Jared Mammon is not the sort of person you’d associate with the Prince of Darkness. A mild-mannered Floridian with a day job in finance — hence his alias — he could easily pass under a demon hunter’s radar. Yet when he isn’t making sales, the 41-year-old folds away his suit and transforms into a reverend for the Church of Satan (CoS). Wallowing in the aesthetic of the dark side, he conducts destruction rituals to channel moments of anger and has attended public Satanic rituals complete with a “nude altar”.
Mammon also works hard to apply his diabolical ethos to everyday life, reading the Satanic Bible and doing all he can to resist the Nine Satanic Sins. Contrary to popular wisdom, this doesn’t involve sacrificing babies and drinking bats’ blood. Rather, the CoS tenets involve “kindness to those who deserve it”; “undefiled wisdom”, and “vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams”.
It’s less about the devil, then, and more about the rebel angel. While there are many different Satanist organisations, each with their own emphasis, the common denominator is a heightened sense of individualism, a repurposing of religious iconography, and a rejection of tired social norms. Satanists may not believe in a literal Satan, but they do find a lot of power in the surrounding symbolism: not least the power to offend. That’s a gift to anyone who likes their non-belief served up with a side of spooky theatrics, or who boasts a well-honed trolling instinct.
As Mammon puts it: “You’ll find militant atheists who are so anti-theistic that they can’t allow for any fun in their lives. We do not believe in any supernatural anything. But we love a good show. We love a good time.”
The upshot is that, in recent years, Satanists have thrived across the West and beyond. Mammon’s CoS keeps membership numbers a guarded secret, but the Satanic Temple (TST), a rival organisation appropriately headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, now boasts around 600,000 subscribers to its mailing list alongside a host of lively congregations. That’s echoed, too, by pushes for more formal recognition. Late last year, for instance, the Temple of Satan: Satanists and Luciferians of Chile applied for recognition as an official religious organisation, five years after TST achieved similar status in the US. According to UK census data, the number of practising Satanists grew almost threefold between 2011 and 2021.
It’s a far cry from centuries past, where devil worship was feared and despised. “In the Middle Ages, and into the Reformation period, the devil was understood as a creature that could physically manifest himself in the external world,” explains Professor Darren Oldridge, a historian of religion at the University of Worcester.
Pretty amusing that satan appears to have convinced his followers that he doesn’t exist.
I’m not religious, but I’m in no way certain that I’m right. Just imagine the regret these people, who have convinced themselves that satan stands for the values of modern progressivism, would experience if they were to discover hell is real.
I honestly think i’d prefer hell; i’d rather be fried than bored to death in heaven.
And of that, i’m absolutely satan..
I think either EltonJohn or Bernie Taupin got it right …cold as Hell. If you’ve ever had to wait half an hour at this time of year actually on a deeply freezing train platform in the dark shade of old industrial buildings for a late train you will FEEL the power of Mordor and know Hell is this cold that’s more than cold. But I do like Machiavellis answer when asked if he wanted to go to Heaven or Hell when he died. Hell he replied,because all my friends will be there,the Popes,the Cardinals,the Dukes,the Princes etc !
Sounds like my local railway station!
Full of Popes and Cardinals?
Brilliant.
As I once said to another person from Manchester, on this site a couple of years ago. Satan is clearly where sentences contain a lot of ‘i’ instead of ‘I’. Pretentious isn’t strong enough.
Sanctimonious is plenty strong enough though. Wear it.
Ok, though it does say in the Bible that laughter is the best Medicine. ( I think the ‘i’s were setting up the “Certain” joke.) Anyway, it was Baudelaire who first said about the Devils greatest trick being to convince mankind he didn’t exist, and according to some he too was of the Devil’s party. In Baudelaire’s time, the First Estate (Priests) had until recently enjoyed even more prestige than scientists had pre-Covid. This let to corruption, and corrupt clergy don’t naturally communicate the beauty of God’s love for us, hence I guess boring you & Baudelaireto death. I hope LL gets to experience the real deal soon.
To cling to the idea of Satin shows only what hypocrites Modernity makes of us, as if there were something (anything) to cling to. David Hume said: “It seems evident that men are carried by natural instinct to repose their faith in their senses and that without any reasoning, or even before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe which depends not on our perception but would exist though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creation preserve this belief in external objects. But this universal and primary opinion of mankind is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, without any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object.” Heidegger likewise spoke of a “world view,” by which he meant not a view of the world, but rather the world understood as a view (a picture). “Existence as a whole is now understood in such a way that it only exists in the first place insofar as it is produced by man who perceives or produces it. The world view does not change from a formally medieval one into a modern one, but this very thing, that the world becomes a view, distinguishes the essence of modernity.”
They don’t give you what you want in Hell; they’d bore you to death there, too.
You’re right. I think Hell sounds a lot more fun.
.When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”― G.K. Chesterton
The usual MSM premise that Christianity is in decline. A lazy assumption. Stems from the usual Western-centric view of the world. While Christianity’s influence may be waning in certain Western societies, it remains a powerful and growing force worldwide. The religion is actually expanding significantly in the Global South, with projections showing an increase from 2.2 billion adherents in 2010 to 2.9 billion by 2050. Africa in particular is experiencing explosive Christian growth and is expected to become Christianity’s largest continental base by 2050.
Satanism may have evolved beyond purely oppositional religious protest into its own form of individualistic expression, this transformation likely stems from broader cultural shifts rather than Christianity’s supposed decline. In fact, Satanism’s appeal as a vehicle for individualism might better be understood within the context of increasing religious pluralism and the fracturing of traditional social structures, rather than as a response to Christianity’s global trajectory.
The “devilish appeal” of Satanism in an individualistic age may say more about changes in how people express nonconformity than about any fundamental weakening of traditional religious institutions.
I up voted your comment as it’s mostly true. But not sure there was lazy assumption in the article. The author’s implicitly talking about the West. And even in global South, it’s unclear that Christianity isn’t in decline in a spiritual sense, even if the numbers are looking rosy. (Actually we don’t have to worry much about the numbers even here in the West, at least not from a long term perspective – Demographic trends discussed in ‘Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?’ are now even more irreversibly baked in than they were when that book was published back in 2010.)
It’s harder to discern the spiritual health of our faith than it is to keep up with the demographics. But recently I’m increasingly hearing from Brazilians, Africans & Indians that faith in their countries has become a bit of a scam, that maybe it’s mainly Mammon folk are serving the world over. If you’re adverse to laziness that’s good, as there is much hard work & prayer for believers to do to restore the church to full health.
I picked up on that misrepresentation too, particularly as data shows there to be a steady growth of Christianity over the past century, with an average annual growth rate of 1.25%. As of 2020, Christians made up approximately 31.7% of the world’s population. Over the last 150 years, Christianity has consistently comprised around one-third of the global population, even as its centre of gravity has shifted to the Majority World, for those interested in the source data see the Lausanne Movement.
I’m also interested in who people think Satan is? The ancient biblical authors offer subtle clues where this being is at work behind the scenes, animating division and hatred between humans. They also use a variety of images to describe this being. It’s a snake, or a sea dragon, or a dark desert creature, or the king of death and the grave. He’s also given many titles like, “tempter,” or “the evil one,” or “the devil,” which in Greek means “the slanderer.”
But is his name “Satan”? Actually no. “Satan” is not a name; it’s another one of these titles, which is why in Hebrew, it has the word “the” in front of it. “The satan” means “the adversary” because he isn’t for anything; rather, he’s anti-everything, working through lies to drag us back into darkness and disorder.
The modern day visual image of a horned red and black figure with cloven hooves is straight out of Dante’s Inferno.
Good piece. Satanism will continue to expand in tandem with the renewed interest in Christianity amongst the young and the old.
However, I’ve always associated modern US Satanism with Gen X culture so I’m not sure how well it will translate for 20somethings now. After all, there is a difference between the black mass stuff and the feeling that the truly Satanic – or at least diabolical – lies behind the trans and assisted suicide movements.
Very stupid people,they will find out.
Cosplay for the blackened & befuddled.
Maybe, but it’s fun (unlike Christianity).
How genuinely transgressive is a certified ‘club for non-conformists’?
It just seems like a new form of conformism for a culture that overvalues non-conformism.
”Enjoying life as you define it” doesn’t seem like a very promising indicator of originality, it just sounds like a line which would fit in to any contemporary advertisement.
If the cultural mainstream is already stridently individualist, then how rebellious is it to flaunt some kind of silly group identity as a certified ‘individualist.’
When New Atheism was fashionable it became striking how many of the most vocal came from very oppressive religious upbringings, and how their new focus on atheism was really only a newly transmuted sort of evangelical creed.
The rhetoric and clothing might have been different, but the underlying psychology hadn’t changed at all.
That all seems like good, healthy fun!
The whole point of Paradise Lost was that Milton had been “of the Devil’s party” and did come to realise it so intensely that he used it to craft the greatest epic poem in the english language. William Blake was a poser who wrote pastiches of Milton’s own works without the breadth of experience or the depth of knowledge to understand the writer’s motivations. He admired what Milton had regretted.
On reflection those are yesterdays people. It’s now hip to join Christianity in particular the Orthodox form. The ones who do it to cut a striking and ‘cool’ figure,and many do,will be fleeing to Christianity soon. Because thats where the in crowd is now.
A provocateur who courted media attention, he painted his house black, dubiously claimed Transylvanian lineage, dressed in plastic horns and a cape, and was supposedly implicated in Jayne Mansfield’s fatal car crash — via a curse he placed on her boyfriend.
Bad aim?
“ an era of declining Christianity and religiosity”
Interestingly, periods of decline in the institutional churches (religion by codified rules and hierarchical organisation) original Christianity (worship in spirit and caring for each other) seems to survive and thrive.
You know of a form of Christianity where people “worship in spirit” and “care for each other”? Where would we find it?
Was it not one of these two organisations that obsessed about covid masking?
Likely there are some pubically recognizable faces, especially USA politicians, who have joined this stupidity and adopted the philosophy of individualism as a pathway to a misguided hedonistic freedom.
“I the People …. “. That’s a wonderful manifesto for a Statanist and our Leftist Progressives who believe in individualism over history or duty. You might well piss on the heads of the Founding Fathers for even more enjoyment and good fun. Most people just want “good fun” to relax or to enjoy some relief from the daily grind. They go to the gym or stop and have a pint with a mate or take their family out to a park to blow off some steam and recalibrate for another day. Not not this clan. They find the meaning of life standing naked at an alter spewing foolishness and pretending everyday is Halloween. Fools will be fools!
This article depicts a version of Mardi Gras and is as empty and unappealing as those it describes.
The opponents of humanity and their false gods are: The Earth, the fauna and flora on the Earth and the greater universe beyond. So what “people of the ( Abrahamic) book” say when they mean Satan is “Nature”. I don’t think we need to guess who’s going to win in the end. The light will take all of us one day.