Wherefore Satan?

Exploring Satanism as a Viable Revolutionary Movement

By Max Frith, White Order of Thule

We of the White Order of Thule do hereby wish it known that, whilst we emphasize the "higher," numinous and luminous aspects of existence and spirituality through the change of appellations of both our organization and its official journal at the close of 1996 (from the Black Order to the White Order of Thule, and from The Abyss to Crossing the Abyss, respectively—see issue #2 of Crossing the Abyss), we nevertheless acknowledge the importance, nay, necessity, of giving voice and expression to the "sinister," or darkside of our nature. It would not behoove us to do otherwise; the modern paradigm is plenty proof of the ill-effects such repression produces. While this is an overtly and explicitly "christian" Western world no longer, the case is still as Nietzsche pointed out more than a century ago: in discarding the outward trappings of the Judeo-Nazarene taint, we still have adhered more or less rigidly to the morality implicit in the mentality. If it is true that, as Nietzsche put it, Christianity is a slave-religion, is it not still the official religion of the state? Most have simply replaced the empty dogma of the church with the equally vapid surrogates of egalitarianism, pacifism, and consumerism. The point is, where "goodness" means "weakness," strength must be seen as evil. It is as evil, then, that we, as ostensibly embodying the power, the strength, the nobility of our promise as a people, must appear to the huddled masses. Should "We Good Europeans," as harbingers and heralds of a New Aeon "for troth with the Old Gods and resurgence of the Tribes," exclude from our ranks those who would profess loyalty to "Satan," the one true archetype of defiance and rebellion that this dying old Aeon has given us? Was it not Hitler himself who identified our enemy's enemy as our greatest friend?

While we do not profess to be a "satanic" or "sinister" Order, we have previously acknowledged the dutiful place of what we call the "Black Order," that is, the negative, destructive impulse and the ceremonies, rituals, and imagery deriving therefrom (q.v. "What is a White Order?" in Crossing the Abyss #2). In officially acknowledging and legitimizing the "shadow," or sinister side of ourselves, for ourselves, in such an open and public forum, we should therefore faithfully follow through and permit the darkside's expression within our own ranks. We, though ultimately deriving our essence from the light that casts the shadow, are nevertheless not sanctimonious!

Within a specifically Judeo-Christian context, Satan is arguably the most potent and negatively-charged archetype. Would it not benefit us to tap into the energy latent in such a symbolically,
and therefore potentially, destructive symbol in order to aid the natural process that is birthing the New on the ashes of the Old? "That which is falling should also be pushed. That which is crawling should also be crushed," wrote Nietzsche. Indeed, many have credited Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible with giving practical expression to the thoughts of Nietzsche, and let's face it, more White youth are likely to read that than Mein Kampf under the current social climate.

Pragmatically speaking, "tapping into a symbol" could be taken as meaning drawing from the ranks of those who avow allegiance to that symbol. In keeping with their neo-primal creed, many Satanists are in possession of relatively unimpaired instincts (read: racially conscious), and could therefore identify with the cause of the realization of the new Aeon, as we manifest it. Some already do, as is evidenced by some (only some) LaVeyan Satanists in their forum The Black Flame (for a good example see "The Faustian Nature of Fascism" in Vol. 5 #1 and 2), but is even more evident in publications from a group hailing from England called the "Order of Nine Angles," who are peripherally associated with the racialist Order of the Jarls of Bælder.

Lastly, in order to properly understand the significance of the Judeo-Christian image, we, as properly standing outside of the current, dying cosmogony, turn to a pagan image. The Norse trickster god Loki, though not the archetype of "evil" in the same sense as Satan ("evil" being specific to dualist paradigms), is nevertheless similarly a revolutionary archetype, challenging the status quo and upsetting the sensibilities of the ruling element, the Æsir. Indeed it is Loki who helps to engineer the fateful conclusion to Ragnarök, aiding Surt and his giants toward the Æsir's downfall, in effect to usher in the New Aeon wherein an even mightier race of gods shall grow and prosper, and thus does the wheel turn again. That is, Loki is on our side!

In closing: let's give the Devil his due. Hail Satan! Hail Loki! Hail Surt!

And thereafter, Hail Bælder!

"Few men Will anything very strongly, and out of these few, only a tiny minority are capable of combining strength of will with unwavering continuity. Most human beings are spasmodic and intermittent creatures, who like above everything the pleasures of mental indolence. "It is for this reason," says Bryce, "that a strenuous and unwearying will sometimes becomes so tremendous a power, almost a hypnotic force." Lucifer is the highest mythological incarnation of this intense personal will, and the great men who have embodied it upon the stage of history participate, to some extent, in his satanic strength and magnificence. It is because of his strength and magnificence, so very different from our own weakness and mental squalor, that we continue to hark back nostalgically to the biographies of such men as Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and that, as each new imitator of Lucifer arises, we prostrate ourselves before him, begging him to save us."

- Aldous Huxley

Appeared in "Crossing the Abyss", Vol 3, 1997