The Satanic Scriptures is a posthumously published collection of writings attributed to Anton Szandor LaVey (1930–1997), founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible (1969). First issued by Feral House in 2007 and edited by Peter H. Gilmore, LaVey’s successor as High Priest of the Church of Satan, the volume gathers essays, statements, polemics, and previously unpublished material associated with LaVey’s later thought.
Its title can be misleading to readers accustomed to the idea of scripture as divine revelation, sacred law, or a universally binding canon. Satanism has no single scripture accepted by all people who identify as Satanists. Different Satanic movements disagree sharply about theology, ritual, authority, ethics, and even whether Satan is a literal being. In this context, The Satanic Scriptures is not “the Bible of Satanism.” It is a particular book from the LaVeyan—or atheistic—Satanic tradition.
The collection is important because it clarifies how LaVey and the Church of Satan understood Satanism after the publication of The Satanic Bible. It also demonstrates the central tensions within modern Satanism: individualism and organization, symbolism and belief, provocation and serious philosophy, freedom and responsibility.
Scripture Without Revelation
In the conventional religious sense, scripture is often understood as a text revealed by, inspired by, or carrying the authority of a deity. The Abrahamic Bible, the Qur’an, the Vedas, and many Buddhist sutras occupy such a role for their respective communities, though each tradition understands sacred authority differently.
LaVeyan Satanism uses religious language in another way. Its “scriptures” are not presented as messages from a supernatural Satan. Rather, they are human writings intended to articulate a worldview. In LaVey’s Satanism, Satan is generally treated as a symbol: an image of pride, dissent, sensuality, self-determination, skepticism toward spiritual authority, and the refusal of imposed guilt.
For this reason, The Satanic Scriptures is better understood as a collection of ideological essays than as revealed scripture. It belongs to the same literary family as The Satanic Bible, The Satanic Rituals (1972), and The Devil’s Notebook (1992): books that define, defend, and extend LaVey’s version of Satanism.
The term “Satanic scripture” therefore has two meanings:
1. The title of a specific 2007 LaVeyan collection, The Satanic Scriptures.
2. A broad descriptive phrase for texts regarded as foundational by particular Satanic groups.
These meanings should not be confused. There is no single Satanic canon shared by all Satanists.
Anton LaVey and the LaVeyan Tradition
Anton Szandor LaVey founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966. The following year, he proclaimed 1966 the beginning of the “Anno Satanas” era, or Year One of the Age of Satan. In 1969, he published The Satanic Bible, the book for which he remains best known.
LaVey’s Satanism rejected belief in a personal God, a literal Devil, immortal souls, and an afterlife governed by supernatural judgment. It was explicitly materialist in outlook: human beings are animals, earthly life matters, and individuals should pursue fulfillment within the limits of reality.
This did not make LaVeyan Satanism merely secular humanism with dramatic imagery. LaVey argued that ritual, theatricality, mythology, and emotional symbolism could have real psychological value even when participants did not believe in supernatural forces. Satanic ritual was presented as psychodrama: a deliberate setting in which participants could focus emotion, declare intention, and confront fears or desires.
LaVey’s writing also made Satanism confrontational. It was designed to challenge Christian moral assumptions, sentimental ideals of universal equality, and cultural expectations of humility or self-denial. Its rhetoric can be abrasive, satirical, and deliberately scandalous. Readers should distinguish between its theatrical provocations and its underlying claims about autonomy, personal responsibility, and opposition to coercive moral authority.
Publication and Editorial Context
The Satanic Scriptures appeared ten years after LaVey’s death. The book was edited by Peter H. Gilmore, who became High Priest of the Church of Satan in 2001. It was published by Feral House, an independent press known for works on counterculture, social controversy, and unconventional political or religious subjects.
The volume collects essays and statements written across several decades. Some pieces had appeared in newsletters, magazines, and other limited-circulation contexts; others were unpublished or difficult for ordinary readers to obtain. As a result, the book does not function as a single, systematically composed treatise. It is an anthology, and its structure reflects that.
This matters for interpretation. The Satanic Bible presents a concentrated statement of LaVey’s foundational ideas. The Satanic Scriptures shows a later and more situational voice: responding to public misunderstandings, internal disputes, changing social fashions, religious rivals, and the practical difficulties of maintaining a movement associated with such a charged name.
The book’s editorial presentation also gives it institutional significance. Under Gilmore’s editorship, it positions LaVey’s later writings within the official continuity of the Church of Satan. For adherents of that organization, the text is an important elaboration of the LaVeyan tradition. For historians, it is a useful primary source for studying the self-understanding of modern atheistic Satanism.
Major Themes
Satan as Symbol Rather Than Supernatural Being
The most fundamental idea underlying LaVeyan Satanic literature is that Satan is not ordinarily understood as an external being to be worshipped. Satan is a symbol of qualities LaVey considered psychologically and culturally necessary: independence, vitality, rational self-interest, resistance to hypocrisy, and refusal to submit automatically to sacred authority.
This distinction separates LaVeyan Satanism from the popular image of “Devil worship.” The Church of Satan has repeatedly stated that it does not worship the Christian Devil, sacrifice animals or people, or seek contact with demonic entities. In its view, worship requires submission; Satanism is instead concerned with self-affirmation.
The symbolic use of Satan also has a literary and historical dimension. LaVeyan writers frequently draw on the Romantic image of Satan as rebel—especially the Satan associated with John Milton’s Paradise Lost—though they do not necessarily endorse Milton’s theology. Satan becomes a cultural emblem of the outsider who questions authority.
Individualism and Personal Responsibility
LaVey’s writings place the individual at the center of ethical life. They reject the ideal that people should erase their own interests for the benefit of an abstract collective, a religious institution, or a moral system demanding unconditional self-sacrifice.
Yet this individualism is not simply permission to do anything one wants. LaVeyan Satanism emphasizes consequences, competence, boundaries, and responsibility. A person is expected to understand reality, recognize the rights and limits of others, and accept the results of their own decisions. In this sense, its moral language is often closer to self-discipline than to lawlessness.
The tension is important. Critics may hear Satanic calls for indulgence as an endorsement of recklessness. LaVeyan texts, however, generally frame indulgence as informed, voluntary, and non-destructive enjoyment rather than compulsive excess. “Indulgence, not compulsion,” a phrase associated with The Satanic Bible, expresses this distinction.
Opposition to Religious Hypocrisy
Much of The Satanic Scriptures is polemical. LaVey frequently attacks forms of Christianity that he regarded as life-denying, manipulative, or hypocritical. He objected especially to moral systems that praise humility in public while allowing powerful institutions or individuals to pursue wealth, status, and influence without restraint.
This critique is not limited to Christianity. More broadly, LaVeyan Satanism opposes what it sees as sanctimonious moralism: the use of purity, virtue, victimhood, or spiritual authority to control other people. The Satanic image is used as a weapon against such control.
At its best, this critique encourages readers to ask difficult questions. Who benefits from a moral rule? Is a demand for self-denial truly compassionate, or does it preserve someone else’s power? Does public virtue correspond to private conduct? These questions are not uniquely Satanic, but LaVey’s style makes them central.
Elitism, Merit, and Their Controversies
LaVey’s Satanism has long been associated with elitism. It places strong value on ability, achievement, discernment, and what LaVey called “stratification”—the idea that people differ in talents, ambitions, and outcomes. LaVey opposed enforced equality of result and criticized political ideals that, in his view, ignored real differences among individuals.
These positions are among the most controversial aspects of his work. Supporters interpret them as a defense of excellence and a rejection of empty egalitarian rhetoric. Critics argue that they can minimize structural inequality, excuse indifference to vulnerable people, or encourage social contempt.
A careful reading requires neither dismissal nor uncritical acceptance. The language of merit can identify the value of skill, effort, and personal accountability. It can also become a way of overlooking unequal access to safety, education, health, wealth, and social recognition. The debate remains relevant because it concerns a wider cultural question: how can a society value achievement without treating human dignity as something earned only by the successful?
Satanism as a Minority Identity
LaVey’s later writings often defend Satanism against sensationalism. Since the late twentieth century, Satanism has regularly been confused with criminality, occult conspiracy, ritual abuse, or violent extremism. During the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and early 1990s, unfounded allegations of organized Satanic ritual abuse circulated widely in North America and elsewhere. Subsequent investigations found no evidence for the vast conspiratorial networks alleged in many of these claims.
The consequences were serious. Families, daycare workers, musicians, religious minorities, and self-described Satanists could face suspicion or harassment because of public fear. Satanic organizations therefore developed a strong interest in correcting false claims about their practices.
The Satanic Scriptures belongs to this defensive context. It seeks to define Satanism on its own terms rather than allow hostile religious or sensational media accounts to do so. That effort is valuable historically, even where readers may reject LaVey’s conclusions.
What the Book Is Not
The Satanic Scriptures is not a neutral survey of Satanism, occultism, or the historical figure of Satan. It is a partisan work written from within one movement. It should not be treated as an objective account of all Satanic traditions.
It is also not representative of theistic Satanism. Theistic, spiritual, or esoteric Satanists may regard Satan as an actual deity, angelic intelligence, adversarial force, or initiatory presence. Their sources may include biblical and apocryphal literature, ceremonial magic, Gnostic reinterpretations, Romantic poetry, modern occult writings, or personal revelation. These approaches are distinct from LaVey’s atheistic symbolism.
Nor does the book represent The Satanic Temple, a separate nontheistic organization founded in 2013. The Satanic Temple shares some broad themes with LaVeyan Satanism—such as nonbelief in a literal Satan and the use of Satan as a symbol of resistance—but it has different public priorities, organizational culture, and ethical framework. Its Seven Tenets are not derived from LaVey’s work, and it does not recognize the Church of Satan as an authority.
Reading the Text Critically
Readers approaching The Satanic Scriptures benefit from reading it as both philosophy and performance. LaVey wrote for effect. His prose often aims to provoke, entertain, unsettle, and draw firm boundaries between Satanists and their critics. Literalism can therefore obscure the rhetorical purpose of a passage.
A critical reading asks several questions:
• What social or religious attitude is the author criticizing?
• Is the claim descriptive, ethical, rhetorical, or intentionally exaggerated?
• Does the argument depend on evidence, personal preference, or cultural provocation?
• How does the argument compare with the lived diversity of Satanists and non-Satanists?
• What assumptions about power, class, gender, ability, and social opportunity lie beneath its language of individual merit?
Such questions do not require hostility. They are an appropriate way to engage a text that itself urges skepticism toward inherited authority.
Place Within Satanic Literature
For readers interested in the LaVeyan tradition, The Satanic Scriptures is best read after The Satanic Bible. The earlier book supplies the basic vocabulary: Satan as symbol, rejection of supernaturalism, ritual as psychodrama, indulgence, self-interest, and the critique of Christian morality. The later collection supplies additional texture, especially concerning LaVey’s cultural commentary and the Church of Satan’s identity after its founding period.
A useful reading sequence is:
1. Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible (1969) — the foundational statement of LaVeyan Satanism.
2. Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Rituals (1972) — ritual texts and commentary on Satanic symbolism.
3. Anton Szandor LaVey, The Devil’s Notebook (1992) — short essays on practical and cultural subjects.
4. Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Scriptures (2007) — collected later writings and institutional reflections.
5. Peter H. Gilmore, The Satanic Scriptures introduction and Church of Satan essays — contemporary official interpretations of LaVeyan Satanism.
For a broader understanding, these works should be supplemented by academic studies of new religious movements, secularism, occultism, and the history of moral panics.
Legacy
The enduring significance of The Satanic Scriptures lies less in any claim to sacred revelation than in its clear expression of a modern religious paradox. It is a book associated with Satan, yet its central Satan is not a supernatural devil. It uses the language of religion while resisting traditional religious submission. It defends individual freedom while demanding personal responsibility. It attacks moral conformity while advancing a demanding, and controversial, ethic of self-definition.
For supporters, the book preserves the uncompromising voice of a movement that insists people should think for themselves and refuse shame imposed by religious authority. For critics, it reveals the limits and risks of radical individualism, elitist language, and provocation elevated into philosophy. For historians, it is an essential document of modern Satanism’s most influential atheistic tradition.
Its most useful lesson may be the simplest: Satanism is not one thing. To understand The Satanic Scriptures, readers must distinguish between symbol and belief, theatrical rhetoric and lived practice, institutional authority and personal interpretation—and between the many movements that have chosen Satan as a name, an adversary, an icon, or a metaphor.