radicallysatan

[radicallysatan]

RadicallySatan thinks TERFs are mythological creatures.

In 415 CE, Hypatia of Alexandria - a female mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and civic leader - was accused of witchcraft and brutally murdered and dismembered by a fanatical mob of Christian monks lead by Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, who perceived her philosophy to be a Pagan threat. This perceived threat was evidently a scapegoat; Pagan men continued to disseminate their ideas at the university of Alexandria for many decades after Hypatia’s assassination. The reality is that Hypatia was uniquely targeted for her innate combination of femaleness and brilliance - a brilliance that threatened the position of power of a man. 

Throughout recorded human history, intelligent and accomplished women have been accused of witchcraft; most often by men afflicted with a serious collective psychosis. The affected men either do not understand these womens’ theories and are unable to follow their logic thus are frightened by what they do not understand; or simply believe - in their misogynistic hubris - that women who possess such intelligence are unnatural or demonic. The mental disease sometimes presents as a combination of both the aforementioned symptoms. 

Other women and girls are sometimes recruited in the persecution of women accused of sorcery. In these cases, the basis of witchcraft accusations is often in the suspected abuse and torment of children. The appeal to a mother’s instinct to protect her children encourages women to point fingers at each other and inculcate a fear of witches in their children - such is a classic “divide and conquer” strategy employed by men in numerous contexts. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 began when two girls - nine year old Betty Parris and eleven or twelve year old Abigail Williams - began to exhibit symptoms of what may have been neuropsychiatric disturbance caused by convulsive ergotism. The wheat the town was eating was infected with a neurotoxic fungus. William Griggs, the village physician, was unable to identify the true physical ailment and diagnosed the girls as being possessed by an “Evil Hand”. As the disease spread, more women and young girls came forth with the same affliction, stating that they were being targeted by witches. Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and an enslaved woman in the Parris household who was known only by the name Tituba, were accused of witchcraft by this core group of afflicted girls. In the end, over 200 people in the village, most of them women, were accused of witchcraft. Fourteen women were hanged.

Women who are distressed or suffering from an unidentified disease have also been accused of lycanthropy, involvement with witchcraft or diagnosed with nonsense fictive diseases such as “wandering uterus” or “hysteria”, originating from the Greek word hystera meaning “uterus”; labels that were designed to belittle them and their suffering. Any and all physical or mental ailments experienced by a woman were thought to be explained by a wandering uterus, treatable of course with marriage, insemination and pregnancy. When that inevitably didn’t work, the melancholy of a chronically sick and untreated woman who was downtrodden in an oppressive marriage wherein she was a slave to her husband and had no autonomy was thought to be due to a general female predisposition to mental illness rather than her nightmarish circumstances and she would be labelled as “hysterical”. 

All these accusations were built on ridiculous myths invented by benefactors of patriarchy and ignorant, fanatical blindlighters who were unable or unwilling to find real scientific or logical explanations for things they did not understand. Sorcery, lycanthropy, wandering uterus and hysteria are not real. They are fictions invented by men with the purpose of keeping women in a disempowered and subordinate position, and the means is wilful ignorance, dehumanisation and demonisation.

The trend of witch-hunting; that is, men (and sometimes women) disbelieving, underestimating, wilfully misunderstanding and accusing women of being something evil and less than or other than human in order to scapegoat them as the cause of a problem, goes back millenia and continues in the modern day. The Writer has noticed one such example:

Liberal pseudo-feminist trans rights activists - The Writer henceforth dubs them TRAPs (standing for Trans Rights Activist Pseudo-feminists) to differentiate them from regular TRAs - use the acronym TERF (standing for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) to refer to a type of radical feminist whose feminism excludes transgender people on the basis of transphobia. TRAPs view TERF rhetoric as bioessentialist and anti-trans rights. What they mean by “bioessentialist” is the reduction of members of a biological category - in this case, sex - to one or more of each of the individual shared traits that define the category. For example, if a Feminist says “only women have uteruses”, the TRAP will reply: “That’s reducing women to the function of their reproductive organs! What about women who have had hysterectomies and don’t have uteruses? Are you saying they aren’t women? You’re a bioessentialist!” 

The fallacy being committed here is a strawman - the Feminist did not say “all women have uteruses and if you don’t have one, you’re not a woman”, nor did she say “women are (only) defined by the function of their uteruses”. The reality is that Feminists know that women who have had reproductive organs removed do in fact remain women, and it is a right-wing socially regressive belief - not a Feminist belief - that women are just walking baby making machines and nothing more. 

Nothing about the Feminist’s actual stated beliefs should cause the TRAP to feel threatened. The TRAP has invented a fantasy in their head of what they think the Feminist said and in so doing accuses her of bigotry, but it does not at all address what she actually said. This happens because the TRAP is a masochrist - a person who has a complex of both martyrdom and victimhood rolled up into one - and so they construct strawmen of what the Feminist actually says in order to fulfil their holier-than-thou persecution fantasy. For them, the purpose of the interaction is not about having any kind of genuine discussion or debate. It is purely to satisfy themselves that they are the ones who are “right”, and thus inflate their empty egos.

The TRAP also makes the mistake of misusing the word “bioessentialist”. While they have their own usage of the word, it was co-opted from earlier Feminist movements that stated that the only requirements for a person to be a woman are that she is female and an adult. She does not need to have a feminine appearance, feminine clothing, feminine aspirations or feminine thoughts. Likewise, a man does not need to have a masculine appearance, masculine clothing, masculine aspirations or masculine thoughts to be a man; he is merely required to be male and an adult. Bioessentialism is the name Feminists gave to the position that femaleness inherently begets femininity, maleness inherently begets masculinity, and that masculine women are not really women and feminine men are not really men. Feminists do not hold this position, so the TRAPs accusation that the Feminist is a bioessentialist is also a strawman. Additionally, the bioessentialist position echoes that of the TRAP much more closely; they believe that one can “feel” as if they are a woman and if they do, they actually are one, regardless of their biology. 

There is similarly erroneous reasoning about the TRAP’s belief that the Feminist is against “trans rights”. In the TRAP’s mind, Feminists want to take away the transgender person’s natural right to alter their body however they see fit. They believe that Feminists want to ultimately ban medical transition for all people who struggle with gender dysphoria, including fully informed consenting adults, and that Feminists are against gender nonconformity and want to enforce sex-based gender roles. 

This is plainly false; every right that any person has, Feminists want transgender people to also have. Feminists do not want transgender people to be afforded special treatment or to have extra rights that everyone else does not have. Feminists are also required by their own progressive beliefs to not only be tolerant and accepting but actively encouraging of gender nonconformity. Additionally, the goal of Feminism has always been oriented to the liberation of women from the imposition of gender roles; Feminists want the abolition of gender roles, not their enforcement. It is the TRAP who places high importance on gendered social performance, thinks that adopting a different gender role means that one should be legally recognised as the opposite sex and thus be able to appropriate the associated sex-based rights, and would prefer to sterilise children than to allow their gender nonconformity to be visible to others. The Writer thinks these accusations of bioessentialism, enforcement of gender roles and preference for strict gender conformity might be a case of projection on the part of the TRAP, but prefers not to digress too much into that topic.

The Writer cannot speak for other Feminists on this topic, but declares to hold the position that every individual should be allowed to define their own gender should they choose to impose one on themselves. This is because “gender identity” is really just a way of separating various personality types into a sliding scale categorisation with the most feminine on one end and the most masculine on the other - one can choose to describe themselves within this paradigm if they wish, but its importance should be regarded as on a par with horoscopes or personality quizzes. For the same reason that “personality type” is not a protected characteristic, “gender identity” should have no bearing on how one is treated within law. There should be no equivalent “gender marker” on legal identification documents because gender, due to its post-modern neo-religious spiritualism of being entirely founded on nebulous feelings that no one can define and that can even change from moment to moment in some individuals such as in gender-fluid identities, should not be a concept enshrined in law. Nobody should have the right to define their own sex or to change their sex marker on any of their legal identification documents because sex is an innate and immutable characteristic. And in any case, an honest transgender person who asserts that sex and gender are two different things and that sex does not determine gender should not care about what their sex marker says.

When a Feminist says “womanhood is not a feeling, nor is it how you choose to dress and present yourself, nor is it the social role you choose to perform. Womanhood is the state of belonging to the biological category of adult female human”, or “You were born male so you will never be a woman. That word only refers to adult female humans and humans cannot change sex. No matter how many surgeries you get or hormones you take to try to emulate women, you will never truly become one of us”, the TRAP says “That’s transphobic! There is no way to define womanhood to exclude trans-women without also excluding some cis-women!”. 

This is silly firstly because the accusation of transphobia is entirely unfounded. If transphobia is defined as “hate or general negative feelings directed at a person or persons because they are transgender and/or at the concept of transness in general”, then the simple, impassive recognition of the fact that a transfeminine male remains male is neither hateful nor phobic. It is not intended to nor does it put the transfeminine male in danger, nor does it express any animosity toward the concept of males physically or medically feminising their bodies, or people using cross-sex hormones and surgeries in attempts to emulate the opposite sex in general. The Feminist’s rejection of the transfeminine male’s self-identification as a woman is not because of hate or fear; it is merely a disagreement. 

The second fallacy here is that the TRAP asserts that there is no real difference between transfeminine males and women, but validation of the difference is baked into their counterargument: If TERFs regard only “cis-women” as actual women, then whatever it is that TRAPs regard as the defining difference between “cis-women” and “trans-women” is what demarks the difference between women and transfeminine males for Feminists. TRAPs profess to believe in a difference between gender identity and biological sex, which means that they must be entirely aware of what that demarcation between “trans-women” and “cis-women” is - they just feign oblivion when the difference is an inconvenience for their argument. It is very easy to thus define womanhood in such a way that includes all women, excludes no women, and excludes all transfeminine males. Observe:

A woman is an adult member of the species homo sapiens who, while gestating in utero, went down the sex development pathway that differentiated her gonads into ovaries; the organs that are structured around the reproductive function of producing the large immobile gamete. Thus, she either will, does, did, or would if not for a disorder, disease, injury, surgery, or other medical anomaly, produce ova, menstruate, and have the ability to become pregnant.

This definition encompasses all women of all backgrounds, including women with disorders of sexual development (DSDs); women who have had hysterectomies; women who have had ovariectomies; women who have been victims of female genital mutilation; post-menopausal women; and women who are infertile or sterile; and excludes all transfeminine males, completely without issue. Thus the matter that is faced here is not one of definitions, but of the TRAP’s ability and willingness to understand them.

You may have noticed, dear reader, that this definition of “woman” also includes whom the pseudo-feminists, TRAs and TRAPs call “trans-men”: adult female humans who have medically and/or surgically masculinised their bodies in attempts to emulate men. Such an observation would be correct - and therefore, such individuals are also included by definition as amongst the intended primary benefactors of the Feminist movement. If this is truly the case - which it certainly is - then the so-called trans-exclusive radical feminism of the Feminists that TRAPs are so vehemently against is actually not so trans-exclusive after all.

In actuality, all radical feminism is trans-inclusive - it is just sex-selective of which transgender people it includes. Feminism can never be about or center the needs, feelings, desires or rights of men, precisely because men are males, and the male anatomy that is observed at birth is where male privilege attaches. Therefore, transfeminine males cannot be included as primary intended benefactors of Feminism, but transmasculine females certainly can be and are included. It is quite apparent then, that whether or not someone can be considered part of the Feminist movement has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they are transgender and absolutely everything to do with their sex. Thus transfeminine males must make their own civil rights movement for the benefit of transgender people, and not hijack Feminism - a civil rights movement for the benefit of women and women alone - for their own purposes. Since TRAPs accept that even in their own ideology, there is a philosophically relevant difference between gender identity and sex, they should have absolutely no problem with this. And yet, they are deeply offended and incensed by it. 

What is this empty and foolish bugaboo, the flames of which the trans rights activists stoke amongst common folk with their ridiculous, groundless ranting about horrible, ghastly, transphobic witches who want transgender people to lose all their rights and become targets of genocidal maniacs? And this cruel ridicule and dehumanisation of Feminists and lesbians who are genuinely afraid of males being legally sanctioned to enter their female-only spaces and threaten their safety, a fear that is validated by transfeminine males who call them “cunts”, “bitches” and “scum” and threaten them with corrective rape? Does it not echo of times past when men would rape women who were neurotic or melancholic and call it a “cure”? Are their threats to kill or maim women they perceive to be TERFs not reminiscent of the behaviour of men who hanged, drowned, and burned at the stake women who they perceived to be dangerous on the basis of witchcraft allegations? It is the Satanic Feminist’s duty to never forget past orthodoxies and recognise the patterns when she sees them lest history be allowed to repeat itself.

Within the psyche of the liberal pseudo-feminist trans rights activist, the TERF is a female humanoid creature - similar to a crone or a hag - who, with her maleficent magic and other powers of destruction, targets transgender individuals and transgender people as a collective, under the guise that she is a woman who is trying to protect other women from men who would disguise themselves as women in order to sexually prey on them. She probably does not actually care about women at all; the goals of the TERF are purely centered around transphobia and being cruel to transgender people - transfeminine males in particular - while ignoring the existence of transmasculine females and how counter-activism against the progression of trans rights can backfire against feminism and cause erosion of women’s rights.

This narrative is entirely mythological; a fabrication borne out of willful ignorance and misinterpretation of rhetoric that was always very clear. Much like sorcerers, lycanthropes and wandering uteruses, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists do not exist. They are a fiction made up by TRAPs to demonise and silence Feminists, much like how witchcraft accusations throughout history were employed to persecute women who sought to empower themselves. Notice also that it is almost always women who are accused of being TERFs and threatened with physical or sexual violence, while men who would actually fit the definition of "TERF" are usually either ignored or slapped with an entirely different label such as "right-wing gender critical" or simply “transphobe” and never punished for their wrongthought in the same way. This closely matches the pattern of historical witchcraft accusations disproportionately targeting women. There are non-feminist trans-exclusionary ideologies, but radical feminism is not only always trans-inclusive - it is actually impossible for it to be anything but and still be internally consistent.

Just as there are women who choose to call themselves witches in an act of rebellion against patriarchy, there are women who have claimed the title TERF as a positive descriptor of themselves and their Feminism. These TERFs are real, but just because they share a name with the imaginary TERFs that TRAPs have invented in their heads, does not mean that they are anything like the imaginary TERFs or that the name real TERFs give themselves is not a total misnomer. Real TERFs are not really TERFs at all, but it brings them satisfaction and vital energy to take power away from a word that is used to terrorise them.

The myth of the TERF is popular among trans rights activists and pseudo-feminists because it perfectly fits their sado-masochristic needs. Just as the accusation of Paganism gave Cyril an excuse to assassinate Hypatia, the accusation of TERFism gives TRAPs an excuse to physically assault Feminists under the pretence of justice and self-defense. Just as the Salem women used scary stories of witches to crystallise their childrens’ indoctrination into Christianity, TRAPs can use the myth of TERFs to frighten gender nonconforming children and young adults into adopting pro-gender pseudo-feminist politics. The children and young adults who possess that same masochristic complex can also be convinced that they themselves are transgender, and become more deeply invested in (trans)gender ideology and pseudo-feminist politics. And just as medical doctors in the 17th century used the fictitious diagnosis of hysteria to force women into being married, barefoot and pregnant, TRAPs accuse Feminists and lesbians of having a prejudice against and an irrational fear of transgender people in order to force them to share their female-only spaces with males. They are trying to silence them - not because of a conspiracy or psyop, but because TRAPs are often liberal pseudo-feminist women who are victims of the same female socialisation that trains women to center the desires of men and to beat down any women who go against that grain.

Just as people throughout history have labeled female scientists and mathematicians as “witches” and distressed women as “hysterical”, male TRAPs label Feminists as TERFs to demonise and scoff at the behaviour and rhetoric they do not bother to even try to understand because their privilege depends on them not being able to understand it. When TRAPs threaten to punch, rape, or kill TERFs, or try to “educate” people about transgender identities and rights, all they are really doing is the modern western world equivalent of accusing ordinary harmless women of sorcery. Both situations arise when people make accusations that are based on groundless, unfalsifiable claims such as “dog whistles” or “invisible supernatural powers”. And when the accused inevitably cannot defend themselves against specious claims that would be extinguished if the accusers actually understood the viewpoint of the accused, it is taken as evidence or an admission of guilt. 

TRAs and TRAPs are afflicted with the same mental disease as the men who murdered Hypatia and the men, women and girls who were complicit or made active accusations during the Salem Witch Trials. Anti-TERF rhetoric and violence is a kind of modern-day witch hunt; women who are accused of being TERFs and demeaned, threatened and assaulted are treated with the exact same brand of misogynistic brutality that witch-hunting folk commit(ted) - just of a different flavour. When these people have a problem or simply dislike something, they feel compelled to point at women and scream “witch!” in order to shift the blame onto them. This recurring societal illness simply adapts to the present-day language of socially acceptable persecution of women. Today, those women are not known as “witches”, but as “TERFs”. 

References:

terfisaslur.com

Special Acknowledgements:

King Critical

[radicallysatan]

RadicallySatan thinks straight men are a minority.

The Writer has observed that so-called “straight men” are not truly attracted to women; they are attracted to the imposition and performance of femininity because it makes them feel masculine in juxtaposition. They are not attracted to femaleness, because being female has nothing whatsoever to do with dresses, long hair, makeup or high heels. Men who are attracted to hyperfeminised male bodies in woman-face in addition to women who perform femininity are pseudo-straight.

A majority of so-called “straight men” are open to sleeping with transfeminine males with or without intact penises. This is because the sexual interaction with a male who has removed himself from the competition for female attention satisfies the automasculinisation fetish of the pseudo-straight man, who then feels superior to the transfeminine male by nature of the feminine-masculine dynamic between them both. The pseudo-straight man has so severely othered the transfeminine male that the sexual attraction he feels is really an admiration for his own masculinity and perceived superiority. Similarly, the sexual interaction serves as validation for the transfeminine male; it affirms that he “passes” well enough to garner what he perceives as heterosexual male attention. Ultimately, the entire interaction is centred around the fragile ego of each respective participant and has nothing to do with forming a real intimate connection.

A similar mechanism occurs in the sexual interactions between the pseudo-straight man and the feminine woman. When he has sexual intercourse with the feminine woman, he does not do so to admire and love her; he does so to admire and love himself and degrade her. For the pseudo-straight man, sex is not an intimate act between a loving couple, but a violent act of conquest - an act that affirms his status as a superior, manly being; the one doing the fucking as opposed to the one being fucked. The one being conquered is always feminine regardless of whether they are actually male or female because to him, sex is a means for him to feel powerful, not loved; it consists only of the attacker and the attacked, the coloniser and the colonised. And in patriarchy, the one who is forced to be feminine - the woman - is the one who takes the abuse. The transfeminine male serves as a proxy for the abused female in the pseudo-straight man’s fantasy.

This psychology can be clearly seen in popular manosphere figures such as Andrew Tate, who has openly stated he would gladly have sexual intercourse with a penis-endowed Megan Fox. These men are not attracted to women who are not stereotypically feminine and in some cases will even call them “men”. The femaleness of women is not at all relevant to the question of sexual attraction; for the pseudo-straight man, sexual attraction is entirely about fetishistic ornamentation, the only human element being subjugation, humiliation and degradation.

Compare this behaviour to that of homosexual men and women (including but not limited to exclusive homosexuals), who can be masculine, feminine or neither, yet the attraction to their respective partners is still there. This is because homosexuality is a real sexual orientation, not just a fetish; homosexual men are actually attracted to men, not masculinity, and homosexual women are actually attracted to women, not femininity. The respective maleness or femaleness of their partners is the first prerequisite for a relationship and mutual sexual attraction. There is no requirement for a gendered social imposition or performance. Homosexuals are non-oppressive sexual and romantic partners, whereas so-called “straight” men are always oppressive to their partners.

However, while pseudo-straight men are perhaps the majority, The Writer believes that real straight men do exist. Real heterosexual men are men who are attracted to women because they are female. They are attracted to the female form, regardless of whether she performs femininity. Real heterosexual men do not care if their partners have long hair or are bald, have shaved bodies or hairy bodies, wear skirts or tracksuits, go full-face or bare-face, or wear stilettos or sneakers. These are the men who have sexual intercourse with women because they love and admire women. They do not have sexual intercourse just as a means to inflate their own impoverished egos. These men are likely a very small minority, but they absolutely exist. Some of them may not even self-identify as straight, because they have had a healthy reaction to the abusive hypersexualisation of women in modern society and sexually shut down. They may identify as asexual, demisexual or heteroromantic. Some of them may even identify as bisexual with a hetero-leaning preference, because as it turns out, true heterosexual men are less afraid to sexually experiment because they do not see sex with a masculine male as a threat to their own manhood.

The Writer is not naïve enough to assert that the minds of true heterosexual men are not influenced by patriarchy. They certainly are. While true heterosexual men are non-oppressive within the sexual context, that does not mean that they do not have other preconceptions about women that are harmful. Women would do well to remember that a true heterosexual man is still a man and a benefactor of patriarchy. Stay vigilant.

Some men may claim to be ex-pseudos or otherwise “changed” - be wary of them. The water in the chalice need only be poisoned once. A few of them might be earnest in their efforts to change, but that does not mean they can. They may have decided to settle down with a woman, but that does not mean they have that woman’s best interests at heart. Pseudo-straight men cannot be changed. They cannot be moulded into or persuaded to become real heterosexual men. Sexual orientations are fixed, fetishes are mostly fixed, conversion therapy does not work under any circumstances, and the trauma that pseudo-straight men inflict upon the women they lay down with is inevitable.

Pseudo-straight men are defective - not because they aren’t straight - but because they will never experience the joy of true intimacy, and especially because their sexuality inherently harms women. These men are embarrassed by themselves, hence they do not share their deepest inner core with their partner(s) and have a need to humiliate their partner(s) to avoid their own fear of being humiliated in a situation where they would otherwise be vulnerable. They do not trust anyone to handle their insecurities with gentleness, because they were not taught how to do so for others. They put on a mask to compensate for their own actual and perceived inadequacies. This all sounds very tragic, but The Writer urges you, dear reader, to not feel sorry for them. They will not return the favour. Show them an ounce of kindness, and your thanks will be negging and other forms of abuse. These men are pathetic, loathsome creatures. They are pure fetishists and perverts devoid of any real or genuine sexual expression, who have empty, meaningless sex that does not provide them with true release. That is why they are driven to sexual compulsion and openly behave like degenerates, rather than derive true gratification and dignity from genuine indulgence in amatory delights.

References

1. Universal Vagina by Andrea Long Chu

Special Acknowledgements

Is Having Sex With Men Gay? A Video Essay by King Critical

[radicallysatan]

Is resonance instability or merely an initiation?

SatanThinks that the Church of Satan naturally attracts unstable people with empty heads because that is all The Satanic Bible can possibly do precisely by virtue of the fact that it is a bible. While His Infernal Majesty definitely has a point (or multiple), the type of resonance that pertains to new readers of The Satanic Bible is not the kind that caused the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to collapse. The resonance Peter Gilmore actually refers to is the kind known as emotional resonance - a psychological phenomenon wherein the source of the oscillations that are reinforced and amplified is the emotional or psychological state of another human being. Put in plain English, this means that two happy people in a room together will amplify and intensify each others’ happiness. Two angry people will make each other more angry, two anxious people will eventually end up in a full-blown panic, and so on. 

Lesser Magic theory will tell you that emotional and psychological states can be carried in objects, such as art pieces, musical mediums, and of course, books. Such mediums take a personal snapshot of the author’s emotional and psychological state at the point of creation, such that anyone consuming the media at a later point in time (including the author themselves) can access what the author was thinking and feeling at that time, and feel the same emotions (again). 

Perhaps Satan’s point then, was precisely that emotional resonance is unstable; after all, what may resonate with one person might not resonate with them anymore at a later time. This is significantly more likely to happen if the person exposes themselves to many different experiences and viewpoints and makes a concerted effort to not live within an echo-chamber. In fact, people who practice such habits are less likely to base any of their beliefs on “resonance” in the first place, because resonance - lacking any walls off which to do its resonating - under such circumstances becomes less and less relevant, being relegated instead to the appreciation of poetry, art pieces or music and not entire philosophies or worldviews. But such people are rare, and The Writer is sure that Old Nick knows better than anyone that human-beings are prone to immersing themselves in echo-chambers because resonance feels good. It makes them feel like they are right; and most everyone wants to be right. 

It is here it becomes most germane to point out that “resonance” also refers to the opinions and beliefs of people conversing in the same room, reading the same newspaper or watching the same documentaries. People who consume the same media frequently enough for long enough are likely to eventually have the same beliefs and opinions, even if they started out with opposing viewpoints. This is because of how higher repetition frequency intensifies the illusory truth effect; that repeated or oft-seen information is perceived as more truthful or trustworthy than new information. And when people consume said media together, they form emotional resonance around it, which strengthens the illusory truth effect. Thus it can be inferred that anyone who reads The Satanic Bible will eventually resonate with it if they read it enough times - especially if they do so with others (who already believe its contents).

However, resonance under those circumstances can perhaps be ignored or simply does not count as per Gilmore’s rule that The Satanic Bible “cannot convert you, [n]or persuade you in directions not inherent in your nature.” What then, is really meant by “resonating” with The Satanic Bible if that still refers to an emotional or psychological resonance?

The Writer has observed that such resonance usually only occurs under specific circumstances that lend themselves to gradual calcification of the Satanic identity. Typically, the situation is thus: A person experiences hardships that, in hindsight, they feel could have been solved by applying the philosophy outlined in The Satanic Bible. As a result, the reader feels that The Satanic Bible has saved them from further difficulties, as they feel they now have the tools they need to navigate and solve their problems. This "saved" mentality is typical of both New Age and fully-fledged religious behaviour. Some new Satanists will even express that Satanism actually saved their lives.

The mechanism behind this is threefold:

Firstly, the reader is accessing the emotions and thoughts Anton LaVey had at the time that he wrote his Satanic Bible, and many of those thoughts are observations that LaVey made about the world around him and how he felt about it. If the reader not only agrees with LaVey’s assessments of the state of the world but also feels the same way he did about it, then that is something with which they resonate. And “resonance” is truly an appropriate word for the experience, as a thought that the reader may have had only once or twice in passing but quickly batted away - often due to it not being a socially acceptable belief - is now permitted by LaVey’s text to be fully indulged while also being praised as a correct observation only held by those who are "the highest embodiment of human life", which amplifies the associated (usually positive) emotional oscillation. And as if by Magic, the reader feels as though they have been heard - that someone "gets" them and has "put into words" feelings that they have always felt. The reader may have even been previously tempted in a society where holding such beliefs is forbidden, making indulgence in the fruit all the more sweet when The Satanic Bible places it into the reader's hands. The reader forgets, of course, all the times that their thoughts did not line up with or were even in opposition to LaVey’s. This is due to the Barnum Effect: a psychological phenomenon wherein a vague and overly generalised description of one's personality is perceived as accurate because it serves as a reminder of all the times they did behave in the described manner, but does not evoke memories of the times they did not.

Secondly, the reader begins to apply methods that are outlined in The Satanic Bible intended for solving various common life problems and find that these methods yield desired results. For example, they might take LaVey's advice to remove psychic vampires from one's life, or at least take steps to minimise their impact. Upon achieving satisfactory yield, the reader usually misattributes their success to their own superior Satanic nature as revealed to them by The Satanic Bible, rather than realising that any idiot can follow simple instructions and get the exact results to be expected from doing so. More highly enthused readers may find themselves trying the Greater Magic rituals as outlined in The Satanic Bible and feeling the exact emotional responses the rituals are designed to invoke and amplify, taking that as evidence that the rituals "work". Some of the more intelligent readers will recognise that the emotional resonance is buried in the text by design and LaVey is successfully bewitching them, even from beyond the grave, meaning that any "resonance" they feel they have with the text is only there because LaVey is making appeals to base human instincts. Any higher order thoughts that one might pull from the text are only revisited after the reader has already been captured by the initial appeals to carnal decadence.

Thirdly and finally, the revisiting of those higher order thoughts and philosophical explorations prompt the initiate to start further reading and study of Satanic canon. This is the stage wherein the Satanic identity has potential to be calcified. Quite invariably, initiates find themselves "resonating" only with the parts of The Satanic Bible that appeal to base human instincts, as this is the very nature of emotional resonance; one cannot derive emotional resonance from unbiased scientific or philosophical inquiry. Perhaps by deliberate design, much of the more philosophical parts of The Satanic Bible are vague and difficult to understand without the assistance of supplementary information sources. Thus it is often observed that initiates have a need to ask clarifying questions about certain material in The Satanic Bible in order to fully grasp what Anton LaVey was saying and be "sure" that they are truly Satanists. Uncertainty on this is amplified by a quote from LaVey that "Satanists are born, not made" which manufactures anxiety that makes the initiate keen to prove to themselves and others that they are a Born Satanist. Feelings of impostor syndrome are common at this stage; it is here that initiates are most likely to abandon their conversion to Satanism and return to their life prior. Sometimes, initiates are shooed away and declared non-Satanists by Church of Satan members who perceive error in their interpretations of LaVey's writing. They may take with them a few useful pointers they have learned from The Satanic Bible, but otherwise the religion is usually left behind.

Initiates who persevere and try to make sense of LaVey's ambiguous writing by collecting and reading every Satanist-authored book they can find are the ones most likely to self-identify as Satanists in the long-term. Whether this stems from a sunk-cost fallacy, simple repeated exposure to the same set of claims or something else is unclear, but what is clear is that resonance is only one small part of a larger process of religious conversion. A conversion it is, as the majority of Satanists have a history of adhering to other religions, and LaVey stated in The Satanic Bible that one "become[s] a Satanist". And of course, there are the odd cases where an initiate is actually able to piece together a logical and coherent rationalisation of LaVey's writing, usually adopting the philosophy they work hard to iron out as their own beliefs. But The Writer is convinced that Satanists of this intellectual calibre are rare, observing instead that most initiates' idea of "study" is reading the same material over and over until they merely believe they understand it via sheer drilled repetition.

RadicallySatan believes that there is more required of a Satanist than mere emotional resonance and is thus not so sure of Satan's conclusion that the system is unstable. It is clear that resonance is not truly enough for an interested new reader to be considered a Satanist, and The Writer thinks that both Gilmore and His Infernal Majesty know this; if resonance were truly enough, then Gilmore would not have maintained that “Satanism demands study, not worship”, and LaVey would not ever have said it. Resonance merely acts as an initiation into Satanic thought; a way for new recruits to dip in their toes and see how the water feels. But one only truly becomes a Satanist a little later, after they have repeatedly poured over Satanic canon and LaVey's essays, and inculcated the ideas in their minds as illusory truths.

References:

1. SatanThinks resonance is instability 2. The Emperor’s New Religion by Ole Wolf 3. The Satanic Bible: Quasi-Scripture / Counter-Scripture by James R. Lewis 4. The Satanic Bible Underground Edition: “Satanism” Monograph (1968-1969) by Anton Szandor LaVey