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Strange History

40 Facts about the Church of Satan

Anton Szandor LaVey - Church of Satan

36. The Church of Satan is an atheistic belief system, paradoxically

To members of the Church of Satan, this is about as real as Satan will ever be: Dave Grohl dressed as the devil in the 2006 film, The Pick of Destiny. All Things Loud

You read that right. The Church of Satan no more believes in a bipedal goat-man than it does a bearded deity sitting on a cloud. ‘Man has always created his gods, rather than his gods creating him‘, writes LaVey in the Satanic Bible. Satan is essentially a mascot or logo for LaVey’s belief system, which is best defined as rationalist-materialist philosophy, and centers on self-indulgence and selfishness. For the Church of Satan, the here-and-now is all we’ve got, and so we need to make the best of it. ‘YOLO with lots of goats and stage magic’, if you will.

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I am a freelance historical and literary writer based in West Yorkshire, UK. I read for a funded PhD in English at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) and graduated in 2016. I am a former lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. My publications include peer-reviewed articles in academic publications, and pieces in mainstream magazines such as History Today and Fortean Times. For more information, please see www.drflight.co.uk

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