Chapter 122. Schisms of the Left-Hand Path: Temple of Set, Order of Nine Angles, Theistic Luciferianism and The Satanic Temple

After LaVey founded the Church of Satan in 1966, organised Satanism did not stay a single movement. It split into currents that disagree on almost everything except their use of the Adversary as a symbol. Some are theistic and some atheistic. Some are initiatory academies, some are insurrectionary cells, and some run legal campaigns. Faxneld and Petersen describe the result as “a heterogeneous assortment of ideas and practices tying into popular culture, esotericism, and diffuse religiosity, developing in many mutually incongruent ways” [Faxneld & Petersen, The Devil’s Party, #87532, “Introduction”]. This chapter follows the main branches: Michael Aquino’s Temple of Set, the Scandinavian orders, the Order of Nine Angles (ONA) and its “Sinister Tradition”, Luciferian witchcraft, and The Satanic Temple (TST). It also follows the scholarly argument over whether “Satanism” is the right name for any of them.

The Temple of Set: Theism, Initiation and the Military Founder

Faxneld and Petersen give the founding account: “In 1975, LaVey’s right-hand man Michael Aquino and other high-ranking members left the church and formed the splinter group Temple of Set. Their focus was openly theistic, and they distanced themselves from the figure of Satan, claiming he was a later corruption of the ‘original’ Prince of Darkness, the Egyptian god Set.” They describe Aquino as “a high-ranking military officer and assistant professor in political science”. In their account he built “an esoteric academy, in sharp contrast to the deliberately seedy satanic carnival LaVey had set up”. The Temple modelled itself on “fin-de-siècle initiatory orders” and “postulated self-deification as the ultimate goal of the practitioner” [Faxneld & Petersen, The Devil’s Party, #87532, “Introduction”, pp. 7-8].

The theological break turns on whether Satan exists. The post-1975 Church of Satan says it “has always understood Satan as a symbol rather than a real being”. Aquino replies that the early church “did in fact treat Satan as an actually existing entity”. In the Temple, Set is “regarded as a real being, and, as written in The Book of Coming Forth by Night, the only god not created by humans” [The Devil’s Party, #87532, Part Four, Granholm chapter]. That founding text records Aquino’s visionary contact with Set, and its supernatural source “is not left to any doubt” [The Devil’s Party, #87532, Part Two]. On organisation, the same volume (citing Aquino 2010) says the Temple “is registered as a nonprofit organization and is thus entitled to tax benefits”. It is “officially led by a high priest/priestess who is the public face and spiritual leader”, and that person is “elected from among fourth or higher degree members by the chairman of a ruling council” [The Devil’s Party, #87532, Part Four].

Aquino was also a public figure. According to Faxneld and Petersen, he “filled LaVey’s role as America’s number one mass media Satanist in the 1980s, with appearances on talk shows like Oprah and Geraldo. Though soon acquitted, he was for a short time suspected of so-called Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) of children”. They place this within “the SRA scare, a rumour panic fired by fundamentalist Christians and dubious psychotherapists” [The Devil’s Party, #87532, “Introduction”, p. 7].

Conspiracy authors tell a very different story, and what follows is their allegation. David McGowan writes that “one of the names that surfaced at the Bonacci trial was that of Michael Aquino, the ‘High Priest’ and chief executive of the Temple of Set”. He states that a victim’s mother and Paul Bonacci identified Aquino as “the Colonel”, and he quotes a photographer, Rusty Nelson, linking Aquino to the Contra trafficking network. McGowan then turns to the Presidio Child Development Center case (1986-88). He reports that on 14 August 1987 a search warrant was served on the Aquinos’ home and that “neither of the Aquinos was charged with any crimes, nor have they been to this day—a fact that Aquino points to as proof of his innocence”. He also quotes a court finding of “probable cause to title Aquino with offenses” while noting that the San Francisco police “closed its investigation and filed no charges” [McGowan, Programmed to Kill, #71652, Chapter 3 “Uncle Sam Wants Your Children”]. Leo Zagami adds a later allegation: “Robert Bigelow, has been working for years with members of the Temple of Set, like Col. John B.” [Zagami, Confessions of an Illuminati, #367409, vol. 6.66]. Chapter 124 returns to the Presidio affair.

The Left-Hand Path as a Category: Granholm and the Tantric Term

Kennet Granholm studied Dragon Rouge and the Temple of Set through fieldwork, and he argues that “Satanism” is the wrong analytical label for them. His chapter “argues against the use of the label Satanism to categorize groups like Dragon Rouge or the Temple of Set, which, though they may display a fairly prominent use of satanic symbolism, are also highly eclectic and do not self-designate as Satanists”. He proposes “Left-Hand Path” and “post-Satanism” instead [Granholm, in The Devil’s Party, #87532, “The Left-Hand Path and Post-Satanism”]. The editors summarise his definition. The term “derives from Indian Tantra, and in the Western esoteric context typically signifies an ideology of antinomianism, self-deification, and individualism, which views man as a psycho-physical totality and celebrates life in the here-and-now”. They add that Dragon Rouge, “founded in 1989, is an influential contributor to the Left-Hand Path current”, but that Granholm “has argued fiercely against putting them in the Satanist category” [The Devil’s Party, #87532, “Introduction”, p. 8].

A practitioner essay in the library, signed “RtM”, traces the term’s history from inside the milieu. It says Hindu Tantra divides into “the Vamamarga (or vamacara or vamachara) or ‘Left Hand Path’ or red tantra and the Dakshinachara or ‘Right Hand Path'”. It claims the Western term “first appears as a perjorative” in Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine (1888), and that LaVey “probably smiled and recognized himself in that role”. The author still separates the two: Vamachara Tantra “strictly requires its initiates to study under the tutelage of a Tantrik guru”, which keeps it from being “Satanic”. Readers who need a guru “are better suited to study Setianism or Tantra rather than Satanism” [Satanism, Tantrism and the Left-Hand Path, #377421]. The text therefore takes the Church of Satan’s side against the Temple of Set’s initiatory model.

The Sinister Tradition: The Order of Nine Angles and David Myatt

Faxneld and Petersen count the Order of Nine Angles, “founded in the UK in the 1970s”, among the “more obviously satanic groups” [The Devil’s Party, #87532, “Introduction”, p. 8]. According to the editors’ summary of Jacob C. Senholt’s chapter, “Secret Identities in the Sinister Tradition: Political Esotericism and the Convergence of Radical Islam, Satanism, and National Socialism in the Order of Nine Angles”, describes a submilieu that is “explicitly political and extreme in its esoteric pursuits”. Through “insight roles” the order “advocates continuous transgression of established norms, roles, and comfort zones”. The example given is founder David Myatt, “also known as Anton Long”, and his “progression from National Socialism and Satanism to radical Islam (and possibly back again)” [Faxneld & Petersen, The Devil’s Party, #87532, “Introduction”, p. 12, summarising Senholt’s chapter]. The editors state: “The ONA despises ethical behaviour, and its main ideologist David Myatt has actively participated in violent neo-Nazi and Islamist terrorist groups. The motivation for those acts is a wish to bring down the ‘old order’. The fact that a manual on Aryan revolution written by Myatt seems to have inspired nail-bomber David Copeland’s deeds drew massive media attention” [The Devil’s Party, #87532, Part Four].

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke places Myatt in the British Nazi underground. He calls him “a longtime devotee of right-wing extremism and satanism” who “had begun elaborating a ‘religion of National-Socialism’ in the early 1990s”, advertising in John Cato’s The Oak and seeing Combat 18 “as the street army from which an Aryan revolutionary movement could be built”. Goodrick-Clarke says Myatt advocated “sabotage of basic services including water, sewage and electricity”. In another passage he calls him “another violent former BM activist and Nazi satanist” who promoted an Essex “East Saxon Kindred” as an “Aryan republic”. The same chapters cover Troy Southgate’s National Revolutionary Faction and the C18 milieu, where the “14 Words” of David Lane served as a masthead motto [Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun, #76349, ch. 2 “The British Nazi Underground”]. On Copeland, Goodrick-Clarke’s emphasis differs from Faxneld and Petersen’s. He records that Copeland joined Myatt’s NSM in late 1998 and became an area leader. He also says Copeland was “allegedly inspired by The Turner Diaries” and “acted as a lone wolf and had little involvement with the NSM”. He reports that three Soho deaths and scores of injuries followed the April 1999 bombings [ibid.]. For the earlier American scene, Goodrick-Clarke describes James Madole’s post-war circle, in which “the medley of Theosophy, popularized Vedic Hinduism, hostility toward Christianity and the neopagan posturing of satanism provided a composite doctrine of racial superiority” [Black Sun, #76349, ch. 4].

Other Currents: Scandinavia, Reds and the Internet

The same introduction names further branches. These are the Swedish Temple of the Black Light; the American Satanic Reds, “which combines their syncretistic dark doctrines with dialectical materialism”; and online theistic Satanism in the 1990s, “with ideologists like Diane Vera of New York City propagating their interpretation of Satanism primarily online”. It also covers Scandinavian black metal, whose rivalry in being “evil” “led to several murders and anti-Christian acts of terrorism like church burnings (Moynihan and Søderlind 1998)”. The editors judge that bands “like Sweden’s Watain, are, in fact, Satanists in deadly earnest—not just as part of a stage show” [The Devil’s Party, #87532, “Introduction”, pp. 7-8].

Luciferianism as Practised

Fredrik Gregorius treats Luciferian witchcraft as a milieu “between the satanic and esoteric Left-Hand Path milieux”, working with Lucifer, Lilith and Cain. He traces it through Leland’s Aradia (1899), Robert Cochrane, and the writings of Michael Ford, Andrew Chumbley and Michael Howard [Gregorius, in The Devil’s Party, #87532, “Luciferian Witchcraft”]. Ford’s own essay says his Luciferian Witchcraft and Liber HVHI “provide a foundation of sorcery which incorporates an interwoven praxis of antinomianism and self-deification”. It describes Liber HVHI as exploring “the Qlippothic Spheres, Ritual Sorcery based on the ancient cults mentioned in the Avesta of Yatuvidah, daeva-yasna (demon-worshippers)”. Ford takes his Adversary from Zurvanite myth, in which Ahriman is the first-born son of Zurvan. He states that “the Adversary is no Christian creation”, and he quotes the ONA on Baphomet as “the mistress (or mother) of blood” [Ford, The Abyss and Tabaet, #85558, “Introduction”; “Sorcery and Ahriman”]. This brings the Zoroastrian dualism of Part 2 back, reversed, as a practitioner’s source. Apotheosis, a beginner’s manual, says that “for experienced and knowledgeable Black Adepts, Lucifer and Satan can be considered the same Deity”. In its scheme Lucifer stands “for illumination and knowledge” and Satan “for challenging, strife and transformation”, and the deity names function as “Deific Masks” that allow either an atheistic or a theistic approach [Apotheosis, #39258]. Asenath Mason’s Draconian Ritual Book (2018) presents the Adversary as dragon and serpent. The figures it treats “became patron deities of the Left Hand Path, especially in regard to the Typhonian/Draconian Tradition” [Mason, Draconian Ritual Book, #80454].

The Satanic Temple: Symbol as Litigation

The reference shelf describes TST as “a non-theistic new religious movement, founded in 2012”. It was active by January 2013 and co-founded by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry “in response to the ‘intrusion of Christian values on American politics'”. It treats Satan as “the eternal rebel” and follows seven tenets, beginning “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason”. It received IRS church status in April 2019 [Wikipedia: The Satanic Temple]. Its bronze Baphomet was crowdfunded in 2014 as a counter-monument to the Ten Commandments monument at the Oklahoma capitol. After the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered that monument removed in 2015, TST withdrew its request and turned to Arkansas, where a privately funded Ten Commandments monument was installed in 2018 [Wikipedia: Statue of Baphomet]. The Synarchy guide gives the facts and then a polemic. It describes the statue as “8.5 feet tall”, featuring “a prominent pentagram”, “unveiled in Detroit in 2015”, and claims that “Pope Francis’ staff resembles the symbolism on the Baphomet statue” [Synarchy: The Complete Guide to the Elite Groups that Rule, #67074, “Vatican”]. Zagami quotes Greaves from “a recent documentary that premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival”: “This is the infancy of The Satanic Temple” [Zagami, Confessions of an Illuminati, #367409, vol. 6.66]. The film is Hail Satan? (dir. Penny Lane, released January 2019) [Wikipedia: Hail Satan?].

A Counterpoint: Keshe’s Rejection of Symbol

The Left-Hand Path depends heavily on symbols: Set, Baphomet, the qliphoth, the dragon. Mehran Keshe rejects symbolic religion altogether. In KSW 518 he argues that “with the coming of Christianity we became one step more mature. Now we carry the statue around our neck”. He says the cross, “Allah and the Moon” and “the Jewish star” are the “same Pagan worship in different D[imension]”, and that “we haven’t reached point to put these things away” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 518, #378230]. In KSW 629 he asks: “do we need religions? Or are the religions just made up to abuse the Man, because it’s a profitable market” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 629, #378341]. Keshe’s critique therefore covers both the mainstream faiths and the Satanists who invert their symbols, since both work through physical emblems.

Key points

• In 1975 Aquino and other senior members left the Church of Satan to found the theistic, initiatory Temple of Set, which treats Satan as a corruption of the Egyptian Set and makes self-deification its goal [#87532].
• Faxneld and Petersen say Aquino was briefly suspected in the SRA scare and “soon acquitted”. McGowan alleges a pattern of cover-up around the Bonacci and Presidio cases, while also recording that no charges were brought [#87532; #71652].
• Granholm rejects the label “Satanism” for Dragon Rouge and the Temple of Set and prefers “Left-Hand Path”, a term taken from Tantra and defined by antinomianism and self-deification [#87532; #377421].
• The ONA’s “Sinister Tradition” joins Satanism, National Socialism and radical Islam. Goodrick-Clarke calls David Myatt a “Nazi satanist” inside the C18 milieu [#87532; #76349].
• Luciferian practitioners (Ford, Apotheosis, Mason) build an Adversary theology partly from Zoroastrian and Zurvanite sources [#85558; #39258; #80454].
• The Satanic Temple uses Satanic imagery for secularist litigation, most visibly through the 8.5-foot Baphomet statue [Wikipedia; #67074].
• Keshe’s teaching rejects all religion built on physical symbols, which sets it apart from both the mainstream faiths and their Satanic inversions [#378230; #378341].