Writer: Alephskoteinos
Subject: The Cult of the Passions
Link: Tumblr / 23.11.2025
The Cult of the Passions
I think we should be more willing to embrace the idea of Satanism as a (or even the) cult of the passions (here I’m sort of evoking Nietzsche’s use of the term) instead of a cult of reason. I think that Satanism is or was sometimes seen as something like a cult of reason, not even devoted to Satan so much as an abstract representation of human reason and its struggles, because of the prominence of rationalist forms of Satanism (and that includes LaVeyan Satanism), many of which are ultimately based predominantly on Romantic Satanism as a genre. But we have already had cults of reason, and I would say all of them are actually quite markedly unsatanic.
Kantian idealism is a cult of reason, positioning “freedom” as basically the absence of passions and affects, dependent on “the sovereignty of reason” and its opposition to the passions. Stoicism takes the passions as negative affects that do not participate in virtue, and also bases itself on a theory of freedom that hinges on the separation of reason from the passions, which are ultimately to be extirpated.
Christianity itself already believes in a divine reason, or Logos, represented by Jesus Christ and sometimes interpreted as a demiurge. The idea of Christianity as a religion of Logos (Reason) is fundamental in a way that most modern debates on faith and reason seem to elide, and in fact it’s so central that you would see people like Joseph Ratzinger say outright, that Christianity is “the religion of the “Logos”, meaning the “creative reason” of the Christian God which manifested in the “love” of the crucified Jesus. Through Greek philosophy, you still see a division between the soul and matter, the soul as a rational-intellectual entity derived from the celestial-intellectual realms, somehow trapped in matter, ruled by demons.
The point is, there’s already cults of reason, and you’ll find that they, at their core, strike against what Satanism represents, what animates it, because Satanism has always had at its core a defense of the passions. Not just a defense of the validity of the reality of the passions by itself, but also a defense of the exercise of the passions as a source of joy, power, and even spiritual liberation.
Sometimes, as is the case for Przybyszewski, Satan seems to be the supreme deity of the passions, filling the world with the desires that give humans life, and guiding them away from the repression of their own desires. Satanism begins with Przybyszewski, and hence with Symbolism (known historically for its erotic obsessions), but even if it were to begin with LaVey, you would get the same picture, since both centered Satanism and Satan around the passions, around desire (even if LaVey still tries to subordinate the passions to the control of reason in a way). Satanism has always been about the passions.
In his heart of hearts, Michael Aquino already knew this, and that’s why he attempted (but failed) to establish “Setianism” as a religious identity separate from Satanism. In fact, Aquino and the Setians’ attempt to separate their “Setianism” from Satanism based on de-emphasizing indulgence in favour of spiritual evolution and enlightenment only serves to highlight their utter pretense: Friedrich Nietzsche was actually included a reading list that Aquino created for the Temple of Set, which shows that he saw Nietzsche as an important intellectual influence, yet it is also clear that he misunderstands Nietzsche totally.
Nietzsche did not elevate reason as an entity capable of conquering the passions and separating itself from matter; instead Nietzsche saw reason as a system of relation between desires, passion as the basis of the human animal, and the ability to spiritualise — not merely control, not restrain or repress, not purify or eliminate, but spiritualise – the passions as something that separates nobility from baseness. In a way, that there could be a religion of the passions offers a grand prospect for their spiritualisation: in crude terms, it’s hard to think of a better way to spiritualise the passions than to make a religion of the passions.
Indeed, what the hell else should one expect of a religion whose common symbol is a representation of the passions aggressively positioned against heaven, that old symbol of lust: the Goat of Mendes.