Total Environments in Satanism

The Church of Satan has a program they call Pentagonal Revisionism. If you’d like to learn more about it, I recommend taking a gander of their website or consulting the Devil’s Notebook, by Anton LaVey, where it was published before the internet did its thing. There are five different avenues that Pentagonal Revisionism proposes would make for a better and more Satanic world. One of those avenues has to do with total environments, or, if I were to summarize my interpretation for you, this avenue proposes that it would be best if we could all live in our ideal world. This goes a bit further than just having an aesthetic for your tastes, this proposes something as complex as walking into a 1960s sitcom when going to visit your sister if that’s the environment she wants to thrive in.

You could imagine that the refrigerator would be a model from the 1950s, that the doilies on the sofa arms would be in filet style, and the family pet would be named something like quaint like Rover or Spike. Chances are, you would be able to hear the Andy Griffith show rolling through out the cozy halls like an anthem. Now, imagine the next house you go to is similarly complicated, except the environment is tree house, and so the homeowner lives in a tree—and nobody is harming anyone in this process, rather everyone is living in whatever total environment best suits their personality, their desires, and their aesthetic.

The reason I bring this up is because I have wondered myself, on a few occasions what sort of total environment I would want to live in if I could live in any environment that I chose. I’ve lived in a few different areas; I’ve lived in the big city, I’ve lived in the rural countryside. I’ve lived in the suburbs, and I’ve almost lived on their streets. I’ve been out of the country, and I’ve been to far-away places that don’t exist anywhere except for my creative mind. There are nearly too many choices to pick one thing—but only nearly. There is one environment which I feel suits me the best, and it’s not one that I’ve had a chance to experience for very long.

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My parents once owned a spot of land surrounded by a deep and magical forest (Ah, you can imagine what I mean by that. It was raw and beautiful.) When I was a teen, I would take myself on nature walks with the hope of seeing how deep the woods would go and discovering what was on the other side. I crossed over fallen logs and suspicious looking bugs, I found birds to stare at me and large mammals to stare at, myself. I remember the natural carpet of the forest being ferns and big leafy plants, I remember the way the sun twinkled through the canopy, and I remember feeling as if it was the most magical place on earth for all of the harmony of the natural world that existed there, completely untouched by the extension of modern man’s reach.

This is the total environment for me. I can see it so clearly in mind: a long stone and muddy road that leads into the wilderness, complete with the sort of potholes and mud pits that only an off-road geared truck or Wrangler could properly handle. I can picture the wilderness coming up around the visitor on both sides, and the general sensation of leaving the city and entering the world that we were meant to experience, truly experience.

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I have nothing against the architects of the city, but if you consider its layout, you operate the majority of your life in a maze of buildings and intersections. You could walk six miles to walk a mile if so you choose, and the constant inundation of concrete and windexed windows sucks your natural wild right out of your spirit! It’s nature that I have always found to be a good healer when I need to center myself, and entropy can always be relied upon to accomplish its goals. So, find me, a handful of decades from now (If I’m not retired at a Walt Disney World condominium with my wife) somewhere deep in the woods with my wolf-dogs and hunting rifles, enjoying the selectively-involved life in my very own perfect total environment.

Where to next?