11 Stanic Guidelines of the Turf
after some by Anton LaVey largely forgotten
1. Give your opinions when they would be welcomed and helpful.
2. Tell your troubles to others if you think they will want to hear them.
3. When in another’s lair, treat him as he treats you. No love wasted on ingrates.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, annoy him back with more insidious words.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless have permission.
6. Take gifts from those who beg you to accept them.
7. Give magic its due. Use it or lose it.
8. Try not to complain too much.
9. Don't hurt kids.
10. Don't hurt animals unless they're your food source, then slaughter them humanely.
11. When walking in open territory, if someone bothers you, destroy his reputation. Or treat him as he treats you. No love wasted on ingrates.
It's valuable to compare the sliding significances of these "Rules" (the "Eleven Satanic Rules of Earth" from LaVey (see below) and those above). To really get a sense of my intention here, you have to have the Rules and Guidelines open next to one another side by side.
I have created this document above because I am meeting up with "LaVeyan" Satanists who are reinterpreting the original LaVeyan 11 Rules to suit their desires by patently and illogically recontextualizing them and cryptically interpretating so as to fit their interest. They then maintain that they are following these rules and that they didn't make them up, LaVey did.
This is a *conventional religious activity*, and the phenomenon isn't new to me. However, I have got to the point where, when I am meeting "LaVeyan" Satanists who are justifying their adoption of the "Eleven Rules of the Earth" in very diluted and unsupportable manners, that I interview them quite calmly and ask them what these rules mean to them and how they apply them. I try not to be mean about it (sometimes a challenge).
Not long ago I came across one LaVeyan's interpretation that was so far off the original significance that I found it amusing, and so I decided to construct what I could infer would be the outside extreme mark of (what I called 'New Age Satanic' significance for these various rules in a comic satire. of COURSE you will agree with the guidelines. that's the POINT of my example. The question is how far do you see these guidelines (note the softening from 'rule' to 'guideline'!; note that it's STANIC in a mimicry of newbie typo!) have varied from the original rules, and what is reasonable to support?
Isn't it funny how religious will seek to retain the loyalty or alliance to the leader of their cult, even if informal, but seek to perturb the ideologies and restraints and specified data interior to their doctrines so as to do what they please while concealing this and pretending to conform to what their cult or leader professes? I find it immensely interesting (a sociologist of religion at heart; I've found this behaviour in all religious cults without exception).
HERE'S THE MEAT OF WHY I HAVE PLACED THIS PAGE HERE:
Analyzing this, pointing it out (at least to other peers, or those who are at a higher level of (anti-)religion than most beginning cultists) ought to be, by my evaluation, the activity of all esoteric/intellectual Satanists, breaking down religion in a scientific and rational sense, saving the portions that we like, and ditching what we find objectionable. Thereafter we may point out to whoever we like and to those 'in the know' (as on this web page in these paragraphs) how people are deceiving themselves or others to achieve their ends.
Anton LaVey's "The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth":
The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth
1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3. When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9. Do not harm little children.
10. Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.
©1967 Anton Szandor LaVey, obtained from the Church of Satan web site.
