(March 7, 2019 at 6:48 pm)Belaqua Wrote:(March 7, 2019 at 11:53 am)EgoDeath Wrote: I cannot help you as you have no interest in learning from me.
You haven't tried to teach me anything. You just say I'm wrong over and over. It's true that I don't know about LaVey; I have only read about pre-1960s Satanism.
One of the things that makes me see post-1960s Satanism as very American in style is its very newness and disconnection from the older types. American "tradition" tends to be fairly new enactments of things that seem old. A new Satanism based on Ayn Rand and the usual misreadings of Nietzsche are right at home.
You remember what Baudrillard was writing, probably. He said that America was the land of fake news, fake democracy, fake religion, fake wars, etc. etc. He said that America needs Disneyland to be extra fake so that the rest of America seems real in contrast.
I still think that a Satanism which buys a statue to put on the courthouse lawn is a deracinated, self-help, feel-good movement.
If you eventually want to explain why that's not so, I am reading your posts.
(March 7, 2019 at 12:02 pm)Yonadav Wrote: I remember a beach that I used to hang out at on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was extremely popular with the local hippy crowd, and not with the tourists. There was a group of old guys there who were refugees from the 60s. They all imagined themselves to be gurus. They were big fans of Aleister Crowley, among others. They all imagined themselves to be deeply knowledgeable about esoteric things. They spent most of their day smoking pot and accusing each other of not understanding stuff the way that they themselves did. Their supposedly esoteric knowledge seemed to be of a pretty pedestrian nature, but they thought that it was deep. I was under the impression that they had not actually read very many books, but the few that they had read made them experts. They had little formal education, and had never spent any time studying with any masters. I doubt that they could have studied with any masters, because that would have required them to actually humble themselves and drop their pretense of knowing things. These guys were old men who never grew up.
Sad to say, this is very much my impression of the great majority of self-described esoteric types. Read a paperback from the '60s and become a guru.
The history of Satanism and all the alternative, inverted religions is really interesting. Tobias Churton, among others, has written interesting history on how these movements had a surprisingly large influence on modern arts, including Verlaine and those guys.
I still think the most fascinating account is in the novels of Huysmans. He begins with the black masses in Paris, and as he develops, largely through close readings of the symbolism in Chartres Cathedral, eventually joins the Catholic Church.
That Satanism had deep roots, knowledge of the dangers and social consequences, and commitment to what was, in those days, risky. They had all read Goethe's Faust and knew what the master had worked out about bargains with the devil.
It's great stuff. Still relevant and inspiring.
You are far better read than I am about these things, my friend. I was getting a bit irritated watching you be insulted about your knowledge by someone whose knowledge comes from reading a couple of books about re-invented American consumer satanism.
We do not inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children.