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SATANIC AESTHETICS AND MAGIC
Once upon a time, there were favored Modernist assumptions about authorship and originality and authenticity, but then the story goes that in the late 1960, and extending through the 1970s and well into the 1980s, those precious beliefs, which really were at the philosophical and aesthetic core of Modernity, were held up to critical scrutiny and were slowly undermined. There was no more originality and the author’s biography and intentions were no longer really relevant. The days of the great original author were apparently over. It was the reading and re-reading and re-reading of discourse which was important. It was the deconstruction of the text, which was important, and the bringing out of the perspectives of the excluded Other.
There are a lot of people who have created careers and found a place in the canon, based on their work in the critique of these Modernist notions – Michel Foucault is one academic who is situated in this whole movement and his essay ‘What is an Author’ is just one example of a piece of writing which engages some of the issues; Roland Barthes is another and his essay The Death of the Author’ was regarded as important in art and literary circles. There are a lot of people with a stake in this. The power of this criticism runs so deep and it challenges almost everything people believe about human beings, society, history and art practice.
All of these issues and people were important when I went to college so many damned years ago. I think the times change though and every critique is transformed or refocuses. To be an author and to be original is still a tricky business nowadays, even though the cultural and intellectual vanguard has to some extent changed its focus.
But what does all this shit have to do with Satanism and Satanic magic? To unpack this, I might start out from Anton LaVey. I tend to move out from LaVey often. LaVey has been quoted as stating words to the effect that “aesthetics is everything.” That’s a big claim – “aesthetics is everything.”
I make this claim: Anton LaVey was a Modernist. That claim makes some sense when you consider the time he grew up in i.e., the heyday of American Modernity and American Modernism. And further when you consider how he built his Satanic aesthetic out of German Expressionist film, film noir, Lovecraft, Weird Tales magazine, art deco and I’m sure many other Modernist elements as well.
But further: I think LaVey’s position is a Modernist one because he, like all genuine Modernists, believes in the fundamental/central place of the individual author as the producer of his or her own unique and original vision. LaVey may rely on the work of William Mortensen and Mortensen’s ‘Command to Look’ to provide him with the objective formal principles around the creation of his aesthetic acts, such as rituals, lesser magical spectacles, glamour, and art, etc., but LaVey is still very much the author and what he does is very much his. He is at the centre.
Okay, just to focus this: I think it is true that a Satanist seeks to impose and magnify their will.
There are different ways of doing that - of imposing and magnifying the will. You can move people around, as if they were pawns on your chessboard, if you are skilled enough. You can make certain choices and then act accordingly and that acting may impose and magnify your will. You can engage in antinomian praxis and so on…
Satanic aesthetics, in my view, is fairly straightforward – it is the imposition and magnification of the will aesthetically. To impose and magnify the will, from my vantage point, is productive, it is creative; it is a form of organizing to some extent, it is Godgame. To impose and magnify the will aesthetically is to create a context within which states of affairs, which I can more or less control, play out. It is the stage within which my theatre takes place according to my direction.
I think as a Satanist: I necessarily have to see the world in a different way, but further, I have to extend my aesthetic preferences or choices across as much of my environment as possible and then beyond that. My aesthetics is my environment. I have to extend as far as possible and I physically alter the environment as I extend. Possibly one could think about architect Howard Roarke from ‘The Fountainhead’ as an example of someone who is literally extending his will across physical space. There are so many other examples out there.
SATANIC MAGIC
I don’t necessarily want to go into detail about my belief in the metaphysical character of the conventional Satanic aesthetic and the elements which underpin it. I did, however, want to highlight some magical practice which underlines some of my views. LaVey is relevant again I think. I want to consider a couple of ritual chambers to help illustrate my point. I also want to draw on LaVey’s “Emerald Tablet” his ‘Pentagonal Revisionism’ as well.
What are total environments and artificial human companions really about?
The Den of Iniquity is obviously a ritual chamber, just as the art deco ambience of Dr. Anton Phibes’ music room, where he plays his organ and dances with Vulnavia, to the sounds of his automated wind up band, is a ritual chamber.
Those ritual chambers contain, in a discrete enclosed space, the objective aesthetic context, which the magician would see extended throughout space, well beyond the boundaries of a ritual chamber. Ritualistically projecting or ritualistically pushing that environment outwards, beyond the confines of a ritual chamber, is a part of the way the magic is supposed to work in those types of ritual chambers.
But moreover, the artificial companions which occupy those “art installations” are characters or actors or models or templates for the way the magician views others in this environment he or she is trying to push out. This is my aesthetic and this is how and where I see you. This is my theatre and this is the role you will play. They are tools; they are pawns. They have a certain function. Again the magician is seeking to place people in their environment and give them certain roles. You place them on your chessboard and give them certain ways of moving and certain amounts of power in relation to everyone else. Does this sort of magic actually work? Who knows? It is thoroughly ego driven. It is totally self-centered and completely Modernist.
I just wanted to finish this rather long post by stating that, in my view, Anton LaVey was beginning to play with time and seek a form of immortality to some extent, in his later years, when he was more reclusive and less likely to give interviews, etc.
The Den really is a sort of time machine, as the whole aesthetic environment of the chamber, is reminiscent of LaVey’s youth and a sort of film noir bar scene from the past, peopled by all those artificial companions, which you could say are appropriate to that aesthetic space and LaVey’s own conception. He steps in there and plays his music and he is back there in that time and everybody in there is “alive.” Unfortunately, however, you can step into the illusion of the past, play the keyboards and create a magic associated with that past, but no one human being can hold back the tides of time forever. Nobody can undermine or call a halt to Becoming, though it may be fun to try for a while…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-Pima8T45o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSOzdFoZsho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-CK47NM8E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQdDJMxkRxA
The Wall