An altar is a designated place or surface used for religious devotion, ritual, offerings, sacred objects, or symbolic focus. Altars occur in many religious traditions, but their forms and meanings vary widely. In modern theistic Satanism an altar may function as a place for Prayer, Ritual, Offerings, meditation, spirit work, or the display of symbols connected with Satan and other beings.
The Church of Satan is the organization founded by Anton LaVey in 1966. Its official account describes Satanism as atheistic and gives Satan a symbolic role.
The Devil is the principal personification of evil in much of Christian tradition and a major source for later Western images of Satan. The term is not identical with every historical use of Satan, nor does it describe one unchanging character across the Bible, theology, folklore, literature, art, and modern religion. In contemporary speech “the Devil” often functions as a proper name for Satan, but…
Fallen angels are heavenly beings portrayed as losing their place or proper condition through transgression. Enochic descent, Satan’s refusal to honor Adam, and the war in Revelation are distinct accounts that later interpretation can bring together.
An ancient Egyptian deity associated with conflict and disorder, also reinterpreted in modern Setian religion.
Lilith is a figure whose history spans ancient Near Eastern demonology, Jewish folklore, medieval protective magic, Kabbalah, literature, feminist reinterpretation, modern occultism, and contemporary Satanic or Luciferian religion. She is often introduced today as “Adam’s first wife,” but that familiar story is medieval rather than biblical. Earlier sources describe beings called lilith or lilin in…
Occultism and Western esotericism provide an important historical and intellectual background for many forms of modern Satanism, but neither term is a synonym for Satanism. Western esotericism is an academic field encompassing currents such as Renaissance Hermetism, alchemy, astrology, Christian theosophy, Kabbalistic reception, Rosicrucianism, ceremonial magic, spiritualism, occultism, and later…
The three-chapter revelatory text at the center of Thelema, also titled Liber AL vel Legis.
The Life of Adam and Eve is a group of related apocryphal narratives about the first humans. Its versions expand the Eden story through accounts of repentance, the Devil’s hostility, illness, burial, and hoped-for restoration.
A Goetic spirit with an angelic body, lion head, goose foot, and hare tail, associated with knowledge and boldness.
A lion-faced Goetic duke who teaches astronomy and the liberal sciences.
A Goetic president described as a winged boy on a two-headed dragon, associated with treasure and serpents.
A German magical fraternity whose teaching gives Saturn a central symbolic and initiatory role.
A modern approach to magic that treats techniques and belief systems as tools for practical experimentation.
A nineteenth-century French occult author associated with ceremonial symbolism and the influential image of Baphomet.
The author and religious figure associated with Thelema, The Book of the Law, and a large body of magical instruction.
The founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals.
Magical systems using the seven traditional planets through timing, correspondences, images, and invocations.
Ceremonies intended to clear, delimit, or reorder a ritual setting, with methods that vary by tradition.