Indulgence and rational self-interest

The Church of Satan affirms an ethic of indulgence and rational self-interest. Set out in Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible, its philosophy rejects self-denial and what it regards as the guilt imposed by conventional religion, and instead exalts the individual, the satisfaction of natural desires, self-reliance, and enjoyment of life in the here and now. Indulgence is preferred to abstinence, and the person is encouraged to pursue their own flourishing and to answer kindness and enmity in kind, within a framework of personal responsibility rather than supernatural command.

Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan on Walpurgisnacht, 30 April 1966, in San Francisco, declaring it the beginning of the "Age of Satan," and set out its philosophy three years later in The Satanic Bible (1969), whose opening Nine Satanic Statements proclaim indulgence over abstinence, vital existence over spiritual pipe dreams, and undefiled wisdom over hypocritical self-deceit, among other reversals of what LaVey characterised as conventional religious morality. LaVey drew explicitly on the individualist philosophy of Ayn Rand, adapting elements of Rand's ethical egoism into Satanic ritual and symbolic language, while using Satan as a rhetorically potent symbol for an essentially self-interested ethic.

This affirmation frames the Church of Satan's outlook as a materialist, individualist philosophy using Satanic symbolism, rather than devil-worship. It stands apart from The Satanic Temple's more altruistic and activist emphasis, and still further from theistic Satanism. The belief expresses a deliberate inversion of ascetic and self-sacrificing ideals, celebrating the self and its desires as the proper centre of ethics; it is described here as the Church of Satan presents its own teaching.

LaVey elaborated the philosophy's ethical boundaries further in a later list, the Nine Satanic Sins, published in his 1992 book The Devil's Notebook, which names failings such as stupidity, pretentiousness, self-deceit, herd conformity, and lack of aesthetics as the true vices a Satanist should avoid, a list intended to show that LaVeyan philosophy is not simple hedonism but a demanding, self-directed ethical code with its own standards of discipline and self-respect. The Church of Satan has consistently maintained since its founding that it does not worship Satan as a literal deity but uses the figure symbolically, a point on which it differs sharply from the smaller theistic Satanist groups that do hold Satan to be a real being.