Hyperborean Transcendence — Evolving Beyond Personal Laws of Limitation

By Jake Block

The Unknown Known

by Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Rituals pp. 219-220)

Despite others’ attempts to identify a certain number with Satan, it will be known than Nine is His number. Nine is the number of the Ego, for it always returns to itself. No matter what is done through the most complex multiplication of Nine by any other number, in the end the final equation nine will stand forth.

The true ages of times are cast in the likeness of Nine, with all cycles obedient to its Law. All matters of terrestrial concern may be evaluated by the infallible resolution of Nine and its offspring. Action and reaction relative to humanity’s tribal needs are contained within successive nine-year periods: the total of both (eighteen years) is called a Working. The beginning and end of each Working is call a Working Year, and each midway point between Working Years displays a zenith of intensity for the Working which has been brought about. Nine eighteen-year Workings equal an Era (162 years). Nine Eras equal an Age (1,458 years), which has been mistakenly called a millennium. Nine Ages equal an Epoch (13,122 years).

Each Age (1,458 years) alternates as Fire or Ice, each differing in the means by which the Control presents its dictum. During the Age of Ice, man is taught to refrain from his pride and retreat from himself; then he will be good. During an Age of Fire, man is taught to indulge himself and to tear himself open and look inside; then he will be good. During an Ice Age, God is above. During a Fire Age, God is beneath. Throughout each Age, big things occur each eighteen years, for the Control must maintain a cycle of action and reaction within the greater cycle of Fire and Ice.

Meaningful and portentous messages are cast forth each eighteen years, and are acted upon for the eighteen years which follow, at the end of which a new statement appears. The Ice Age from which we recently emerged began in the year 508 “A.D.” Just as the Zenith of passion for what each Working has inspired occurs halfway between the Working Years, so the greatest intensity of each Age’s message occurs at its midpoint. Thus in the year 1237 “A.D.” man’s fervor for what the last Ice Age represented had reached its summit. That Age ended in 1966, and the new Age of Fire was born.

The twentieth century has prepared us for the future and the coming of the Age of Fire was well heralded in the last Working Years of the Ice Age. The peoples of the Earth have been touched by the vehicles of 1894, 1912, 1930, and 1948, and communication has been well wrought. The new Satanic Age was born in 1966, and that is why His Church was built.

The infant is learning to walk, and by the first Working Year of his age – that is to say 1984 – he will have steadied his steps, and by the next – 2002 – he will have attained maturity, and his reign will be filled with wisdom, reason and delight.

REGE SATANAS!

AVE, SATANAS!

HAIL, SATAN!

LaVey was fond of saying “Today’s madness is tomorrow’s norm,” meaning that the pendulum of acceptance and rejection swings from acceptance to rejection of fashion, of taste, of value and of law.” Change is the only sure thing, based on human whims and popular prejudice. Think of this passage from the reading, above:

“Each Age (1,458 years) alternates as Fire or Ice, each differing in the means by which the Control presents its dictum. During the Age of Ice, man is taught to refrain from his pride and retreat from himself; then he will be good. During an Age of Fire, man is taught to indulge himself and to tear himself open and look inside; then he will be good. During an Ice Age, God is above. During a Fire Age, God is beneath. Throughout each Age, big things occur each eighteen years, for the Control must maintain a cycle of action and reaction within the greater cycle of Fire and Ice.”

The Control. What is “THE CONTROL?” Is it the societal norm, a consensus of what is right vs what is wrong; a mandated law or contract of limitation in which citizens agree to abide under threat of personal penalty; a holy dictum from an all seeing and all knowing god pronounced from a mountain on tablets of clay, or is it simply man’s personally accepted limitation upon himself?

The answer is in who you ask this question of, because it will change respectively, dependent upon their philosophical, religious, cultural… even socio/economic standing in whatever cultural or societal grouping they may fall within. Which is the true direction and ultimate north star by which man may guide himself through the murky waters of his earthly existence? We go to great lengths to choose who among us will give us this direction, spending millions in national and personal wealth to promote and elevate “the select” to be “the CONTROL,” yet upon doing so, we inevitably (and naturally) come to the conclusion that they are inept at doing their jobs… jobs that WE placed them in positions for, TO CONTROL. We find fault in THEM, but in reality, the failing is invariably with US, as we naively accept that we NEED control, for we are incapable of controlling ourselves. We lack that wisdom. We need supervision.

Left to function under their primitive, emotional and untrained raw selves, most men will simply exist. If you tell him, “eat cake,” and leave a whole, delicious three layer triple chocolate and sugar sprinkled masterpiece in front of him, he will EAT CAKE until it is gone, or until he can no longer stuff his face with another bite, leaving the rest. He has followed the dictum, and now moves on, without the discipline to know that perhaps simply having a piece of cake and saving the rest for later might be in his better interests. He has no responsibility for the cake, and has no idea of consequences. He is simply doing what he does. Eventually SOMEONE gets the idea and learns to conserve, and they pass that message on to others who learn, becoming THE CONTROL by default. This, then, becomes the model that we begin to follow, knowing it and (as we will almost always revert to our primitive natures) resist change to our world because we have no idea of other options available. Fire and Ice. Given personal options and personal responsibilities, attitudes and actions change. Given a law, they become stagnant and simply follow life in rote memory. Here we can fall back on physics and apply it to the human condition (inertia). “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion and objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an external force.”

The Hyperborean mind becomes its own “external force,” in that in analyzing a given situation logically and as dispassionately as possible, a third option might be achieved. So, instead of seeing the cake with an EAT/DON’T EAT control (binary thinking,) one injects a third option of logic. Eat SOME, SAVE FOR LATER. To those with a logical and self-protective mind, this will seem to be simply common sense, but for those coddled into submissive, controllable lassitude, dependent on external control, not so much.

The idea of transcendency fits within the Hyperborean construct. In transcending the traditional limitations of unstructured and undisciplined thought, one can focus more upon what matters. Personal responsibility in all things makes this possible. In the simplistic example of the undisciplined cake eater, simply looking at it as action vs consequence shows that in simply eating, one is satisfying one’s immediate need, but in planning and conserving, one cans satisfy the immediate and long term needs as well. This model can be used in all aspects of one’s life, replacing simple binary thinking with alternatives as needed. The Hyperborean mind doesn’t accept the supernatural “god” or “control” option, but transcends into the supranatural realm of personal deification, in which one decides for themselves logically and with personal responsibility for the actions they take.

OK… now let’s tie this in with the Fire and Ice concept from LaVey’s piece, THE UNKNOWN KNOWN. If we think of ourselves as “X” — the SPOT — and suspend a pendulum above us, holding stationary, this would indicate where we as individuals stand on any given topic. To the left is FULL ACCEPTANCE and to the right is FULL REJECTION of a situation at hand. For the example at hand, the topic could be drug legalization.

Realistically, no one is going to start out as dead neutral on any subject of personal import. I will place myself 3/4 of the way to the FULL REJECTION side of the issue. Someone else might be on the opposite side, 3/4 of the way to FULL ACCEPTANCE. That’s ok. We’re looking for differences. We’re beginning to come to grips with our personal vs societal or cultural conditionings. We are where we are because we have our minds made up, sometimes as a knee-jerk reaction to something we see as abhorrent, and sometimes simply because it is adversarial or contrary to be in opposition of any idea not our own. How then do we act as our own external force to swing the pendulum?

Now, if we see our goal as to make everyone see and think our way, we want that pendulum to swing in our direction, so we will proselytize, we will cajole, we will shame others into thinking that we OBVIOUSLY have the right idea, and that only an idiot would see things differently. We see that it’s better (at least for us) if we stay here, comfortably set in our ways and beliefs. Our opposition is thinking the same way, trying desperately to keep that pendulum moving in the OBVIOUSLY right position, so he’s proselytizing, cajoling and shaming others as well. The result, stalemate… NOBODY WINS. The traditional (red pill/blue pill) option is that one side or the other will bitch, complain, moan and become such a pain in the ass that eventually people will begin to just submit to get some peace. We never really resolve anything… we CAN’T, simply because in matters of personal sovereignty, while we might listen to others, we can only do what is right for ourselves. Stalemate… lip service… constant struggles.

What I’ll call the Hyperborean Solution is to simply refuse to play the game. By using logic and rejecting the emotionality of a question, one can focus on what is important in any issue of choice. In doing so, one brings the positives and the negatives that are presented into personal perspective and one can embrace the pros and cons simply as that, balance… but only as it applies to you. Let it go. It really doesn’t matter on a personal level if person A or B does or does not use drugs. What matters is if YOU do, and if one is truthful to themselves and intellectually honest with themselves, they can evaluate the benefit vs detriment upon their own lives. Truly you are the control. You have the ability and the sovereign right to choose, provided you also accept total responsibility for that choice.

“Do not complain about that to which you need not subject yourself.” — 11 Satanic Rules of the Earth

You could spend your entire life in the mundanity of “adversarialism for adversarialism’s sake,” or you could just realize that the only thing you can truly control is YOU. If you want to change the hearts and minds of people, you can’t do it by showing them where they are wrong, but by showing them by example where you are right. Doing what you believe to be in your own best interests and showing the positive results is a powerful motivator and trumps a thousand hackneyed excuses and arguments every time.

The Hyperborean solution seems counterintuitive, yet centers the pendulum back to zero. In transcending the compulsion to “be right,” and quantifying that rightness in the number of sovereign individuals that we an cajole into thinking our way, we take firm control of our lives while still providing that external force for others who see and understand that not becoming involved in the petty, self-serving bickering of humanity, but getting on with the business of actually living, we prosper. We may not see the cataclysmic change of revolution to every problem at hand, but radical changes change radically again and again. Permanent change through understanding takes longer to propagate, but is well worth the effort.

A little known ritual of the Church of Satan was called The Madness of Andelsprutz, in which the inmates of an insane asylum have taken over and now madness becomes norm. In this ritual, preferably done in a stark white room, the participants are provided with a two sided mirror, one side reflective and the other side black and a black broad-tipped magic marker. In total silence they circulate the room, the mirror’s reflective face pointed outward, with the black side facing themselves, marker in hand. With each participant they encountered, they would stare into the mirror and mark out what imperfections they saw reflected in the mirror. The message soon became obvious. Like the old Pogo comic strip said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

It’s so much easier when you stop looking for imperfections in others and concentrate on making the most of what you have yourself.