DON'T BATHE

By Anton Szandor LaVey

Fair use excerpt from Satan Speaks!, © 1998

Anton LaVey was a famous Satanist. What good can there be in his writings? Quite simply this; the spirit of anti-Christ pervades almost every writing in our society, without most people knowing it. The devil wants us to think he is a good guy. So when he comes out in public, as in the writings of Anton LaVey, he puts his best foot forward and uses his best table manners. The best way to seduce people into trusting you is to give them truth. This excerpt from Anton's last book is mostly true. It is less "Satanic" than the science periodicals you'll find on the shelves of your local public library.

To Jules Goldschmidt

I never bathe. It is against my religious principles. Bathing is uncomfortable, messy, disruptive, and unhealthy. Bathing is like suicide. When life becomes more unbearable and uncomfortable than death, suicide is a worthy, practical, and gratifying alternative. When discomfort, stickiness, outside heat and itching become insurmountable, immersion in cool water is a blessing. If I am not uncomfortable when warm and dry, why should I change things?

If I stink in certain areas of my body, I wash those areas. I leave the rest alone. If I am not going to come into human contact, and can tolerate my own more pungent odors, I leave well enough alone. I don't wish to offend those for whom I care. Most others offend me more than I could ever return the favor, so why should I be charitable? If I can offend them in a manner even approaching how they offend me, more power to me.

Bathing is very unhealthy, in that it washes away natural enzymes and oils that significantly immunize the body from all manner of attack.

Bathing is unkind to other animals, in that it renders a human unpredictable and often unjustly untrustworthy. It creates confusion as to who is friend or foe. The only humans who need worry about such accurate evaluation are the untrustworthy and treacherous. Hence the worst people have good reason to bathe most often.

If one's diet is conducive to unsavory odor, because of ethnicity or preference, that person should live among others who share the same dietary resultants, rather than stink up an existing environment. That is nature's most basic means of stratification. One tribe smells different from another for good reason. Within the tribe, any deviation in normal odor is a sure sign that something is wrong with the stinker. Either he is ill, or guilty and has reason to fear his fellow tribesmen.

So you see, bathing and scent masking are dishonest. They provide a laudable means — in the guise of cleanliness (and goodness) — to conceal one's true nature and motivations. Anyone who deals with diversity in people, yet depends upon making a sale, must mask his scent.

The worst problem in bathing for scent masking is this: The indigenous odors — for better or worse — that are scrubbed away necessitate that the body's scent production work overtime to replenish whatever type of scent is habitual to the individual. Unlike perfumery, the process is reversed. Rather than cutting a stronger, objectionable animal scent, thus rendering it attractive, one's body naturally overcompensates by exaggeration. The result is that in a scrubbed and descented body, the very odor which offended is replenished even more pungently than ever!

Bathing is genetically disastrous and eugenically unsound. Through the fine art of scent masking, a woman who would be totally unsuited and unattractive to a desirable but unwise mate is able to breed and produce offspring of inferior genetic quality. Interestingly, this is an issue which is never explored, yet might yield frightening findings. Like telegony — though proven and applied in animal husbandry, it was long ago discarded as senseless quackery as applied to human animals, because it violated democratic ideas.

When creatures left the sea and walked on land, they still needed water inside them, being made up of vast percentages of fluid. Hence, they must still take on water internally in order to exist. Things are still the same. They rejected and left the habitat of water on the outside of their bodies to become man.

Love of the sea and attraction to water has nothing to do with a moral, societal, and psychological need to bathe. The only thing each has in common is water. I love the sea. I am invigorated by water, whether aerated or rushing, rippling or crashing. I like to live surrounded by water. I love the feel of crisp, cold water over my wrists and hands. As a child, I spent endless hours playing with boats in the cool water of a huge bathtub. I simply don't bathe, for some of the reasons I have given. To me, there is a difference between the feel of the salt spray while standing on the forecastle of a ship plunging through the sea; and the need to leap into a shower and wash away my own vital saltes, my identifying scent, and my unholy stinke. As far as I'm concerned, habitual bathing is for the pious, the frightened, the guilty, the idle, and the insecure.

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