Det blir noen nokså lange skrivedager for tiden, med lite overskudd til skeptiske og norskspråklige blikk på hva nå det skulle være. Deadlines hoper seg opp, sammen med innleveringer og andre ting som tar tid.

Jeg planlegger å ganske straks starte en kort serie av noe halvferdig fra forelesninger om alternativmedisin og religion. En eller annen gang blir det kanskje en artikkel, når jeg har prøvd ut og fått korrigert de mest uholdbare tankene. I mellomtiden hiver jeg meg tilbake til noe mer presserende.

Og for de ekstremt spesielt interesserte, legger jeg ut et første utkast fra noe jeg egentlig burde ha holdt på med atskillig mer av i vårterminen. Og, ja, så mye suger mitt engelskspråklige akademiske uttrykk ved første gjennomskriving, etter langt over tusen sider med trening…

Det som følger her er situert i avslutningen av en historisk gjennomgang av diskurser om «satanisme før satanisme» slik vi kjenner det etter 1966. Forutgående har vi hele den romantiske arven med dekadente innfall, og den fremvoksende moderne esoterikken og grenseflatene mot satanisme. Her altså en liten smakebit fra aller siste del av kapittel 3, skrevet på nytt etter at jeg omsider fikk tak i en kopi av denne boken.

Confrérie de la Fléche d’Or – the Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow was founded in Paris in 1932 by the Russian émigré Maria de Naglowska. Having a background as a journalist and writer, and an enthusiastic student of several esoteric systems, she started teaching a satanic philosophy and system of sexual magic for “artistic and occultist circles” of the Montparnasse from around 1930. This was later organized as an initiatory order in the Golden Arrow. De Naglowska’s vision seems to have been influenced by many different sources. Some of them include the sexual magic of Paschal Beverley Randolph (whom she translated into French) and by theosophy, of which she was a long-time member (Hakl 2008: 467; Deveny 1997: 71).

In Fleche d’Or we find Satan involved in an integrative vision with God representing the body and Satan reason. The two stand in a constant dialectic and necessary relationship, with the union of these two a final goal to be achieved through the religion of “the Mother” – Satanism. God is the center, explains Hakl: “God is Life, and Life is God” (2008:468). But this God is dependent on its negation in order to create the world, and this “negation” is Reason, which is opposed to Life as Satan is to God. The homologies God:Life::Satan:Reason hence relate to the necessary dynamic of creation, a dynamic which gives “birth” to Christ, the Son.

As part of the dynamic dialectic between the poles, the initiate has to learn to “serve Satan before they can serve God” (ibid.:469). This process of learning is the satanic initiatory path, through which the initiatory climbs as they would a mountain, explains Hakl. But when they have ascended to the summit, they must be hanged, trusting in Satan that they shall survive: “Then, according to Naglowska, in the exact moment of their fall, their religious service ceases to be satanic and becomes divine” (ibid.). From having served Satan, they now serve God, but the initiated understand that services are “but one” (ibid.).

Sexual magic was an important part relevant to several central doctrines in the Golden Arrow. First, de Naglowska taught a doctrine of three “dispensations”, about the ages of the Father, the Son, and the Mother. In this latter age, of which she was the prophetess, salvation was to be brought by female sexuality. This is, echoing the heritage of Theosophy’s problematic attitude towards sex, not a carnal focus on female pleasure. Men are of the Sun, women of the Moon, and pleasure belongs to the Sun alone. The race of men is, indeed, degraded by women knowing “local pleasure” (ibid.:471).

De Naglowska’s system follows in a tradition older sexual politics, in “elevating” woman by making her the instrument of taming of Evil and men. The religion “consists in redeeming the Spirit of Evil not by fighting him, but by purifying him through rites and sexuality” (ibid.). Through the acts of voluntary submission and “inner happiness” rather than “local pleasure”, women priestesses would educate men and relieve them of “all his perversities and making him stronger, healthier, and morally just” (ibid.). The Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow was thus, like many other orders, not merely a religious system of personal initiation and spiritual growth, but aimed at transforming society.

Most of the rites of the Golden Arrow seem to have stayed at the planning stage. Grand schemes for political transformation failed to see much consequence, and the fraternity died when its founder quit in 1936. Maria de Naglowska died briefly thereafter.

These developments of satanic discourse set the scene for the late 20th Century reinvention of Satanism. While the Romantic discourses on Satan have been hugely influential, however, and Crowley’s towering figure stands as an important background, none of the latter groups have influenced the contemporary satanic scene – or even their own time’s occultism – to any great extent.