Those mock satanists are of course intellectual provocateurs, not everybody comprehends their approach of putting free human will - I can see Auntie Ayn R smiling from her grave, she never thought much of religion - above adoration of and devotion to any form of supernatural deity. When I read about them on school boards a while ago, I thought to myself this might not end well in the US of A, never underestimate stupidity and ignorance. All religion is potentially dangerous.
I arrived at the conclusion that there is no devil already as a child, even earlier than surmising that there is no God either. I can't have been older than eight or nine, I just defined both out of my life. Psychologists will however have to say something about the fact that I love movies about the occult - it's all humbug to me, but I'm thoroughly entertained by it and find hanging on the edge of my seat with goose bumps pleasant. Ghosts, Satan, Lucifer & the Beelzebub, demons, exorcisms, haunted houses, vampires, bring'em on! And when the end credits roll, I switch on the light and go to bed totally unperturbed (but deeply satisfied if it was a good one) and no creaking door, wind-flung window or rushing curtain bothers me. I never dream of anything occult either.
PS: Well, there was one dream ... A year or so after my dad had died I had this extremely vivid dream of him and me doing garden work together. Now if you knew my dad: Doing garden work with him was excruciatingly terrible and best avoided, because nothing I did was ever good enough.
But this time we worked smoothly together, got things done - an unreal experience! And near the end of the dream, we're standing around looking at the heaps of garden waste as I suddenly ask him point blank:
You are aware that you're dead though, right? And he just gave me one of those trademark slow silent crooked smiles of him, nodded a little and then starts fading away like in some cheesy ghost movie ...
And then I woke up and felt real good about it!
