A history of black metal & it's ideologies.
"I see the universe as a chain around our necks. Totally negative: destroying them, chaining them, making them small. Salvation - it is the contradiction of everything that we know. The color of your hair or your eyes... all these things become totally devoid of meaning. I hate my flesh; I love the space in between the stars. Let them see that what they perceived as good, and real - is false."
-Selim Lemouchi
1. Closing the Book
Thacker describes cosmic pessimism as "the difficult thought of the
world as absolutely unhuman, and indifferent to the hopes, desires, and
struggles of human individuals and groups." Thacker discusses the
thought of human extinction, for instance - the destruction of all
mankind and our thought, and thus the negation of thought and no minds
to even think of that negation. This is a scenario that may well unfold;
in fact, it has been the fate of most species. The same 'cosmic
perspective' that would allow one to 'see beyond' our conventional
perspectives which concern themselves with values and judgments on a
scale limited to our culture and era ought to also turn our attention
not just to 'other' perspectives, but to greater scales of perspective
- the climatological, as Thacker says, but perhaps geological could be
used as well, as it often is to describe lengthy epochs that defy human
ability to conceive of them. From a cosmic perspective, the extinction
of man - and every other awful, unthinkable, but necessary, truth - must
be reckoned.
By why need it be pessimism? Understanding the cosmos as constituted in a horrific manner is a terrifying thought, for the thinker exists - and in fact, must exist - within the cosmos. But if we were to take this understanding and reverse it - what would we have? What would the corresponding position of optimism be? Cosmic optimism might be described as the opposite viewpoint, and represents what would be a differing understanding of the cosmos as constituted in a benign manner - this is not what we're looking for. Could one maintain the same understanding - the cosmos as indifferent, unhuman, perhaps hostile - but invert their interpretation of that understanding?
The term we're looking for is anti-cosmic optimism - this is the underlying philosophical position that is expressed by the religion known as anti-cosmic satanism. The cosmic pessimist laments the nature of the cosmos; the anti-cosmic optimist hopes for its destruction. The cosmic pessimist sees the a flawed reality; the anti-cosmic optimist sees a perfect non-reality. The cosmic pessimist has a negative attitude towards existence; the anti-cosmic optimist has a positive attitude towards non-existence.
This is the nature of the revaluation that anti-cosmic satanists have undergone. Thus, this new religion cannot be called cosmic pessimism, although it is a product of it. It is borne out of black metal, but not limited to it. It draws equally on its kindred ideologies in the primordial soup of black metal's pessimistic zeitgeist - equal parts satanic opposition to Christianity and pagan occult practices - whilst eschewing all non-theistic satanists and traditional or neo-pagan sects. Perhaps it is one possible formulation of the new 'darkness mysticism' that Thacker has conceived - although even here it is defiant, for anti-cosmic satanists justify their beliefs with a different God, albeit one named 'Satan'.
Even here, anti-cosmic satanists cannot be so easily understood. Satan in the anti-cosmic satanist ideology is not a 'deity' in the form of an entity or consciousness in the same way as God or gods are normally understood in other ideologies. Since it is a mystical belief system, these concepts are difficult to convey by their very nature, but perhaps the best explanation would be an understanding of Satan as more like a personification, or aspect, of Chaos. Chaos is a very important concept to anti-cosmic satanism, and it is a concept that means something between 'nothingness' and 'everything', or perhaps both at the same time.
To explain this, we must look at anti-cosmic satanist cosmology. In the beginning, there was nothing, but this nothingness was really Chaos - a reality of infinite dimensions of space, which are infinitely expanding, multiplying and collapsing. There is no time, and thus in these conditions nothing can 'be', since materialization and form are simply not possible. However, this is not to say that Chaos is 'empty'; in one sense it is, but in another sense, there are no 'laws' governing Chaos - either physical or logical - and thus anything can happen, and does. The result is that Chaos is pregnant with every possibility, all of which are happening at once, but the negation of every possibility is also happening, simultaneously. There is an actuality of nothing, but the potential for everything.
One of these possibilities was a sustained existence - in other words, the concept of duration, and therefore of 'things' with defined parameters, the passage of time, cause and effect, etc. Thus, within the vast churning maelstrom of Chaos, there was a 'contraction' of sorts, whereupon Chaos receded from being everywhere at once to being around a reality with a sustained existence. But if a reality is to exist, this reality would be robbing all potential realities from existing - whereas before they were all coming into existence at once, all the time, now, the actuality of one of those realities becoming the one and only cosmos destroys the others. Thus, Chaos wants to swallow up reality once more - the cosmos's defense against this is the creation of the cosmic gods, a challenge which Chaos answers with the anti-cosmic gods.
There is much, much more to this religion (you can find a lot of it by googling, but it will take some digging; you have to sift through a great deal of hearsay and rumors to find their actual texts). But this is at least a rudimentary understanding of the concepts involved, if not the specifics of the deities and events described - in one framing of their 'creation story', the Liber Azerate frames the tale into the characters and events of Enuma Elish, the Sumerian creation myth. Thus, Tiamat and Apsu, the primordial 'first gods' are more like the very wrath of Chaos itself against the rebellious defiler Marduk. He, like many of the offspring of the first generations of gods, are abhorred by their parents, who seek to destroy them. Marduk manages to defeat them and shape the sanctuary of the cosmos, which the text refers to as 'a stinking island' in the sea of Chaos - but the anti-cosmic gods rise from the blood of Tiamat, destined to eventually destroy it all.
It is a very Thackerian construction - the unhuman, unthinkable Chaos, receding just beyond the bounds of reality, ever pushing against it, yearning to collapse into it. However, the anti-cosmic satanist position - being underlain by anti-cosmic optimism, as its philosophical foundation - is one that celebrates this truth, and hopes for the day when Chaos will envelop everything. Due to the nature of their supernatural claims, this apocalypse is inevitable, and preferable.
Anti-cosmic satanists lament that our free, limitless souls are incarnated into the limitations of a physical body - I've read one passage that suggests that, in the course of this process, our souls are 'raped'. In this existence, we are certain to suffer greatly, and be forever enslaved to causation and duration - the tyranny of time. But they escape the position of cosmic pessimism through a sort of worship of death. Death is seen as a force of Chaos, intervening in the world, the inevitable consequence of the world being an aberration in a reality where, normally, nothing can attain 'being'. Thus, while our decay and eventual dissolution into nothing is assured, it is a long, slow process. But this is something to look forward to, for an anti-cosmic satanist. When one is not confined to their body, to a certain set of limitations on their being, they are instead limitless, and at one with all things. This necessarily overwhelms any individual perception of existence, and one would thus lose all of the traits of their own being - being one with everything means that your self becomes nothing. These types of beliefs certainly qualify as a type of 'darkness mysticism', the way Thacker described it earlier.
"Magic is not just confined to consciousness. All events, including the origin of the universe, happen basically by magic. That is to say, they arise spontaneously without a final prior cause. Matter gives the appearance of being governed by physical laws, but these are only statistical approximations. It is not possible to give a final explanation of how anything happens in terms of cause and effect. At some level the event must have 'just happened'. This might seem to give rise to a completely random and disordered universe. Not so. Throw a single die and you might get anything; throw six million and you will get almost exactly a million sixes. There is no reason for the laws of the universe represented here by the structure of the dice; they, too, are phenomena that have just arisen spontaneously and may one day cease to apply is spontaneity produces something different."
There is a certain elegance to the idea that nothingness proceeded 'somethingness'. When debating with theists over the cosmological argument, the two options most commonly given as a refutation to the theistic argument would be that the universe has always existed (in some form), or arose from a spontaneous cause. Both solutions seem problematic, but this is not very troubling, generally, because theism ultimately falls victim to the same issues. But, if we want to honestly contemplate the issue outside of a debate, we're left with the underlying assumption that something, in some form, was always here. What if existence is the exception to the rule? What if there was no uncaused cause, because reality is, in its most natural state, acausal?
There is a philosophical precedent to attributing the tragedy of the human condition to time. Emil Cioran famously asserted that the 'demonic character of time' was responsible for man's fear, regret and anxieties. We must bring up Nietzsche here too, who described the past as a heavy weight that was forever out of our reach. We possess knowledge of the past, and yet we have no control over it, and thus our memories of hardship yield trauma, of our own wrong-doing they yield guilt, and even our happy memories and feelings of nostalgia are tinged with the knowledge that they represent a good experience that has now passed. The worries over the possible course the future might hold are also self-evident. Mankind fears the unknown, and there is no greater unknown than the future - save for a few certainties in life, which some have jocularly identified as 'death and taxes', which underscore the reality that what little we can know of the future includes our own destruction.
There is even a glimmer of meaning to human life, in that a human life might be used to sow the seeds for the coming of Chaos. Kingu, a Sumerian mythological figure whom Marduk slays in the Enuma Elish also appears in the anti-cosmic satanist version. In the original myth, he uses his blood to shape mankind into servants. This happens in the Liber Azerate telling as well; thus, in the Temple of the Black Light's interpretation, consciousness is evidence in man of a divine 'spark' of the darkness within everyone. Man has a divine origin, but divinity here means non-existence as a part of Chaos and nothingness. Since existence within our cosmos is the aberration, one may find direction by helping to free other souls from suffering under the weight of time - this, of course, involves ritual practices and sometimes sacrifices.
Thus, everything is inverted. Death over life, darkness over light, non-existence preferable to existence. Nothingness the rule, destined to eventually overwhelm the exception and destroy the cosmos. All of this is celebrated, negating the problems of pessimism; through supernatural beliefs, adherents now have a goal at which to aim.
Does this solve the problem of nihilism? Does it successfully transmute it into a belief that can be affirmed?
Ultimately, it is still a 'path to nothingness' in a Nietzschean understanding. While the anti-cosmic veneration of death and nothingness may be some kind of value, it is still the hope for an 'afterworld', of sorts, even if this afterworld isn't necessarily represented as a heaven in the way most religions would understand it. Whether or not there is anything supernatural, this is a philosophy that is avowedly death-affirming, completely in opposition to Nietzsche's values.
All the same, we aim to be free spirits here, and so we shouldn't really give a damn what Nietzsche thinks, even if we are adopting his perspectivist approach, at times. I'm not convinced that there is any way to create an order of rank amongst value systems. Talking about which values 'are of more value' is nonsensical, and will lead to an infinite regress. You know which values to value more? How did you determine this? By a higher table of values? Shouldn't there be one higher than that? And so on? A philosophical system being life-affirming does seem to be the most 'real', in a sense - such a system actually engages with the world on its own terms, and does not make up anything fictional in order to derive value. We are alive, in this existence, right now, and thus we should affirm this - it is a powerful demand, and a persuasive one. And yet, we cannot really say that life-affirming systems are better or worse than death-affirming systems, one can only decide which type of values system is acceptable to himself, or herself.
And if we accept the Nietzschean concept of fatalism (specifically the Nietzschean concept, not fatalism in the sense of 'destiny'), then persons are viewed as constituted by many drives, values, virtues, memories, inclinations, physiological demands, passions - a complex society of the mind and self, ever-changing and pulling in many directions. One cannot control which drives are the strongest; rather, a man's drives have sovereignty over him. A strong individual must understand their own drives - everything that pushes them towards a certain state of being, or pulls away from another, undesirable state of being - and allow them to find harmony, and order of rank amongst themselves, with the stronger drives mastering the weaker (and only after a long 'war within the self', of course). If one has been pulled or pushed to the depths of cosmic pessimism, and anti-cosmic optimism offers them a goal at which to aim - one cannot say that they have picked an inherently 'worse' path, if this is how their drives have narrowed their focus.
One may take issue with the supernatural claims involved, but at the risk of sounding a bit philosophically reckless, if we are to be completely honest with ourselves, we cannot know anything for certain. Anti-cosmic satanism, if it is indeed a form of darkness mysticism, must defy our human understanding of reality. Every certainty we have about reality will eventually boil down to an uncertainty; and every institution of the conceptual realm - morals, values, interpretations of reality, are, in some loose sense, fabrications. Ironically, as fervently as the Temple of the Black Light denounces modern society as based on illusion and lies, their ideology must also rely on fictions. But this cannot be too troubling, because, all the while, they attack the very concept of truth, as we understand it, by asserting a dominant realm in which our laws of logic do not apply. At the very least, we know that man is the animal that lies - certainly this religion couldn't be said to be any more or less believable than all the others, and it seems to me that it was demanded by the yearnings of those who wanted something like religion, where they found it lacking.
But if this is not satisfactory, one may even ignore the supernatural claims and focus on the underlying philosophical position: anti-cosmic optimism. And I just can't help going back to the ancient mystics of Alexandria, and the enraptured students in Critchley's course. In today's world, by any of man's appraisals thus far of what is 'good' or 'right' - human society has failed, and continues to fail. By any understanding of the cosmos, there is nothing 'higher' than man that cares for him or wishes to save him from this plight. To many, everything around them seems superficial and unfulfilling - and yet, they cannot bring themselves to embrace religions that deny the previous two facts. Anti-cosmic optimism is the project of reckoning the world as it is - and, in the words of Watain, saying "Fuck the world." This new breed of devil-worshipper has found nothing to say 'Yes' to, so perhaps the only merciful thing is to embrace and celebrate the eventuality of leaving the world.
The result is sometimes beautiful in its poeticism. Selim Lemouchi writes in The Devil's Blood song, 'Endless Saturnalia', of his strange inclination "To find love in the shimmer of blood on stone, to find passion in a maze of sun-bleached bone." There is another verse in the song 'Within the Charnel House of Love', where his verse proclaims, "And as horror begets horror, so I receive my father's sin. I was made to dwell within his house, and drown in the love therein." The 'father' being referenced is Satan, and a charnel house was a place in the monastery where the bones of dead monks were left. Or, as Erik Danielsson shrieks in the Watain track 'The Waters of Ain':
While a love of death or praise of darkness may seem disturbing, it should not seem odd in light of everything we've now read of the Temple of the Black Light. And supposing that Lemouchi really did find love in the thought of death, should we abhor the thought of loving that which we all must face? Or ought we avoid thinking of death at all, focusing on life in the here and now? This is an easy maxim to espouse, but a more difficult one to follow when one's view has shifted to the 'cosmic perspective'.
We never were going to come even close to the answers to these questions, at least not here and now. In many ways, anti-cosmic satanism is constituted by much of the same attributes as the largest religions - prioritizing an afterlife over this one, esoteric knowledge and theological explanations, the promise of eventual 'salvation'. But in other, important ways, it is not - the afterlife is a non-life, salvation is death, and the only rules or values are freedom and hedonism, or the hope for an eventual apocalypse, from which none will be spared. In many important ways, it addresses the same philosophical problems of cosmic pessimism, nihilism, and values. But, it tackles these problems in ways most of the philosophers of ages past who wrestled with them would not agree with.
Whether explored by Thacker, Pizzolatto, or Lemouchi, the central questions that this series has explored is: "What should I believe? Where should I direct my will? Why? How?" In ages past, men did not have to think about these questions - his culture or religion directed his will, and this was the order of things. In our prehistory, which was the natural state of man for far, far longer than our recorded history as a 'civilized animal', man's direction was ever-more set in stone by consequences of his birth and physiological needs; perhaps these questions weren't thought about at all, or only rarely. And even now, in our cosmopolitan societies, where any belief system is tolerated by our laws and by most societal conventions, religion is a guiding hand for many.
We may see anti-cosmic satanism as yet another answer to this question - "They are all wrong. It is pointless; we have achieved nothing. Direct your will towards nothingness." As Nietzsche said, man would rather will nothingness than not will. It is simply not an option for us, and so, even a cult that worships death will not merely lay down and die - these beliefs are married with ritual and theology, and perhaps this is the more obvious 'transmutation' that affects the nihilism of its adherents. Everything must be made into poetry and art for us, because while scripture can impart the message, a melody can make you really feel that message.
The anti-cosmic message is one of many answers to these fundamental questions - and, like a church hymn, continues to travel through music. But, perhaps, as in the theology of the Liber Azerate, it should be seen as only one possibility, out of an endless myriad of potential answers. And so, we must parallel the figures of their creation myth - we cannot permit this perspective any permanence, so long as we be wanderers. For us, for now, the goal at which we aim is to be free spirits. Accordingly, we may even stop for a moment on our journey and admire the anti-cosmic satanist; he seeks for spiritual freedom, and the spirit is never freer than when it lies, deceives, propagates illusions - that is to say, interprets, values, creates.
* * *
"A Waxing Moon Over Babylon"
"Reaping Death"
A link to "Satan's Cheerleaders"
Selim Lemouchi discusses his beliefs
The Devil's Blood, SL introduces the cult
"I see the universe as a chain around our necks. Totally negative: destroying them, chaining them, making them small. Salvation - it is the contradiction of everything that we know. The color of your hair or your eyes... all these things become totally devoid of meaning. I hate my flesh; I love the space in between the stars. Let them see that what they perceived as good, and real - is false."
-Selim Lemouchi
* * *
1. Closing the Book
Last year - which was only about a few weeks ago, but still - we began this series with an article about Eugene Thacker's In the Dust of This Planet. That seems like an eternity ago, but since then, we've discussed True Detective, the HBO series was partly inspired by Thacker's book. Today, we're talking about black metal - specifically, the philosophical and occult beliefs of the musicians involved with black metal, as well as those associated with those beliefs outside the genre. It's been fun, but I'm excited to move on to new projects - it's time to close the book on Thacker, at least for now.
Thacker finishes his book with a reflection on whether or not a new sort of mysticism is possible:
"If historical mysticism still had as its aim the subject's experience, and as its highest principle that of God, then mysticism today - after the death of God - would be about the impossibility of experience, it would be about that which in shadows withdraws from any possible experience, and yet still makes it presence felt, through the periodical upheavals of weather, land and matter. If historical mysticism is, in the last instance, theological, then mysticism today, a mysticism of the unhuman, would have to be, in the last instance, climatological. It is a kind of mysticism that can only be expressed in the dust of this planet."
To inquire about the role of mysticism in society is revealing - whether this is to be understood as a serious question will depend greatly on whether one thinks that mysticism has any role at all in modern culture, or if it should. This is not to speak of how mysticism is even possible in a world where every phenomenon is to be understood as explainable and natural in origin. The world of the supernatural has retreated into fiction, and theological interpretations of that which we do not understand are not accepted in academia or by any respectable institutions (beyond the religious ones). But if we are to take the question seriously - where is Thacker pointing here? A mysticism of the unhuman? A mysticism that expresses things that we cannot possibly experience?
We have studied the problem of nihilism somewhat extensively for the past two articles, and we discussed True Detective's cult of the Yellow King as a possible 'solution' or 'escape'. From a cosmic perspective, one's values are only human, all too human. And yet, this is not very satisfying. Thus one is left with a choice between asserting a 'world-for-us' despite the many negations of this by an indifferent and sometimes hostile reality, or embracing the world as it is and claiming no meaning or special significance to human life or our projects. The latter may be unavoidable on certain philosophical journeys, but it has the attractive aspect of never contradicting our measurable experience. What if one could find a values system within the latter option, though? One that affirms an unhuman, uncaring, indifferent and sometimes hostile reality - and, in fact embraces this and deems it 'good'.
But we need not look to fiction for examples of this strange variety of religion. I mentioned briefly the episode of Radiolab that discussed In the Dust of This Planet and its relation to True Detective at the start of these three ruminations.
At one point in that episode, they speak to Simon Critchley - author of an influential article on nihilism, not-so-coincidentally. He tells an anecdote about a class that he taught about mysticism throughout history, with none other than Eugene Thacker. The class discussed 'intense forms of aesthetic practice' - specifically, a sect of women who, during the latter days of Alexandria, would wander off into the desert to live in caves, be closer to Christ and commit various acts of self-mutilation in order to distance themselves from their own bodies in favor of their souls. Strangely enough, the reason why Critchley recounts this anecdote is in answer to the question of whether or not there is something real or of substance to the existential pangs of nihilism throughout the ages. And while today's youth is increasingly non-religious (and neither are Critchley or Thacker, who taught the class), as he looked out onto the faces of the students, he got the distinct impression that the story was something 'hitting' something 'really deep' within them - their eyes were lit up, enraptured by the story of the mystics.
The idea of 'seceding' from society and tapping into something 'real', or deeper, or spiritual - this is an urge that is both present today and a perennial phenomenon across human cultures. When one abandons or no longer holds the tenets of their own society, in the past, the supernatural offered an alternative - one could opt out of their old values and embrace something 'higher', or divine. Perhaps this is the void that Thacker's 'darkness mysticism' could attempt to fill - not for those who still wholeheartedly cling to the 'old God', or the old values. Rather, for those who simply cannot embrace these ancient idols any longer, but who require something deeper, perhaps what might be called 'spiritual' to value.
This may seem far-fetched: are subsequent generations really going to accept a 'darkness mysticism' for fulfillment of their spiritual yearnings? Strangely enough, it has happened, and it has existed for some time: subterranean, dwelling underneath and at the fringes of our civilization - emerging from the dark, cold north of Scandanavia and dispersing across subcultures throughout the world. And it has made this journey through the subversion of one of the more powerful art forms: music.
Ironically, in order to close the book on Thacker in this last of these three articles inspired by In the Dust of This Planet, we will go back to the beginning. In the first chapter of the book, Thacker investigates the ideological roots of the black metal genre, and subdivides the musicians of black metal into different categories: satanists, pagans and cosmic pessimists (the final category as an overarching one as well). He is basically correct here, although he can be forgiven for missing a more obscure sect - and one that will be the basis of the discussion today - anti-cosmic satanism.
I mentioned at the addendum to the previous article that this final chapter may be the darkest, in a way. But the anti-cosmic satanist ideology inverts everything - including our preference for light over darkness. No doubt, Nietzsche would have hated the ideology in question here - their transmutation of nihilism would be seen as a failure, as the result is in no way life-affirming. He probably would have ridiculed their supernatural appeals. But if there is one thing they've undeniably succeeded in doing, it is the implementation of a profound revaluation of values amongst its adherents, and one that can probably be attributed to the age-old drive to find something spiritual - which occasionally crops up even within those who have eschewed the spirit.
In an article somewhat regrettably entitled "Satan's Cheerleaders", Darcey Steinke (writing for Spin Magazine) reported in 1996 on a sub-cultural phenomenon occurring in Norway. The article begins provocatively, as Steinke recounts traveling to the ruins of a church that had just burned down. Those days, churches were being torched by arsonists frequently in Scandanavia, many of them historic. At the site of the destroyed church - of which all that remained was a granite foundation - Steinke wandered into the cemetary:
"A little white-haired man kneels at his wife's gravestone, one of the many that surround the site where the church once stood. He is weeding the daisies and begonias as he prepares to leave behind some cut roses in a mayonnaise jar. When I ask who did this, he shakes his head and speaks in heavily accented English. 'The Satanists' he says wearily."
The tale Steinke tells is a bizarre one. Whilst Thacker identifies three ideologies underlying the genre, the early zealots of black metal appear to have embraced all three in their primal forms, all interrelated. There is the demonic aspect, defined in its opposition to Christianity; the ideology of these early zealots of black metal could be called a 'negation' of Christianity, defining its values in terms of opposition to those of Christianity. But the exclusion or alterity of paganism was also an influential belief system in black metal; there was a resurgence of belief in Nordic deities and cosmology. And finally, there is the raw 'cosmic pessimism' of musicians like Dead of the band Mayhem, who would bury his clothes outside for months before digging them up to wear at shows, filthy and covered in insects. He was one of the first prominent musicians of black metal to die violently, and he would not be the last. It did not surprise his bandmate Hellhammer, who comments on his suicide in the article:
"He was a strange guy, always talking about Carpathian castles and the Pophyrians and how this life is only a dream." His suicide note read, simply, "Excuse all the blood." Hellhammer and Euronymous, Mayhem's Guitarist, found Dead dead-legs akimbo, his brain tissue and blood splattered on the walls and sheets. Euronymous didn't seem to mind the mess at all. In fact, says Hellhammer, "he took pieces of the brain and made a stew. He put in ham, frozen vegetables, and paprika. He'd always said he wanted to eat flesh, so he figured this was an easy way."
Thus, many musicians, fans - all of them zealots for the cause of black metal - would, over the years to come, go on to repeatedly murder each other or sometimes even random victims. Or, like Dead, kill themselves. Many ended up in prison, some, like Burzum, even releasing records from inside. But before things died down, there were more than a few 'legendary' parties, fights, incidents - far too many to name - where all kinds of depravity was unleashed. Public displays of sadomasochism were common. (I've appended a link to the Spin article that someone has archived; it contains a few typos and the formatting can be difficult to read, but if you're interested in knowing the full scope of black metal's exploits in those days, there you have it).
Dead and those of his ilk may have simply been depressed or mentally unbalanced - it is a charge that most would probably levy at the majority of the black metal musicians discussed here. But we cannot ignore the fact of an underlying ideology driving these actions. Insanity is a perfectly acceptable explanation for aberrant, sadistic or masochistic behavior, especially when taken to the extreme. But individual neurological disorders hardly explains a group of individuals who undertake such behavior, especially when they express a commonality of ideas to which they attribute their actions. What is happening here is something more akin to a religion, and thus dismissing them all as 'crazy' will not do. Whether religion qualifies as insanity or might constitute insanity if taken to the extreme is another question entirely - but at the very least we can all acknowledge that this would not be a very interesting or explanatory conclusion, because religion would have to also be considered a special kind of insanity, at least in this case. These are ideas that are transmitted between individuals, which are driven by deeply-held value judgments and theological claims and upon which several individuals have acted.
And really, is it difficult to believe that religious beliefs could drive individuals whose behaviors would otherwise be within the realm of normalcy towards acts that could be described as grotesque by society? It is now nearly twenty years after the publication of this article, and the Islamic State is proving once again that religion can be an incredibly potent force in reshaping human values. There are thousands of Muslim westerners who have left western society to fight for the Islamic State, leaving behind a better standard of living, modern healthcare, running water and electricity, as well as the relative security of western states - in exchange for war, disease, in-fighting between rebel groups and tasks such as the beheading of opponents. Would those individuals have any reason to make such a decision, other than their religion?
Black metal isn't exactly a religion unto itself, but it is and was the common thread running through these various ideologies. In the beginning, it seems that the pagan, satanist and general cosmic pessimist attitudes were swirling about in the same melting pot. It might be an interesting future article to discuss music - and art in general - as a conduit for belief systems, stimulating the listener's passions, and thus entering through a more primal, emotional connection. The importance of music and its effects on the listener were not unknown to the ancients, being discussed at length by Aristotle in his Poetics, and by Plato in The Republic. Both seem to advocate for censorship, controlling for what kinds of poetry people should read, or what kind of music they should listen to. This upsets our sensibilities today - but even if we would not agree with any kind of censorship, what these ancient writers are hinting at is an understanding of the real power of music and verse and its effects on a person. They suggest that the state stifle certain kinds of expression because of a very real fear that music could stimulate the 'wrong' passions, or too much of a certain passion, or the wrong passion at the wrong time.
Thacker, as I've said, I think is correct to identify black metal, in essence, as being essentially defined by cosmic pessimism. This is not a unified ideology that is necessarily expresssed - for this is the nature of a zeitgeist carried forth by a movement in music. There is no central leadership, or membership. There are general beliefs and practices, and there is a 'boundary' between the inside and the outside, but the boundary is, by its nature, subjective. But black metal is a bit of a special case, as it began life as an enthusiastically 'underground' genre. In a sense, black metal as a subgenre operated, in those days, like something of a secret society - there was an inner circle of the most influential figures, in this case, the record store named 'Hell' in Oslo, owned by Euronymous. News, locations and times of shows and rumors all traveled by word of mouth. There was a certain dress code and a different set of rules from the rest of society.
Black metal has been said to have been more focused on a message and promotion of a certain way of life than on developing itself as a musical genre. Until recently, this was largely true, and I think the story of black metal is the story of a 'cult of music'. In the social democracies of Scandanavia, most social ills are at a minimum. Religiosity has declined more so than anywhere else on Earth. The people are educated, and much progress has been made against crime and poverty. I can't help but think that there must have been something to Nietzsche's warnings for the future of our democratic, egalitarian project. God is dead, western society has become cosmopolitan and seeks for equality and freedom for all. And yet, while we may still believe that these are the right paths for society, we have failed to understand the inevitable problems consequent to this project. Perhaps we should have expected to see it first in the societies have that progressed farthest towards the goal of eliminating all suffering and making everyone safe, free and equal. Was this wave of cosmic pessimism borne out of this society where no one has anything for or against which to struggle? Where spirituality is considered a relic of the past? Where their education has taken them up to that very cosmic perspective, with no salve offered for the trembling and confusion to follow?
"When Faust moved from his small village to work at Hell, his interest in violence intensified. He began to create an entire moral universe based on the precepts of Black Metal. "I started thinking about macro- and micro-cosmoses and comparing human life to dust on a far-off planet in a far-off galaxy in the middle of nowhere. I made human life valueless."(Steinke)
Faust's remarks here oddly mirror the exact language employed by Thacker throughout the book. And when we listen to the remarks of those involved in the many crimes committed in the early says of black metal, especially regarding what drove them to it, similar themes emerge. Steinke asks Ihsahn, lead singer of Emperor (and the only member not in jail at the time) about his opposition to his own society's values, particularly those fostered by Christianity.
"It wastes love," he says. "In Norway, like in the U.S., if you're weak, everybody supports you. There are special centers, 12-step programs. Everything is for the weak. Everything caters to people who are failures. There is too much pity."
Thus, just as Nietzsche saw the values and underlying assumptions of Plato carried on via Christianity as 'Platonism for the people', so too the satanists of black metal saw the values of modern-day egalitarian society as 'Christianity for the people' - in this case, a society that is largely in the process of 'moving on' from religion. So while Thacker subdivides the genre into different belief systems: paganism, satanism, cosmic pessimism, which represent distinct ideologies in the genre now - they all began in the same place. In Scandanavia, the narrative of paganism as opposed to Christianity is burned into their history, and the church burnings were heralded by many as a conscious push to return their people to life as 'children of Odin' once more. Satan as opposed to Christianity (Satan being fundamentally a negation or inversion), the pagan gods of nature (nature being indifference itself as power) as opposed to Christianity, Christianity as a representation and reification of all the 'weak', stale values of modern society - it was on the basis of these fundamental definitions that black metal was constituted.
Today, the distinct belief systems within black metal are more defined, having been given more time to assert themselves, find adherents and progress musically and ideologically. The 'great albums' produced old days of Norwegian black metal were almost all of the satanist ideology - Emperor's Wrath of the Tyrant, Gorgoroth's Pentagram, Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas - and that is how that era is remembered. However, all of these different perspectives emerged from the single movement that was early black metal - and this was an exclusionary movement that defined itself by the abandonment of and opposition to all the values, beliefs and practices of society. It was a reaction to the perceived emptiness of western society, and thus the primary idea that constituted the 'cult of music' was a great No-saying, or perhaps No-screaming. This 'No', a repudiation of everything, was disseminated through black metal music.
Many remained at this position - Dead, for instance - choosing 'No' over yes and embracing nihilism to the full. Some found their 'Yes' in hedonism, witchcraft, the thrill of black metal's elitism, satanism, or a return to Viking pagan ideals. Thus, black metal is 'protestant' by nature - there were many sects and interpretations, and no central leadership to guide the entirety of the movement. There are even some who refer to the bands and their fans as 'cults', constituting distinct groups. And the cosmic pessimist viewpoint did not remain confined to black metal - different styles of music tend to branch off, intertwine and evolve, which is another powerful aspect of the medium. Thacker cites Sunn O))), technically a drone doom band, as an example of cosmic pessimist music, specifically the Grimmrobe Demos, which was completely instrumental. Strangely enough, I think I agree with him - and this relationship was later solidified further by their Sunn O)))'s inclusion of Mayhem singer Attila Csihar. The ideology of black metal would not remain confined to 'the cult'.
We can safely say that each development in this great splintering either sought to embrace cosmic pessimism, wallowing deeply in nihilism or seeking only to fulfill physical pleasures - or sought to grasp for an affirmation of something, somehow, somewhere. Perhaps these were the ones with the spiritual drive amongst the all the opposition and repudiations of black metal. The return to Viking paganism of Ulver, Ildjarn & Striborg certainly was a step in that direction. And, around the same time, quietly, making another stride on this journey, amongst the innumerable sects of black metal's cult, a group called the Misanthropic Luciferian Order was founded.
It is in the churning maelstrom of black metal's early, furious beginnings that we should expect to see vibrant, new perspectives and interpretations. The categorization of black metal's many bands and underlying beliefs of those bands, as well as the many paths upon which they have developed, may be safely left to Thacker. But it was also there that this revaluation from the depths of cosmic pessimism took place, and this revaluation was codified into theology by The Temple of the Black Light. They were founded under the name the Misanthropic Luciferian Order, but the name was changed, perhaps to avoid any confusion with the various sects of 'satanists' who do not believe in Satan - this is just a guess, since, to my ears at least, the 'Misanthropic Luciferian Order' sounds like it could very well be an organization similar to the Church of Satan or the Temple of Set. Both of the latter two organizations mentioned promote 'Satan' as a purely metaphorical concept, representing rebellion, or free-thought. The MLO, and its later incarnation as the Temple of the Black Light has routinely distanced themselves from those types of satanists.
The black metal band Dissection was heavily involved with the order from the beginning. When guitarist and vocalist Jon Nödtveid committed suicide, and his bandcamp Set Teitan responded to the media' reporting that he had been found with a Satanic Bible:
"It's not any atheist, humanist and ego-worshiping The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey that Jon had in front of him, but a Satanic grimoire. He despised LaVey and the 'Church of Satan'."
The Church of Satan, Temple of Set and The Satanic Temple are all ultimately materialist, humanist organizations, and thus, the Temple of the Black Light and other anti-cosmic satanists have often found themselves in opposition to them. While anti-cosmic satanists hate the cosmos, mankind and everything material, LeVeyans believe only in the material and advocate for the 'human rights' of modern, secular, eqalitarian societies, not unlike those of Scandanavia - which are the very societies and values that anti-cosmic satanism was borne out of and opposes. Thus, the level of hatred towards LeVeyans is always fierce. Religions tend to hate heretics or apostates more than unbelievers, so this shouldn't surprise us too much. When one uses the same figures or iconography as one religion, but expresses almost opposite beliefs, we can understand the enmity that could be created between them.
Not there haven't been satanists who have actually affirmed a theological belief in satan as an entity before the Temple of the Black Light. However, the terminology can become confusing, mainly due to the popularity of LeVey and his adherents using the same term - satanist - with no theological or supernatural implications. Perhaps the best term would be 'devil-worshipper' - implying an actual religious belief and avoiding the perhaps too widely used term 'satan' - and there were and are many, and many different kinds, in death metal and black metal, and even long before either genre.
Even before the occult-themed lyrics of Black Sabbath, the rock group Coven was famously the first to do things on a major record release like display the inverted cross or the 'horns' handsign, or write lyrics that openly described satanic rituals or practices. The group claimed to be descendents of many generations of occultists, and to actually have believed in occult (read: religious, not just metaphorical) satanic beliefs, though it is a belief that they apparently no longer ascribe to.
"The satanic thing actually was something we were interested in and were studying at the time. When you're younger, you're looking for answers, and a lot of members of the band were looking into the same books at the same time. We studied it, we practiced it."
-Jinx Dawson, singer of Coven
But despite this, the most popular bands espousing satanic beliefs meant them to be interpreted as an ideological position, or as a type of 'horror theater' - Slayer most readily comes to mind here. Even some of the more offensive groups such as Cradle of Filth or Deicide are known now and were known at the beginning of the 90s to be atheists. "I don't believe in or worship a devil," said Deicide drummer Steve Asheim. "Life is short enough without having to waste it doing this whole organized praying, hoping, wishing-type thing on some superior being". The devil-worshippers had their detractors, even in extreme forms of heavy metal, like black metal. One could be forgiven for thinking that there were likely no true devil-worshippers at all, in metal music or otherwise - perhaps this was just an invention of the religious right, trying to scare people with the eventual aim of censorship. All those promoting these ideas don't really believe them - their goal is to entertain, and be 'shocking'.
Thus, the zeitgeist of militant nihilism, theistic satanism, Viking paganism and all the other 'serious' forms of opposition to society that arose during the mid-90's in Scandanavia was easy to misunderstand. If one was not digging deeper into the actual goings-on of that scene, it would be only natural to think of black metal as made up of more 'mere performers' wearing corpse paint. And while it wasn't entirely unheard of for performers to hold occult beliefs - Jimmy Page, for example, or Coven - musicians who were devil-worshippers (and serious about it) was something new.
Not that the Temple of the Black Light worships the 'Biblical devil'. Numerous sources are used to construct the temple's belief system, drawing on occult texts, beliefs, deities and concepts from kabbalah, thelema, Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek pagan religions, as well as various hermetic or occult beliefs that developed throughout Europe both before and after the Enlightenment. Satan is one of eleven anti-cosmic deities (albeit a very important one) who are in opposition to ten cosmic deities. The cosmic gods want to preserve the universe, anti-cosmic gods want to destroy it. Obviously, the cosmic gods are at a disadvantage, being outnumbered by one, and this is the significance of Satan, as the 'extra' deity who tips the scales in Chaos' favor.
The aforementioned Dissection is of key importance here. Their album Reinkaos was co-written by one of the authors of the Liber Azerate - one of the occult texts of the Temple of the Black Light. That album is generally understood as essentially a statement of the anti-cosmic satanist belief system. While Dissection's musical style on the album has been criticized as a departure from black metal, the contemporary group Watain has become one of the most popular black metal bands on Earth, and as anti-cosmic satanists themselves, they continue to promote the temple's beliefs (although the relationship between them and the actual temple is not within public knowledge; it has been claimed by some that they are not even members, whilst others have spread rumors that they helped author one of the temple's books; the truth is simply unknown).
And now, groups outside of black metal have taken up the torch - The Devil's Blood was a powerful force in underground rock music, a cult sensation in more ways than one. Together with In Solitude, they released records in less extreme forms of metal and rock that sang the praises of anti-cosmic satanism and the occult, and, consequently, toured with Watain and black metal band Behemoth. Selim Lemouchi, the bandleader and primary songwriter of The Devil's Blood, ended his life recently, not unlike Jon Nödtveid. Both men stated that they wanted to die upon reaching their 'peak', and completing their creative output by giving all that they had to offer. Watching interviews with Lemouchi, even years after the fact, his calm manner and smile give no indication of his impending suicide even as he talks about taking his own life; if anything, he seems joyous, describing death with the sort of religious ecstasy that a born-again Christian effuses when he speaks about Jesus.
If black metal wasn't religion, The Temple of the Black Light in particular and anti-cosmic satanism in general most certainly are. And it seems to be as powerful as any religion - it has supernatural beliefs, 'fire and brimstone' preachers, like Erik Danielsson of Watain, and even those who are willing to become martyrs, like Jon Nödtveid, or Selim Lemouchi. This religion seared through the apparent damnation of cosmic pessimism and emerged on the other side with something new - something that has now disseminated beyond black metal, though still carried on the powerful wings of music.
Thacker finishes his book with a reflection on whether or not a new sort of mysticism is possible:
"If historical mysticism still had as its aim the subject's experience, and as its highest principle that of God, then mysticism today - after the death of God - would be about the impossibility of experience, it would be about that which in shadows withdraws from any possible experience, and yet still makes it presence felt, through the periodical upheavals of weather, land and matter. If historical mysticism is, in the last instance, theological, then mysticism today, a mysticism of the unhuman, would have to be, in the last instance, climatological. It is a kind of mysticism that can only be expressed in the dust of this planet."
To inquire about the role of mysticism in society is revealing - whether this is to be understood as a serious question will depend greatly on whether one thinks that mysticism has any role at all in modern culture, or if it should. This is not to speak of how mysticism is even possible in a world where every phenomenon is to be understood as explainable and natural in origin. The world of the supernatural has retreated into fiction, and theological interpretations of that which we do not understand are not accepted in academia or by any respectable institutions (beyond the religious ones). But if we are to take the question seriously - where is Thacker pointing here? A mysticism of the unhuman? A mysticism that expresses things that we cannot possibly experience?
We have studied the problem of nihilism somewhat extensively for the past two articles, and we discussed True Detective's cult of the Yellow King as a possible 'solution' or 'escape'. From a cosmic perspective, one's values are only human, all too human. And yet, this is not very satisfying. Thus one is left with a choice between asserting a 'world-for-us' despite the many negations of this by an indifferent and sometimes hostile reality, or embracing the world as it is and claiming no meaning or special significance to human life or our projects. The latter may be unavoidable on certain philosophical journeys, but it has the attractive aspect of never contradicting our measurable experience. What if one could find a values system within the latter option, though? One that affirms an unhuman, uncaring, indifferent and sometimes hostile reality - and, in fact embraces this and deems it 'good'.
But we need not look to fiction for examples of this strange variety of religion. I mentioned briefly the episode of Radiolab that discussed In the Dust of This Planet and its relation to True Detective at the start of these three ruminations.
At one point in that episode, they speak to Simon Critchley - author of an influential article on nihilism, not-so-coincidentally. He tells an anecdote about a class that he taught about mysticism throughout history, with none other than Eugene Thacker. The class discussed 'intense forms of aesthetic practice' - specifically, a sect of women who, during the latter days of Alexandria, would wander off into the desert to live in caves, be closer to Christ and commit various acts of self-mutilation in order to distance themselves from their own bodies in favor of their souls. Strangely enough, the reason why Critchley recounts this anecdote is in answer to the question of whether or not there is something real or of substance to the existential pangs of nihilism throughout the ages. And while today's youth is increasingly non-religious (and neither are Critchley or Thacker, who taught the class), as he looked out onto the faces of the students, he got the distinct impression that the story was something 'hitting' something 'really deep' within them - their eyes were lit up, enraptured by the story of the mystics.
The idea of 'seceding' from society and tapping into something 'real', or deeper, or spiritual - this is an urge that is both present today and a perennial phenomenon across human cultures. When one abandons or no longer holds the tenets of their own society, in the past, the supernatural offered an alternative - one could opt out of their old values and embrace something 'higher', or divine. Perhaps this is the void that Thacker's 'darkness mysticism' could attempt to fill - not for those who still wholeheartedly cling to the 'old God', or the old values. Rather, for those who simply cannot embrace these ancient idols any longer, but who require something deeper, perhaps what might be called 'spiritual' to value.
This may seem far-fetched: are subsequent generations really going to accept a 'darkness mysticism' for fulfillment of their spiritual yearnings? Strangely enough, it has happened, and it has existed for some time: subterranean, dwelling underneath and at the fringes of our civilization - emerging from the dark, cold north of Scandanavia and dispersing across subcultures throughout the world. And it has made this journey through the subversion of one of the more powerful art forms: music.
Ironically, in order to close the book on Thacker in this last of these three articles inspired by In the Dust of This Planet, we will go back to the beginning. In the first chapter of the book, Thacker investigates the ideological roots of the black metal genre, and subdivides the musicians of black metal into different categories: satanists, pagans and cosmic pessimists (the final category as an overarching one as well). He is basically correct here, although he can be forgiven for missing a more obscure sect - and one that will be the basis of the discussion today - anti-cosmic satanism.
I mentioned at the addendum to the previous article that this final chapter may be the darkest, in a way. But the anti-cosmic satanist ideology inverts everything - including our preference for light over darkness. No doubt, Nietzsche would have hated the ideology in question here - their transmutation of nihilism would be seen as a failure, as the result is in no way life-affirming. He probably would have ridiculed their supernatural appeals. But if there is one thing they've undeniably succeeded in doing, it is the implementation of a profound revaluation of values amongst its adherents, and one that can probably be attributed to the age-old drive to find something spiritual - which occasionally crops up even within those who have eschewed the spirit.
2. A Pessimistic Zeitgeist
In an article somewhat regrettably entitled "Satan's Cheerleaders", Darcey Steinke (writing for Spin Magazine) reported in 1996 on a sub-cultural phenomenon occurring in Norway. The article begins provocatively, as Steinke recounts traveling to the ruins of a church that had just burned down. Those days, churches were being torched by arsonists frequently in Scandanavia, many of them historic. At the site of the destroyed church - of which all that remained was a granite foundation - Steinke wandered into the cemetary:
"A little white-haired man kneels at his wife's gravestone, one of the many that surround the site where the church once stood. He is weeding the daisies and begonias as he prepares to leave behind some cut roses in a mayonnaise jar. When I ask who did this, he shakes his head and speaks in heavily accented English. 'The Satanists' he says wearily."
The tale Steinke tells is a bizarre one. Whilst Thacker identifies three ideologies underlying the genre, the early zealots of black metal appear to have embraced all three in their primal forms, all interrelated. There is the demonic aspect, defined in its opposition to Christianity; the ideology of these early zealots of black metal could be called a 'negation' of Christianity, defining its values in terms of opposition to those of Christianity. But the exclusion or alterity of paganism was also an influential belief system in black metal; there was a resurgence of belief in Nordic deities and cosmology. And finally, there is the raw 'cosmic pessimism' of musicians like Dead of the band Mayhem, who would bury his clothes outside for months before digging them up to wear at shows, filthy and covered in insects. He was one of the first prominent musicians of black metal to die violently, and he would not be the last. It did not surprise his bandmate Hellhammer, who comments on his suicide in the article:
"He was a strange guy, always talking about Carpathian castles and the Pophyrians and how this life is only a dream." His suicide note read, simply, "Excuse all the blood." Hellhammer and Euronymous, Mayhem's Guitarist, found Dead dead-legs akimbo, his brain tissue and blood splattered on the walls and sheets. Euronymous didn't seem to mind the mess at all. In fact, says Hellhammer, "he took pieces of the brain and made a stew. He put in ham, frozen vegetables, and paprika. He'd always said he wanted to eat flesh, so he figured this was an easy way."
Thus, many musicians, fans - all of them zealots for the cause of black metal - would, over the years to come, go on to repeatedly murder each other or sometimes even random victims. Or, like Dead, kill themselves. Many ended up in prison, some, like Burzum, even releasing records from inside. But before things died down, there were more than a few 'legendary' parties, fights, incidents - far too many to name - where all kinds of depravity was unleashed. Public displays of sadomasochism were common. (I've appended a link to the Spin article that someone has archived; it contains a few typos and the formatting can be difficult to read, but if you're interested in knowing the full scope of black metal's exploits in those days, there you have it).
Dead and those of his ilk may have simply been depressed or mentally unbalanced - it is a charge that most would probably levy at the majority of the black metal musicians discussed here. But we cannot ignore the fact of an underlying ideology driving these actions. Insanity is a perfectly acceptable explanation for aberrant, sadistic or masochistic behavior, especially when taken to the extreme. But individual neurological disorders hardly explains a group of individuals who undertake such behavior, especially when they express a commonality of ideas to which they attribute their actions. What is happening here is something more akin to a religion, and thus dismissing them all as 'crazy' will not do. Whether religion qualifies as insanity or might constitute insanity if taken to the extreme is another question entirely - but at the very least we can all acknowledge that this would not be a very interesting or explanatory conclusion, because religion would have to also be considered a special kind of insanity, at least in this case. These are ideas that are transmitted between individuals, which are driven by deeply-held value judgments and theological claims and upon which several individuals have acted.
And really, is it difficult to believe that religious beliefs could drive individuals whose behaviors would otherwise be within the realm of normalcy towards acts that could be described as grotesque by society? It is now nearly twenty years after the publication of this article, and the Islamic State is proving once again that religion can be an incredibly potent force in reshaping human values. There are thousands of Muslim westerners who have left western society to fight for the Islamic State, leaving behind a better standard of living, modern healthcare, running water and electricity, as well as the relative security of western states - in exchange for war, disease, in-fighting between rebel groups and tasks such as the beheading of opponents. Would those individuals have any reason to make such a decision, other than their religion?
Black metal isn't exactly a religion unto itself, but it is and was the common thread running through these various ideologies. In the beginning, it seems that the pagan, satanist and general cosmic pessimist attitudes were swirling about in the same melting pot. It might be an interesting future article to discuss music - and art in general - as a conduit for belief systems, stimulating the listener's passions, and thus entering through a more primal, emotional connection. The importance of music and its effects on the listener were not unknown to the ancients, being discussed at length by Aristotle in his Poetics, and by Plato in The Republic. Both seem to advocate for censorship, controlling for what kinds of poetry people should read, or what kind of music they should listen to. This upsets our sensibilities today - but even if we would not agree with any kind of censorship, what these ancient writers are hinting at is an understanding of the real power of music and verse and its effects on a person. They suggest that the state stifle certain kinds of expression because of a very real fear that music could stimulate the 'wrong' passions, or too much of a certain passion, or the wrong passion at the wrong time.
Thacker, as I've said, I think is correct to identify black metal, in essence, as being essentially defined by cosmic pessimism. This is not a unified ideology that is necessarily expresssed - for this is the nature of a zeitgeist carried forth by a movement in music. There is no central leadership, or membership. There are general beliefs and practices, and there is a 'boundary' between the inside and the outside, but the boundary is, by its nature, subjective. But black metal is a bit of a special case, as it began life as an enthusiastically 'underground' genre. In a sense, black metal as a subgenre operated, in those days, like something of a secret society - there was an inner circle of the most influential figures, in this case, the record store named 'Hell' in Oslo, owned by Euronymous. News, locations and times of shows and rumors all traveled by word of mouth. There was a certain dress code and a different set of rules from the rest of society.
Black metal has been said to have been more focused on a message and promotion of a certain way of life than on developing itself as a musical genre. Until recently, this was largely true, and I think the story of black metal is the story of a 'cult of music'. In the social democracies of Scandanavia, most social ills are at a minimum. Religiosity has declined more so than anywhere else on Earth. The people are educated, and much progress has been made against crime and poverty. I can't help but think that there must have been something to Nietzsche's warnings for the future of our democratic, egalitarian project. God is dead, western society has become cosmopolitan and seeks for equality and freedom for all. And yet, while we may still believe that these are the right paths for society, we have failed to understand the inevitable problems consequent to this project. Perhaps we should have expected to see it first in the societies have that progressed farthest towards the goal of eliminating all suffering and making everyone safe, free and equal. Was this wave of cosmic pessimism borne out of this society where no one has anything for or against which to struggle? Where spirituality is considered a relic of the past? Where their education has taken them up to that very cosmic perspective, with no salve offered for the trembling and confusion to follow?
"When Faust moved from his small village to work at Hell, his interest in violence intensified. He began to create an entire moral universe based on the precepts of Black Metal. "I started thinking about macro- and micro-cosmoses and comparing human life to dust on a far-off planet in a far-off galaxy in the middle of nowhere. I made human life valueless."(Steinke)
Faust's remarks here oddly mirror the exact language employed by Thacker throughout the book. And when we listen to the remarks of those involved in the many crimes committed in the early says of black metal, especially regarding what drove them to it, similar themes emerge. Steinke asks Ihsahn, lead singer of Emperor (and the only member not in jail at the time) about his opposition to his own society's values, particularly those fostered by Christianity.
"It wastes love," he says. "In Norway, like in the U.S., if you're weak, everybody supports you. There are special centers, 12-step programs. Everything is for the weak. Everything caters to people who are failures. There is too much pity."
Thus, just as Nietzsche saw the values and underlying assumptions of Plato carried on via Christianity as 'Platonism for the people', so too the satanists of black metal saw the values of modern-day egalitarian society as 'Christianity for the people' - in this case, a society that is largely in the process of 'moving on' from religion. So while Thacker subdivides the genre into different belief systems: paganism, satanism, cosmic pessimism, which represent distinct ideologies in the genre now - they all began in the same place. In Scandanavia, the narrative of paganism as opposed to Christianity is burned into their history, and the church burnings were heralded by many as a conscious push to return their people to life as 'children of Odin' once more. Satan as opposed to Christianity (Satan being fundamentally a negation or inversion), the pagan gods of nature (nature being indifference itself as power) as opposed to Christianity, Christianity as a representation and reification of all the 'weak', stale values of modern society - it was on the basis of these fundamental definitions that black metal was constituted.
Today, the distinct belief systems within black metal are more defined, having been given more time to assert themselves, find adherents and progress musically and ideologically. The 'great albums' produced old days of Norwegian black metal were almost all of the satanist ideology - Emperor's Wrath of the Tyrant, Gorgoroth's Pentagram, Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas - and that is how that era is remembered. However, all of these different perspectives emerged from the single movement that was early black metal - and this was an exclusionary movement that defined itself by the abandonment of and opposition to all the values, beliefs and practices of society. It was a reaction to the perceived emptiness of western society, and thus the primary idea that constituted the 'cult of music' was a great No-saying, or perhaps No-screaming. This 'No', a repudiation of everything, was disseminated through black metal music.
Many remained at this position - Dead, for instance - choosing 'No' over yes and embracing nihilism to the full. Some found their 'Yes' in hedonism, witchcraft, the thrill of black metal's elitism, satanism, or a return to Viking pagan ideals. Thus, black metal is 'protestant' by nature - there were many sects and interpretations, and no central leadership to guide the entirety of the movement. There are even some who refer to the bands and their fans as 'cults', constituting distinct groups. And the cosmic pessimist viewpoint did not remain confined to black metal - different styles of music tend to branch off, intertwine and evolve, which is another powerful aspect of the medium. Thacker cites Sunn O))), technically a drone doom band, as an example of cosmic pessimist music, specifically the Grimmrobe Demos, which was completely instrumental. Strangely enough, I think I agree with him - and this relationship was later solidified further by their Sunn O)))'s inclusion of Mayhem singer Attila Csihar. The ideology of black metal would not remain confined to 'the cult'.
We can safely say that each development in this great splintering either sought to embrace cosmic pessimism, wallowing deeply in nihilism or seeking only to fulfill physical pleasures - or sought to grasp for an affirmation of something, somehow, somewhere. Perhaps these were the ones with the spiritual drive amongst the all the opposition and repudiations of black metal. The return to Viking paganism of Ulver, Ildjarn & Striborg certainly was a step in that direction. And, around the same time, quietly, making another stride on this journey, amongst the innumerable sects of black metal's cult, a group called the Misanthropic Luciferian Order was founded.
3. Devil of a Thousand Faces
It is in the churning maelstrom of black metal's early, furious beginnings that we should expect to see vibrant, new perspectives and interpretations. The categorization of black metal's many bands and underlying beliefs of those bands, as well as the many paths upon which they have developed, may be safely left to Thacker. But it was also there that this revaluation from the depths of cosmic pessimism took place, and this revaluation was codified into theology by The Temple of the Black Light. They were founded under the name the Misanthropic Luciferian Order, but the name was changed, perhaps to avoid any confusion with the various sects of 'satanists' who do not believe in Satan - this is just a guess, since, to my ears at least, the 'Misanthropic Luciferian Order' sounds like it could very well be an organization similar to the Church of Satan or the Temple of Set. Both of the latter two organizations mentioned promote 'Satan' as a purely metaphorical concept, representing rebellion, or free-thought. The MLO, and its later incarnation as the Temple of the Black Light has routinely distanced themselves from those types of satanists.
The black metal band Dissection was heavily involved with the order from the beginning. When guitarist and vocalist Jon Nödtveid committed suicide, and his bandcamp Set Teitan responded to the media' reporting that he had been found with a Satanic Bible:
"It's not any atheist, humanist and ego-worshiping The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey that Jon had in front of him, but a Satanic grimoire. He despised LaVey and the 'Church of Satan'."
The Church of Satan, Temple of Set and The Satanic Temple are all ultimately materialist, humanist organizations, and thus, the Temple of the Black Light and other anti-cosmic satanists have often found themselves in opposition to them. While anti-cosmic satanists hate the cosmos, mankind and everything material, LeVeyans believe only in the material and advocate for the 'human rights' of modern, secular, eqalitarian societies, not unlike those of Scandanavia - which are the very societies and values that anti-cosmic satanism was borne out of and opposes. Thus, the level of hatred towards LeVeyans is always fierce. Religions tend to hate heretics or apostates more than unbelievers, so this shouldn't surprise us too much. When one uses the same figures or iconography as one religion, but expresses almost opposite beliefs, we can understand the enmity that could be created between them.
Not there haven't been satanists who have actually affirmed a theological belief in satan as an entity before the Temple of the Black Light. However, the terminology can become confusing, mainly due to the popularity of LeVey and his adherents using the same term - satanist - with no theological or supernatural implications. Perhaps the best term would be 'devil-worshipper' - implying an actual religious belief and avoiding the perhaps too widely used term 'satan' - and there were and are many, and many different kinds, in death metal and black metal, and even long before either genre.
Even before the occult-themed lyrics of Black Sabbath, the rock group Coven was famously the first to do things on a major record release like display the inverted cross or the 'horns' handsign, or write lyrics that openly described satanic rituals or practices. The group claimed to be descendents of many generations of occultists, and to actually have believed in occult (read: religious, not just metaphorical) satanic beliefs, though it is a belief that they apparently no longer ascribe to.
"The satanic thing actually was something we were interested in and were studying at the time. When you're younger, you're looking for answers, and a lot of members of the band were looking into the same books at the same time. We studied it, we practiced it."
-Jinx Dawson, singer of Coven
But despite this, the most popular bands espousing satanic beliefs meant them to be interpreted as an ideological position, or as a type of 'horror theater' - Slayer most readily comes to mind here. Even some of the more offensive groups such as Cradle of Filth or Deicide are known now and were known at the beginning of the 90s to be atheists. "I don't believe in or worship a devil," said Deicide drummer Steve Asheim. "Life is short enough without having to waste it doing this whole organized praying, hoping, wishing-type thing on some superior being". The devil-worshippers had their detractors, even in extreme forms of heavy metal, like black metal. One could be forgiven for thinking that there were likely no true devil-worshippers at all, in metal music or otherwise - perhaps this was just an invention of the religious right, trying to scare people with the eventual aim of censorship. All those promoting these ideas don't really believe them - their goal is to entertain, and be 'shocking'.
Thus, the zeitgeist of militant nihilism, theistic satanism, Viking paganism and all the other 'serious' forms of opposition to society that arose during the mid-90's in Scandanavia was easy to misunderstand. If one was not digging deeper into the actual goings-on of that scene, it would be only natural to think of black metal as made up of more 'mere performers' wearing corpse paint. And while it wasn't entirely unheard of for performers to hold occult beliefs - Jimmy Page, for example, or Coven - musicians who were devil-worshippers (and serious about it) was something new.
Not that the Temple of the Black Light worships the 'Biblical devil'. Numerous sources are used to construct the temple's belief system, drawing on occult texts, beliefs, deities and concepts from kabbalah, thelema, Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek pagan religions, as well as various hermetic or occult beliefs that developed throughout Europe both before and after the Enlightenment. Satan is one of eleven anti-cosmic deities (albeit a very important one) who are in opposition to ten cosmic deities. The cosmic gods want to preserve the universe, anti-cosmic gods want to destroy it. Obviously, the cosmic gods are at a disadvantage, being outnumbered by one, and this is the significance of Satan, as the 'extra' deity who tips the scales in Chaos' favor.
The aforementioned Dissection is of key importance here. Their album Reinkaos was co-written by one of the authors of the Liber Azerate - one of the occult texts of the Temple of the Black Light. That album is generally understood as essentially a statement of the anti-cosmic satanist belief system. While Dissection's musical style on the album has been criticized as a departure from black metal, the contemporary group Watain has become one of the most popular black metal bands on Earth, and as anti-cosmic satanists themselves, they continue to promote the temple's beliefs (although the relationship between them and the actual temple is not within public knowledge; it has been claimed by some that they are not even members, whilst others have spread rumors that they helped author one of the temple's books; the truth is simply unknown).
And now, groups outside of black metal have taken up the torch - The Devil's Blood was a powerful force in underground rock music, a cult sensation in more ways than one. Together with In Solitude, they released records in less extreme forms of metal and rock that sang the praises of anti-cosmic satanism and the occult, and, consequently, toured with Watain and black metal band Behemoth. Selim Lemouchi, the bandleader and primary songwriter of The Devil's Blood, ended his life recently, not unlike Jon Nödtveid. Both men stated that they wanted to die upon reaching their 'peak', and completing their creative output by giving all that they had to offer. Watching interviews with Lemouchi, even years after the fact, his calm manner and smile give no indication of his impending suicide even as he talks about taking his own life; if anything, he seems joyous, describing death with the sort of religious ecstasy that a born-again Christian effuses when he speaks about Jesus.
If black metal wasn't religion, The Temple of the Black Light in particular and anti-cosmic satanism in general most certainly are. And it seems to be as powerful as any religion - it has supernatural beliefs, 'fire and brimstone' preachers, like Erik Danielsson of Watain, and even those who are willing to become martyrs, like Jon Nödtveid, or Selim Lemouchi. This religion seared through the apparent damnation of cosmic pessimism and emerged on the other side with something new - something that has now disseminated beyond black metal, though still carried on the powerful wings of music.
4. "O Joy, O Rapture, O Decline of Space & Time"
By why need it be pessimism? Understanding the cosmos as constituted in a horrific manner is a terrifying thought, for the thinker exists - and in fact, must exist - within the cosmos. But if we were to take this understanding and reverse it - what would we have? What would the corresponding position of optimism be? Cosmic optimism might be described as the opposite viewpoint, and represents what would be a differing understanding of the cosmos as constituted in a benign manner - this is not what we're looking for. Could one maintain the same understanding - the cosmos as indifferent, unhuman, perhaps hostile - but invert their interpretation of that understanding?
The term we're looking for is anti-cosmic optimism - this is the underlying philosophical position that is expressed by the religion known as anti-cosmic satanism. The cosmic pessimist laments the nature of the cosmos; the anti-cosmic optimist hopes for its destruction. The cosmic pessimist sees the a flawed reality; the anti-cosmic optimist sees a perfect non-reality. The cosmic pessimist has a negative attitude towards existence; the anti-cosmic optimist has a positive attitude towards non-existence.
This is the nature of the revaluation that anti-cosmic satanists have undergone. Thus, this new religion cannot be called cosmic pessimism, although it is a product of it. It is borne out of black metal, but not limited to it. It draws equally on its kindred ideologies in the primordial soup of black metal's pessimistic zeitgeist - equal parts satanic opposition to Christianity and pagan occult practices - whilst eschewing all non-theistic satanists and traditional or neo-pagan sects. Perhaps it is one possible formulation of the new 'darkness mysticism' that Thacker has conceived - although even here it is defiant, for anti-cosmic satanists justify their beliefs with a different God, albeit one named 'Satan'.
Even here, anti-cosmic satanists cannot be so easily understood. Satan in the anti-cosmic satanist ideology is not a 'deity' in the form of an entity or consciousness in the same way as God or gods are normally understood in other ideologies. Since it is a mystical belief system, these concepts are difficult to convey by their very nature, but perhaps the best explanation would be an understanding of Satan as more like a personification, or aspect, of Chaos. Chaos is a very important concept to anti-cosmic satanism, and it is a concept that means something between 'nothingness' and 'everything', or perhaps both at the same time.
To explain this, we must look at anti-cosmic satanist cosmology. In the beginning, there was nothing, but this nothingness was really Chaos - a reality of infinite dimensions of space, which are infinitely expanding, multiplying and collapsing. There is no time, and thus in these conditions nothing can 'be', since materialization and form are simply not possible. However, this is not to say that Chaos is 'empty'; in one sense it is, but in another sense, there are no 'laws' governing Chaos - either physical or logical - and thus anything can happen, and does. The result is that Chaos is pregnant with every possibility, all of which are happening at once, but the negation of every possibility is also happening, simultaneously. There is an actuality of nothing, but the potential for everything.
One of these possibilities was a sustained existence - in other words, the concept of duration, and therefore of 'things' with defined parameters, the passage of time, cause and effect, etc. Thus, within the vast churning maelstrom of Chaos, there was a 'contraction' of sorts, whereupon Chaos receded from being everywhere at once to being around a reality with a sustained existence. But if a reality is to exist, this reality would be robbing all potential realities from existing - whereas before they were all coming into existence at once, all the time, now, the actuality of one of those realities becoming the one and only cosmos destroys the others. Thus, Chaos wants to swallow up reality once more - the cosmos's defense against this is the creation of the cosmic gods, a challenge which Chaos answers with the anti-cosmic gods.
There is much, much more to this religion (you can find a lot of it by googling, but it will take some digging; you have to sift through a great deal of hearsay and rumors to find their actual texts). But this is at least a rudimentary understanding of the concepts involved, if not the specifics of the deities and events described - in one framing of their 'creation story', the Liber Azerate frames the tale into the characters and events of Enuma Elish, the Sumerian creation myth. Thus, Tiamat and Apsu, the primordial 'first gods' are more like the very wrath of Chaos itself against the rebellious defiler Marduk. He, like many of the offspring of the first generations of gods, are abhorred by their parents, who seek to destroy them. Marduk manages to defeat them and shape the sanctuary of the cosmos, which the text refers to as 'a stinking island' in the sea of Chaos - but the anti-cosmic gods rise from the blood of Tiamat, destined to eventually destroy it all.
It is a very Thackerian construction - the unhuman, unthinkable Chaos, receding just beyond the bounds of reality, ever pushing against it, yearning to collapse into it. However, the anti-cosmic satanist position - being underlain by anti-cosmic optimism, as its philosophical foundation - is one that celebrates this truth, and hopes for the day when Chaos will envelop everything. Due to the nature of their supernatural claims, this apocalypse is inevitable, and preferable.
Anti-cosmic satanists lament that our free, limitless souls are incarnated into the limitations of a physical body - I've read one passage that suggests that, in the course of this process, our souls are 'raped'. In this existence, we are certain to suffer greatly, and be forever enslaved to causation and duration - the tyranny of time. But they escape the position of cosmic pessimism through a sort of worship of death. Death is seen as a force of Chaos, intervening in the world, the inevitable consequence of the world being an aberration in a reality where, normally, nothing can attain 'being'. Thus, while our decay and eventual dissolution into nothing is assured, it is a long, slow process. But this is something to look forward to, for an anti-cosmic satanist. When one is not confined to their body, to a certain set of limitations on their being, they are instead limitless, and at one with all things. This necessarily overwhelms any individual perception of existence, and one would thus lose all of the traits of their own being - being one with everything means that your self becomes nothing. These types of beliefs certainly qualify as a type of 'darkness mysticism', the way Thacker described it earlier.
"Magic is not just confined to consciousness. All events, including the origin of the universe, happen basically by magic. That is to say, they arise spontaneously without a final prior cause. Matter gives the appearance of being governed by physical laws, but these are only statistical approximations. It is not possible to give a final explanation of how anything happens in terms of cause and effect. At some level the event must have 'just happened'. This might seem to give rise to a completely random and disordered universe. Not so. Throw a single die and you might get anything; throw six million and you will get almost exactly a million sixes. There is no reason for the laws of the universe represented here by the structure of the dice; they, too, are phenomena that have just arisen spontaneously and may one day cease to apply is spontaneity produces something different."
There is a certain elegance to the idea that nothingness proceeded 'somethingness'. When debating with theists over the cosmological argument, the two options most commonly given as a refutation to the theistic argument would be that the universe has always existed (in some form), or arose from a spontaneous cause. Both solutions seem problematic, but this is not very troubling, generally, because theism ultimately falls victim to the same issues. But, if we want to honestly contemplate the issue outside of a debate, we're left with the underlying assumption that something, in some form, was always here. What if existence is the exception to the rule? What if there was no uncaused cause, because reality is, in its most natural state, acausal?
There is a philosophical precedent to attributing the tragedy of the human condition to time. Emil Cioran famously asserted that the 'demonic character of time' was responsible for man's fear, regret and anxieties. We must bring up Nietzsche here too, who described the past as a heavy weight that was forever out of our reach. We possess knowledge of the past, and yet we have no control over it, and thus our memories of hardship yield trauma, of our own wrong-doing they yield guilt, and even our happy memories and feelings of nostalgia are tinged with the knowledge that they represent a good experience that has now passed. The worries over the possible course the future might hold are also self-evident. Mankind fears the unknown, and there is no greater unknown than the future - save for a few certainties in life, which some have jocularly identified as 'death and taxes', which underscore the reality that what little we can know of the future includes our own destruction.
There is even a glimmer of meaning to human life, in that a human life might be used to sow the seeds for the coming of Chaos. Kingu, a Sumerian mythological figure whom Marduk slays in the Enuma Elish also appears in the anti-cosmic satanist version. In the original myth, he uses his blood to shape mankind into servants. This happens in the Liber Azerate telling as well; thus, in the Temple of the Black Light's interpretation, consciousness is evidence in man of a divine 'spark' of the darkness within everyone. Man has a divine origin, but divinity here means non-existence as a part of Chaos and nothingness. Since existence within our cosmos is the aberration, one may find direction by helping to free other souls from suffering under the weight of time - this, of course, involves ritual practices and sometimes sacrifices.
Thus, everything is inverted. Death over life, darkness over light, non-existence preferable to existence. Nothingness the rule, destined to eventually overwhelm the exception and destroy the cosmos. All of this is celebrated, negating the problems of pessimism; through supernatural beliefs, adherents now have a goal at which to aim.
5. "A Place of Eternal Freedom, The Void Where All Illusions Die"
Does this solve the problem of nihilism? Does it successfully transmute it into a belief that can be affirmed?
Ultimately, it is still a 'path to nothingness' in a Nietzschean understanding. While the anti-cosmic veneration of death and nothingness may be some kind of value, it is still the hope for an 'afterworld', of sorts, even if this afterworld isn't necessarily represented as a heaven in the way most religions would understand it. Whether or not there is anything supernatural, this is a philosophy that is avowedly death-affirming, completely in opposition to Nietzsche's values.
All the same, we aim to be free spirits here, and so we shouldn't really give a damn what Nietzsche thinks, even if we are adopting his perspectivist approach, at times. I'm not convinced that there is any way to create an order of rank amongst value systems. Talking about which values 'are of more value' is nonsensical, and will lead to an infinite regress. You know which values to value more? How did you determine this? By a higher table of values? Shouldn't there be one higher than that? And so on? A philosophical system being life-affirming does seem to be the most 'real', in a sense - such a system actually engages with the world on its own terms, and does not make up anything fictional in order to derive value. We are alive, in this existence, right now, and thus we should affirm this - it is a powerful demand, and a persuasive one. And yet, we cannot really say that life-affirming systems are better or worse than death-affirming systems, one can only decide which type of values system is acceptable to himself, or herself.
And if we accept the Nietzschean concept of fatalism (specifically the Nietzschean concept, not fatalism in the sense of 'destiny'), then persons are viewed as constituted by many drives, values, virtues, memories, inclinations, physiological demands, passions - a complex society of the mind and self, ever-changing and pulling in many directions. One cannot control which drives are the strongest; rather, a man's drives have sovereignty over him. A strong individual must understand their own drives - everything that pushes them towards a certain state of being, or pulls away from another, undesirable state of being - and allow them to find harmony, and order of rank amongst themselves, with the stronger drives mastering the weaker (and only after a long 'war within the self', of course). If one has been pulled or pushed to the depths of cosmic pessimism, and anti-cosmic optimism offers them a goal at which to aim - one cannot say that they have picked an inherently 'worse' path, if this is how their drives have narrowed their focus.
One may take issue with the supernatural claims involved, but at the risk of sounding a bit philosophically reckless, if we are to be completely honest with ourselves, we cannot know anything for certain. Anti-cosmic satanism, if it is indeed a form of darkness mysticism, must defy our human understanding of reality. Every certainty we have about reality will eventually boil down to an uncertainty; and every institution of the conceptual realm - morals, values, interpretations of reality, are, in some loose sense, fabrications. Ironically, as fervently as the Temple of the Black Light denounces modern society as based on illusion and lies, their ideology must also rely on fictions. But this cannot be too troubling, because, all the while, they attack the very concept of truth, as we understand it, by asserting a dominant realm in which our laws of logic do not apply. At the very least, we know that man is the animal that lies - certainly this religion couldn't be said to be any more or less believable than all the others, and it seems to me that it was demanded by the yearnings of those who wanted something like religion, where they found it lacking.
But if this is not satisfactory, one may even ignore the supernatural claims and focus on the underlying philosophical position: anti-cosmic optimism. And I just can't help going back to the ancient mystics of Alexandria, and the enraptured students in Critchley's course. In today's world, by any of man's appraisals thus far of what is 'good' or 'right' - human society has failed, and continues to fail. By any understanding of the cosmos, there is nothing 'higher' than man that cares for him or wishes to save him from this plight. To many, everything around them seems superficial and unfulfilling - and yet, they cannot bring themselves to embrace religions that deny the previous two facts. Anti-cosmic optimism is the project of reckoning the world as it is - and, in the words of Watain, saying "Fuck the world." This new breed of devil-worshipper has found nothing to say 'Yes' to, so perhaps the only merciful thing is to embrace and celebrate the eventuality of leaving the world.
The result is sometimes beautiful in its poeticism. Selim Lemouchi writes in The Devil's Blood song, 'Endless Saturnalia', of his strange inclination "To find love in the shimmer of blood on stone, to find passion in a maze of sun-bleached bone." There is another verse in the song 'Within the Charnel House of Love', where his verse proclaims, "And as horror begets horror, so I receive my father's sin. I was made to dwell within his house, and drown in the love therein." The 'father' being referenced is Satan, and a charnel house was a place in the monastery where the bones of dead monks were left. Or, as Erik Danielsson shrieks in the Watain track 'The Waters of Ain':
"Do not mistake me for a star,
Though I'll shine like them at night,
But behold instead the darkness in between them,
The Devil's light."
Though I'll shine like them at night,
But behold instead the darkness in between them,
The Devil's light."
While a love of death or praise of darkness may seem disturbing, it should not seem odd in light of everything we've now read of the Temple of the Black Light. And supposing that Lemouchi really did find love in the thought of death, should we abhor the thought of loving that which we all must face? Or ought we avoid thinking of death at all, focusing on life in the here and now? This is an easy maxim to espouse, but a more difficult one to follow when one's view has shifted to the 'cosmic perspective'.
We never were going to come even close to the answers to these questions, at least not here and now. In many ways, anti-cosmic satanism is constituted by much of the same attributes as the largest religions - prioritizing an afterlife over this one, esoteric knowledge and theological explanations, the promise of eventual 'salvation'. But in other, important ways, it is not - the afterlife is a non-life, salvation is death, and the only rules or values are freedom and hedonism, or the hope for an eventual apocalypse, from which none will be spared. In many important ways, it addresses the same philosophical problems of cosmic pessimism, nihilism, and values. But, it tackles these problems in ways most of the philosophers of ages past who wrestled with them would not agree with.
Whether explored by Thacker, Pizzolatto, or Lemouchi, the central questions that this series has explored is: "What should I believe? Where should I direct my will? Why? How?" In ages past, men did not have to think about these questions - his culture or religion directed his will, and this was the order of things. In our prehistory, which was the natural state of man for far, far longer than our recorded history as a 'civilized animal', man's direction was ever-more set in stone by consequences of his birth and physiological needs; perhaps these questions weren't thought about at all, or only rarely. And even now, in our cosmopolitan societies, where any belief system is tolerated by our laws and by most societal conventions, religion is a guiding hand for many.
We may see anti-cosmic satanism as yet another answer to this question - "They are all wrong. It is pointless; we have achieved nothing. Direct your will towards nothingness." As Nietzsche said, man would rather will nothingness than not will. It is simply not an option for us, and so, even a cult that worships death will not merely lay down and die - these beliefs are married with ritual and theology, and perhaps this is the more obvious 'transmutation' that affects the nihilism of its adherents. Everything must be made into poetry and art for us, because while scripture can impart the message, a melody can make you really feel that message.
The anti-cosmic message is one of many answers to these fundamental questions - and, like a church hymn, continues to travel through music. But, perhaps, as in the theology of the Liber Azerate, it should be seen as only one possibility, out of an endless myriad of potential answers. And so, we must parallel the figures of their creation myth - we cannot permit this perspective any permanence, so long as we be wanderers. For us, for now, the goal at which we aim is to be free spirits. Accordingly, we may even stop for a moment on our journey and admire the anti-cosmic satanist; he seeks for spiritual freedom, and the spirit is never freer than when it lies, deceives, propagates illusions - that is to say, interprets, values, creates.
* * *
There's more to come, but not for this series! It's a joy to finally have all of this down on paper (or on 1s and 0s). I've wanted to write about these topics for a long time and there's a sort of 'congestion of ideas' that starts to build up, with the ever-present knowledge that if you don't record them in some way, they'll start to die off and become forgotten, as our minds are not merciful with memories. We'll be moving on to brighter topics soon. There are many articles in the works, covering a lot of ground in a lot of different directions. Hopefully we'll go off on our merry way and explore all of them - and many more that I haven't yet imagined.
"A Waxing Moon Over Babylon"
"Reaping Death"
A link to "Satan's Cheerleaders"
Selim Lemouchi discusses his beliefs
The Devil's Blood, SL introduces the cult
Interesting... very interesting...
ReplyDeleteThanks for this essay, I've found it very interesting and it drove me to learn more about anti-cosmic satanism. You have great topics to discuss about in your blog, thanks again.
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