Leadership means different things to different people. For some, it means power and immunity. It gives the ability to do whatever you want and suffer no consequences for it. For others, it’s a chance to change the world according to their own vision. For me, leadership has always been a support role. This applies whether I’m in the workplace or running a session of Dungeons and Dragons. It is not a spotlight role. My job as a leader is to remove obstacles (or put them there as is appropriate to player character level), to teach, and to guide my teammates/players to success.
My philosophy on leadership stems largely from my background as a Christian. Many Christian youth groups teach about servant leadership, the idea that leaders are meant to serve the people following them, not to be served by them. As a teenager, I went through several programs meant to teach youth servant leadership, a program called U.M. Army standing out the most in my mind. The idea was to take a group of kids and send them to an underserved area a few hours away and have them fix up houses for the elderly and disabled. In retrospect, it seems to me just a way for the host church to provide free labor for their congregation (we went to Katy, Texas one year, a suburb of Houston that is far from underserved), but the concept of servant leadership, at least some version of it, has stuck with me long after I’ve left the church.
While Christianity has a lot to say about what being a leader means, I haven’t found as much information about what leadership means to a Satanist. So, here’s my attempt to define leadership as a Satanist. I drew a lot from Anatole France’s The Revolt of the Angels for this. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, Lilith Starr wrote a comprehensive summary of the novel.
A Satanic Leader Must Rebel Against Arbitrary Authority and Tyranny
As Satan is the ultimate rebel against arbitrary authority and tyranny, a Satanic leader must also rebel against arbitrary authority and tyranny. In a workplace setting, planning a coup against your CEO will most likely get you fired or demoted, so you need to find a way to manifest that rebellious spirit in more productive ways. A great way to embody rebellion is to constantly be looking for ways to improve things. Don’t blindly follow SOPs, look for ways to streamline and optimize work procedures. Question new directives and ask why things are done the way they’re done. If the answer is unsatisfactory, challenge that and offer an alternative.
A Satanic Leader Must Have Courage
It’s easy to say you rebel against arbitrary authority, but it’s quite another thing to actually do it. Challenging authority is risky, even when it’s warranted. Unless you’re already independently wealthy or have some kind of immunity or other protection, you could lose your livelihood or even your freedom by challenging authority too loudly. A lot of powerful people have gotten away with – and are still getting away with – horrible crimes because those who otherwise would have reported them were too afraid to say anything. A Satanic leader has to have the courage to call out bullshit when and where they see it – and no shame if you don’t! When you have people depending on you, losing your job or ending up incarcerated is detrimental to you and the people you support. If the risk is too great, don’t feel bad about keeping your silence. Instead, bide your time, make preparations, and come forward when circumstances are more in your favor.
A Satanic Leader Must Thirst For Knowledge and See Things From a Different Perspective
In The Revolt of the Angels, it is through knowledge and study that the guardian angel Arcade begins to lose his faith in Jehovah – it’s how most human atheists and Satanists lose their faith as well. However, there are a lot of people who read and study the Bible and other Christian sources without losing their faith, so it’s not enough just to seek knowledge to be a Satanic leader. So what do Satanic leaders have that Christian scholars lack? The answer is the ability and willingness to see things from another person’s perspective. A Christian scholar reads the story about Abraham and Isaac and sees a man who is willing to sacrifice anything for his god, and sees it as a good thing. A Satanic leader reads the same story and sees a young boy taken to the top of a mountain by his dad who is acting strangely, who then attempts to murder his son – essentially the plot of a true crime novel. Instead of praising Abraham for passing God’s test, a Satanic leader is more inclined to comfort the young boy and get him the hell away from his unstable father before the unthinkable happens. Satanic leaders must not only be constantly learning, but they must also be willing to see things from a different perspective, even if that perspective is contrary to everything they’ve been told.
A Satanic Leader Must Have a Strong Sense of Justice
Tied to the ability and willingness to see things from an alternate perspective, a Satanic leader must also have a strong sense of justice. As do most people, a good Satanic leader knows that the status quo is not always just, and what is legal isn’t necessarily fair. What sets Satanic leaders apart is that they cannot simply live with that unfairness like everyone else. A Satanic leader is always striving to bridge the gap between what is and what is not fair or just.
A Satanic Leader Must be Able and Willing to do the Things They Ask of Others
A common complaint in the workplace is that managers won’t or can’t do the things they ask of their team members. With a good Satanic leader, this isn’t a problem. A Satanic leader at the very least knows how to do their team members’ jobs, and in some cases (mine included) would rather be doing those tasks instead of their own (seriously, paperwork and QA are boring). It’s especially important to be willing to do what you’re asking of others. If you’re leading your team to failure, it’s not just your team’s failure, it’s yours too. Satan didn’t lead his army of angels only to stand by as they faced Yahweh’s thunder and fell into hell. He fell with them, as one of them.
Of course, leadership is a lot more nuanced than my approach or even a more traditional version of Christianity’s servant leadership. However, I would say this version of servant leadership isn’t that different from Christianity’s. Ultimately, the goal is to lift the team up, not the other way around.
Playing With Demons 