What Satanism Was Really For

Stephen Brown’s Letters and the Art of Being the Adversary

Richard Moult - Deofel Atu

Preface

This essay arises from sustained engagement with Stephen Brown's The Satanic Letters during archival and primary-source research conducted for my broader book project on the Order of Nine Angles. Rather than approaching these texts through later commentary or retrospective systematisation, I have treated the Letters as historically situated, polemical documents, written in dialogue with—and often in deliberate opposition to—contemporaneous Satanic formations such as the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set.

It should be stated at the outset that the relationship between the Order of Nine Angles and earlier or parallel currents—particularly LaVeyan Satanism, the Temple of Set, and Crowleyan Thelema—has already been addressed at length elsewhere in the Order’s textual corpus. Works such as Hostia and related internal texts engage these traditions directly, and often with considerable explicitness. The decision to focus here on The Satanic Letters is therefore not motivated by any perceived absence in that material, nor by a need to rehearse comparative arguments already made within the tradition itself.

Instead, this essay adopts a deliberately narrow focus on the Letters because they offer a particularly clear window onto the logic of Satanism as practice rather than as identity. Unlike more programmatic or retrospective texts, the Letters are situational and polemical, composed in direct response to specific interlocutors and debates circulating within the late twentieth-century Left Hand Path milieu. As such, they allow the historian to observe Satanism in use: assumed, performed, relativised, and contested in real time.

The analysis developed here is the result of close rereading and comparison with other early Order of Nine Angles material. It is intended as a contribution to the historical understanding of Satanism as a form of adversarial positioning and initiatory praxis, rather than as a stable doctrinal system or enduring identity.

Gertrude Abercrombie - Alone: The Stroll - 1946

Section 1

Reading The Satanic Letters as Primary Sources

The question of Satanism’s role in The Satanic Letters of Stephen Brown did not emerge from engagement with secondary commentary, journalistic treatments, or online polemics, but from sustained work with primary sources during the research phase of a longer book project. Reading and rereading the Letters alongside other early Order of Nine Angles material produces a tension that is difficult to ignore: Satanism is rhetorically central to these texts, yet it is consistently framed as provisional, instrumental, and subordinate to a broader initiatory logic. The present essay is an attempt to think through that tension rather than to resolve it prematurely.

One of the most striking features of The Satanic Letters is its situational character. They are written to specific individuals, against identifiable positions, or in response to concrete claims circulating within the late twentieth-century Left Hand Path milieu. Brown himself foregrounds this polemical context, noting that the publication of Order material formed part of a deliberate strategy to challenge what had become accepted notions of “Satanism,” particularly as represented by organisations such as the Temple of Set and the Church of Satan. In this sense, Satanism functions not as a neutral descriptor but as a contested category, deployed tactically within an ongoing struggle over authority, legitimacy, and esoteric direction.

Methodologically, the analysis that follows is grounded in a close reading of these primary texts, treated as historically situated and polemical rather than as systematic doctrinal statements. Satanism is not approached here as a belief system to be reconstructed or evaluated in the abstract, but rather as a set of practices, roles, and initiatory functions operating within a specific esoteric strategy. This approach reflects the Letters’ own self-understanding. Brown repeatedly frames Satanic forms as provisional and experiential, insisting that they are subordinate to individual development and that “the responsibility for development ultimately rests with individual desire,” rather than with adherence to fixed doctrines or submission to external authority. Accordingly, the emphasis is not on defining Satanism but on examining its role within the praxis articulated in these texts.

This perspective is reinforced by Brown’s consistent rejection of religious authority and doctrinal finality. His insistence that there is “no religious attitude” and no acceptance of someone else’s authority makes little sense if Satanism is treated as the defining essence of the Order of Nine Angles. It becomes considerably more coherent if Satanism is understood instead as one phase or modality within a longer initiatory process, rather than as its culmination.

It is important to stress that such a reading does not minimise the seriousness or extremity of the Satanic discourse contained in the Letters. On the contrary, the texts make clear that Satanism was intended to be lived, enacted, and tested at the level of character and conduct. Yet even here, Brown repeatedly insists that forms and frameworks are not sacred in themselves. Reflecting on his own writings and ritual constructions, he observes that they “are all means; steps to something beyond. They serve a purpose and then are mostly discarded.” This principle applies no less to Satanic forms than to any other esoteric technology articulated in the Letters.

Paul Carus - The History of the Devil - 1900

Section 2

The Satanic Milieu Addressed by The Satanic Letters: CoS, ToS, and the Question of Authority

Any historically grounded reading of The Satanic Letters must begin by recognising that they intervene in a Satanic landscape that had already begun to harden into identifiable institutional forms. By the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Satanism in the Anglophone world was no longer an amorphous countercultural signifier, but an increasingly structured field, defined by organisational lineage, public representation, and internal mechanisms of boundary maintenance. Within this field, the Church of Satan and, subsequently, the Temple of Set functioned not merely as participants but as authorities claiming the right to define what Satanism properly was. The Satanic Letters are written squarely against this background.

Brown makes clear that his articulation of Satanism neither emerges in a vacuum nor aspires to institutional legitimacy. On the contrary, he explicitly rejects the assumption that Satanism can be codified, monopolised, or guarded by any single organisation. His insistence that what LaVey codified, and what the early Church of Satan represented, is not the only possible form Satanism can take is coupled with the claim that Satanism existed in multiple forms long before LaVey. This is not an appeal to historical pluralism for its own sake, but a direct challenge to the Church of Satan’s claim to definitional authority.

As Brown presents it, LaVeyan Satanism is characterised above all by codification. It is described as rhetorical, philosophical, and performative: a system articulated through texts, slogans, and symbolic inversion rather than through sustained lived ordeal. Brown repeatedly expresses contempt for what he regards as the reduction of Satanism to “talk,” insisting that verbal rebellion and theatrical transgression are no substitute for personal risk and enduring consequence. He explicitly contrasts this with the position articulated in Order of Nine Angles material, stressing that words are of little value in the absence of deeds. The criticism here is not that LaVeyan Satanism lacks transgressive tone, but that it lacks danger in practice.

This divergence becomes sharper still in Brown’s engagement with the Temple of Set. Unlike the Church of Satan, the Temple explicitly reframed Satanism as a religion, complete with ethical articulation, consecrated authority, and a formal initiatory hierarchy. In correspondence reproduced in The Satanic Letters, Michael Aquino’s insistence that Satanism constitutes an ethical religion and that the Temple provides an ethical environment for its initiates is treated by Brown as a categorical misunderstanding of the Left Hand Path itself.

Brown’s response to Aquino is revealing both for its content and for its tone. Rather than engaging in a detailed ethical debate, he dismisses the premise as misplaced. Speaking for himself, he characterises ethical discussion as futile in a Left Hand Path context, arguing instead that honour, responsibility, and self-understanding can emerge only through individual experience rather than through pre-formulated moral codes. The implication is clear: ethics articulated in advance function as constraints that limit autonomy rather than as catalysts for development.

The difference between these positions is not merely philosophical but structural. The Temple of Set’s Satanism depends on continuity, legitimacy, and recognised authority. It presupposes initiation conferred by an authorised body, adherence to a shared ethical framework, and recognition of priestly status. Brown rejects each of these premises in turn. His insistence that there is no religious attitude and no acceptance of external authority foregrounds a mode of praxis that prioritises individual development and lived experience over institutional belonging. Where the Temple of Set seeks to stabilise Satanism as a religion, The Satanic Letters deliberately destabilise it.

This destabilisation is not accidental. Brown openly acknowledges that his writings adopt an adversarial posture toward other Satanic organisations, but he frames this posture as a necessary corrective rather than as sectarian hostility. When Order material was read as being “against” the Temple of Set or the Church of Satan, he explains that this was the result of his assuming the role of Adversary, challenging what he perceived as an emerging dogma according to which the only “real” Satanists were those affiliated with these organisations. In this sense, the adversary is not opposed to Satanism as such, but to its domestication and institutional closure.

The rhetoric of extremity that permeates The Satanic Letters must be understood within this comparative context. Brown explicitly states that the publication of controversial material was intended to restore to Satanism a darkness that he believed had been lost, and that this formed part of a broader sinister strategy grounded in dialectical opposition and disruption. This darkness is not metaphysical posturing, but a refusal of respectability. Where the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set seek recognition—legal, social, or cultural—Brown treats marginalisation as a feature rather than a problem.

This refusal of respectability also clarifies Brown’s emphasis on secrecy, reclusiveness, and pseudonymity. Writing in a reclusive and ostensibly secret manner has long been a necessity for Left Hand Path traditions operating in hostile environments. In contrast to American Satanic organisations that pursued public legitimacy, the Satanism articulated in the Letters treats visibility itself as a test, and often as a liability rather than an achievement.

Seen in this light, The Satanic Letters do not merely articulate an alternative form of Satanism; they contest the very conditions under which Satanism is allowed to exist as a stable identity. Against the Church of Satan’s theatrical philosophy and the Temple of Set’s ethical religion, Brown presents Satanism as ordeal, risk, and confrontation—something to be endured rather than affirmed. The Letters thus occupy a deliberately uncomfortable position within the Satanic milieu of their time, refusing both codification and consecration in favour of adversarial praxis.

Michael and Lilith Aquino

Section 3

Satanism as Adversarial Positioning: Ordeal, Not Identity

In The Satanic Letters, Satanism is articulated not as a stable identity to be inhabited, but as an adversarial position deliberately assumed within a contested esoteric field. Brown is explicit that this adversariality is neither a rhetorical posture nor a symbolic rebellion, but a functional stance adopted in order to confront emerging orthodoxies within Satanism itself. Against movements seeking to stabilise Satanism as philosophy or religion, he insists that there can be no religious dogma governing Satanism or the Left Hand Path, and no subservience to someone else’s ideas or prescribed ways of living. Adversarial Satanism, in this sense, is directed first and foremost against authority.

Brown addresses accusations that the Order of Nine Angles was hostile toward the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set directly and without apology. When Order writings were read as being “against” these organisations, he explains that this was the result of his assuming the role of Adversary, challenging what he perceived as an emerging dogma according to which the only “real” Satanists were those affiliated with either the Temple of Set or the Church of Satan. The importance of this framing lies in its inversion of expectations: Satanism itself is not what is being defended, but what is being contested. The adversary is not anti-Satanic, but anti-orthodox.

This conception of adversariality marks a decisive break from the Church of Satan’s performative model of opposition. Brown repeatedly contrasts lived confrontation with what he perceives as LaVeyan theatricality, arguing that symbolic inversion and rhetorical provocation amount to little if they are not accompanied by genuine personal risk. Words, he insists, are of no value in themselves; it is deeds that count. Satanism that does not endanger comfort, status, or security is, in Brown’s view, functionally inert.

The emphasis on danger and consequence is central to the adversarial role articulated in the Letters. Satanism derives its value precisely from its capacity to force confrontation with social exclusion, moral uncertainty, and personal responsibility. Brown repeatedly frames this in terms of ordeal rather than expression, stressing that genuine development requires situations in which there is no external validation and no institutional protection. In such circumstances, there is no hiding place: symbolic affiliation offers no shelter, and verbal commitment provides no exemption. Adversarial Satanism engineers precisely these conditions.

The contrast with the Temple of Set is again instructive. Where Setian Satanism foregrounds ethical articulation, initiatory continuity, and religious seriousness, Brown treats the introduction of ethics as a fundamental category error. Responding to claims that Satanism constitutes an ethical religion, he dismisses ethical debate as irrelevant to Left Hand Path praxis, characterising such discussions as futile in that context. Ethics, as pre-formulated systems, are understood as mechanisms that insulate the individual from the consequences of autonomy rather than as frameworks that facilitate it.

This rejection of ethics should not be read as nihilism. Brown does not deny the existence of values, but refuses their abstraction. Honour, responsibility, and judgement are framed as emergent properties of lived experience rather than as principles to be adopted in advance. Each individual, he insists, must arrive at their own assessment of what is valuable or just through direct encounter rather than inherited moral codes. Satanism, when deployed adversarially, strips away ethical scaffolding and leaves the individual exposed to the outcomes of their own actions.

Crucially, adversarial Satanism is designed to repel rather than attract. Brown repeatedly notes that many who express interest in the Order are unwilling to undertake the sustained effort and risk required for genuine self-development. Reflecting on enquirers, he observes that a significant number were not prepared to work toward their own development, preferring reassurance, structure, or symbolic belonging instead. The adversarial posture ensures that those seeking identity, community, or validation are filtered out early in the process.

This filtering function stands in direct opposition to the recruitment logic of both the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set, which depend on recognisable membership, public continuity, and institutional growth. In The Satanic Letters, Satanism is instead framed as something that actively diminishes numbers. Difficulty, isolation, and discomfort are not unfortunate by-products, but integral components of the praxis. Adversarial Satanism is intended to be unsustainable for most.

It is also essential to stress that the adversarial role is not permanent. Brown is explicit that such positions are adopted situationally and relinquished once they have fulfilled their function. Adversarial stances are assumed occasionally and for specific purposes, rather than constituting a fixed identity. This temporality distinguishes Brown’s conception of Satanism from movements that define themselves primarily through perpetual opposition.

Brown generalises this principle when reflecting on his own writings and practices, observing that they are all means—steps toward something beyond—that serve a purpose and are then largely discarded. Satanism, when functioning adversarially, belongs within this category. To cling to it beyond its usefulness would be to mistake confrontation for culmination.

Finally, adversarial Satanism must be understood as inward-facing as much as outward-facing. While polemics with the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set provide the most visible targets, the deeper adversary is the practitioner’s own tendency toward comfort, rationalisation, and self-deception. By engineering situations in which these tendencies are exposed, Satanism forces a reckoning that cannot be resolved through belief or affiliation. Brown’s insistence that deeds matter more than words is thus not merely polemical, but diagnostic.

Read in this way, Satanism in The Satanic Letters functions as an ordeal engine rather than as an identity marker. It generates social, ethical, and existential friction in order to test whether the individual is capable of proceeding further. This adversarial positioning prepares the ground for the next stage of analysis: Satanism’s placement within the Sevenfold Way, where its value is measured not by permanence, but by what it makes possible.

Magistra Peggy Nadramia and Anton LaVey

Section 4

Satanism Within the Sevenfold Way: Ordeal, Risk, and Irreversibility

If Satanism in The Satanic Letters functions as an adversarial role, its full significance becomes clear only when situated within the broader initiatory framework that governs Brown’s conception of esoteric development: the Sevenfold Way. Throughout the Letters, Satanic praxis is consistently subordinated to this structure, presented not as an end in itself but as a means of generating specific forms of experience at particular stages of development. Brown describes the Sevenfold Way as the cultivation of self-insight and magickal competence through lived progression, emphasising that it is grounded in ordeal rather than in belief, symbolism, or institutional initiation.

The Sevenfold Way is not articulated as a metaphorical ladder or abstract schema. Brown repeatedly insists that genuine insight arises only through sustained exposure to risk, isolation, and uncertainty. Wisdom, he argues, is acquired through an alchemical process of internal change unfolding over time. While techniques and practices may facilitate this process, they cannot replace the necessity of prolonged, often uncomfortable experience. Within this model, Satanism is valuable only insofar as it creates conditions under which such transformation becomes unavoidable.

It is in this context that the initiatory placement of Satanism becomes more precise. The Satanic praxis articulated in the Letters aligns most closely with the ordeals associated with the stage of the External Adept, in which the individual is deliberately placed in situations that undermine social belonging, moral certainty, and personal security. Brown is careful to stress that these ordeals are not symbolic trials, but real-world confrontations that carry lasting consequences. His repeated emphasis on facing death—whether understood literally or existentially—underscores the irreversibility of such encounters.

At this stage, Satanism functions primarily as a mechanism of deconditioning. By rejecting inherited ethical systems and social norms, the individual is forced to confront responsibility without external justification. Brown explicitly dismisses pre-formulated ethics, insisting that each individual must determine what is valuable or just on the basis of direct experience rather than inherited moral frameworks. Satanism, in this context, strips away moral scaffolding and exposes the practitioner to the immediate consequences of autonomy.

This logic stands in sharp contrast to the models of Satanism articulated by both the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set. As Brown presents them, LaVeyan Satanism remains largely symbolic and rhetorical, allowing transgression to be articulated without necessarily being enacted at the level of irreversible consequence. The Temple of Set, by contrast, reinscribes ethical structure, institutional protection, and religious continuity. Both approaches, in Brown’s view, serve to insulate the practitioner from the degree of risk demanded by the Sevenfold Way. The Satanism articulated in the Letters does the opposite: it removes insulation.

Brown is explicit that genuine development requires exposure to danger rather than its management. Initiation, he insists, cannot be conferred, safeguarded, or overseen by an institution. It must be earned through ordeals that cannot be undone or symbolically resolved. There is no promise of safety within this framework—only the necessity of confronting situations in which words offer no refuge and deeds alone carry weight. Satanism’s initiatory value lies precisely in its capacity to generate such conditions.

The Sevenfold Way also introduces a temporal dimension that further differentiates Brown’s model from institutional Satanisms. Development is cumulative and irreversible; experiences cannot simply be reinterpreted or bracketed as symbolic. Brown repeatedly stresses that certain ordeals permanently alter the individual, rendering regression impossible. It is this irreversibility that gives Satanism its weight within the initiatory process. It is not something one experiments with lightly, but something that, once enacted, leaves enduring traces.

At the same time, the Sevenfold Way explicitly limits the duration of Satanic forms. Brown insists that techniques, roles, and phases are not intended to be retained indefinitely. Reflecting on earlier methods, he observes that they have served their purpose and made possible subsequent developments, but are abandoned once their function has been fulfilled. Satanism belongs squarely within this category of necessary but transient forms.

This insistence on abandonment is crucial. Within the Sevenfold Way, attachment to a particular identity beyond its usefulness signals stagnation rather than fidelity. Brown generalises this principle when he remarks that his writings and systems constitute only a stage toward something else, and are expected to be altered, extended, and ultimately transcended. Satanism, when understood initiatorily, is no exception.

The Sevenfold Way thus resolves the apparent paradox at the heart of The Satanic Letters: Satanism is both central and ultimately insufficient. It is indispensable at certain stages because it generates conditions under which autonomy, responsibility, and self-knowledge are tested under pressure. Yet it cannot remain central without obstructing further development. What ultimately matters, Brown insists, is not outward affiliation or symbolic identity, but what is internal—what has been known, learned, and experienced.

Seen in this light, the Satanism articulated in The Satanic Letters functions as a gate rather than a destination. It opens onto experiences that dismantle inherited structures of meaning, but it does not offer a resting place. Attempts to read Brown’s Satanism through the lens of religious continuity or ethical stabilisation, therefore, miss its initiatory logic. The Sevenfold Way is oriented not toward the preservation of forms, but toward continual transformation through ordeal.

The Devil Rides Out, 1968

Section 5

Means, Masks, and Abandonment

The prominence of Satanism in The Satanic Letters has often led to the assumption that it represents the core identity articulated in these texts. The Letters themselves repeatedly undermine this reading. Brown states unambiguously that forms are means—steps toward something beyond—that serve a purpose and are then largely discarded. This principle is not peripheral, but central to the praxis articulated throughout the Letters.

Brown explicitly applies this logic to his earlier writings and methods, noting that they have served their purpose and facilitated subsequent developments but are no longer necessary once their function has been fulfilled. Satanism belongs within this category of provisional forms. It is neither sacralised nor repudiated, but treated instrumentally.

The metaphor of the mask is particularly apt in this context. Satanism functions as a persona deliberately assumed in order to provoke confrontation, generate risk, and disrupt emerging orthodoxies. Brown reinforces this by insisting that a role is only a role, enacted in the course of a broader quest for understanding. The mask is worn to do work, not to become a permanent face.

Abandonment, in this framework, is not a gesture of rejection but one of transcendence. Brown repeatedly anticipates that his work will be changed, extended, and ultimately surpassed. To cling to a form beyond its usefulness would be to mistake the mask for the face, or the means for the end.

This logic also clarifies why later Order material moves beyond explicitly Satanic language. What matters is not the continuity of symbolism but the continuity of development. The ultimate measure of progress is internal rather than external: what has been learned, experienced, and integrated through ordeal. Satanism is superseded not because it was false, but because it has completed its function.

Penda’s Fen, 1974

Conclusion

What Satanism Was For in The Satanic Letters

A sustained reading of The Satanic Letters of Stephen Brown reveals a conception of Satanism that is both central and deliberately provisional. Satanism is indispensable to the praxis articulated in these texts, but it is never presented as an ultimate identity, doctrinal system, or enduring religious commitment. Instead, it functions as an adversarial role, an initiatory technology, and a means of generating specific forms of lived experience within the framework of the Sevenfold Way.

This conclusion emerges not from theoretical extrapolation, but from the Letters themselves. Brown consistently rejects religious authority, ethical codification, and permanent affiliation, insisting that development arises through ordeal, responsibility, and experience. The responsibility for development, he repeatedly emphasises, rests with individual desire rather than with obedience to institutions, doctrines, or inherited moral frameworks. Satanism matters in the Letters precisely because it forces this responsibility into the open.

Understanding Satanism as a role rather than an essence also resolves the tension between its prominence in the Letters and its later displacement. Satanism is foregrounded because it does work: it confronts, destabilises, and isolates. It generates conditions of risk and discomfort under which autonomy can no longer be deferred to belief, symbolism, or authority. Once those conditions have fulfilled their function, continued attachment to Satanic identity would signal stagnation rather than fidelity to the path. As Brown repeatedly insists, forms that have served their purpose are meant to be abandoned, not preserved.

This reading does not sanitise or diminish the extremity of the Satanism articulated in The Satanic Letters. On the contrary, it takes that extremity seriously by situating it within a deliberate initiatory strategy rather than treating it as rhetorical excess or ideological posturing. Satanism is sharpened, not softened, when understood as instrumental: its demands fall squarely on the individual, without the protective mediation of ethics, institutions, or religious narratives.

The relevant question, then, is not whether the Satanism articulated in The Satanic Letters is “real.” The primary sources make this clear. The more historically grounded and analytically productive question is what Satanism was for. Read closely and in context, the Letters offer a consistent answer: Satanism was a role assumed in order to be enacted, tested, and ultimately outgrown. To mistake it for the essence of the Order of Nine Angles is to commit a category error—one that obscures the Sevenfold Way’s orientation toward transformation rather than fixed identity.