"Hail Satan?" (2019)

[Belacqua]

please cite me a source of a group that called themselves "Satanists" before LaVey.

Ah, that's a different question. I'm not sure whether there were groups who referred to themselves as "Satanist." They might have called themselves something else. Nonetheless, they prayed to Satan, made offerings to him, attempted to get help from him, etc. They believed he was real and did their best to work with him. 

But if your sole criterion here is "did they call themselves by that label," that's somewhat different. 

As for people who are known to have done these things, you can look up Stanislas de Guaita, Gérard Anaclet Vincent Encausse (aka Papus), Joséphin Péladan, Pierre Eugène Michel Vintras, Abbé Joseph-Antoine Boullan (a defrocked priest), and Oswald Wirth. Huysmans, of course, did the most to make Satanistic rituals well-known in France. Whether he was ever a member of a group, or just wrote about them, is difficult to know. He certainly seemed to know a lot. But openly confessing to being a worshipper of Satan had social consequences that many people didn't want to face. 

Then there are the serious people at the time who weren't Satanists but reported what they saw. Joanny Bricaud would be one of the most important of these. 

I've left out the people like Gabriel Jogand-Pagès who called themselves dangerous devil-worshippers as a sort of tease, or a way to get publicity. 

More ambiguous were the many (shall we say) "alternative" religions or sects which appeared out of the roots of Christianity. These included Gnostic chapels and others. As always, it's hard to say exactly what their beliefs were. Worship of Satan was still seen as dangerous to society and very few members of these small groups would speak up about their practices. Since a number of the people who attended or founded these smaller groups were also involved with Black Masses and other devil-related rituals, there is reason to believe that many of the practices overlapped. 

So yes, if we limit the discussion here in two ways, you may have a point. If we say 1) we can only call a group Satanist if it has the word "Satanist" in its name, and 2) it can only be called Satanist if it has some sort of codified Satanic philosophy, then maybe LaVey's version is the only group which meets these two requirements. 

The groups I have heard of tended to call themselves other names, that didn't have "Satanist" on their calling card, and their philosophy was still largely that of Catholicism, though they chose to call on those forces which mainstream Catholics would eschew.

As far as I can tell, the only source you've given us for your view is that of the web site to LaVey's group. Are there other sources you can point us to that would support your position? I'm willing to look elsewhere.

Added later:

Just now I looked at the web site of the Church of Satan. I see that they repeatedly use the symbol first drawn by de Guaita, one of the people I mentioned above.

This, from the very first part of the web site, is instructive:

...we are the first above-ground organization in history openly dedicated to the acceptance of Man’s true nature—that of a carnal beast, living in a cosmos that is indifferent to our existence. To us, Satan is the symbol that best suits the nature of we who are carnal by birth—people who feel no battles raging between our thoughts and feelings, we who do not embrace the concept of a soul imprisoned in a body. He represents pride, liberty, and individualism—qualities often defined as Evil by those who worship external deities, who feel there is a war between their minds and emotions.

Note that they don't claim to be the first Satanists. They claim to be the first "above-ground" such organization, "openly" dedicated to these ideas. This seems to imply that there were any number of other such groups, though they were below ground and closed. That's quite believable, and not quite the same as what you've been saying on this thread.

There is something which, as far as I know, is new for this group: they make it clear that Satan is a symbol for them, not a real being. This is what I mean by deracinated. By reducing the titular figure to a figurehead, there are no stakes, and no skin in the game. It is the American version: coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, sex without the contact of two bodies. Previous Satanists -- or, if you don't like that word, Satan-worshippers, Satan-believers, those who sincerely tried to sell their souls to the devil, actually believed.