Becoming a Satanic Witch--Based on Anton Lavey's "The Satanic Witch"

"My Dark, Satanic Love"-- By Peggy Nadramia

This chapter is an essay by Peggy Nadramia, who is female satanist. Reading her thoughts on loving life, yourself, and others, is very enlightening, and it helped me reach a better understanding of what it means to be a Satanist.

I see a red door, and I want to paint it black. I'm one of the things that goes "bump!" in the night. I'm a born Satanist. I'm a happy little blob of custard and you can't nail me to any wall; in fact, I'd pull those nails out and aim them at you. Tell me how negative I am; tell me how I'm filled with hate. You're not just stupid—you're wrong.

Dracula loved his brides. Dr. Frankenstein loved his monster. My Satanic love burns fiercely; it's perfect and uncompromising.

Firstly, necessarily, I love myself. I'm my own God, after all, and I put no Gods before Me. I'm uppermost in my mind; I always bring me flowers. Sometimes I realize I could have done something better; sometimes I make mistakes. It's wonderful how I learn from these things; it's exciting to have an opportunity to be an even better Me. Even when I deny myself something, withhold gratification, it's always in order to enjoy something even more fulfilling and worthwhile down the road. This is why I can hate so purely, so irrevocably, anything that wastes my precious time, energy and attention.

Along with Me, I love He Who Is Not Me, my husband. He is, for one thing, the consciousness in which I can see a wonderful reflection of my own God, myself. His love for me qualifies him with the very best of taste and discernment, after all; he obviously knows what's good for him. My cells respond to his pheromones, and being around him gives me a heightened feeling of happiness, contentment and well-being. The shape of his face is the dearest sight in the world to me. He is my mentor, my master, my very best friend; I have placed with him my perfect trust, and he accepts it as only a real man can. His hopes, dreams, goals are mine; his disappointments are mine, too, and thusly I hate whatever distresses him or gets in his way. This hate, too, is black and pure, like gunpowder; it can burn as brightly and as feverishly as my love.

Next, I love my tribe, my folk, those who are like as me. They can be friends or family, but in my heart they are simply my tribe, and the Black Flame burns within all of them. They light my days and bring me joy through their achievements and antics; they make the world a more interesting place, and only a Satanist knows what a gift that is. Sometimes they are close enough to share food or warmth or simply company; sometimes they are far away, voices on phone lines, words on a page. But they're always in here, part of me, my folk. I cannot feel indifferent toward those who would distress my tribe. He who attacks them attacks Me; he who places obstacles in their way earns my ire, my enmity, my hate.

As a natural-born Satanist, I'm joyfully free of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic bias against non-human animals, and so have never questioned that what I feel and have felt for my pets is pure and simple love. I love them more than I love many people; I value their lives more highly. The Black Flame of Satan burns dark and soft in animals, at its purest and deepest. I bristle and chafe at the laws that give destructive, unwanted, horrid little children more rights than my dog has. She is my property, and I can only protect her as such. A product of a thousand generations of breeding for domestication, for compatibility with humans, she is nevertheless only a hair's-breadth away from wild. As highly as I treasure her life, so deeply does my hate run for those who would be cruel to her. I bare my fangs at them.

I love everything that belongs to me, all my stuff. I love my books, my music, my pretty china, my coffee machine, my raincoat, my old, soft green blouse. I hate anybody who would steal, destroy or disorder my precious stuff; why wouldn't I? What value could such a creep have that would exceed that of my heavy stoneware mug, my perfect leather bag?

Contingent on all of this, I love the world. It's so beautiful, so perfect a setting for my God, Me. I love mountains, the sea, acres of trees without a single house, rows of houses all antique and charming, museums, fog, delicious nourishment, quiet afternoons, star-filled nights. If only there weren't all these anti-life bastards who want to fuck it all up, who hate themselves so much they have to destroy the source of their own sustenance. I hate them. Only in the depths of the Black Flame in my heart is it known how much I hate them and what they've done to the world, these library-burners, these child-molesters, these people who, as Charlie said, kill things that are better than they are. When they ask why we hate Christians, can they ever really understand the answer unless they love as we do, love with the dark, Satanic love of life and self?