Homo Satanis: How I Learned to Love Satan and Other Insights from my Childhood

By Fred Andersson

Sometimes only an apocalypse can bring change. But who could know this one would involve one of Sweden's most famous and beloved celebrities during the filming of a lighthearted reality show? Fred had no idea, that's for sure. But it gave him the opportunity to take charge of his own life and stop looking back in anger.

This is the true story of a life that started in the claws of the destructive and hypocritical Swedish Pentecostal movement and ends, through numerous insights, in the open-minded and loving philosophy of rational Satanism. It's about loving yourself and shaping your own universe, breaking free from from the insanity of Christian and heterosexual norms and the importance of secrets, magic, mysteries and insights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Nov 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9789177858782

Fred Andersson

Fred Andersson (f. 1977) är en mysteriefantast, tv-redaktör och researcher med ett stort intresse för det märkliga. Han har tidigare gett ut essäböckerna Homo Satanis: How I Learned to Love Satan and Other Insights from my Childhood (2018), Homo Satanis 2:The Devil Made Me Do It! (2019) och novellsamlingen Bögskräck (2019).

Book preview

This book is dedicated to: G, my star, my universe. Markus, a co-traveler in art and Nagu. Jason, a friend and mentor in life and career. Leif, I’m very happy and honored to be your friend in the forest. Jocke, a friend in monsters and gore is a good friend indeed. Mom, who might not agree with me, but I know she loves me, no matter what. Rosi & Anders, fellow crazy cat persons. Stellan Karlsson for all the yellow cars and friendship over the years.

Special thanks: Tobias Myrbakk for valuable advices and making me keeping going when I wanted to give up. Niklas Nieminen for wonderful support and comments. Joel at Antikvariat Verklighetsflykt for making me read and write again. Lennart Bostedt for that extra year. Micke Dahlgren for those words of wisdom. Higgabam to you all.

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Liar's Biography.

On the Nose: The Power of Insights.

The Master of Master Suppression Techniques.

‘Round the Earth, Roaming About

A Ritual

A Few Words on Magic

A Few More Words on Magic.

The Modern Wand.

Signs of Happiness and Other Desperate Attempts to Fool Oneself.

Don’t be different!

Other People’s Kids.

I’m so Gay I Cause Localized Flooding

Competition Oriented Physical Activities and Other Time Wasters

Confessions of an Introvert Extrovert

An Encounter with a Chubby Family

Five Rules of How to Watch Film

Relationship Advices.

Childhood's End.

The Secret of Charisma

Let Your Truth Be a Slice of Cake

The Ideaspace

Facing Fears.

Everything is Connected (Allt Hänger Ihop)

The Artist as Human Sacrifice

The Youth Leader

The One Good Thing I Learned from a Prayer Meeting.

The Spiritual Inferiority Complex

Don't Turn the Other Cheek

Human Value and Other Illusions

The Magic of BRA

The Martyrdom of Empty Barrels.

Do Cats Dream About Flying?

Sometimes.

Shape of Houses.

The I-Magi-Nation

Altered States of Amnesia.

A Satanist’s View on Past Life Regression.

The Exorcism of Fredson.

The Psychic Vampire and You.

Life and all that

Shrooms

The Secret of a Satisfying Relationship.

The Power of Let Go

The Fragile Ash of the Mathematical Bonfire.

Being Here.

Homo Satanis.

My Own Private Apocalypse.

Introduction.

I might have been raised in a Christian environment, but my upbringing was purely the work of the devil. I'm not bitter it took me so long to embrace this, I see it as a path I had to walk to fully understand my existence. To make it clear; I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in Satan. I don’t believe in any supernatural entities controlling our lives or abstract beings we need to pray to once a day to be able to go to heaven or any other mystical after death location, neither heaven or hell. The only one I believe in and worship is myself - but no, I’m not an asshole. There’s more to Satanism than meets the eye.

The fictional character of Satan though, the mythological figure raising, literary, hell in his fights against the good powers, have fascinated me since childhood. Sometimes his red face and glowing eyes would look upon me from the pages of some religious scripture, or his bare breasted body and horned head on the wall of some church seemed to attract me as a young boy way more than was appropriate. The stories about Satan and his hell always felt more fun and less fake, because he embraced the lust and ego we all have, and that made him easy to relate to.

But most important of all; he fucked with the heavenly dictator himself, the so-called God, to a degree it was hard to not love the guy. No one likes a bully, and God is the ultimate bully: the master of master suppression techniques and in general a hypocritical asshole. No doubt about it.

I was raised in a Christian community and spent many years in the Swedish Pentecostal Movement, including teen camps, tent meetings, prayer events and reading the bible as a good, on the surface, brainwashed kid - but I always felt it was all a lie. I discovered a dishonesty among the more honored members in the congregations I was involved with, where healthy sexuality and popular culture from the outside was banned - but inside the church there was a wide array of sexual activities, drinking and gaming - and in some cases even serious sexual abuse, which was silenced by those in charge.

These hypocritical religious leaders made me very soon realize there’s no almighty to worship up above, but instead of blaming all the sins on the devil like everyone else did, I decided to embrace these satanic sins and become the person who I really wanted to be. In my teens, after spending years pretending to believe in God and Jesus and Heaven and Hell, I left the church and decided to focus on what I love; horror films, books, writing, filming and once in a while have passionate sex with other dudes.

Later in life I became, as many young men and women, fascinated by the works of Anton LaVey, the founder of The Church of Satan. I’m not a member, but I still carry a lot of his philosophy within me, and he have without a doubt paved the way for me to find myself in the name of individualism, positive egoism and rational Satanism. I don’t believe or worship Satan or any other beings - outside myself. For me Satan stands for enlightenment, opposition, self-critique, humor, lust and ego.

No one says you need to be an asshole if you’re a Satanist, or a heartless idiot if you’re an individualist - it’s all about taking care of yourself first, so you have strength (if you feel for it) to deal with everyone and everything around you. Oh, and have a lot of fun.

I wrote this collection of essays in a frenzy, four months after experiencing an ordeal that broke me down to nothing and at the same time led me to be stronger than ever. I spent two months wandering in the nature, analyzing myself and my surroundings, and when the New Year arrived I was a new person where most pieces of my puzzle had found a place. Something, an abstract inner force, made me start writing again after years feeling blocked. Every thought and insight I had from five years of age until now just poured out. This is my up and downs, my anger and happiness, some silliness and a lot of seriousness. Almost everything revolves around Satanism and/ or individualism and that what Anton LaVey calls lesser magic.

It’s nothing weird, it just about seeing the world with a new set of eyes. No regrets, absolutely no regrets at all. Because when your day comes, and it will be you all alone facing the great unknown, it’s all about you and what you’ve done in your life.

I know I’ll die happy, do you?

Fred Andersson, 2018

A Liar's Biography.

You need to create what you want to be, and that also means changing the past. Sometimes with lies, sometime telling the truth from a different viewpoint, at times exaggerating or maybe taking everything back a notch or two.

What’s a lie anyway? If it’s the truth for you it doesn't matter if someone tells you the opposite. We’re not here to please others, we’re here to please ourselves and that also means what we come from and what we’re made of. One important ingredients here is of course responsibility. If you claim to be the best surgeon (or chef, parent, pilot, translator and so on) and you can’t live up to those claims, then you need to take full responsibility - it’s utterly stupid to live a life filled with lies that can hurt someone else.

I’ve noticed all my heroes have very ambiguous pasts. From Anton LaVey and his work as a crime photographer and lion tamer to Erich von Däniken’s exotic adventures and incredible discoveries around the world. Maybe it’s all true, maybe it’s not. But it’s there and somehow it has become the truth for them and some of their followers, when others keep a distance and don’t see the point with exaggerating the past.

But I say, why not? Why don’t breathe in extra life to those early years, to those years no one ever will find out the truth about. Change details every time you tell your life’s story, confuse all those people around you who craves the truth. Give them the truth, your truth, in that very moment and make it to be the only truth then and now. Nothing wrong with that, because every time you remember something from your past it will be what it is when you’re retelling it. The objective truth is long since gone, even if it’s about something so small and utterly unimportant to your greatest days.

I had long black hair when I was born, fragments from my family’s connection to the Romani people far back in history. We’re also descendants from Harald Bluetooth, the Danish king who was the first one in Scandinavia to officially convert his country to Christianity - which I suspect was him trolling the fuck out of his countrymen. My mother was a welder of submarine and nuclear plant parts and some other top secret constructions. My dad, a musician, played with Eric Clapton and was one of Sweden’s most promising rugby stars. I refused to eat as an infant and nearly didn’t leave the hospital alive. At an early age, maybe as early as five or six, I realized there was no god and understood I wasn’t like everyone else around me. During my teens I became an illusionist and performed hundreds of times during every form of occasion, from churches and circuses to television and private parties. I never felt guilt for being gay, never felt ashamed. Which also made me leave the Christian environment I was raised in. I’ve traveled the jungles of Thailand and Cambodia, I’ve walked the Great Wall of China and visited the suicide forest at the foot of Fuji in Japan. Mysteries of all kinds it what drives me forward. When I was