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This week, Satanists from around the globe are converging on that city-of-the-damned known in common parlance as Los Angeles to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Church of Satan. Many of our representatives will be there or are en route, so please expect delays if you are a member of the press inquiring for last-minute interviews. Our time is heavily booked up through the event, with rehearsals and several documentary projects, so we will do what we can to accommodate your needs for written, spoken, or videotaped interviews.

There are publications coming out on Tuesday in Belgium and Chile with feature articles, and there will be a special on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which will air on Tuesday and which will also have video clips on their web site, featuring an appearance by Magus Gilmore. He also filmed an interview with Reuters that may appear on any one of 500 different local news subscriber networks world wide. NPR in Chicago also recorded an interview and The Wall Street Journal has something in the works as well. We haven’t been able to keep track of all the many print articles coming out on or around the “dreaded date” which will contain quotes from us, so keep your eyes open!

For those needing some quotes for their articles, here are some thoughts on this occasion by our High Priest, Magus Peter H. Gilmore:

For Satanists, numbers are just numbers, and June 6, 2006 is a day like any other. We are amused by Christians superstitiously being afraid of this number, as well as the date—which is not mentioned in any scriptures. Since we enjoy mocking irrationality in all its forms, we embraced this day to have a celebration of our organization’s freedom from such nonsensical fears. Anton Szandor LaVey called Satanism a “Cosmic Joy Buzzer” to emphasize our function as iconoclasts and pranksters, so going where others “fear to tread” is par for our course.

We are not afraid of 666, nor do we hold it in any particular regard—it is the same with the number 13. Historically, 666 is the name of Emperor Nero reduced to its numerological value through Hebrew Gematria. Satanists think this is quaint, but of no real value except for a record of the lengths people will go to force significance where none exists, objectively speaking.

Satanists are epicurean, skeptical atheists who see Satan as a symbol of pride, individualism, and the quality of questioning all dogmas. The word in Hebrew means “adversary” and so we are each “Satans” to the doctrines that would have people use faith instead of reason to understand the universe in which we live. Our goal is to enjoy this, the only life we have and not waste it in anticipation of a mythical afterlife or an imagined apocalypse.

We’ve heard that there are people who are on one hand trying to have children on this date, and others who are trying to delay or advance their deliveries to avoid it. We find this to be grotesquely primitive. Our suggestion would be to let nature take its course, since the Satanic position is always to embrace and flow with Nature, and to drop such ignorant beliefs as they are truly unfitting for those who live in the 21st Century.

>> Tomado del Sitio Oficial de la Iglesia de Satanas.