Thursday, July 06, 2017

The Revelation of the Satanic Bible

When I was younger, as now, I was a big horror fan. Back in high school, thanks to books like The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, and Hostage to the Devil, I was into the Devil, at least as a fictional monster.  I said fictional, folks, let's get that straight, I didn't believe this stuff.  It was in that spirit I picked up Anton LaVey's so-called Satanic Bible.

I can still remember the look of alarm I got from the elderly lady clerk at B. Dalton when I plopped the book on the counter to purchase it. She would always give me the evil eye after that whenever I entered her mall store. On the contrary however, when I was in college, and working at that mall, a girlfriend who worked at WaldenBooks told me they sold lots of copies of the book all the time. Maybe more folks bought their Satanic Bibles at Walden than Dalton?

Anyway, I couldn't wait to dive into this evil plain black book and learn all about the Devil.  Then I started reading, then skipping and browsing, then slowly putting it down. Man, what a disappointment.  The Necronomicon it was not.  No horns, no possession, no Biblical evil, not even a pitchfork.  What I got was a boring new age book about doing whatever you want.  Do what you will or some such crap.  This was philosophy, a self-help book, where was the evil? Where was the Devil??

Now I remember tossing that thing into the paperback trader pile, and began spending a lifetime correcting people who think Satanists are Devil worshippers.  I went back to Stephen King, Robert McCammon, and James Herbert pretty quickly.  What a misleading piece of crap. 

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