Some people whine that the Church of Satan does NOTHING. It seems that SUCH accusations are based upon rather anti-Satanic ideas of what constitutes doing…SOMETHING. Also, I’ll talk a little about finding fellow Satanists in the real world. Today, on Satansplain.
[intro]
Magister Bill M. here with Satansplain, the Satanic talk podcast.
Before we begin, I just want to give a little background about me and about Satansplain. Just because I think it will be relevant to today’s topics, maybe in more ways than one.
As some of you listeners already know, I write Satanism essays from time to time. You can find some of them on the official Church of Satan website, Church of Satan dot com. But over the years I’ve also had articles that wound up printed in Satanism zines, or in compilation books of different essays contributed by different Satanists. As for where my ideas for these essays come from, sometimes they come about because I find myself answering a Satanism question or misconception ONLINE over and over again, and I think, “OK, at this point maybe I should just write a full essay on this topic.” And I go ahead and do that. I suppose you could call them rants, but even with rants, I try writing something that I think other Satanists might enjoy reading.
Now ANOTHER thing some Satanists might know me for is The Devil’s Mischief, my other podcast, a comedy podcast which I’ve been doing for close to 20 years now.
So…what motivated me to start Satansplain was thinking, “OK, I have all of these essays and these written responses I’m always giving to people online. And I also have plenty of experience with podcasts. So, why don’t I just take some of this written stuff and put it in podcast form?” And that’s what Satansplain has been. Now as I’ve said since episode number 1, this doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to limit Satansplain to just that. I’ve certainly thought of INTERVIEWING other Satanists on the show, or maybe having THEM contribute things in another way, or doing live streams with active Q&A, doing VIDEO and not just audio. We’ll see. I certainly don’t rule any of those things out.
But to go back to that situation I mentioned of internet posts that become essays, there was one particular incident back in 2019, where I started writing a reply to somebody on Facebook, and realized that what I was writing was starting to be long enough to be its own essay. So that’s what I ended up doing. I’m going to read that essay to you now, add some additional thoughts inside and afterwards, and also read a listener EMAIL I got which SOMEWHAT relates to this topic as well.
This essay is called, “On the Doing of Nothing”.
When people whine that the Church of Satan "doesn't do anything", it begs the question of what, exactly, they think we should be "doing" that we don't already do, and why. These people seem to expect the central office to be doing stuff that falls into one of the following categories:
Things we may already be doing. Namely, these are things which Church of Satan members are already free to do as individuals, and may in fact already be doing. For example, organizing or attending social events with other Satanists, manufacturing and selling a certain type of Satanic item, supporting a particular philanthropic cause, or joining a particular political rally.
Things we no longer see a need to do. These are things which we have already tried as an organization, but stopped doing once they were found to no longer work for us. For example, the grotto system, or having initiatory workshops.
Things we have no valid reason to do. These are actions that would go directly go against the principles of Satanism itself, or at the very least would just be really stupid and self-defeating. They include things like indoctrinating children, expecting us to be ecumenical or "join forces" with unrelated (and largely unknown) occult groups, or supporting outright illegal activity.
This third category extends to requests we occasionally get for the Church of Satan to take on public battles against religious zealots. Occasionally, a news story will break concerning one or more fanatical Christians pushing their religion in public, after which complete strangers on social media may state that “the Church of Satan should” rival those evangelical efforts. They of course never stop to think how giving the illusion of public Satanic “rivalry” could backfire and make Christians double down in their efforts, or that legal battles to preserve secularism are much better suited for secular organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, or Freedom from Religion Foundation. Again, individual Church of Satan members who are passionate about fighting theocrats can opt to directly support such groups if they wish. Typically however, the people making these requests are not Satanists, nor are even directly affected by the Christian zealotry in question. They “just think it would be funny”. In other words, they want the Church of Satan to spend its time and money to entertain them. Needless to say, this is something for which we have no valid reason to do.
The Church of Satan does however certainly serve purposes as the world’s long-standing go-to organization for Satanism. These purposes are both external and internal. Externally, the organization serves as a direct source for the media, scholars, and other researchers. Similarly, we've had representatives serve in an official capacity as experts in court cases, as motion picture consultants for "occult" scenes, and as legal wedding officiants.
Most notably, for those who have read The Satanic Bible and determined themselves to be Satanists, the Church of Satan is a logical next place to look for more information, as well as look for other Satanists. Affiliation helps Satanists filter through the unwashed masses and find each other, sharing their discoveries and works with like-minded people in a mutual admiration society. As I said in my essay "Satanism is not a Congregational Religion", the Church of Satan is made up of its members, so if you want to see what the Church is doing, go look at what the individual members are doing.
However, if you think the organization is still somehow obliged to go beyond all those roles and additionally serve you, or to do all the work to change your world for the better, then ultimately this means you feel entitled to have other people in life do certain things for you. After all, the administration is made up of humans too, namely other Satanists who've taken the responsibility to help run the organization, but still have their own lives to live and are not necessarily here to be your public servant.
If you think the central office has an obligation to go beyond the aforementioned administrative duties, particularly to do things which you could already do yourself -- or worse, feel that you need the actions of other people to give your own life a feeling of purpose and validation -- then the self-serving religion of Satanism is probably not be right for you in the first place. Perhaps you should "do something" about that.
[end of essay]
So that’s the end of my little essay.
I’d like to go back to what I said at the beginning of it, though. When people tell me that the Church of Satan doesn’t DO anything, I then ask them: WHAT, exactly, is it, that you think the Church of Satan should be doing, that we’re not doing? Now before you answer that question, stop and think about those 3 categories. ARE YOU SURE, it’s not something that some members already DO, if they want to? Are you sure it’s not something we USED to do but STOPPED doing, for good reasons? Are you asking us to do something that just wouldn’t make SENSE for us to do, either because it would go directly against Satanism, philosophically, or that it’s just something which would be a waste of our time, when you think about it?
First of all, to anybody complaining that the Church of Satan doesn’t DO anything, or for people demanding that we DO some particular thing, let me ask you this: who ARE you? Are you even a Satanist? Because if you don’t even identify as a Satanist in the first place, then…frankly why should we care what you think? There are LOTS of non-Satanists who demand we do one thing or another. We get messages daily from religious fanatics who want us to turn away from Satanism and become Christians. Obviously, we don’t obey THEM. What makes you any better? As I said in the previous episode of Satansplain, I’ll see people on social media who have ZERO CLUE what Satanism or the Church of Satan are, expect to be spoon-fed the information on Satanism, and then within 5 minutes of learning about us, say, “Oh, well you should change your name. You should do this instead. You should do that.” Again, who ARE you? We’re not going to change the name of our religion just because it doesn’t match up with your misconceptions. Fuck off.
And like I said in ANOTHER episode a while back, when the state of MAINE was in the news because of a legal battle involving school vouchers and public versus private schools, and morons kept tagging the Church of Satan on Twitter to say, “Hey, now that religious schools are allowed, the Church of Satan should make a religious school!” Again, first question: who are you? Are you a Satanist? No. Do you even live in the state of Maine? No. Do you even have children? No; in most cases these people didn’t even have children. So why are you asking us to build a school in Maine? “Well, I just thought it would be funny. You know, if around these Christian schools, there would also be a Satanist school, ha ha.” Oh, OK, so you want us to ENTERTAIN you. Well, again, we’re not going to do that. Even ASIDE from all that, the school example makes no sense. The whole idea we would take all of the time and money to pull some stunt that, first of all makes no sense in the context of Satanism; we don’t indoctrinate children. Second of all, a school almost nobody would end up enrolling their children in. WHAT on earth would we get out of it? We make the Christians look bad? That we give them a funny scare? They already LOOK bad. They already ARE scared.
As a Satanist, I don’t HAVE to go out of my way to make Christianity look stupid, nor to scare them. Christians already DO a good job at that to THEMSELVES. Certainly more than just I could do. It’s been that way for at least maybe a generation or two now. People don’t like jesus freaks. Why? Because they’re annoying and they believe in stupid things, and they inject those things everywhere.
Now I’m not saying that if religious nuts are giving you a hard time, then you should just let them walk over you. I’m not saying that there should be no efforts to make sure they’re kept in check. But…think those efforts through, first. Trying to mirror their efforts by doing a Satanic parody of whatever they’re doing, is not going to help. First of all, it makes no THEOLOGICAL sense in the religion of Satanism. Satanism is an adversarial religion; it’s not for the masses; we DON’T have prayers, we’re NOT looking for acceptance, we DON’T indoctrinate children, we DON’T hold up things like philanthropy as a virtue that everybody must do, we DON’T serve God, we DON’T serve the greater good. By the way, the so-called “greater good” is a notion that’s as intangible and vague as the notion of God, but I digress. So since the Church of Satan represents Satanism, it makes no sense to expect it to do actions like that, which are counter to Satanism. Satanism is a religion of the flesh and not the spirit, of the self and not the masses.
And THAT, was just my first point. My second point, is that not only does it make no sense in the context of Satanism to do something like build a school in Maine, but stunts like that don’t even accomplish anything. No Jesus freak, as ever, EVER said, “Gee, I wanted to shove my religion into this place in public, but now that I see that SATANISTS could do the same thing, well I’ll back down now and I’ll keep my religion to myself.” That never happens. If anything, trying to build a Satanic school or whatever will just confirm their fears of, “Oh look, the world needs jesus because as you can see, there are devil worshipers infiltrating society.” And they’ll just double down on their efforts.
Now to be fair, SOME attempts to parody religion HAVE been effective, in some way or another. There was a group called the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster who challenged the Kansas City School Boards, when they were trying to get Christian creationism taught in public school science classes. You can look them up. In fact, they ALSO challenged a law that you couldn’t wear a hat in your drivers’ license photo unless it was a hat for a religion. So for example, a turban, or a yarmulke, or something. So, somebody fought to get their drivers’ license photo of themselves wearing a spaghetti colander as a helmet. There was a group of people in the UK I believe who threw off a bunch of polling data on religion by all writing in “Jedi” as their religious preference.
There was the Church of the Subgenius, who thought it was strange back in the 1980s that some states in the United States didn’t have many opportunities for people to be legal wedding officiants unless they were church ministers, so they created a parody religion which, among other things, created a loophole for that.
Now notice in all of these cases though, it was abundantly clear that the so-called religion challenging these things was a SATIRICAL religion. I mean…flying spaghetti monster. How STUPID do you have to be, NOT to think that that was an intentional joke. That doesn’t work with Satanism. That’s because Satanism, you see, is an actual religion. And those of use who are actual Satanists say no, we’re not going to go downtown in our ritual robes to harass Christians. That’s not what we’re about, and we’re not here to just to entertain you.
I’ve gone off on a long rant here, but let’s get back to the question. To the people who whine that the Church of Satan doesn’t DO anything, what exactly IS it, then, that you think we should be doing?
“Well, you should…fight for religious rights!” Mmm, as far as I’m concerned, I already HAVE my religious rights. I can legally be a Satanist and practice Satanism here in the United States. I don’t see a right which non-Satanists have but I don’t have because I’m a Satanist. But let’s assume I’m wrong. How, exactly, do you want me to fight? Be specific. Do I…show up at protests, write my congressman, give money to financially support court cases? Walk up to Christians who preach in public and…give them the finger? Or what? What if I find those sorts of things to be a waste of my time? It’s MY life, and maybe I have better things to do. What do you expect the Church of Satan to do, FORCE me to go to protests, and write letters, and give money to the ACLU? Instead, how about this arrangement: any Church of Satan members who DO feel passionate about those sorts of issues and DO find it to be a battle that’s worth their time, are free to go ahead and do that stuff, and the members who AREN’T, don’t? That makes far more sense. And that’s why it’s the policy we take.
The same goes for any other political protests. I was on a podcast sometime in the past year or two where the interviewers asked me, shouldn’t the Church of Satan be showing up and joining Black Lives Matter. I said no, we’re not going to do that. First of all, not all Satanists support the organization Black Lives Matter. *I* most certainly don’t. It’s not because I’m a racist, it’s because I have my objections to them as an organization and how they run things. I see some explicit Marxist ideology in the things they push which have nothing to do with race, I see money they get not going to help black communities but instead going to fund mansions in white neighborhoods that the Black Lives Matter leaders live in. And another thing I told the DJs is that if Black Lives Matter were shown in the news getting thousands of people supporting from the CHURCH-OF-SATAN, would that look good at all for their organization? I would say no. And you would have to be completely delusional to think otherwise. Now maybe there ARE Church of Satan members who don’t view the organization Black Lives Matter the same way that I do, and they DO support that cause. I have no idea what their rationale is; I won’t claim to speak for them. But once again, we’re back to the issue where not all members of the Church of Satan necessarily agree on a particular cause or outside organization like Black Lives Matter, Incorporated, and thus we leave it up to members to decide what they want to do.
Let’s keep asking this question though, what is it that you think the Church of Satan should be doing, that we’re not doing? “Well, you should be educating people on Satanism”. OK, um, I’m doing that right now. I’m a Church of Satan member, and I’m doing this free podcast about Satanism. We’ve been doing interviews and writing books and articles for over half a century now. I don’t KID myself into thinking that we can eradicate all ignorance about Satanism. Because as a Satanist, I believe that humans on the whole are pretty dumb sheep. I believe in correcting MISINFORMATION, but again, this isn’t a religion that wants full social acceptance. So I’m not going to go door to door with The Satanic Bible or anything like that.
What else, do I hear people say the Church of Satan should be doing. “I need to find a Church of Satan that’s local to me. Where is my local chapter? You should have them.” No, the Church of Satan doesn’t work like that. It’s TRUE that we USED to have grottos. We used to have regional-based groups where Church of Satan members got together. But we stopped doing that a decade or more ago, and for good reasons. First of all, even when we HAD grottos, very very few members were ever in one. In some cases there were members who didn’t LIVE anywhere near a grotto, and even in some cases where there WAS a grotto nearby, that member didn’t necessarily want to join. Maybe the guy running the grotto was somebody you didn’t get along with. Maybe the sorts of activities and projects the grotto would do weren’t things that you were necessarily interested in. And especially once the internet became a household thing, you no longer needed a grotto to connect with other Church of Satan members. Reverend Andy Howl for example, hosting the Devils Reign events every December in Florida. Those were Church of Satan affiliated events, but didn’t need a special Florida chapter of the Church of Satan to do it. He said, “Hey, here is my tattoo place and my art gallery and performance club. Here’s a theme. Submit your artwork. We’ll publish the best in a book. We’ll display the art in the gallery. We’ll have a gallery opening event, come on down.” Me, another Church of Satan member who lives in a different part of the country, I hear about that because I’m a member of the Church of Satan and keep up with news events, as well as secret events which members might only tell other members on-line. I say, “Cool, count me in.” I show up, meet some members I haven’t seen in a while, meet some OTHER members for the first time.
Once again: no special grotto needed.
This is similar to another thing I hear, “Well you guys should get together for rituals, and you USED to do that, and I heard somebody say you don’t do that anymore.” Well, you heard wrong. Church of Satan members DO get together with each other for rituals. I have done it many times myself over the years. Do we ALL get together, and do this on regular intervals? No. That’s because in Satanism, we realize that WHEN a Satanist feels the need for ritual is going to be different for different Satanists. We’re not one of those religions where everybody is required to drag themselves to a particular building for an hour every weekend.
But when we DO get together, it’s like the example I gave with the Devils Reign art showings. A member says, “Hey, I’d like to get together to do this and this.” And…we go do it. And the members who don’t WANT to be part of it for one reason or another, DON’T do it.
I even remember one guy telling me years ago that he’s a Satanist and that he wouldn’t join the Church of Satan unless he had a guarantee that he would meet other Satanists in person. And this guy…first of all, lived in the middle of the sticks of Ohio. And I tried explaining to him, “OK, keep in mind that Satanism is a minority religion. Satanists will always be in the minority. That’s just how the world works.” There IS always that chance that there may be a fellow Church of Satan member living in the same small town of… PotatoSack, Ohio, that you live in. But you would probably have better luck driving to Cincinnati or some more popular area like that, where Satanists from the surrounding area might meet up. But he said no no no, he doesn’t want to have to drive 2 hours to meet another Church of Satan member. OK, well then what should the Church of Satan do, then? Pay for airfare to fly members out to meet you? Furthermore, let’s suppose that there really ARE one or more Church of Satan members who live in your town. What reason would THEY have, to meet with YOU? I mean if you lived in my town, I know *I* wouldn’t want to hang out with you in person. You sound like a whiner.
Similarly, I’ve seen people say things like, “Oh the Church of Satan should have a Satanic goth club I can go to.” Or, “The Church of Satan should have a community center, you know, just like there are Christian youth centers, or Jewish community centers, or the YMCA.”
I’ve already addressed the idea of Satanism not having to do anything with helping communities, so I won’t repeat that point.
But this idea of a Satanic goth club you can go to…Well, that may SOUND cool, but again, think through the logistics here. Would there be enough Satanists in your area to make this worthwhile? If not, and you’re saying we should have a building that’s run by the Church of Satan where non-Satanists, let alone non-members, and other strangers we don’t even know, can visit, well….I don’t know any Satanist who would want that. Or again, like that little town in Ohio example, it would be kind of a waste if you’re the only person who’d end up going. CHRISTIANS have their local churches and communities and stuff because, at least here in the US, it’s the most popular religion by far. They make up a majority of Americans.
Now I DO know some Church of Satan members who are business owners, and they own a club, or a bar, or a gym, or some other business like that. Some of these things may AESTHETICALLY appeal to many Satanists. You know, maybe there’s a certain goth aesthetic or something which not ALL Satanists are necessarily turned on by, BUT many may be.
Which leads us to the question: if YOU really, really, want some sort of Satanic goth club or Satanic rec center or something…then what are YOU doing, to make that a reality.
I’m going to talk MORE about that sort of stuff later, after the break, but I bring up this last point because I see a much bigger, underlying problem with the idea of saying, “The Church of Satan should do X”, or “The Church of Satan needs Y”, “The Church of Satan should provide Z”. And it’s a problem that goes beyond the topic of the Church of Satan, a problem that goes deeper than any arguments about Satanism. What I’m talking about is this underlying attitude of “Well SOMEBODY needs to do something about this.” “Things are like THIS right now, but it SHOULD be like this.” You see this sort of thing in the business world all of the time. Or in politics for that matter. For one, there’s the problem of never thinking through the logistics. I gave that example earlier about the idea of building a Satanic school in one of the U.S. states, let alone one of the most rural ones. It’s the problem of shouting an idea that SOUNDS appealing, SOUNDS like it would be an amusing thing, but LOGISTICALLY makes less and less sense the more you think about it. I witness this first-hand in my day job in the corporate world, where somebody in marketing or management says, “Hey, we need to build a product that does this, this, and this in 3 months.” “Um, that’s impossible, because this part isn’t capable of doing that, and the patents we would need would take this long to clear, and we’re already going to be busy working on this OTHER thing for this OTHER client over these next 2 months so we don’t have the manpower to…” “Oh, but I promised them we WOULD do this new thing in 3 months, so now it HAS to be done. I’m TELLING you it has to be done, so go do it.” “But this proposal says to build a 5-sided triangle. You can’t MAKE a 5-sided triangle. Triangles have THREE sides.” “Well, we’ll just pay a bonus to motivate you more so it can be done.”
And back and forth it goes, like a Dilbert comic strip. So there’s the problem of thinking that an idea that sounds nice or has good intent will necessarily be attainable. But there’s also the problem in thinking that somebody ELSE can always take care of something. And even more importantly, the idea that you need INSTITUTIONS to perform an action. Whether it’s a Satanic organization, or a manufacturing company, or the U.S. government, or whomever. INSTITUTIONS have their purpose, but institutions themselves don’t perform actions. HUMANS do. INDIVIDUALS do. If you say, “This company should build this product”, or “The government should do this”, well that still comes down to individual people in that company or that government performing the action. You may hear somebody say, “This pollution and this garbage in my city is out of control. Somebody has to clean it up.” OK, but whether you expect the job to be done by the government, or by a volunteer group, or somebody else, in all cases, one or more PHYSICAL HUMANS, individual human beings, will have to leave their homes, pick up equipment, physically pick up the garbage from the street, put it into a truck. Somebody will have to then drive the truck to the dump, and so on. How do you GET people to do that? Well they may exchange their labor for a PAYCHECK, that’s how work usually works. Or you may have criminals who were charged by the government to do so many hours of community service, in which case they get to fulfill that by cleaning up garbage. Or you may have local people who are so fed up, they’re sick of waiting for bureaucrats in the government to arrange for the clean-up, so they roll up their sleeves and clean it up themselves. There was a man in California named Scott Pressler who did just that, cleaning up tons and tons of garbage in his hometown of San Francisco. He kind of proved a political point along the way, that people don’t necessarily need to wait for the government to fix a problem. But I digress. You see a problem in your life? What are YOU doing about it? YOU, an individual. If it’s something you really can’t fix, then surely there are things you can do so that it doesn’t AFFECT you as badly. If you don’t feel you’re in control of your own life, and can’t do anything as an individual to change your life to make it more desirable, then all I can say is, Satanism clearly isn’t the religion for YOU.
And this brings us back to the Church of Satan. When you say “The Church of Satan should DO” this thing or that thing, in the end that still requires one or more individual Church of Satan members spending their money or time to do it. Who are Church of Satan members? Church of Satan members are Satanists. So when you say “The Church of Satan” should do something or another, in effect what you’re doing, is demanding that SATANISTS, do something to please YOU. And naturally, a Satanist’s response to that request is…why should I? Who are you? What’s in it for ME?
Suppose you think I should be out protesting some Christian prayer being held in some government meeting. Well, what if I don’t CARE about that? What if I feel I have something far more important to do that Thursday? It’s MY life, not yours. I’m a Satanist. Maybe I’d rather sleep in late, or do some extra work for more money, or go to a concert, or go to the beach.
Or maybe, just maybe, I DO have an interest in that particular government meeting, but it’s only because of the actual laws that the meeting is going to be debating. Maybe there’s a bill being discussed that I’m against because it’s going to raise my taxes, and I couldn’t care less whether the meeting starts with a prayer to Jesus or Allah or the Muffin Man. Imagine that. A grown-up with interest in grown-up things like taxes.
But if I’m not interested in showing up for this protest, or building this school, or donating my own money to some particular philanthropic cause or particular politician, what do you expect the Church of Satan to do? Do you expect High Priest Peter H. Gilmore and the Council of Nine to DEMAND everybody does it? Have the Church of Satan as an administrative body TELL members -- TELL Satanists how to live their lives? Yeah, good luck with that. How on earth would that square with the idea that the Church of Satan represents Satanism, a religion where the individual is his or her own god?
It doesn’t. Let’s take a long-overdue break right now. You are listening to Satansplain.
[break]
Magister Bill M. here with Satansplain. I want to give a quick mention to Mark from New Zealand who sent me this beautiful, one-of-a-kind wooden pendant with a Sigil of Baphomet burned into it. It’s quite exquisite. He just sent it to me as a way to say thanks for the show. I happily accepted. I’m definitely going to have to show some photos of it on social media. Namely, places like Facebook and Twitter. You can find Satansplain on both. Please give Satansplain a like and a follow on those places if you use them and you haven’t yet. You can find the direct links and more on the official website for the show, Satansplain dot com. That’s S-A-T-A-N, S-P-L, A-I-N, dot com. If there is one place to remember, you can just remember that. You can find all of the previous episodes of Satansplain there, too. Satansplain episodes are available not only on the main website and on the YouTube channel, but also Spotify, Audible, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and other places as well. And of course, you can also email me, bill@satansplain dot com is the email address.
Speaking of email, I want to finish off the episode with an email I got from a listener, because I think some of this ties back into points I said earlier.
This email is from Aaron, and he starts off his email with a couple of little anecdotes to share, before he gets into his question. So I guess since these ARE Satanic anecdotes, we can treat these as Satanicdotes. This means it’s time for a Satanicdote. Cue the Satanicdote theme song.
[Satanicdote theme song]
Aaron says, “After I had just read The Satanic Bible for the first time, giddy with excitement from discovering that I wasn't alone, I met someone who wore a sweater covered in Baphomets, and I approached this person like my ex-wife approaches a cheesecake: with focus and determination.
"Shemhemforash!!!" I said with a big smile. I was expecting shared excitement, but received only…fear and confusion. It was an embarrassing lesson, one that I will soon not forget.
Fast-forward a couple of years. I walk past a rough-looking guy, leaning on his truck and I notice a Sigil of Bophomet™ sticker on his bumper. The excitement still burned in me, but this time I knew better. I simply gave him a subtle nod with partly raised horns. He did the same back, and I went on my way.
So that was the Satanicdote portion of Aaron’s email. Let’s now read the rest of it.
Aaron says, “Living in a small Christian town, and without social media, it's exciting to think that I may share a philosophy with someone nearby. It's not something I discuss with anyone else, as that would not serve me. It would be nice to chat and hear different takes on many of the concepts I have long read about.
Here's my question: How would YOU spot a Satanist in the wild, and how would you acknowledge that you're a fellow traveler of the left-hand path? In other words, how do you say, “Hey, hell yeah, let’s talk Satanism” without accidentally "outing" yourself to someone who gets their religion from… Reddit or Wikipedia.
Now Aaron adds, “Perhaps you would just ignore scenarios like this nowadays because you are already acquainted with many Satanists, but what about ~25 years ago?”
I wrote back to Aaron. I pointed out that, “Due to the popularity of pentagrams and other Satanic aesthetics in subcultures like the heavy metal scene or goth scene, it's true that seeing them WORN is hardly a guarantee that the wearer is a Satanist. And I’m sure this is a problem that other people have, not just Satanists, where people wear something for a group without really believing or understanding it. For example, there are people who wear cross jewelry who aren't Christians. I’ve seen some people buy T-shirts of bands because they just thought the T-shirt was cool, despite not being familiar with the band’s music at all. I've run into people in public wearing Doctor Who merchandise, and I'd be excited and want to talk to them as a fellow Doctor Who fan, only to find out that they were really only familiar with whatever season of the reboot series was out at the time.
Now having said that…The jewelry test doesn't fail 100% of the time, though. Many years ago I was in Las Vegas, waiting in line for a concert, and noticed a woman wearing a Sigil of Baphomet medallion. And remember that the Sigil of Baphomet specifically is a symbol trademarked by the Church of Satan. I approached her, showed her my own necklace, we exchanged a “Yeah! Hail Satan!” I asked if she was a member of the Church of Satan. She said no, BUT that her boyfriend (who was also around somewhere) was in fact a member. So he eventually came back in line, I met him, and we had a very nice conversation. I've also heard a story that some years ago, Magus Peter H. Gilmore was walking down the street in Manhattan, and walked by somebody wearing a sigil necklace, and said “Hey, there! Wait up!” And it turned out this stranger was in fact a Satanist, and that Satanist ended up being my friend Michaelanthony Mandrake, who turned out to be a very active member and is now a Church of Satan Magister.
Of course, hardly all Satanists are doing things like wearing their sigils in public. Which is why I think the best way to meet other Satanists without having to put up with so many fakes and weirdos was, 25 years ago, to join the Church of Satan. In fact, I'd argue that it still is the best way today. Joining doesn't absolutely guarantee that you'll meet another member (remember: the organization has to protect member privacy). There’s no guarantee that there'll be some pre-planned social event in your area, but it's still a network which members have at their disposal. Now it’s true that there are bonafide Satanists who understand the Satanic Bible and all that, who AREN’T members of the Church of Satan. Joining the Church of Satan isn’t a requirement to be a Satanist. And likewise there are some Church of Satan members whom I personally DON’T get along with. I wouldn’t want to hang out with them, they wouldn’t want to hang out with me. But even with those two types of exceptions, I would STILL argue that by having an event or a chat room or whatever restricted to Church of Satan members only, you filter out SO, SO many of the people who don’t get it. The devil worshipers, the Illuminati seekers from Nigeria, the people who SAY they’re Satanists and SAY they adhere to The Satanic Bible but are just freeloaders or clinical narcissists or creeps who want to send dick picks to every goth girl they find on the internet. It’s not a perfect filter, but again, Church of Satan membership filters out a lot of those types.
But getting back to Aaron’s question of how I'd recognize another Satanist "in the wild" without something more obvious like a Sigil necklace, and how you could signal back to that person? I suppose you could drop names or phrases which typically only another Satanist would know. I had an online profile years ago where I included the words "undefiled wisdom" somewhere in the bio description. I figured that people who've read The Satanic Bible would notice that and would know where I got it from, while those who didn't know would not think much of it. Also at some point I may have buried something like "ASL / COS / HS!" in an email signature. So yeah, I'm sure there are similar codes like this one could do.
So after writing to Aaron, he wrote back. He said,
“Thank you very much for the thoughtful and well-written response! I appreciate how you relate spotting a Satanist with an enthusiast of some other form, you make a good point about people wearing merch for things they aren't familiar with, like my example of the Baphomet sweater[...]
I joined the church a couple of years ago, and I applied for active membership last December. I mentioned in my application that a couple of reasons I would like to become an active member is to proudly sport something like a lapel or medallion knowing that the organization agrees that I understand the philosophy well enough to represent it. That I'm not a poser, essentially. Meeting and chatting with other Satanists would provide a better understanding, as well as practice in communicating the concepts and being able to answer questions more confidently.
I have heard mention of this insider network several times, and I am very curious about what that involves. I think it's best to leave the details for those who are deemed worthy. Though, I do hope it involves more than a Facebook page, as I despise social media. I can't deny it may have its utility in some regards, but still.
In the meantime, I will continue to kick ass in my pursuits, and I hope to someday be able to provide our organization with something more valuable than my one-time membership fee money.”
So that was the end of Aaron’s reply, and as you can see, he brings up the topic of Church of Satan membership and the benefits of that. It’s a question I see now and then, though usually when I see it, it’s not from somebody who’s a Church of Satan member, but usually somebody who is NOT a Church of Satan member, and asks, “Well what do you GET when you join?” Or on the extreme, the assholes who claim that you DON’T get anything from Church of Satan membership. Idiots who claim for example that all you get is a membership CARD. Now to be clear, Aaron here is not BEING one of those asshole idiots. I’m not saying all this to attack HIM. But as he sort of brings up the topic, and also considering that I started the show with a long rant against accusations that the Church of Satan doesn’t do anything, I’d like to read you my reply to Aaron.
Some of this is admittedly going to sound repetitive with what I said earlier on the show, but bear with me.
I started off by saying to him, “I know the expression of "you get what you put into it" may sound kind of cliche, but that's really what I think Church of Satan membership comes down to. This is as it should be, since Satanism is a self-serving religion, and Satanists don't exactly bend over backwards to do things for other people without some kind of reciprocity. The Church of Satan is made up of Satanists, so if you ask the Church of Satan to DO something for you, then what that ultimately means is….that you’re asking one or more Satanists to do something for you.
Now I’ll get back to this point in a little bit, but let’s stop and look at WHY Satanists join the Church of Satan in the first place. Not everybody joins for the same reasons.
Some people choose to join as registered members and then opt to never utilize their membership for anything in particular. For example, some simply join as a way to say thanks for the organization, because this is the organization responsible for Satanism and The Satanic Bible. The Church of Satan has done a lot of other work to represent Satanism: interviews and books and podcasts and articles and so on. And there are Satanists who feel that this religion, Satanism, has greatly enriched their life. How much? Well, if they HAD to put a dollar value on it, many would say that it’s certainly more than what the Church of Satan charges for lifetime membership. I know that was the case for myself. So that was one of MY own personal reasons for joining the Church of Satan. And more importantly, again for ME -- I don’t speak for all members, but for me -- I’m a Satanist and here was the organization that represents Satanism, founded by the same guy who wrote The Satanic Bible, and run by people who agree with it. In other words, I joined because it simply made the most sense to me to officially affiliate with the one organization on the planet that best represents my values and the philosophy I adhere to. Now personally I joined as a registered member, but then decided to do more active things, and later on filed for active membership.
But to be clear, there is nothing wrong with joining the Church of Satan for reasons like the ones I gave, and then deciding NOT to to do anything particularly active. Or having no desire to hook up with other members for things. For the members who DO want to do those sorts of things though, let’s back to these questions of how Church of Satan members use their membership, and how is it that we DO things, that there are tangible THINGS the Church of Satan produces, and what I mean by “you get out of membership what you put into it”.
Well, let me pick an example here. Let’s look at Radio Free Satan. It’s the distributor of my other podcast, The Devil’s Mischief.. It’s the distributor of OTHER podcasts by Satanists as well. How and when did Radio Free Satan come about? Radio Free Satan started in the year 2000 when some Church of Satan members from Chicago said, "Hey, let's create our own radio station where the DJs are all fellow Church of Satan members, and we play the stuff WE want to play, instead of this modern top-40 crap on FM radio. I think there are Satanists and other people who would listen. We have the internet technology to do this. So let’s do it."
Now, what happened next, is some other members got word of this and said, "Hey, this sounds great. I'd like to be a part of this. Where do we go from here?" One Satanist says, “I want to do a goth and industrial music show. I have a huge collection of that music, I could totally host that.” Another Satanist says, “I want to do a punk music show.” Another Satanist says, “I want to do death metal show.” Another Satanist says, “I want to do a show where I play recordings of old-time radio shows like The Shadow, and Abbott & Costello, and these crime and murder dramas from the 1930s.” Another Satanist says, “I know how to deal with the legal end of things.” Another Satanist says, “I know how to keep a server running.” Another Satanist says, “I know how to get a website going.”
And on it went until it was established in June of that year, June 2000.
There were technological struggles to be sure. There were failures that had to be fixed. But it finally got off the ground. It was a labor of love. Radio Free Satan launches. Word spreads to other members via the Church of Satan news feeds and other Church of Satan-affiliated forums and Church of Satan-affiliated zines, then also the press in general with some articles in Spin magazine and others. We ended up having some in-person parties and celebrations in Chicago and Los Angeles when some of the station's anniversaries came up. The station has since served as an outlet for numerous other Church of Satan members over the years who've wanted to become DJs for some format or another. Over 20 years later, Radio Free Satan is still around, and still being run and enjoyed by Church of Satan members.
Now…going back to the year 2000….could those Satanists in Chicago have created Radio Free Satan without any use of the Church of Satan or their memberships in it? Maybe. But it's doubtful many would have known and heard about it. Especially the DJs who contributed to it. I doubt *I* would have heard of Radio Free Satan if it weren’t for the Church of Satan, even as a listener. Also, who knows what sort of devil-worshiping, pseudo-Satanic weirdos could have come in and changed it to something else (maybe running it into the ground) without that Church of Satan affiliation in place to weed out idiots like that.
More importantly though, notice that Radio Free Satan wasn't formed by somebody saying, "I paid my lifetime membership fee for the Church of Satan, and now I want a Satanic radio station. So use the money I gave you, and go make me a Satanic radio station! I’m not going to DO any work for it. And I have no idea what administrative expenses the Church of Satan may have, or what other members members might be demanding you build. But hey, I paid money to the administration, so…go make me a Satanic radio station. I'll sit back and wait."
Would that approach have worked? No, of course not. How would you even carry it out? Somebody says, “Build me a Satanic radio station!” What then? Like I said earlier, it would come down to humans in the Church of Satan having to build it. Who? How? Does administration have to command certain members stop what they’re doing and go build this thing? Would you expect them to obey? I suppose you could hire professionals OUTSIDE the organization to do it. Radio station professionals. I mean we may HAVE Church of Satan members who are in those professions, but whether you were to hire somebody from inside or outside of the organization, they’d obviously want some money, and I'm sure that would have cost well over what a single lifetime membership fee to do it. Plus, if you DO have to hire outside of the Church of Satan, would those non-Satanist workers know what they’re doing?
I’ll stop before I just repeat what I said in the first half of this episode, but I told Aaron that hopefully with this example, you get a better idea of what I mean by members getting out of membership, what they put into it.
Responding to the rest of Aaron’s email, I said that I'm not sure what he meant when he said “Well I hope this insider network I hear about involves more than just a Facebook page.” Yes, the Church of Satan has an official Facebook page. So does ANY organization or company in this day and age, really. Facebook pages are public. We have an official Facebook page, a Twitter channel, a YouTube channel, and so on. Because like any other organization, we have announcements we want to make and what not. Here’s a Church of Satan affiliated event that’s going on in THIS city. Here’s THIS new thing that one of our members did. Hey, here’s a new article from the High Priest. Here’s a rare photo. And so on.
It seems though that what Aaron was talking about was a Facebook GROUP, which is a completely different thing from a Facebook PAGE. A Facebook PAGE is always public. A PAGE is where the owner and only the owner make status posts. A Facebook GROUP is basically a message board; a place where people join to make posts and reply to them.
Even BEFORE Facebook, we’ve had some Church of Satan members who’ve made internet forums to discuss Satanism. Some of those being public, some strictly for Church of Satan members only. The Letters to the Devil message board for example had both a public area and a members-only area. And yes, there are similar members-only groups on Facebook. You could call that a membership privilege, being able to go to a Satanism forum where again, you don’t have to deal with devil worshipers, and Jesus freaks, and Illuminati seekers from Nigeria, and spammers and trolls. But instead, a whole forum of people who understand Satanism, and understood it enough to join the Church of Satan. Most Church of Satan members I know, if they choose to participate in Satanism forums at ALL, stick with just members-only forums like that, having no tolerance for places where trolls and the like show up.
That’s ONE way Church of Satan members may decide to network with each other and communicate with each other. If you hate that and don’t want to use it, fine, but keep in mind that this is the way MOST people communicate these days. MOST people these days, when they want to network and communicate with each other in this day and age, use some form of social media. Personally, I think that Facebook will go the way of MySpace eventually, and become a ghost town. If that hasn’t happened already. So when that happens, you’ll see Church of Satan members opting for some other form of online communication to talk in private about Satanism with other Satanists. There probably ARE such private places on some other platforms and I just haven’t used them yet.
But that concludes the email and also concludes this episode of Satansplain. So remember this the next time somebody claims the Church of Satan doesn’t DO anything. Chances are the people who say this think that the only valid forms of doing something are when it’s done in the name of a collective instead of as in an individual, or want us to do something that would go against Satanism itself, or do something members CAN already do if they want to, or want us as an organization to do something which really the decided job of secular organizations like the ACLU, or aren’t even putting any THOUGHT into the request and just want us to dance for their amusement. In all cases, to those people I say: you don’t understand Satanism. Get lost.
To the rest of you, of course, thank you for listening to Satansplain. Hail Satan.
