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adamz24 's review for:
The Satanic Bible
by Anton Szandor LaVey
The nine Satanic sins are stupidity, pretentiousness, solipsism, self-deceit, herd conformity, lack of perspective, forgetfulness of past orthodoxies, counterproductive pride, and a lack of aesthetics. The astonishing thing about The Satanic Bible is that it commits every single one of these sins. Not just once or twice each, but over and over again. It's especially guilty of pretentiousness, solipsism, lack of perspective, and a lack of aesthetics.
Still, there's something kind of weirdly admirable about The Satanic Bible as a counterculture product (which is what this is, completely and entirely; as most people know there's really nothing occult about this form of Satanism. Being a LaVeyan Satanist is like being a pissed off hippie with no weed to mellow her out). This stuff isn't always smart, but it sort of can be, sometimes, in an odd way. It's not an admirable way of life, but it has great appeal as pretty much an atheistic but sorta religious codification of your core beliefs as a teenager. It's also honestly way saner at times than some actual religious stuff.
What I really took away from reading this was respect for this odd work of consistent, yet probably unintentional irony. If we ignore LaVey as a personality, and take this book to be parody or satire, it's maybe some kind of pomo masterpiece: a decidedly non-Biblical Bible that constantly undermines its own doctrines and potential as a way of life, showing them and it to be as vacuous and hypocritical as the doctrines and ways of life suggested by the non-Satanic Bible.
Still, there's something kind of weirdly admirable about The Satanic Bible as a counterculture product (which is what this is, completely and entirely; as most people know there's really nothing occult about this form of Satanism. Being a LaVeyan Satanist is like being a pissed off hippie with no weed to mellow her out). This stuff isn't always smart, but it sort of can be, sometimes, in an odd way. It's not an admirable way of life, but it has great appeal as pretty much an atheistic but sorta religious codification of your core beliefs as a teenager. It's also honestly way saner at times than some actual religious stuff.
What I really took away from reading this was respect for this odd work of consistent, yet probably unintentional irony. If we ignore LaVey as a personality, and take this book to be parody or satire, it's maybe some kind of pomo masterpiece: a decidedly non-Biblical Bible that constantly undermines its own doctrines and potential as a way of life, showing them and it to be as vacuous and hypocritical as the doctrines and ways of life suggested by the non-Satanic Bible.