision possible only by sance, which neither conventional publishing nor the Internet has sufficiently advanced to accommodate. 2 Not to mention terrifying stenographers. - 10 And my own dalliance here will soon dissolve as well; so if Antons Devil-Son doesnt do this now, no one will. If the Satanic Bible werent worth a damn any more except as an incidental cash-goat for its profiteers, the most merciful thing to do would be to let it continue to fade away into obscurity: a quaint relic of an equally-quaint aberration in 20th Century American counterculture.

But, you see, it does happen to be worth something: indeed rather more than the sum of its parts. Because it hallmarked a door into a previously inexplicit aspect of human existence. It was a statement, an affirmation not just that humanity is an intelligent phenomenon of nature, but that there is something beyond the natural in this attribute. Philosophers as dissimilar as H.P. Lovecraft Eric Hoffer have glimpsed this door; and it was no secret whatever to the ancient Egyptians But in the sterile 3 I have just had a talk with the Man downstairs, who informs me that I should take my Devil-Son aside for a few moments and discuss certain machinations of the human jungle ... Letter, Anton LaVey to M.A.

Aquino, June 2, 1973. 4 Cf. Correspondence with Emil Petaja in Selected Letters ofH.P. Lovecraft, Volume V. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1976. 5 Cf.

The Unnaturalness of Human Nature in The Ordeal ofChange, 1968. 6 Kantner, Paul, Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra. San Francisco: Little Dragon, 2003. 7 Cf. Childhoods End (1953) and [with Stanley Kubrick] 2001:A Space Odyssey (1968). M.A. M.A.

Aquino, MindStar (2016, 2018). - 11 timidity of modern intellectualism, Anton LaVey was the first to step through it, and the Satanic Bible was his footprint. Indeed, had it contained nothing but blank pages, its title on the cover alone would have sufficed to pull down the Samsons temple of sanctimony epitomized not only by the Hebrew Torah (Old Testament) but its cluster of clones: Koran, Book of Mormon, New Testament, adtedium. A bible is supposed to define, and thus imprison the reader in reality: in all these cases nature. But a bible for Something Else? As I daresay my DevilDad would approve, this ReVision retains only the conceptual flow of its predecessor: its first four books named in honor of that 19th-Century occult classic Abra=Melins four crown princes of Hell: Satan, Lucifer, Belial, Leviathan. Satan is a dramatic introduction to that personage.

In the original, at which time no satisfactory epic was available, Anton chose to do this indirectly, through an intensely anti-Judo/ Christian diatribe that could be dramatically, if not strictly attributed to the Devil. Lucifer consists of essays outlining the cosmology and philosophy of the Age & Church of Satan. In the original these collected and reprinted the pre- Bible rainbow sheets (handouts so-called 9 Mathers, Samuel L. MacGregor (Trans.), The Book of theSacred Magic of Abra=Melin, the Mage. New York: de Lawrence, 1932. 10 Yes, both Anton & I are well-aware that in certain traditions Satan & Lucifer are post/pre-Fall identical, that Belial & Leviathan were Hebraic corruptions of the rival [to their god El] Canaanite gods Baal & Lotan.

Neither was inherently Satanic; Jobs nemefishs name just decorates the Bessy Baphomet because Satan in Hebrew has only four letters. - 12 because they were mimeographed on brightly colored paper) of the fledgling Church). Anton wrote these in the vernacular of Haight/Ashbury San Francisco as his lecture-audiences of the day could understand without taxing their brains. Their present replacements unflinchingly address the more complex issues raised by the same sequence of topics; unfortunately readers brains can now expect some taxation. Humans come to a religious institution because they want to get in touch with the god(s) in question: at least to find out what they want so as not to anger them, but perhaps also to get on their good side and get blessed rather than beaten. The Church of Satan was different in that it introduced adherents to the tools of its god - something called Black Magic - enabling them to bless themselves [and perhaps beat on others].