By the way – I’ve now started a Glossary section on the site, where definitions useful in the context of discussion on this blog will be posted. Take a peek – it will significantly grow over time.

Within the context of the Church of Satan, “Lesser Magic” can be defined as social engineering or manipulation of people to further one’s own ends. Anton LaVey wrote an entire book on the subject, and his in home “Witch School” predates and proceeds the Church itself. His own life (and the lives of many of his heroes) is a textbook example of this.

What we’re going to talk about here is the actual objective mechanisms behind what can be called Lesser Magic, as currently understood by hard science today.

“Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is an approach to changing socially useful behaviors that employs scientifically established principles of learning to bring about these changes” (Kearney 19). ABA is the only objectively verifiable school of psychology, and is considered a hard, and not a social one. The basics are actually quite easy to understand for the reasonably intelligent, but even the definition found above contains some very precisely defined terms (that are not quite correctly defined by their common usage).

My time is short, and writing out an ABA 101 post is both boring for me and redundant to do – there are plenty of “layman” introductory sources to learn these things from. My current, in print and redily accessable (and cheap) favorite here is quoted above – Albert J. Kearney’s “Understanding Applied Behavior Analysis: An Introduction to ABA for parents, teachers, and other professionals”. Wonderful, yet short, introduction.

Go get the book – he introduces these concepts far better then I can, and why reinvent the wheel anyways? If you are cheap or can’t afford the book, google Applied Behavior Analysis. I don’t care if you deem me full of shit and this blog useless – this book belongs on the shelf of every Satanist. That’s a plain Amazon link above – I don’t need your money.

Get a feel for ABA, and suspend your uninformed opinion as to it’s validity. Next couple of posts will rely on this information.

This context requires some precise definitions to be comprehensible, even at a basic level.

(Edit: In private conversation, a prominent member of the CoS reminds me that the team is Lesser Magic, and not Lesser Black Magic. This is a failure in editing on my part, and has been corrected (and the catch appreciated))

(2nd Edit: one more correction became necessary, which actually illustrates the mechanism of Behavior Shaping via Rule-Governed (or Verbal) Behavior. Bonus question – can you describe this mechanism?)

Dear Lush Cosmetics,

Your company, on more than one occasion, has been referred to as a “lifestyle company” – a company who’s marketing and advertising vision sells not a product, but an over-priced vision of your customers to themselves, perfectly packaged in bath bomb form. As a long time veteran in online marketing and advertising, I understand this well. We are all unique snowflakes, just like everybody else, and one can be both edgy and unique when one buys The Designated Product™. Your products are indulgences, and as we all know from history, various organizations in the western world have done quite well for themselves by selling indulgences. I commend you from the bottom of my heart.

Transparent marketing aside, I rather enjoy a number of your products. You see, I have a confession to make….I am a heterosexual, alpha male, bubble bath whore. I love soaking in the tub, listening to Terror Transmission or Underworld Amusements in the background, letting the cares of the day slip away. Sometimes, I listen to big band jazz or 80′s Heavy Metal while savoring the sweet and savory smells your perfumed bath products emit. Sometimes, my bathroom remains silent, with only thoughts of violence to keep me company. What a glorious indulgence a bubble bath is for me! Alas, for all the pleasure I derive from your products, there is one thing that often stands between myself and hot water bliss.

Glitter.

Most of your products contain glitter, and this is simply unacceptable to me. Glitter is useless. Glitter is pointless. Glitter adds nothing to the bath experience. Glitter is not biodegradable, and fucks your whole illusion of enviornmentally friendly products (which is bullshit anyways, but hey, just trying to help…). Glitter is either a shitty movie or the uniform of the stripper, and is rarely more than this. Most men would prefer not to have this useless additive wedged in our nether regions.

I am a Male Bubble Bath Whore, and I am not alone. There are many of us, many men who enjoy a bubble bath. Get rid of the glitter, and you’ll open up a whole new market for yourselves.

Thank you for your time.

Your friend in marketing and advertising,

Richard Cerno

Ha, ha, only serious. “Hulu. An evil plot to destroy the world. Enjoy.”

(No, I don’t currently work for hulu, but damn, I admire this ad campaign…)

Witness the Church of Satan and it’s membership, or at least, the public side of the Church found online. My entirely unscientific and self-serving survey indicates that there is a high number of artists in residence – and an artist is a Creator, a god in his or her own right. Most art is ideal for display on the Internet – you can reproduce an image of the creation for display on the web, and any knucklehead who browses your page can see the creation. The skewed sense of the Internet aside, there are multitude ways to be a Creator. Don’t fool yourself – We are all around you, and not all of us carry a paintbrush or write interesting and wonderful music. One with talent who owns that creativity can make a deep mark in this world.

A Consumer defines him or herself by what he owns – essentially, he allows others to define his being almost in toto. He or she is psychic silly putty, naturally lifting the newspaper print of Fear and Desire. Both Consumer and Creator are necessary – we need wool from the sheep to keep us warm, as well as meat for our bellies.

For a more directly Satanic treatment of this topic, I strongly suggest picking up Magister Matt G. Paradise’s book, Bearing the Devil’s Mark – you’ll find his essay “Producer or Consumer? Which one are you?” to be quite instructive.

So…which one are you? Producer or Consumer? Are you certain? Have you asked yourself this question lately?

This post is really low on the content scale – it’s point is simply to lead you to think about a topic of my design that, on first view, appears unrelated. The topic is this: if humans are no more than animals, and there are objective, scientific means to train animals, are humans really any different from other life forms?

More to the point – one of the very few differentiators between man and other beasts is the evolution of man’s forebrain, the organic source for language and what is known in a scientific context as Verbal Behavior. We can communicate through language, making understanding possible. If one can know how to train an animal, and one can verbally describe and understand the objective mechanisms that make this possible, is the human animal exempt from it’s operation?

Bonus question for the Crimson Card carriers here – both Anton LaVey and Peter H. Gilmore have some background in animal training – Dr. LaVey with the circus and his legendary pet lion, and High Priest Gilmore was raised in part by a father who worked as a dog breeder and groomer. Given the place of both men in the Church, do you think this shared background in and around animal training to be simply a coincidence?

Can you guess what I’ve been doing?

Tonight will be different. Am getting together with an old friend I haven’t seen in a few years. While this week held long work hours, tonight holds good sushi, better jazz, and excellent company. While I view my working hours as an indulgence, all work and no play leave Richard Cerno a dull and burnt out boy.

Life is truly good.

Arkham Studios is the brainchild and creative vehicle of Bryan Moore, a sculptor and artist of the highest caliber. I first encountered his work through the pieces he produced for the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (I’m a huge Lovecraft fan). Moore, much like the fictitious Henry Anthony Wilcox, has the uncanny ability to experience nightmarish dreams and flawlessly carve them into Being. His work is both breathtaking and alive.

At the start of this Lunar Year, Moore announced his “Four Crowned Princes Series” – 25 pieces each of the Four Crown Princes of Hell – Satan, Lucifer, Belial, and Leviathan, roughly 12″ in height in a cast polymer bronze finish. The “Satan” piece has been released, with each future piece in the series being released within months of each other. Tonight, I ordered a copy of the “Satan” bust, and will be ordering each future piece just as soon as they are available.

Check out the piece here, and order yourself one if you have the means to do so.

Review the following news story concerning Peter Thiel’s new investments in New Zealand. At first glance, the article appears to be an exercise in speculation. Indulge me on this – it is much more then this. While articles of these nature are famously inaccurate in the details of the Is To Be, they tend to illustrate an important fact of business and the human jungle in general – even the apex predator is completely dependent on the strata below him. The apex predator has his kill in view, but by signaling other, lesser predators that there are complimentary opportunities available. These opportunities serve the apex predator in that they tend to provide the scaffolding below his master work, further supporting his success in the hunt and reducing his risk.

Out here in Silicon Valley, Thiel is a Moby of a Venture Capitalist, birthing several Internet-based household names. In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve had the pleasure of consulting for some of his most famous ventures, and some of them (in their current incarnations) are customers of the company I find myself currently employed with. I’ve met the man, but I would not delude myself into thinking he knows me, nor I him. He is clearly in a social and business strata above me. This may not always be true, but it most certainly is for now – counterproductive pride often being my own personal stumbling block, I must make this clear, if only to myself. He is an apex predator in the technology world.

In the jungle, the predator employs many tactics to court the kill. Strength, cunning, speed – all contribute to the continuance of the strong. The art of invisibility and surprise is a majorly successful tactic in business – there is the first, and there is the dead. Much of the practices and laws concerning business deal specifically with the enforcement of Needful Silence, everything from the concept of client privilege to one of the most powerful Workings of Greater Magic, commonly called the Non-Disclosure Agreement. There are countless methods employed regularly to protect one’s actions from prying eyes, the most employed and effective of which are completely legal, moral, and near universally practiced. All predators of any value are watched.

So why did Thiel start a public paper trail of ventures and investments in such a manner that reasonably accurate speculation becomes inevitable?

No apex predator exists in a vacuum. The predator requires a prey (or opportunity, in less blood-thirsty terms), but also needs to be surrounded by the lesser struggles of the other animals. The smart animal will see Thiel making a move, and move themselves to capitalize on it. These complementary ventures, in turn, supports Thiel’s goal. Vendors clamoring to sell him services and support (driving costs down). Investors looking to get in on the ride (thinning out risk). Headhunters and employee placement firms (providing the human capital so critical to success). Even smaller, local businesses like the dry cleaners, the grocery store, the coffee house – these small ventures will provide a good life for the lesser, yet enterprising animal, while serving as the environmental attractants for the people Thiel will need to execute his ventures. Each venture develops a lattice of bonds and relationships that serve to support Thiel’s greater goal.

What does this illustrate? The lessons are many, but the most obvious are three: Firstly, it is not only the practice of Silence that facilitates success, but also, the experience of when and how to break this silence – timing makes a huge difference. Make no mistake – this story was calculated to be possible only when Thiel was far enough ahead of the game that competing predators could profit from his ventures, but not at his expense. Communication and media are powerful tools, and the wise utilize them to great effect. Secondly, the successful predator must always seek to understand the opportunities around him, and actively Look for them. In business, this is most often accomplished by the courting and development of relationships and alliances with other predators for mutual benefit – even for the apex, the most productive Alien Elite, business is all about the relationships – never, ever forget this. Finally, and most importantly – though you may personally loathe certain people in your jungle, though you may find little value in their company and elect to spend your time and energy elsewhere, treat all with respect and decorum at all times – today’s bottom feeder may be tomorrows invaluable ally.

Here endeth the lesson.