Yes folks.
ENCYCLOPEDIA SATANICA
BY: Matt Schutt
Matt is a member of the Mensa society.
PERUSE AT THY PERIL
Encyclopedia Satanica is a collection of essays that pretends to be a sequel to Ambrose Bierce’s 1906 classic, The Devil’s Dictionary. (The writer apologizes for the delay of a century. He was busy.) Be warned, gentle reader, for while this book disguises itself as a neutral catalog of encyclopedia subjects, it contains gross displays of sinister arrogance and absurd cynicism. Intestinal distress may ensue.
Some of the book’s gimmicks include:
- Instructions for writing a kick-ass love letter
- A smarter way to elect politicians
- A primer on how to be hip
- An expose of the world-wide reader conspiracy
- The comic book super-powers personality test
- The 101 definitions of philosophy
- What not to do on The Howard Stern Show
- The book’s secret message hidden in a word puzzle
Warning: This book doesn’t really have anything to do with satanism. Burning it will not get you into Heaven.
FOREWARD
The Devil’s Dictionary, first published in 1906, is a collection of sarcastic definitions written by Ambrose “Bitter” Bierce. If you don’t know who Bierce was, look him up in your Encarta. Or just imagine the love child of Edgar Alan Poe and Mark Twain. The epigrams of his Dictionary compile a wise, if biting, catalog of human nature. Some examples:
Beauty, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Destiny, n. A tyrant’s authority for crime and a fool’s excuse for failure.
Happiness, n. An agreeable sensations arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
Lawyer, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
Mine, adj. Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it.
Penitent, adj. Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Year, n. A period of three hundred sixty-five disappointments.
And so forth.
Encyclopedia Satanica is an abecedarian collection of essays written in the spirit (if not the wit, craft, and vigor) of Bierce’s work. Satanica and The Devil’s Dictionary share a dark sense of humor, but neither was inspired by Old Scratch. Both books are devilish, devilling, devil-may-care, and act as devil’s advocates, but they’re not really satanic. (For a true gospel according to Lucifer, go read John Milton.) While the Dictionary has an unearthly obsession with death and decay, Satanica has more prurient fascinations. Products of their respective times, presumably.
So what would Ambrose Bierce have to say about Satanica were he alive to read it? Probably something scathing like, “The prose of Encyclopedia Satanica could be described as honey-like if by “honey-like” one meant cloying and sticky.” And then he would ignore it.
But to insure that others do not ignore it, Satanica’s contents have been consciously designed to snare attention. It harbors passages both wildly offensive and unapologetically pedantic. Some of the material is too raw for a Larry Flynt screed while some of the leftist plots would drop the jaw of Ralph Nader. It is to be hoped, however, that enough good-natured humor has been injected into these essays so that the reader will more often snicker than howl.
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