Satanism is a choice that an individual makes every moment of their lives, thus to say that Satanism is a state of becoming, one that is happening in an eternal cyclical moment. If the Satanist one moment performed a ritual declaring their personal Satanism, then made the choice to unquestioningly follow a group or pre-packaged dogma, then they stopped becoming a Satanist.
Satanism is unfortunately full of self-proclaimed leaders who claim ownership of the Left Hand Path or attempt to impose on others their personal interpretation of what Satanism is to them. Such people are like spiders spinning webs to catch unthinking flies, that they will devour to their own benefit, but to the loss of the deluded slave that was caught in the trap.
One Satanist recently declared they was the leader of Theistic Satanism based on a claim of 10,000 followers of their blog. Another Satanist declared they was an authority based on a large number of views and followers of their YouTube channel. Such claims are forms of marketing designed to blind and seduce the individual for the gain of another at the expense of self.
I recently exchanged comment with a self-proclaimed guru who desired to impose their own personal Satanic standards upon everyone else, one who considered harming others should be a Satanic ideal. Satanists made an effort to break away from restrictive dogma such as Christianity, only to find in the liberated boundaries of Satanism other people desiring to create and impose rules or standards of their own relative truths upon the individual. When the individual gives up their own standards, beliefs and dreams in exchange for that of an external authority, they give control of their minds to others. The hidden agenda of anyone seeking to impose standards on others is a form of control, since if all individuals reject their own standards in favour of externally created standards it becomes another form of dogma such as exists with the Roman Catholic Church.
I like the Satanic idea of “self becoming their own god through the manifestation of personal will” which is undermined if the individual places an external authority above themselves in their own mind or life. The path that the Satanist walks is a crooked path, covered on all sides with traps that will seduce and capture, a journey that the individual walks every moment of their life, a series of choices in a becoming of godhood through the manifestation of personal will. The blind unwary individual can in one moment fall into the abyss of slavery, thus Satanism is a path for the attentive questioning fighter, a path few manage to attain.