Satanism, Symbols and Archetypes

by Thomas LeRoy

Symbols and mythological archetypes are important on the left-hand path, and should be in all Satanic organizations, otherwise you’re simply atheists with an attitude.
Archetypes are universal within our species because many differing configurations of emotion are ubiquitous in the human experience. These images tend to lead to metaphorical structures, which eventually develop into complex representations with emotionally motivating schematic meanings. How does archetypal symbolism come about in the human psyche? Carl Jung believed we were born with them and that they reside in the collective unconscious. He believed that these models, or symbols, are innate, universal and hereditary. Archetypes should function to organize how we experience life. They are neither good nor bad. They simply are. Archetypes are not able to be tamed by society; they live an autonomous existence in their original raw and primitive forms. To most people, with their limited awareness and their many fears, certain archetypes seem good and others seem bad. Most are attracted to the “positive aspects” of the Mother, the Hero, the Sage, but terrified of the Devil, Demons and Serpents.
We on the left-hand path are drawn to those archetypes that survive in the darker reaches. Like Cerberus, they are standing guard over our own personal Underworld. They are sentinels between us and the herd.

Within the Sect, the use of mythological archetypes may vary from person to person. Most Satanic groups use Satan, and only Satan. We also utilize Pan, Cernunnos, Prometheus, Dionysus, Shiva, the choice is that of the initiate. Hence the name “The Sect of the Horned God” and not the “The Sect of Satan”.

These gods are guides to lead the individual through the deeper aspects of the self, through the maelstrom that is the subconscious, and to the door of the collective unconscious, where aspects of these archetypes are recognized. The collective unconscious consists of these primordial images, the most ancient and universal “thought forms” of humanity. Jung pieced together the theory of the collective unconscious when he noticed that some of his less educated patients created delusional images that he found to be analogous to symbolic representations from many religions and mythologies. The link between the dreams, fantasies and drawings of these patients and the symbolic structure of mythologies prompted Jung to speculate about a collective, or shared, origin of symbolic images. The horns and antlers of the Greco/Celtic gods, and the fire of Prometheus would be examples of recognizable universal forms. The horns representing power, the fire knowledge. Together they become what a true Satanist is: a synthesis of strength through personal knowledge.