Modern Satanism also goes by the name of LaVeyan Satanism. It is the principle theory that this page deals with.

Modern Satanism recognizes the image of Satan to be a principle of life. The phrase "preferred archetype" is usually used to describe Satan. It is perhaps the largest branch of Satanism that exists today. The Church of Satan is regarded by many to be the principle organization in which Satanism is expounded. The Church of Satan is localized in San Francisco, California.

There are various numbers that are used to identify the number of Satanists actually living in the United States today. According to Statistc Canada, only 335 Canadians identified themselves as Satanists in the last census (1991: I recognize this information is out of date). This implies (the population of Canada at the time was apparently 1/10th that of the United States) that there were roughly 3,500 Satanists in the United States at that time--a very conservative estimate. The true number of Satanists is most likely much larger than this. In the 1970s, a United States Department of the Army pamphlet (#165-13), used by military chaplains for a brief overview of religions of soldiers in the service, identified approximately 10 to 20 thousand members of the Church of Satan. Accurate totals are impossible to obtain, because Satanic organizations such as the Church do not release membership totals for various reasons.

The concept of Satan as used by Satanists bears no similarity to the Christian Devil. According to Christianity, the Devil is the force of nature or the deity (depending on how you see him) that is responsible for all evil. But the concept of Satan to a Satanist is pre-Christian. This is a distinctly important difference. Our Satan is a symbol that represents an ideal: power, virility, sexuality, and sensuality. These are the true meanings of Satan. His image is used to represent these ideals. In Modern Satanism, Satan is firstly not recognized as the Devil because Satanists do not believe in the Devil. It's important to keep in mind that in Modern Satanism, Satan is not a deity.

Gnostic (Gr. "spiritual knowledge") Satanism is sometimes referred to as Setianism.

The beliefs of the Gnostic Satanists and the Modern Satanists are very similar. The main organization of Gnostic Satanism is The Temple of Set.

The founder of the Temple, Michael Aquino, was originally a member of the Church of Satan. He was a personal friend to Anton LaVey. Over time, the two grew apart and eventually, Michael Aquino left the Church and denounced it.

Soon afterwards, he formed The Temple of Set. The main difference between the two beliefs, Modern and Gnostic Satanism, is the concept of Satan. This is what led to the split in the first place. Recall the concept of Satan in Modern Satanism: a life force, a symbol representing power, virility, sexuality, and sensuality.

The Gnostic Satanist believes in Satan as a deity. But Satan is still pre-Christian. The Prince of Darkness has, as of yet, not been demonized. Pre-dynastic Egyptian religion describes Satan not as a devil, but as Set. His formal reitualized name was Set-ten (hence Satan). Set (also Seth also the Greek Typhon) was regarded not as the lord of evil, as Egyptian deities were considered to exist in a realm where the concept of "evil" did not exist (dynastic Egyptian religion demonized Set, turning him into the murderer of his brother, Osiris). In most cases, Set is represented as a man with the head of an animal (usually a hyena). He was not regarded as a part of the forces of the universe.

Gnostic Satanists do not display an obsession for Set...that is, they do not actually worship him or demonstrate faith in him as a god such as Christians, Muslism, Jews, or Wiccans do in their respective deities. Rather, they belive The Seven Deadly Sins are unnatural restrictions on human behavior, and that to display their beliefs, they explore these sins to their rational limits, keeping an amount of control on themselves.

Gothic Satanism is what most people think of when they see the word "Satanism". Don't confuse Gothic Satanism with the Gothic subculture. The Gothic subculture is a philosophical, artistic, and musical movement that uses pathos, death, and darkness as its main themes.

Gothic Satanism originated during the Inquisition (also called The Burning Times and The Female Holocaust). It is an imaginary religion that never has existed on a wide scale, and hopefully never will.

It was said that there were people who rode to Black Masses on All Hallow's Eve (they were usually female--more about that later) where they cavorted, danced, drank, and participated in massive orgies in which the Devil appeared in the form of a large black goat. According to the Catholic leaders of the day, these people willingly sold their soul to the Devil in exchange for powers such as the ability to turn people into animals, disappear at will, control minds, cause death by looking at you, and other such nonsense. Most of these so-called "Satanists" were female, because, according to two Dominican priests named Kramer and Sprenger, females are easily impressionable, more perfidious, more sexual, more envious, and less intelligent than men. They argued in their book The Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch's Hammer), that God, being a man, would naturally protect other males from such temptations from the Devil that women were so susceptible to.

Regardless of how utterly ridiculous such claims as these are, a great fear of Satanism in all its forms survived until recently. In the 1970s, a mass hysteria, called bemusedly by most Satanists as "The Satanic Panic", swept the United States and other Western nations. Satanists were regarded as serial killers, violent people who still took part in massive orgies, murderers of babies, paedophiles, incestuous, and church-burners. This fear of Satanism probably wasn't helped too much by Anton LaVey's tireless ploys for publicity (he performed the first public Satanic Wedding, the first Satanic Baptism, and on more than one occasion he performed a Black Mass--a religious statement in which the Roman Catholic Mass is parodied to ridicule the doctrines of the Christian church).

Modern and Gnostic Satanists regard Satan in a pre-Christian light, one (Modern) looks at him as a symbol, the other (Gnostic) views him not as Satan but as Set.

All Satanists are highly critical of other belief systems. Satanists are usually very adept at pointing out hidden flaws of a philosophy. This makes many Satanists to be inclined towards some form of art and complicated music as it fits their penchant for noticing details.

All Satanists regard Christianity in a very bad light. Satanists are highly anti-Christian (but it's important to note that they willingly accept the right of people to be Christians--among other religions--and are very rarely if ever at all responsible for violence of an anti-Christian manner). Though not physically abusive to Christians or their Churches, all Satanists work to preserve in the strictest possible sense the seperation of church and state.

Like Christianity, Wicca (the modern-day witchcraft movement) is also regarded very badly. Satanists consider Wiccans to be hypocrates, for two reasons. Firstly, Wiccans restrict their form of "magick", as they call it, to "white" magic or beneficial magic. On the other hand, Satanists are also responsible for doing magic that is aimed at benefitting their friends and other people, along with themselves without harming others, but they are also responsible for magic aimed at harm, and, in some cases, death. It's important to make clear that such magic and spells are absolutely last ditch efforts to "get even" with someone. Legal roads are stressed, and no Satanist will do more than is deserved. They believe that by restricting yourself to one side of "Good" or "Evil", that you limit your potential as a human being. According to Satanic philosophy, neither good nor evil is an absolute value--it is a reaction to a single stimulus, categorized dependant on how you relate to it. This, they argue, means that nothing is truly "Good" or "Evil", because they represent the very same concept, the perception of which is skewed by the individual's perspective. Satanistis tend to try to view things from multiple perspectives, usually with the intent to reject dogmatism. That's not to say that Satanists don't have moral values. It means that the moral values of one Satanist will be different from another. What we call a moral value is not universally so (in short, Satanists are a type of relativist). Secondly, Satanists believe Wiccans are hypocritical because of how they relate to the Christian Church. Wicca is a predominately feminine belief, and they, as witches, were the target of the Burning Times as well as Satanists. Lies put forward by Christians to justify the action of killing women based on their religion (Wiccans and Satanists were regarded as the same thing--see Gothic Satanism for a summary of what Christians claimed both Wiccans and Satanists were responsible for) were the same as they were for Satanists. Yet to this day, the Wiccan religion fervantly attempts to unite itself with Christianity, and, not only that, but Wiccans are also responsible for promoting lies and fear of Satanism. The claims made by the Christians in the 70s and 80s during the Satanic Panic were expounded and supported by Wiccans, and to this day, they are. Look at any Wiccan website and you will unfailingly see a criticism of Satanism based on what the modern public views as a Satanist. This practice is identical to those of the Christians during the Inquisition.