Please, know that for as long as I live I will be haunted with the sorrow for what I did and when I die I will have counted it more mercy than I dese… - Sean Sellers

To be a Satanist is not to be liberated. It is to be bonded to death. The freedom it offers is an illusion. And this is something I know every Satanist knows, because I was there. In the dark and quiet, all alone, without the buzz of alcohol or drugs, or the rhythm of music to drown out the sounds, there is an empty echo inside us. A vacancy. A feeling of loss and cold and turmoil and hunger. That emptiness gnaws and hurts worse than anything else in life; we take up knives to carve our skin just to escape it, or run into the arms of a lover to smother it, but it doesn't go away. It grows. It is death at work, emptiness causing decay. No matter how much we feed it SIN, it will never fill up.

I was not a cruel person. I didn't commit murder because I enjoyed causing pain. I had pets all my life and I wanted to be a veterinarian. I never was a bully, or provoked fights, or picked on people weaker than I was.

Satanism to Anton LaVey was the celebration of that part of ourselves. His rituals were parodies of Catholic rituals. His philosophy was to embrace that "darkness" within ourselves, since it led to pleasure and pleasure was the real aim of life; after life there was nothing. No Heaven, no Hell, just the grave. We cease to exist.