How Does Satanism Intersect With Other Alternative Spiritualities?

Satanism intersects with other alternative spiritualities mainly through the Left-Hand Path, a shared body of occult literature, and a common rejection of mainstream religious authority. It overlaps most directly with Luciferianism, Thelema, Setianism, and chaos magic, and least with Wicca, which is frequently confused with it and has almost nothing in common with it doctrinally.

Key Takeaways

• The Left-Hand Path is the main conceptual bridge between Satanism and other alternative spiritualities, emphasising self-deification over union with a higher power.
• Satanism and Wicca are routinely conflated and are substantively different: Wicca is a nature-based, largely duotheistic religion with no Satan in its cosmology.
• Thelema, founded by Aleister Crowley, is a major shared influence on modern Satanism without being Satanism itself.
• Luciferianism overlaps heavily with theistic Satanism but frames its central figure as an illuminator rather than an adversary.
• Chaos magic supplies a methodology that Satanists of any theological stripe can and do use.
• Non-theistic Satanism intersects more with secular humanism and atheist activism than with any occult tradition.

What is the Left-Hand Path and why does it matter?

The Left-Hand Path is a category of spiritual practice that prioritises individual sovereignty, self-deification, and the rejection of external moral authority. It is the single most useful concept for understanding where Satanism sits among alternative spiritualities, because it explains both the overlaps and the boundaries.

The terminology entered Western esotericism through Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society in the late nineteenth century, borrowed and substantially reframed from Indian tantric usage (vamachara, the left-hand practice). Blavatsky used it pejoratively. The traditions it was aimed at later adopted it as a description, which is a fairly common trajectory for insults in religious history.

The distinction as used in modern Western occultism:

• Right-Hand Path. The goal is union with, submission to, or dissolution into a higher power or universal order. The self is ultimately subordinate.
• Left-Hand Path. The goal is the strengthening, separation, and eventual deification of the individual self. The self is the project.

Satanism sits firmly on the Left-Hand Path. So do the Temple of Set, most Luciferian currents, and significant portions of Thelema. Wicca and most contemporary paganism sit on the Right-Hand Path. This single distinction resolves most of the confusion people have about which of these traditions are actually related.

The broader relationship between Satanism and occultism generally is covered in how Satanism differs from occultism.

How do Satanism and Wicca actually relate?

Satanism and Wicca are separate religions with different origins, different cosmologies, and no shared deity. Wicca has no Satan in it. The two are confused constantly, and the confusion runs almost entirely in one direction: outsiders assume Wiccans are Satanists, and Wiccans spend a great deal of energy explaining that they are not.

Wicca was developed by Gerald Gardner in England and publicised from the 1950s onwards. It is a nature-venerating religion, typically honouring a Goddess and a Horned God, structured around the eight seasonal Sabbats of the Wheel of the Year, and governed ethically by the Wiccan Rede and, in many traditions, the Threefold Law.

Satanism, in both its atheistic and theistic forms, has none of these features. There is no seasonal calendar of comparable centrality, no Goddess and Horned God pairing, no Rede, and no karmic return principle. LaVeyan Satanism in particular is explicitly hostile to the idea that harm returns threefold, which it regards as a piece of moral bookkeeping imported from the traditions it rejects.

The source of the confusion is the Horned God. Christian iconography from the medieval period onward assimilated horned pagan deities into its depiction of the Devil, which means the visual vocabulary of Wicca and the visual vocabulary of Satanism genuinely do overlap. The theology does not.

Where the two traditions do meet:

• Both are minority religions that face similar public misunderstanding.
• Both draw on overlapping bodies of ceremonial magic literature.
• Both have members who practise witchcraft as a technique.
• Individuals occasionally move between them, or hold hybrid positions.

For the fuller comparison, see Satanism vs paganism and is the occult connected to witchcraft and Wicca.

How does Thelema relate to Satanism?

Thelema is a religious philosophy founded by Aleister Crowley in the early twentieth century, and it is one of the largest single influences on modern Satanism without being Satanism itself. Crowley was not a Satanist, though he enjoyed being described as one enough that he rarely corrected anybody.

Thelema takes its central law from Crowley's The Book of the Law (1904): "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", paired with "Love is the law, love under will". The doctrine of True Will, the idea that each individual has an authentic purpose that they must discover and enact, is the system's core.

The influence on Satanism runs through several channels:

Direct textual borrowing. Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible (1969) includes the Enochian Keys, adapted from John Dee and Edward Kelley's Enochian material by way of Crowley's Golden Dawn-derived versions.

The primacy of individual will. LaVeyan Satanism's emphasis on indulgence and the sovereign self is recognisably downstream of Thelemic thinking, whatever LaVey's own view of Crowley was. LaVey was publicly dismissive of Crowley, describing him in unflattering terms, which did not stop him borrowing.

Ritual structure. The general shape of modern Satanic ritual, with its quarter-callings and invocations, comes from the Western ceremonial magic tradition that Crowley did more than anyone to transmit.

The Temple of Set engages with Thelemic material more directly and more respectfully than the Church of Satan does.

Crowley himself is covered in who was Aleister Crowley.

Photo by Joy Marino: https://www.pexels.com/photo/women-s-black-spaghetti-strap-dress-3052658/

What is the difference between Satanism and Luciferianism?

Luciferianism venerates Lucifer as a figure of enlightenment, knowledge, and liberation, where Satanism frames its central figure as an adversary and a symbol of opposition. The two overlap heavily, and the distinction is often one of emphasis rather than substance.

The practical differences:

Satanism	Luciferianism
Central figure framing	Adversary, accuser, rebel	Light-bringer, illuminator, teacher
Primary value	Self-sovereignty, indulgence, opposition	Knowledge, gnosis, ascent
Typical tone	Confrontational	Aspirational
Theistic or atheistic	Both common	Usually theistic or archetypal
Relationship to Christianity	Defined largely in opposition	Often more independent of it

Many Luciferians consider themselves a branch of Satanism. Many Satanists consider Luciferianism a softer rebranding. Both positions are held sincerely, and the argument has been running long enough that it is unlikely to be settled by an article.

The name itself carries most of the ambiguity, which is unpacked in is Satan the same as Lucifer.

How does Setianism fit in?

Setianism is a theistic Left-Hand Path religion that emerged directly from Satanism, and it represents the clearest case of a Satanist organisation evolving into something distinct.

The Temple of Set was founded in 1975 by Michael Aquino, who left the Church of Satan following disagreements with Anton LaVey. Aquino's position was that the Satanic principle was real rather than symbolic, and that its proper name was Set, the ancient Egyptian deity of isolation, storms, and the desert.

Setianism differs from LaVeyan Satanism on the point that matters most: it is genuinely theistic. Set is held to be a real, distinct intelligence, not a psychological symbol or a rhetorical device. Setian practice centres on Xeper (an Egyptian term the Temple renders as "I have come into being"), the deliberate development of the individual consciousness toward permanent independent existence.

It intersects with:

• Egyptian revivalist currents and Kemetic practice, though Setians read Set very differently from most Kemetic reconstructionists.
• Thelema, through the shared inheritance of ceremonial magic and the emphasis on individual becoming.
• Satanism, historically and structurally, while rejecting its atheistic branch entirely.

Photo by Jana Belonina on Unsplash

How does chaos magic intersect with Satanism?

Chaos magic is a methodology rather than a religion, which makes it unusually compatible with Satanism of any theological position. A Satanist can use chaos magic techniques without adopting any beliefs that conflict with their own.

Chaos magic developed in England in the late 1970s, associated with Peter J. Carroll, Ray Sherwin, and the Illuminates of Thanateros. Its central proposition is that belief is a tool: the practitioner adopts whatever belief system produces results, uses it, and discards it. The influence of Austin Osman Spare, particularly his sigil technique, is foundational.

The compatibility with Satanism is structural:

For atheistic Satanists, chaos magic's paradigm of belief-as-tool matches LaVey's own framing of ritual as psychodrama. Neither requires a real entity to be present for the ritual to work. Both treat efficacy as psychological.

For theistic Satanists, chaos magic imposes no doctrinal constraints that would conflict with their beliefs. It simply supplies technique.

Sigil work in particular has spread far beyond chaos magic proper and turns up across contemporary occult practice, including among Satanists who have never heard of Peter Carroll.

The broader question of what these techniques are and how they are used sits in what types of divination are used in the occult and how do occult rituals work.

How does non-theistic Satanism intersect with secular humanism?

Non-theistic Satanism intersects more substantially with secular humanism, atheism, and civil liberties activism than with any occult tradition. This is the intersection people least expect and the one that currently matters most in practice.

The Satanic Temple, founded in 2013, holds no supernatural beliefs. Its Seven Tenets emphasise compassion, justice, bodily autonomy, respect for the freedoms of others, deference to scientific understanding, willingness to correct one's own errors, and the primacy of the spirit of compassion over the written word.

Read without the branding, that is a broadly humanist ethical statement. The theological content is nil. The Satan is rhetorical.

This produces genuine common ground with:

• Secular humanism, on ethics grounded in reason rather than revelation
• Atheist and freethought organisations, on church-state separation
• Reproductive rights campaigning, through the bodily autonomy tenet
• Science education advocacy, through the tenet on scientific understanding

It also produces friction. Some humanist and atheist organisations are wary of the association, on the grounds that adopting satanic branding makes secular arguments easier to dismiss. Some Satanists reply that this is precisely the point: an argument that only works when made politely is not much of an argument.

The atheistic branch is covered in what is atheistic Satanism.

How do these traditions compare on the points that matter?

Tradition	Theistic?	Path	Central authority	Relationship to Satanism
LaVeyan Satanism	No	Left-Hand	Church of Satan	Is Satanism
The Satanic Temple	No	Left-Hand (loosely)	TST International	Is Satanism
Theistic Satanism	Yes	Left-Hand	None	Is Satanism
Luciferianism	Usually	Left-Hand	Various	Closely adjacent, sometimes overlapping
Setianism	Yes	Left-Hand	Temple of Set	Descended from it, now distinct
Thelema	Varies	Mixed	O.T.O., A∴A∴	Major influence, not Satanism
Chaos magic	Optional	Neither	None	Compatible methodology
Wicca	Yes	Right-Hand	None (tradition-specific)	Frequently confused, unrelated
Modern paganism	Yes	Right-Hand	None	Frequently confused, unrelated
Secular humanism	No	Neither	Various	Shares ethics with non-theistic Satanism

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Why are these traditions confused with each other so often?

These traditions are confused because they share a visual vocabulary, a set of historical opponents, and a marginal social position, none of which are the same as sharing a theology. The confusion has three specific sources.

Shared iconography. Pentagrams, horned figures, candles, robes, and ritual daggers appear across most of these traditions. They mean different things in each. A pentagram in Wicca represents the five elements. An inverted pentagram in Satanism represents the primacy of the material over the spiritual. They look similar enough that nobody outside either tradition distinguishes them.

A common historical adversary. Christian authorities historically classified Satanism, witchcraft, paganism, ceremonial magic, and folk practice together as a single category of heresy. That classification was theologically incoherent but institutionally durable, and it shaped public understanding for centuries. The Satanic Panic revived it wholesale in the 1980s.

Genuine borrowing. These traditions really do share texts, techniques, and personnel. The confusion is not purely external. Someone can practise sigil magic, hold Left-Hand Path values, celebrate a seasonal festival, and read Crowley, and be difficult to file.

The persistent misconceptions are handled in what are some misconceptions about the occult.

FAQ

Can you be both a Satanist and a Wiccan? It is uncommon and doctrinally awkward, but people do hold hybrid positions. The main obstacles are the Wiccan Rede and the Threefold Law, both of which LaVeyan Satanism explicitly rejects. Someone practising a non-Gardnerian, eclectic form of witchcraft alongside Satanist philosophy would face fewer contradictions than someone in an initiatory Wiccan tradition.

Is Thelema a form of Satanism? No. Thelema is a distinct religious philosophy founded by Aleister Crowley, centred on the discovery and enactment of True Will. Crowley used satanic and Beast imagery deliberately and provocatively, and he is often assumed to have been a Satanist as a result. Thelema has, however, been one of the largest single influences on modern Satanist practice and ritual structure.

What is the Left-Hand Path in simple terms? The Left-Hand Path is spiritual practice aimed at strengthening and ultimately deifying the individual self, rather than dissolving it into a higher power. Satanism, Setianism, and most Luciferianism sit on it. Wicca, most paganism, and mainstream religion sit on the Right-Hand Path. The terminology comes from Indian tantra by way of Helena Blavatsky.

Do Satanists practise witchcraft? Many do, though what they mean by it varies. In LaVeyan Satanism, "witch" is a formal second-degree title and ritual is understood as psychodrama rather than supernatural causation. Theistic Satanists may practise witchcraft in a more literal sense. The techniques used often overlap with those used by Wiccans and other practitioners, even where the underlying beliefs do not.

Is Luciferianism just Satanism with better PR? Some Satanists would say so. Luciferians would argue the distinction is real: Lucifer as light-bringer and teacher carries different associations from Satan as adversary and accuser, and the practices emphasise gnosis and ascent rather than indulgence and opposition. Both traditions draw on the same biblical material and the historical conflation of the two names, so the argument has no clean resolution.

Why do people think paganism and Satanism are the same thing? Largely because Christian authorities spent centuries classifying them together, and because both use horned imagery. The Devil's horns in Christian art were partly assimilated from pre-Christian horned deities such as Pan and Cernunnos. The visual overlap is genuine and the theological overlap is close to nil.

Does chaos magic require any particular belief? No, and that is the point. Chaos magic treats belief as a tool to be adopted temporarily for effect and discarded afterwards. This makes it compatible with atheistic Satanism, theistic Satanism, and most other positions, which is a large part of why it spread so widely from its origins in late 1970s England.

Whichever corner of the Left-Hand Path you occupy, our gothic pins, gothic patches, and 3 for £12 accessories cover the iconography without committing you to anybody's doctrine.