The Church of Satan
An atheist philosophy in devil’s costume — documented construction, routinely confused with a panic.12
Documented connection
LaVey founded the church in San Francisco on Walpurgisnacht 1966, declaring “the Year One, Anno Satanas,” and gave it a scripture, The Satanic Bible (1969). Its content is an atheistic egoism: Satan is a symbol of the self and of nature, not a being to be worshipped. The organization, the date, and the founding book are all documented — a modern institution with a known author.
Asserted intent — firewalled
The church is routinely confused with the thing it is not: the 1980s Satanic Panic, the ritual-abuse conspiracy theory that imagined a coordinated occult program abducting and abusing children. That panic has no documented substrate — it is moral-panic synthesis, and the record of a self-declared atheist philosophy-church is not evidence for it. The construction is documented; the conspiracy is somebody else’s invention, and it is kept apart.
Role in the thesis
A manufactured faith that is honest about being one — its Satan a symbol, its scripture a compilation, its founding a dated event — and a standing case of how easily a documented construction is misread as a hidden design.
Referenced by. Where this entry is cited in the reading — hover any to read it in place.
- Scripture With a Bibliography — “The Church of Satan LaVey founded on Walpurgisnacht 1966 is, on its own account, an atheist philosophy — Satan a symbol of the self — and its scripture is a compilation with its seams showing.”