All aboard with Satan's sailor
Catherine Bennett
Thursday October 28, 2004
The Guardian
What does a Satanist do? Although the question is obviously more pressing when the Satanist in question occupies a neighbouring bunk, the crew members of HMS Cumberland cannot be the only people curious about the worshipping style favoured by Leading Hand Chris Cranmer, the naval technician who has just been granted permission to practise his faith on board a Royal Navy frigate.
With their learned debates on incest and the the correct spelling of Shemhamforash!, Satanist websites shed little immediate light on the likely congruence between satanic observances and a life on the open sea. Better perhaps to begin with the text that captivated Cranmer when he came across it nine years ago: Anton Szandor LaVey's Satanic Bible. It was, apparently, Cranmer's desire to "relax in bed" with a copy of this bible (as well as a reluctance to bite his tongue "with idiots") that impelled him to register as a Satanist.
Thanks to the navy's enlightened attitudes we can now picture Cranmer, in his bunk, quietly meditating on his spiritual leader's injunction to "hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, SMASH him on the other!" LaVey's biographer, Burton H Wolfe, has summarised the satanist creed as "a blatantly selfish, brutal philosophy ... based on the belief that life is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest". Although such organised self-assertion is certainly less alarming than the infant sacrifice and blood-drinking often erroneously associated with LaVey's Satanism, one wonders if the navy has really confronted the difficulties that could arise when the contempt for inferiors that characterises the devout Satanist conflicts with nautical discipline. The prohibition on "herd conformity", number five in LaVey's list of satanic sins, rules out any question of submission.
Could a Satanist, whose ambition is to proclaim, "Bow down, for I am the highest embodiment of human life!", ever be truly happy repeating "Aye aye, sir"? Not to mention the hornpipe? If I were a senior officer on HMS Cumberland I might want to start making regular checks for effigies, removing any that may, in an excess of religious zeal, have been punctured in the approved LaVey style, with pins or nails.
After publishing his bible in 1969, LaVey (whose real name was Howard Stanton Levey), composed a companion volume, The Satanic Rituals, from which Leading Hand Cranmer will presumably be selecting the ceremonies he is now licensed to perform.
Since the navy is an equal opportunities employer, there may not be much difficulty in finding a naked female rating to use as an altar. "A nude woman is used as the altar in satanic rituals," Lavey explains in his bible, "because woman is the passive receptor and represents the earth mother." Instead, the chief problem is likely to be one of space, for in comparison with Christian or Muslim rites, the simplest satanic rituals seem to require enormous quantities of kit, something that may not always harmonise with operational effectiveness.
To enact even the most basic satanic ritual, Cranmer will need black robes (cowled or hooded); a symbol of Baphomet ("the Powers of Darkness combined with the generative fertility of the goat"); both black and white candles; a bell ("the tonal quality should be loud and penetrating"); a chalice ("anything but gold"); elixir ("whatever drink is most stimulating and pleasing to the palate"); sword (or "long knife, cane, or similar staff"); phallus ("one may be made from plaster, wood, clay, wax, etc"); gong ("a concert gong is preferred"); and parchment ("plain paper may be substituted").
For the more imposing rites, such as the Ceremony of the Stifling Air, Cranmer must also source (in addition to many minor props, including a goblet, cruet and cat o'nine tails) a coffin - "a traditional hexagonal style is recommended". LaVey adds that it must be "large enough to contain two persons", one of whom will be a woman who is required to "beckon seductively". Another ceremony requires "entire animal heads made of papier mache" and a mouse in a cage. A human arm-, or legbone will have to be requisitioned for the Russian-themed Homage to Tchort: "I am a thrusting rod with head of iron, drawing to me myriad nymphs, tumescent in their craving!"
Although the prancing, ringing and gonging that accompanies these rituals is, no doubt, strictly harmless, sailors who overhear Cranmer shouting, "I am rampant carnal joy!" in the next cabin may not feel totally at ease. There is also the impact on morale to consider should he decide to try out a magical technique which involves concealing a dead mackerel in his trousers. LaVey, a man with a disturbing dirty-underwear fetish, urges his Bible readers to use smell - or not-washing - as an "important manipulative factor in lesser magic". Perhaps a whitebait would do the trick.
Can Cranmer's fellow crew members feel confident that they will not become a human sacrifice? Not altogether. In the Satanic Bible, LaVey does not shrink from asking, "Who, then, would be considered a fit and proper human sacrifice?" The answer, he says, is "brutally simple. Anyone who has unjustly wronged you ... In short, a person asking to be cursed by their very actions." Were the Cumberland ever to engage in formal hostilities, this cursing (instructions are included) could obviously be quite advantageous: "I call upon the messengers of doom to slash with grim delight this victim I have chosen." Although it remains to be seen if it would work on people who are widely considered to be evil high-achievers themselves - Osama bin Laden, for instance.
But even if Ldg Hand Cranmer is unable to eliminate enemies using invisible, impressively economical Conjurations of Destruction, he has earned our gratitude. The sanctioning of LaVey's smutty hocus pocus on board HMS Cumberland not only illustrates how unattractive a belief system may be while still earning official respect; it hints at the difficulties we may soon face in criticising anything that calls itself a religion.
Happily, with Blunkett's law against inciting religious hatred still only a threat, it is still legal to argue that Satanism, which was invented by the absurd LaVey in 1966, is far too silly, and smelly, to deserve protected faith status. And if the only way to subdue the claims of particularly idiotic or offensive religions is to exclude the whole lot of them from public life, then - as the devil worshippers of my acquaintance like to put it - so mote it be.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1337620,00.html
Catherine Bennett
Thursday October 28, 2004
The Guardian
What does a Satanist do? Although the question is obviously more pressing when the Satanist in question occupies a neighbouring bunk, the crew members of HMS Cumberland cannot be the only people curious about the worshipping style favoured by Leading Hand Chris Cranmer, the naval technician who has just been granted permission to practise his faith on board a Royal Navy frigate.
With their learned debates on incest and the the correct spelling of Shemhamforash!, Satanist websites shed little immediate light on the likely congruence between satanic observances and a life on the open sea. Better perhaps to begin with the text that captivated Cranmer when he came across it nine years ago: Anton Szandor LaVey's Satanic Bible. It was, apparently, Cranmer's desire to "relax in bed" with a copy of this bible (as well as a reluctance to bite his tongue "with idiots") that impelled him to register as a Satanist.
Thanks to the navy's enlightened attitudes we can now picture Cranmer, in his bunk, quietly meditating on his spiritual leader's injunction to "hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, SMASH him on the other!" LaVey's biographer, Burton H Wolfe, has summarised the satanist creed as "a blatantly selfish, brutal philosophy ... based on the belief that life is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest". Although such organised self-assertion is certainly less alarming than the infant sacrifice and blood-drinking often erroneously associated with LaVey's Satanism, one wonders if the navy has really confronted the difficulties that could arise when the contempt for inferiors that characterises the devout Satanist conflicts with nautical discipline. The prohibition on "herd conformity", number five in LaVey's list of satanic sins, rules out any question of submission.
Could a Satanist, whose ambition is to proclaim, "Bow down, for I am the highest embodiment of human life!", ever be truly happy repeating "Aye aye, sir"? Not to mention the hornpipe? If I were a senior officer on HMS Cumberland I might want to start making regular checks for effigies, removing any that may, in an excess of religious zeal, have been punctured in the approved LaVey style, with pins or nails.
After publishing his bible in 1969, LaVey (whose real name was Howard Stanton Levey), composed a companion volume, The Satanic Rituals, from which Leading Hand Cranmer will presumably be selecting the ceremonies he is now licensed to perform.
Since the navy is an equal opportunities employer, there may not be much difficulty in finding a naked female rating to use as an altar. "A nude woman is used as the altar in satanic rituals," Lavey explains in his bible, "because woman is the passive receptor and represents the earth mother." Instead, the chief problem is likely to be one of space, for in comparison with Christian or Muslim rites, the simplest satanic rituals seem to require enormous quantities of kit, something that may not always harmonise with operational effectiveness.
To enact even the most basic satanic ritual, Cranmer will need black robes (cowled or hooded); a symbol of Baphomet ("the Powers of Darkness combined with the generative fertility of the goat"); both black and white candles; a bell ("the tonal quality should be loud and penetrating"); a chalice ("anything but gold"); elixir ("whatever drink is most stimulating and pleasing to the palate"); sword (or "long knife, cane, or similar staff"); phallus ("one may be made from plaster, wood, clay, wax, etc"); gong ("a concert gong is preferred"); and parchment ("plain paper may be substituted").
For the more imposing rites, such as the Ceremony of the Stifling Air, Cranmer must also source (in addition to many minor props, including a goblet, cruet and cat o'nine tails) a coffin - "a traditional hexagonal style is recommended". LaVey adds that it must be "large enough to contain two persons", one of whom will be a woman who is required to "beckon seductively". Another ceremony requires "entire animal heads made of papier mache" and a mouse in a cage. A human arm-, or legbone will have to be requisitioned for the Russian-themed Homage to Tchort: "I am a thrusting rod with head of iron, drawing to me myriad nymphs, tumescent in their craving!"
Although the prancing, ringing and gonging that accompanies these rituals is, no doubt, strictly harmless, sailors who overhear Cranmer shouting, "I am rampant carnal joy!" in the next cabin may not feel totally at ease. There is also the impact on morale to consider should he decide to try out a magical technique which involves concealing a dead mackerel in his trousers. LaVey, a man with a disturbing dirty-underwear fetish, urges his Bible readers to use smell - or not-washing - as an "important manipulative factor in lesser magic". Perhaps a whitebait would do the trick.
Can Cranmer's fellow crew members feel confident that they will not become a human sacrifice? Not altogether. In the Satanic Bible, LaVey does not shrink from asking, "Who, then, would be considered a fit and proper human sacrifice?" The answer, he says, is "brutally simple. Anyone who has unjustly wronged you ... In short, a person asking to be cursed by their very actions." Were the Cumberland ever to engage in formal hostilities, this cursing (instructions are included) could obviously be quite advantageous: "I call upon the messengers of doom to slash with grim delight this victim I have chosen." Although it remains to be seen if it would work on people who are widely considered to be evil high-achievers themselves - Osama bin Laden, for instance.
But even if Ldg Hand Cranmer is unable to eliminate enemies using invisible, impressively economical Conjurations of Destruction, he has earned our gratitude. The sanctioning of LaVey's smutty hocus pocus on board HMS Cumberland not only illustrates how unattractive a belief system may be while still earning official respect; it hints at the difficulties we may soon face in criticising anything that calls itself a religion.
Happily, with Blunkett's law against inciting religious hatred still only a threat, it is still legal to argue that Satanism, which was invented by the absurd LaVey in 1966, is far too silly, and smelly, to deserve protected faith status. And if the only way to subdue the claims of particularly idiotic or offensive religions is to exclude the whole lot of them from public life, then - as the devil worshippers of my acquaintance like to put it - so mote it be.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1337620,00.html
