Ok, but I don't see how there can be such a huge differing of perspective on solid facts. Satanists do not believe in Satan or any other supernatural being. Period. It's just a fact. My brother is a true-blue Satanist and mentally devours everything Crowley. We have had many discussions about religion and I have learned a LOT about Satanism from him and the stuff he has had me read.
Perhaps, in your perspective, not worshipping God constitutes worshipping Satan, but I just can't draw that conclusion.
Sorry about the "no clue" thing. It was a bit harsh. :)
Alright you have me curious now. I never heard of a satanist not beleiving in Satan.
Does your brother believe in Satan? I am wondering why he would call himself a SATANist if he does not beleive in Satan. If he is just an atheist why does he not join atheist groups? Does he beleive in the power of black magic or cast spells? Does he beleive that we humans struggle between light and darkness in our thoughts and actions?
When I was in my late teens, I worked with a self proclaimed satanist. She was in her fifties. She beleived in Satan as a being who offered her great power to use in the world. She tried to recruit me with promises of powers. She despised Christians/Christ and told me her god was much more powerful. It was one of the more strange experiences of my youth.
Also Salem, Mass. is full of folks who call themselves satanists who beleive in Satan. They are not like the pagan witches; they worship Satan and say so openly in their materials. They sell books with chants to invoke Satan.
You are the only person I heard to make the claim that Satanists don't beleive in Satan. But then again, we do have folks who call themselves Christians who don't beleive in Christ, so i suppose it is possible for there to be a Satanist who does not beleive in Satan. : )
"Satan" is a Hebrew word derived from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seti ("ha-Set-hn" as spoken in the Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "Adversary" of Judaic theology. A perplexing question is whether "Adversary" was originally intended as a plural like "Malakhim Raoth" in Hebrew, as a composite entity of the many "evil angels." (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim, according to primary dictionary definition in most errant college editions.) Paganism is pantheistic, idolatrous and always violently adversarial to Judaism historically. There is also Biblical description of pagan conflicts within Judaism itself, a confederacy of insurgent deceivers opposing God. Many Jewish rabbis will say that Satan does not exist at all; possibly because either phantasms are no things corporeal, and therefore the collective embodiment in their prince cannot be also; Satan, Lucifer, etc. are fictitious pagan deities, as all the pagan pantheons are contrived; or considering there is, according to Judaic theology, the many fallen angels, whereas Lucifer, Satan, Abaddon, Beelzebub, Belial, etc., etc. are but just a few of them. It is also consistent in Biblical teaching that there are false prophets within Judaism and the Christian Church inspired by such inimical genii. The Bible (both New and Old Testament), if taken literally, is a Zionist doctrine. Yahweh and Yeshua are Zionists, without exception or compromise.
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass, an animal holy to the pagan Egyptian god Set, was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the figure commonly known to Gentiles as Satan, was born into the World. Such conflict was evident from the cradle of human civilization through pagan Babylon, pagan Egypt, pagan Greece (with the Maccabean period of Ptolemic Dynasties and Antiochus Epiphanes), pagan Rome, and continues into modern times on several fronts with Marxist iconic paganism, Islamic paganism and New Age Neo-paganism (they all hate the Jews and Christians).
The idea of a "Devil," lord and master of an infernal place, is universal to religion and a seemingly interminable myriad of names are enough to fill several pages in very fine print. The Patagonian devil "Setebos," alluded to by Shakespeare through Caliban in the Tempest, is one of many compelling similarities between esoteric mythoi in the Egyptian Book of the Dead: "Behold, I am Set, the creator of confusion, who creates both the tempest and the storm throughout the length and breadth of the heavens." Iago in Othello: "Divinity of Hell! When devils will the blackest of sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows, as I do now." Iago represents Satan in Othello. William Shakespeare knew a lot more in his time than the many do today. 'The many, as many, are ignorant,' according to Plato. Satan, Lucifer, etc., are spirits of paganism.
The Greeks called Set "Typhon," who was the war god assigned to Upper Egypt. This also represents another contravention to the "accepted" etymologies of words like "typhoon" in English, which is listed erroneously or deficiently as the Cantonese "tai fung" in many dictionaries. Often the etymologies are not congruent with definitions in language; such is true of the term "pagan." Often the Neo-Pagans will deceptively assert that Satan is only in Christianity. Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word (adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set, as the other devils' names are of pagan origin).
Socrates already told us why the pagans are liars and their gods are a lie before his execution for exposing the pantheistic pagan esoteric sophistries. Piety to the many gods, who all want different devotions or actions from humans, is impossible.
Consider this, from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, in 1668:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[1] Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air"; [Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world":[John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.