The Devil's Notebook

A Medicine for Melancholy or How to Avoid the DB'S

THE DEVIL'S NOTEBOOK

Hell must be a pretty swell spot, because the guys that invented religion have sure been trying hard to keep everybody else out.
-- Al Capone

A Medicine for Melancholy or
How to Avoid the DB'S

At no time in Western civilization has man accepted so willingly contrivances calculated to weaken and destroy him. Many persons have found these years, as we approach the superstitious dread of the coming millennium, to be the most tumultuous period of their lives. Upheaval, depression, disillusionment, paranoia, anguish, anxiety, illness, and every other

sort of malaise imaginable. Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming," expresses the social climate well. Surely an explanation, or at least speculation, is in order.

Let's examine some ingredients. No overseas war is in progress which involves Americans on a personal level, patriotic or otherwise. There is no universal enemy to occupy the minds and emotions of society. Hence enemies, threats, and other problems must emerge from a diversity of sources which are timely and easily relateable. Media re-enforcement of fears and anxieties is at an all-time zenith. Prime-time TV dispenses suspense and crisis, either real (newscasts) or by fictional or documentary features and series. This is considered "entertainment," not demoralization.

If complaints are voiced that streets are unsafe to stroll, surfs unsafe for swimming, and even grazing laid unsafe for cows ("Satanic Cattle Mutilation"), where can one expose his or her puny human form? In the safety of an automobile? Perhaps, but what of the subliminal demoralization coupled with a sense of false security that mandatory safety devices provide?

Despite rapid and radical advances in medicine, why are more people sick? Emphasis on prompt detection of certain symptoms is supposed to prevent serious illness. With everyone listening for internal gurgles, feeling for lumps, and pondering each pain, hypersensitivity cannot be avoided. Does a consuming concern for diet and exercise make for healthier living than sitting in the car gobbling Big Macs? Which takes a greater toll -- fear of the effects of preservatives, chemical- pumped chicken, mercury-saturated fish -- or the foods themselves?

If you are a law-abiding citizen, who is concerned about the safety of your home and family, you are made to feel like a criminal if you own a gun and are henceforth categorized as a "crazed gunman with a Saturday Night Special." Though you know you are responsible and conscientious, you are demoralized into stigmatization, nonetheless.

In bygone days, before you were demoralized by static cling, it was halitosis or B.O. or unsightly snaps or non-Sanforized Gaposis. How easy it would be if one needed only to fret over such trivial social ostracisms. Now, in addition to ring-around- the-collar, you are confronted by threats to your immune system, germ warfare, telephone bugging, new cancer viruses, conspiratorial politicians acting as decoys for the Real Rulers, governmental breakdown, danger in the streets, on the

Anton Szandor LaVey Durango, Mexico 31 August XXVII Anno Satanas

freeways, at the beach, rising costs of food, gasoline, higher taxes, and ... the unknown! Is another world watching? Are UFO's about to land in your front yard? And to The Good the threat of Satanism is still fine scare copy.

How to immunize yourself against the great D.P. (Demoralization Process) which is inexorably reaching its plateau?

I) Recognize it for what it is: a collective phenomenon, self-perpetrating according to Malthusian law. The separation of the strong from the weak, the reactors from the perceivers. Norbert Wiener would be delighted at current examples of human thermostats and their behavior. Never before has man been so controllable and easily programmed while foolishly considering himself more sophisticated than at any time in his development.

2) Avoid popular amusements. Take a lesson from the ostrich, whose head-in-the-sand attitude has been universally ridiculed. If timeliness is an essential ingredient of demoralization, existentialism is a perfect vehicle. "Live for today -- don't think about the past or the future" has been misapplied to "Dwell on today." We must all respond to imminent situations. We either benefit from, cope with, or succumb to them. But don't go out of your way to encounter any potential problem or worry if you need not. Don't socialize with those who do, either. They'll bring you down. TV is not the "entertainment" medium it is assumed to be. Newspapers and periodicals aren't either. Pop music is "concerned" music, with lyrics and harmonies unconsciously gauged to the now. Films and plays are simply variants of TV fare. Even the clothes on your back integrate you into the herd unconsciously, if they are "stylish". Stop and consider if whatever you buy, see, listen to, or do is popular. If it is, it is programmed, and like it or not, so are you. Does all this imply that you stop all activity just because it's popular?
You figure that one out. It should come easily to a Satanist.

3) Break out of the D.P. time/space warp by realistically and minimally dealing with the present, and dwelling on the past and future. If you need to play the intrigue or crisis game, look back on past scandals and outrages. Patronize that which is out of vogue or not yet in vogue. Seek out persons who are not harbingers of present mores. Discover and share pastimes unrelated to current phobias. Surround yourself with reminders of another social climate and contemplate them as you would a crystal ball. The trend towards nostalgia is an understandable rebellion against the D.P.'s. Its only flaw is that it too has become fashionable and only softens the impact of hardcore downers, which occupy prime-time in our present lives. Reflect, instead, upon personally gratifying things and situations, rather than those labeled "nostalgia" or "collector's edition."

Yes, I realize how tough things have been for many of you this year, for in any such softening up process very few are unaffected. Out of the chaos, the rough beast which slouched towards Bethlehem to be born in the Year One is learning to stand, to walk anew, and His footfalls are creating random upheaval. The Tenth Key has manifested itself in the rolling thunder which has darkened the sky for Satanist and non-Satanist alike. It is for Satanists to known the whys and wherefores of their sorrows. And realizing that, like all their kin -- Cain, Prometheus, Orpheus, Frankenstein -- they ... We ... are, in part

or in whole, responsible for our own problems and those of the multitudes. An overview is essential to survival, and what has been sown will soon be reaped. The roses in the garden east of Eden will have thorns. Whatever the blossom, whatever the harvest, the future belongs to us.

Rege Satanas!