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?)

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?

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Contrary to popular, “folk” vernacular, “business” is not (only) the exchange of currency for goods and services. For certain, this transaction is an important part of this. Here in the Boardroom, goblet in hand, legs spread widely as our gorgeously hot companion (or strikingly handsome, as the case may be) willingly swallows us to ecstasy, anticipating our chance to return the favor… sorry, got distracted there.

Anyways, we here use a different, more Satanic definition – “business” is defined as the creation, cultivation, and leveraging of mutually beneficial relationships and the successful, purposeful execution of tasks that are mutually beneficial to that alliance. More bluntly stated, business is the process by which the strong feed on the weak, the clever and cunning become the strong, and if the cleaver are thoughful enough, they remain clever while attaining that strength. It is nature, red in tooth and nail, with a “professional” veneer – the smile, the handshake, the business suit. 

Brutal, but crushingly honest. This is not to say that these actions and relationships are done for purely exploitive purposes – only that there is no real altruism, and that when properly executed, one can do nothing but benefit from the transaction. This definition reflects the total acceptance that we’re all animals, but it doesn’t negate honor, integrity, and ethics (at least, not without consequence – responsibility to the responsible, always). 

Thus endith the lesson. Time to get back to what’s going on under the table here in the Boardroom.

After much reflection, I have concluded without reservation that becoming an Active Member in the CoS is what I want to do, and I want this for more then simple ego gratification reasons. This post explores some of this self analysis.

From the very beginning, I have been clear on two things: 1) That I was a Satanist, as described in the writings of Anton LeVay, and 2) At the very least, I needed to mail a check into the CoS for membership as a small thanks to him and his church. But Active Membership is more. To me, it demanded a detailed and methodical examination of many things. What does Active Membership mean to me? What are the risks involved? The benefits? What are my real motivations for pursuing this? Do I really agree wholeheartedly with all the tenets of the Church.

And the most important of all: While the Philosophy of Satanism describes me completely, am I willing to commit to the Religion as the CoS describes it? Don’t dismiss this question outright, as they are certainly different things. The Philosophy of Satanism is a very Atheistic, Humanistic one, which provides axioms for understanding oneself and the world. I’ve known hundreds of people in my life who act accordingly, unconsciously. This occurs because the tenets of LaVey’s writings are based on observational behaviors – it describes the natural state of the animal called man. The Religion of Satanism takes this one step further, and provides both a vehicle whereby ritualistic dogma can and must be applied to further ones desires and passions, and an absolute, unshakable resolution for the first outcome of all of the basic CoS tenets: If the tenets of the CoS are wholly true, and one accepts them as this, then one has accepted complete, full and total responsibility for one’s life. There is no one to blame for anything in one’s life but oneself. There are no longer any excuses. 

This process was absolutely necessary for me – an unexamined life is the way of the sheep, particularly in a Working so important as this. I have concluded that, yes, this is where I belong, and this is truly who I am: a Satanist through and through, balls to bone. I want this, and I will have it.

So, this site has been brought back (such that it is, at the moment), and my Active Membership form has been complete. Over the next few posts, I will be sharing some of my answers to the questions on the application.\

Welcome back to the Boardroom.