[excerpted from http://www.cris.com/~Amon1/satanism/watcher5.txt (reformatted by tn)] THE FIRST REBEL By Illuminatus "Satan is the first free-thinker and Saviour of the World. He frees Adam and impresses the seal of humanity and liberty on his forehead, by making him disobedient." Thus stated Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian Anarchist philosopher. Jehovah, Allah and many other god-concepts have been used since the dawn of humankind to enslave the individual and stifle his ascent, at the behest of vested interests, ruling the cliques and coteries. Often it is that Government and Church have worked hand-in-hand to crush the human spirit. What then of Satan, whom Bakunin praised as the first free-thinker and liberator of man? Is it a paradox that this Father of Anarchism should identify with such a figure, for is not Satan simply another God-despot?" No! Satan - whether defined as a symbol, an archetype or a literal entity - is not God, but Anti-God. What did Bakunin mean, with his allusion to the freeing of Adam through disobedience? Turning to the Judaeo-Christians' own scriptures we find that it was Satan who offered humankind the choice of free-will, or continued enslavement to the tyrant-god. The first archetypical human couple chose freedom, and willfully disobeying the godly-tyrant partook of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, gaining self-consciousness and the ability for independent thought. (Genesis 2-3). Satan is representative of freedom from godly-tyranny and the worship of ignorant superstition. Satanism and 'devil worship' are antithetical rather than synonymous, for the latter simply substitutes Satan for Jehovah/Jesus; the devil-worshipper is an inverse-Christian. WHAT IS SATAN? Who or what then is Satan? A malevolent figure of hideous aspect demanding that his adherents kiss his arse in homage> Reading the Old Testament and The Revelation this sounds more like Jehovah. The following is a more apt description of Satan, as given by Paul Carus, author of The History of The Devil: "Evil personified appears at first sight repulsive. But the more we study the personality of the Devil, the more fascinating it becomes. In the beginning of existence the Evil One is the embodiment of everything unpleasant, then of everything bad, evil and immoral. He is hatred, destruction, and the annihilation incarnate, and as such he is the adversary of existence, of the Creator, of God. The Devil is the rebel of the cosmos, the independent in the empire of the tyrant, the opposition to uniformity, the dissonance in universal harmony, the exception to the rule, the particular in the universal, the craving for originality, which bodily upsets the ordinance of God that enforce a definite kind of conduct; he overturns the monotony that would permeate the cosmic spheres if every atom in unconscious righteousness and with pious obedience slavishly followed a generally prescribed course." Satan is the embodiment of those forces which lead to progress and human ascent by upsetting the static order. Thus we see the rationale for Bakunin's championing of Satan, for he is the proto-Anarchist. ---------------- COSGNI (Anarchist) Box 58-524 Auckland Social Dis-Ease (Anarchist), $3.00 from: Anarchy Organisation Box 14156 Kilbirnie, Wgtn. NZ. Euphoria (Anarchist) from Tom McPhee 41 Osborne St. S. Yarra, Vic.3141, Australia. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Normality should be your total difference from it." -Austin Osman Spare ------------------------------------------------------------------------ excerpted from "The Watcher", November 1990CE XXV AS, Issue No. 5 originally edited by: Graeme Wilson P.O. Box 38-262 Petone Wellington New Zealand EOF