By Jake Block

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is derowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Trobles my sight; a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless in the sun, Is moving is slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking candle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I suppose some might wonder why I would quote a relatively obscure poem by Yeats from 1919 to begin what could be seen as a talk to you from one of the ancient gray beards that were around when this thing of ours that we call Satanism breathed its first painful breath into a world that was unready for it, bequeathed to a progeny who might never be. But as I approach the end of my time on this planet, it would be likely that I might have had a few small insights along the way that might help those who follow my trail.

One of the things that people ask me most, aside from, “Wow, man, did Anton toke up?” or, “Wow, man is it true that he almost beat that lion to death…?” (No he didn’t toke up, and think about it; LaVey at his best was 6’2” tall and weighed maybe 220 pounds. A young adult Nubian lion is 6′ long, weighing 300 to 400 pounds with razor sharp claws and dagger-like fangs and a tightly muscular body, coiled like a spring with one purpose… death to its prey. No. He did not.) But I digress. They ask me, what did LaVey think about the Satanists coming up after him? And therein is the import of the poem.

LaVey would most answer that question with the line, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” If he said it to you, and you thought about what he was saying, you might feel a crimson rush to your face as if slapped and you hoped upon hope that he certainly could not be talking about YOU. He had a look that saw through to your “soul,” and tested your marrow with just a glance, as if in that instant, like Anubis, he was gauging your worthiness for the afterlife.

In a humorous moment, he once described the men he would see in the carnivals lusting after the hoochie-coochie dancers on Saturday night, being in the church tent on Sunday, pious and prayerful before their families and friends while the objects of their lust of just a few hours ago might be singing in the choir. I once put it as, “Sewing one’s wild oats on Saturday and praying for a crop failure on Sunday.”

These days, they move apocalyptically, as I see it. And the end is coming more quickly than I would hope. And while I can HOPE for another 10 or 12 years of life, I have to be a realist and know that in a blur of pain and corruption, the body that is me will be no more. That’s ok. I can deal with that, as death is just another damned thing you have to do. But do I share that same vision for the future as my mentor? Do I see the falcons soar beyond the range of my voice as the world we know begins to crumble?

Unfortunately, I am here to tell you that as I see it, there are few bright lights on our paths, for those of us who embrace Satanism, yet fall prey to all of the pits and pratfalls of the degradation of the SPIRIT that made us what we are.

We want to believe that we are all divine in the “we are our own gods” in the “LaVeyan” vernacular. I hope that is the case, but in the vast majority of those who claim the mantel of Satanist, and especially when they preface it with “LaVeyan,” we’re not only missing the mark, but we’re many times not even facing the target. We (as a whole) are not much different than those men in the carnival tents who indulge in the baser desires, but succumb to them in our own hypocrisies.

You might ask, “How so?”

Let me paint a picture for you of the failed Satanist:  merely rebelling to rebel, with no purpose, but full of passionate intensity. This is one who condemns anything around him that he or she sees as “mundane” vehemently, damning the Christian, Muslim and Jew for their lockstep with societal norms. One who will proudly use the buzzwords of today’s scornful “god,” with a disapproving glare for those not of his flock… sorry… team. They are quick to judge, all the while demanding THEIR right to choose. They claim intellectual superiority, all the while rejecting the idea that knowing is different than parroting the words of the prophets of the day: Hitchens, Carlin, et al. and thumping their “anti-bible” faster than Neil Peart can rattle a drum-kit on that riser that places him above those who stare up in wide wonder at his power and control.

They’re sewing their wild oats, for sure. Bad-boys and girls flaunting their disapproval of the mundane masses and their “faith” and their “dogmas,” never realizing that in blindly quoting and taking as fact the words of their saints of un-godliness and “Atheism,” they simply become a counterpoint, the flip side of the coin,, rather than am evolutionary replacement for the herded masses.

Just an anecdote… two years ago, my Facebook page was overrun with ATHEIST “propaganda” damning religion and anyone who had faith and anyone who belonged to that flock out there that they felt was theirs to shear. This went on for months and months, as repetitive as any street-corner preacher’s message, but instead of “GOD SAYS,” it was overflowing with “ATHEIST BOB SAYS.”

Then… silence. Two days of blissful silence; a respite from the preaching and proselytizing. I looked at my calendar. December 24th and December 25th.  In an almost insanely humorous revelation, the image of those men in the church tent. “praying for the crop failure” came back to mind.

December 26th, the propaganda returned, but this time I returned their posts, asking, “WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU ON DECEMBER 24th and 25th?” Holding the mirror up, and daring them to look with that “clear vision” they so much proclaimed. I was DE-FRIENDED in a massive way, over night. Ahhhhhh, relief from that constant bleating from the herd. Sorry team.

Sure. I had a few try to justify this flip-flop. It was just for “the kids,” or “but I got a bunch of presents,” etc. Hey, it’s not MY life. I can look myself in the mirror and know that 24/7/365, I am what I am, unapologetic and unreservedly so. But people do what they need to do to survive and fit in with their surroundings, That’s ok,  just don’t damn others for doing the same thing. If you are TRULY different, then embrace it. But don’t lord it over others, because in the long run, you simply become part of a different herd, rather than the wolf on the hill.

Do I see that changing as we “mature” as Satanists? I’m sad to say no, as much as I would like to see it. There are a few bright lights out there on the horizon, but unless the hearts and minds of those who seek association with them change, what we will end up with is the Satanic equivalent of the Second Baptist Church in any town USA, mouthing the words when we think they will do us some good and insuring that Aunt Wilma will send us our package of tube socks “From Jesus With Love” on Christmas.

As much as I like the internet, because it gives me a lot of resources that I can draw upon to aid in my creative efforts, I’m going to tell people that it is not reality, and if anything on the internet becomes your reality, please seek medical attention immediately. We as Satanists are NOT in a war, we are NOT killing people and burying them in mass graves. There are people who will tell you we are. And there are people who will weave a tale of a vast Satanic conspiracy, of which they are, of course, the leader. They’re “the Illuminati,” or they’re “the Bilderbergs.” or they’re the devil worshippers at The Bohemian Grove. No, they aren’t. They are words on a screen until proven otherwise in physical reality and fact.

Turn off the computer once in a while and get the hell out of the house. If your “soul mate” is out there, chances are they aren’t going to be found while sitting in your underwear swilling a beer and staring at a screenshot of “Russian Beauties Who Want Only YOU.” And while we’re at it, knock off the damned daily drama! If what someone says to you on a computer screen is that important to you and you need to spend the next six weeks fighting back and forth… just get a life, ok?

It’s been said that winning a fight on the Internet is like winning a race in the Special Olympics. At the end of it all, you’re still retarded. Get into the real world and do something. Get a job. Get laid. Just go for a walk. Believe me, the internet is exactly like those silly soap operas on TV. If you go on vacation for six weeks, when you come back the same drama and bickering will still be going on with the same people, making the same points in the same place.

Unless we as people learn to cut that electric leash, we will always be at its beck and call, as it feeds us pablum of dumbed-down thought and the almost Orwellian Think-speak of texting. “Thx bb ttyl…” isn’t much different than 2 times butter double-plus good” on the communication scale. And for those of you who have half a mind free yet, think of this. Why would “the man” encourage us to buy communications devices and then use a language so simple and so limited as text?

Well, limited vocabulary is a good thing in a control mechanism. You want those you would control to be unable to communicate in complex thought. Keep it simple and they are easy to steer in the direction you most want them to go, without having to worry about them trying to communicate complex thoughts like revolution, dissidence or independence or creative thought. That would be “Double-plus un-good.”

Speaking of un-good, I would like to discuss the substance ingesting segment of our darker section of the world. Now, I don’t care whether you use drugs or not. It’s your body, and as long as you don’t involve me, I just don’t care…but spare me this, please. I don’t want to have to hear and read about it from you every five minutes, if you don’t mind.

Which brings me to…

One of LaVey’s favorite movies was BLADE RUNNER, as it almost mirrored what he thought our future might very well turn out to be. He thought we might see a world of technological marvels, but fueled by a permanent underclass of people (Proles), who would be systematically addicted to substances by the control structure and kept stoned enough and docile enough that they would do the “dirty jobs” that have to be done; always with the carrot at the end of the stick that good, hard labor will set you free, but in reality, being kept illiterate enough and dependent enough that generation after generation served and suffered.

But he also saw the opportunity to control their actions through simple manipulations, such as having the control element supply the drugs, but building up a mythos that in taking those drugs that will enslave you to this underclass of the people, you were somehow “sticking it to the man…” And then you price control the drugs that you have already addicted them to by keeping the price low enough so that they can be obtained by anyone in the “prole class,” but expensive enough that it ate into the financial needs of the proles, forcing them into debt to survive with just a few comforts and time consuming, buy mind numbing entertainments and ensuring that they never quite made enough to ever get out of debt with high interests and long term contractual entanglements.

The EXCESS in Prole society? That becomes a source of cheap labor and subject to entrepreneurial commerce. You may have figured it out already. The Prole class would become a large and permanently active prisoner based work force, (in COMMERCIALLY RUN PRISONS), convicted of crimes that would keep the cells full and products being produced for little or no pay, fed the minimum to keep them alive and refused access to the drugs that got them into prisons, yet quietly supplied by the prison staff in “prisoner run black markets,” where the prisoners could again stick it to the man by remaining addicted to the drugs the man was supplying.

That’s a hell of a frightening future that he thought could well be orchestrated in plain sight of those who were led to believe and bred to follow. But wait a moment… sounds like it might have already happened. My point is that I see a lot of people who claim that they are Satanists and in control of their own lives walking into that trap. Sold a bill of goods that says that the drugs will “open your mind,” or give you insights or any number of things. But at what cost? The line from the Bible comes to mind: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8.36)

I see Satanists that want it all, but shun the education that will give them the wherewithal to GET IT. I see complacency and I see laziness and I see a slippery slope to that Blade Runner type future. So, am I here to prevent it? No. Truth is, I am in favor of it happening and, while it won’t happen in my lifetime, if we keep things going the way they are, it eventually WILL.

Yes. These days, they move apocalyptically. But then, they always have.