Heavy metal music and its sub-genres are often on the dock as alleged devil worshippers, with the conviction that all the symbolism of that music is somehow connected to Satanism. In the coming days on Balkanrock, follow a series of texts that will explain metal symbolism and mic, mic by mic, refuting arguments that ascribe to music the action of some evil higher forces.
While in the Dark Middle Ages the church banned books, burned them at the stake and accused of heresy all those who thought outside the framework of Christian doctrine, today repression, in a much milder form, is directed more and more often at pop culture.
One of the forms of pop culture that is a “thorn in the side” of the Christian church is heavy metal music, as well as its predecessors jazz, blues and rock’n’roll. Heavy metal fans and bands that play that music are portrayed by the media as Satanists. Long greasy hair, black clothes, vulgar and anti-theistic song lyrics, aggressive music that provokes violence and the like, in the eyes of religious representatives are the definition of a supporter of heavy metal music and are therefore automatically worshipers of the devil. Proving that the lord of hell is behind this musical form is tantamount to trying empirically to prove the existence of God. Both cannot provide definitive answers, and therefore neither will this paper. The goal of this text is to break the prejudices and generalizations that have given heavy metal a bad reputation.
DEFINING THE TERMS “SATAN” AND “SATANISM”
The word “satan” comes from the Hebrew word satan, which translates as “adversary”. According to Vujaklia’s lexicon of foreign words and expressions, the term “Satanism” can mean “religious respect, cult of Satan” or “awe of the principle of evil in life; devilry” .
In Judaism, satan, or more precisely ha-satan, was an angel who pointed out evil human activities to God. It was only with the advent of Christianity that Satan was identified with the devil, and some of the synonyms used are Lucifer, Beelzebub, Leviathan… In Islam, the devil’s name is Iblis or Sheitan. This means that Satan was only presented as the embodiment of evil in later religious teachings.
In the modern sense, Satanism and the Satanic Church are not affiliated with Satan, the Devil, or any other supernatural being. The Satanist Church follows the writings from the Satanist Bible written in 1968 by Anton Lavey. Lavey took the ideas for the book directly from the teachings of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the rituals of the occultist Aleister Crowley. The basic tenet of the Satanic church is the emphasis on individualism and faith in oneself. Rules such as “do no harm to small children” and “do not kill non-human animals unless attacked or for food” are followed. On the other hand, there are also rules that refer to the destruction of a human being or to revenge. For example, “When walking in an open area, do not disturb anyone. If someone bothers you, ask them to stop. If they don’t stop, destroy them.”
Of course, the Satanist church is only one branch of the belief in Satan and it is not excluded that there are more extreme sects, but this one is important because Aleister Crowley is one of the figures most often associated with heavy metal music and Satanism.
On Monday we write about the source of prejudice about heavy metal music
Source: balkanrock.com
