Satan as a Symbol, Not a Being

The Church of Satan and The Satanic Temple affirm an atheistic Satanism in which Satan is a symbol rather than a literal deity. On this understanding there is no supernatural devil to worship; the figure of Satan is embraced as an emblem, of the questioning intellect, individual liberty, pride, carnal reality, and rebellion against arbitrary authority. These organisations describe themselves as non-theistic, rejecting belief in gods and the supernatural, and use Satanic imagery to represent human self-determination and opposition to what they see as repressive dogma.

LaVey set out his philosophy in The Satanic Bible, published in 1969 and still the foundational text of the Church of Satan. Scholars of new religious movements, including James R. Lewis, have documented that LaVey drew substantially, without extensive attribution, on earlier sources, including Ayn Rand's philosophy of rational self-interest and the nineteenth-century writer Ragnar Redbeard's Might Is Right, combining them with borrowed ceremonial trappings into a self-consciously provocative synthesis LaVey presented as a wholly original philosophy, a scholarly finding that has not diminished the text's continuing influence within organized atheistic Satanism.