...to see my conclusions echoed by people with more credibility:

"We should not fall into the trap of imagining that the older a system is, then the more 'pure' it must be.  This is fundamentalism, the belief that the modern world is but a degenerate reflection of a former golden age.  Everything must evolve from age to age, keeping itself in tune with the spirit of the age, otherwise it becomes useless and obsolete, and is lost.  Although we study the past, we should remember that it is the repository of errors as well as truths, and enlightened people of the present day can make a contribution to the understanding of divination through alphabets as well as many a practitioner of former times."

Magical Alphabets, pp.126-27, by Nigel Pennick.

One example of my own involves an ex-girlfriend explaining that, essentially, it's dumb of people to use inverted crosses as an anti-christian emblem.  She argued that this symbol lacks meaning because of how young this practice is.  What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that symbols lack meaning until we give it to them.  While the color red does have certain primal connotations, a STOP sign itself would mean nothing if we couldn't recognize and comprehend the word "stop," which is a human creation.

Certain symbols evolve based on usage and come to represent almost the complete opposite of what they once did.  The swastika is probably the best representation of this principle.  The Christian cross, in all of its various forms, is another.  To many, the cross is a beacon of hope, charity, light, and purity which embodies nothing but all the best qualities in humankind.  To me, the cross is a symbol of tyranny, oppression, ignorance, and blasphemy, for the temples of my ancestors were destroyed and defiled so that monuments to Christian empirialism could be erected in their wake.

The inverted cross is a rather immature means to subvert Christian rule.  The brand of Satanism which merely inverts Christian doctrine and regalia while employing the most gaudy of Hollywood trappings is nothing but an offshoot of Christianity, for it accepts the validity of Christ as our savior and the predominance of the New Testament God.  It is therefore easy for their opponents to dismiss them as disillusioned crazies, since that's pretty much what they are.

I'll confess I have difficulty being open-minded when it comes to certain magickal paradigms.  I think practitioners of chaos magick are, so to speak, the dirty hippies of magick.  Anything goes, whatever works for you is acceptable, results are what counts, et cetera.  Magickal practice affects reality in ways we often can't perceive, and I feel people should be careful in choosing the means to the ends they desire.  This is the view of an outsider, however, since my interest in magick and religion is currently a scholarly pursuit.  If I said people should stick to magickal practices with more pedigree, I'd probably just be expressing the fundamentalist view.