by: Tani Jantsang
First off: Jack London was often a Hobo and a Bum in life, as he rejected civilization as it was. He was also a MILITANT SOCIALIST! He took part in LABOR RALLIES. That's WHO wrote MiR. Doc only took portions DOC liked. Let's put some historicity into this and understand INTENT.
THE BOOK OF SATAN
I
1. In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear.
To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign proclaiming:
Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!
Note: The writer LIVES IN the "wilderness" of steel and stone (NOT a wilderness at all and, in fact, London loved the wilderness and nature). He proclaims death to the weakling and wealth to the strong. He PROCLAIMS this. 1. Is he saying it SHOULD BE this?? Since he himself was NOT wealthy and lived as a Hobo and was a Militant Socialist one has to STRONGLY DOUBT that! 2. He is saying IT IS this, that's the status quo where the steel and stone cities have KILLED the wildernesses? OR: he is saying that wealth should go to the strong, not to the weak ones who happen to rule RIGHT NOW (did rule when he wrote this).
2. Open your eyes that you may see, Oh men of mildewed minds, and listen to me ye bewildered
millions!
3. For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the "laws"
of man and of "God"!
Note: He is questioning not just xianity or religion. He is ALSO questioning the laws (legal) of MAN. Remember, he was a Militant Socialist! They ALL questioned the "laws of man" and wanted to write new ones (often after a revolution).
4. I request reason for your golden rule and ask the why and wherefore of your ten
commandments.
5. Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence, and he who saith "thou
shalt" to me is my mortal foe!
Note: Here DOC has selected this. What have the 10 commandments to do with the laws of man or labor relations which London was really involved with? Nothing.
6. I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad redeemer, and write over his thorn-torn brow: The TRUE prince of evil - the king of slaves!
Note: This is a take off of "RELIGION IS THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE" which was said by Karl Marx - the founder of ALL Socialism! Religion was used to keep everyone else oppressed and induce them to tolerate exploitation. Socialism was dead against this. They regarded the ruling class as EVIL and knew the ruling classes used religion to keep everyone else down.
7. No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen!
8. I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.
Note: the hoary falsehoods are the laws of MAN, not just "god." He believes, as all Socialists believe, that everyone was born with the NATURAL RIGHT to pursue life, liberty and happiness! Even Felix Dzerzhinsky said this and he never heard of Jefferson!
9. I raise up in stern invasion the standard of the strong!
10. I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and pluck him by the beard;
I uplift a broad-axe, and split open his worm-eaten skull!
11. I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophically whited sepulchers and laugh
with sardonic wrath!
Note: Doc's selected paragraphs here again. Doc is focusing on what is RELIGION oriented here. Doc LaVey never advocated taking up arms against the GOVERNMENT. Socialists DID advocate this and so did London.
THE BOOK OF SATAN
II
12. Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.
Note: This is also how such revolutionaries regarded their own ruling classes - who used religion to stifle the workers! Remember, London was militant in the labor movement as a socialist, not just a Union guy.
13. I question all things. As I stand before the festering and varnished facades of your haughtiest moral dogmas, I write thereon in letters of blazing scorn: Lo and behold; all this is fraud!
Note: Marx himself could have written this paragraph, he wrote such things in personal letters.
14. Gather around me, Oh! ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to
have and to hold!
15. Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought!
Note: this is CLASSICLY against the ruling classes who were regarded as conservative as OPPOSED TO progressive. This is a call for PROGRESSIVE revolt.
16. Too long right and wrong, good and evil have been inverted by false prophets!
17. No creed must be accepted upon authority of a "divine" nature.
Note: No creed is NO CREED.
Religions must be put to the question.
Note: NOW he INCLUDES religion.
No moral dogma must be taken for granted - no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!
Note: he is NO LONGER speaking about religion. Standards of measurement (regarding classes and etc.), moral codes (our laws), human laws. He's calling for revolution as many other Socialists in the labor movement did.
18. He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all unwisdom.
Note: he says false principle. He is NOT talking about religion here!
19. The chief duty of every new age is to upraise new men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards material success - to rend the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories and ideas that may have meant life and hope and freedom for our ancestors may now mean destruction, slavery, and dishonor to us!
Note: Upraise new men (make the New Man) liberties, material success, chains of dead custom that prevent healthy expansion (ruling classes all that). This is CLEARLY a political-economic statement here from London. It has nothing to do with religion AT ALL. There is NOTHING in Christianity that is against pure Nazism OR pure Communism OR Libertarianism, OR any other political system. The Christian Bible is VERY versatile like that. This is not about religion.
20. As environments change, no human ideal standeth sure!
Note: again, ideals. He is trashing the current ideals, as in IDEOLOGY. He is saying "Let's GET REAL and SMASH ideals."
21. Whenever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of an inconvenient falsehood, no one can prosper.
Note: WHO dominated? The ruling classes, Kings, Empires and yes, they were in cahoots with religious organizations or else they'd have DESTROYED the religious organizations.
22. Let established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they
are a standing menace to all true nobility of thought and action!
23. Whatever alleged "truth" is proven by results to be but an empty fiction,
let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires,
dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!
Note: AGAIN he speaks not just of dead gods, but of dead empires and philosophies. The writer was a Militant Socialist. One might get a gleaning of such rhetoric BY READING Das Kapital by Marx for surely, the writer of THIS MiR DID read it!
24. The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie - the lie everyone believes to be a model truth.
Note: PRIVILEGED lie. Told to the PRIVELEGED classes at the time and then told to the workers and serfs. People used to believe that they were serfs and the Czar was the Czar because "god ordained it."
It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is a hydra-headed tree of unreason with a thousand roots. It is a social cancer!
Note: See my article Tree of Destruction. It's about the same kind of thing.
25. The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons accept as fact - the lie that has been inculcated in a little child at its mother's knee - is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence!
Note: again, think in terms of political-economic-social realities here. THAT is where the writer was coming from.
26. Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them: Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers. Exterminate them root and branch. Annihilate them, or they will us!
Note: this is almost a quote from LENIN here. "Cut them out, to the core, as a disease; exterminate them root and branch!" He said such things about the bourgeoisie and compradores. As a Militant Socialist, it is certain that London read Lenin's works! Lenin OFTEN argued against established dogmas by using pure reason.
THE BOOK OF SATAN
III
27. "Love one another" it has been said is the supreme law, but what power
made it so? Upon what rational authority does the gospel of love rest? Why should I
not hate mine enemies - if I "love" them does that not place me at their mercy?
Note: he is speaking rhetorically - the serfs and exploited workers DID love their enemies, even fought wars to enrich their enemies and got nothing in return. Keep in mind, the author was a Militant Socialist! They were at the mercy of their enemies - the ruling classes that everyone looked up to and loved.
28. Is it natural for enemies to do good unto each other - and WHAT IS GOOD?
29. Can the torn and bloody victim "love" the blood-splashed jaws that rend
him limb from limb?
Note: AGAIN, he speaks to the serfs and workers who WERE torn asunder and who CONTINUED TO respect their tormentors!
30. Are we not all predatory animals by instinct? If humans ceased wholly from preying upon each other, could they continue to exist?
Note: As a matter of fact, YES, WE WOULD "CONTINUE TO EXIST" -and we would be MUCH BETTER off at that! ALL Militant Socialists advocated using either brute force armed revolution or other less violent means, or labor strikes (which were VERY violent back then) to SMASH AND CHANGE the system - but then they advocated replacing it or changing it with something much more along the lines of how things were LONG LONG ago, without all the Hobbesian strife and closed-hearted distrust of everyone. What was actually accomplished in the USA was the New Deal (prior to that, the Bill of Rights!) If you feel that this flies in the very face of MIGHT IS RIGHT, you are absolutely correct since you are NOT understanding the person who wrote it and HIS life, you are NOT understanding what it was like back then and you DO NOT know the history; - as said before, MIGHT IS RIGHT is a social cancer, a LIE, a hydra-headed tree of unreason with a thousand roots. The Book of Satan and ALL Socialist Movements back when London wrote this, DEBUNKED "Might Is Right" for the cancer that it was. Right here, LaVey is revealing his true intent once again, OR he knew exactly what London was talking about, knew about the history of such struggles and used the same intent. I'd ALSO assume Doc took this portion to apply it to xianity and keep it on the religious level. AT THE TIME Doc wrote this, there were no ruling classes in the same sense exploiting DOC or anyone else. In fact, NO ONE EVER exploited Doc! Those days were gone, THANKS TO MILITANT LABOR ACTIVISTS LIKE LONDON!
31. Is not "lust and carnal desire" a more truthful term to describe "love" when applied to the continuance of the race? Is not the "love" of the fawning scriptures simply a euphemism for sexual activity, or was the "great teacher" a glorifier of eunuchs?
Note: Don't make the common mistake of taking the word "love" out of context here - DOC was NOT talking about feelings of people in love. But I DO BELIEVE London was! Militant Socialists saw "romantic love" as something decadent, a leisure activity engaged in and written much about by the ruling classes while the toilers of the world had lives of abject misery and probably never were loved and could not feel love since they didn't have TIME to love anyone. (I will be straight about this: I know where my people come from, what they were and did and they raised me. I am NOT ABLE to feel "romantic love" either. I just DON'T FEEL this. Am I too cold? Too hard? Maybe. I don't think so, I'm also very friendly and easy going in many ways. I know what Friendship is and Lust. But romantic love? Musha mushy? "Nothing words and hours of conversation about nothing?" I don't know it and when it's aimed at me I feel it is a total nuisance and a waste of my time. Perhaps this is racial; Ice Adaptation; I don't know. We are communal as hell, very friendly and playful too. But romantic? Far from it.)
32. Love your enemies and do good to them that hate and use you - is this not the despicable philosophy of the spaniel that rolls upon its back when kicked?
Note: "that hate and USE YOU." Christianity doesn't "use" anyone, nor does it "hate" anyone. It's merely a philosophy, "it" can't DO anything and its philosophy can literally be used for ANYTHING, it's very versatile. PEOPLE do things, not "-ianities" or "-isms." Ruling classes USED everyone, they had malicious contempt for the very people who TOILED and WORKED and MADE EVERYTHING these same ruling classes and their spoiled rotten children loved so much. And when kicked, the workers and serfs DID roll on their backs. That is, until London and people like him wrote rants like this and WOKE THEM UP!
33. Hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, SMASH him on the other!; smite him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law!
Note: again, taken with history and in context, this is revolutionary talk. BUT: in the case of Doc taking this, does this say, "smite people willy nilly, push them around and act superior?" If everyone adopted this philosophy TODAY, how long do you think bullies would survive?
34. He who turns the other cheek is a cowardly dog!
35. Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom - with compound interest liberally
added thereunto! Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, aye four-fold, a hundred-fold!
Note: the Jewish people DO PREACH THIS! It's a quote from the Old Testament! I know Jack London knew it and so did the Social Revolutionaries, many of whom were from Jewish backgrounds. But did Doc realize he quoted from the Bible here? But, for our neo Satanists out there, does this say: "Give blows for nothing, just be a bully and lord it over anyone you can, be an asshole, give out scorn for scorn's sake, heap doom for those inferior" (like the freaks in the movie Freaks for whom Doc had immense respect)? - Doc was talking Lex Talionis here, true individual culpability in action and the Jews also meant it exactly that way. But for the neo Satanists that abound these days, what is missing, what often gets forgotten here, is the Fourth Satanic Statement: Kindness to those that deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates (and here Doc did not mean lust!). With this in mind there is a whole different dimension to the popular misconception attached to these words TODAY. What happens today is that people who HAVE suffered as victims use this as their wail, as their justification to BULLY OTHERS who never did anything to them. BOTH Doc's intent and London's revolutionary intent is wholly lost on them. (And it is these late-coming Satanists that I have a beef with which inspired me to RANT against Jack London's RANT about might is right.)
Make yourself a Terror to your adversary, and when he goeth his way, he will possess much additional wisdom to ruminate over. Thus shall you make yourself respected in all the walks of life, and your spirit - your immortal spirit - shall live, not in an intangible paradise, but in the brains and sinews of those whose respect you have gained.
Note: the Jewish people HAVE done this, for the most part! Note that many Social Revolutionaries back then were JEWISH. London would have read their works.
THE BOOK OF SATAN
IV
36. Life is the great indulgence - death, the great abstinence. Therefore, make the
most of life - HERE AND NOW!
Note: again, this is thoroughly Marxist. They believed that their day had come and this was their opportunity to either instill this knowledge into the workers and serfs or die trying.
37. There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now
is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity!
Choose ye this day, this hour, for no redeemer liveth!
38. Say unto thine own heart, "I am mine own redeemer."
39. Stop the way of them that would persecute you. Let those who devise thine undoing
be hurled back to confusion and infamy. Let them be as chaff before the cyclone and
after they have fallen rejoice in thine own salvation.
Note: again, London writes of persecution. The cyclone is the revolution!
40. Then all thy bones shall say pridefully, "Who is like unto me? Have I not been too strong for mine adversaries? Have I not delivered MYSELF by mine own brain and body?"
Note: they did deliver THEMSELVES.
What would all this have meant to Doc who lived during the finest days of New Deal reforms, where any worker could make good money and where 99% of the people here were thoroughly happy and content? It is obvious. Doc made the Church of SATAN - a semi-RELIGIOUS organization. He took portions out of London's rant and applied them SOLELY to religion; Doc never called for anti-government activities (nor was he against it). That was not what the CoS was about.
Copyright 1999-2004 by Tani Jantsang