How Satanism Works

to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Seated directly across from me is one Charles w Wayne, Charles Chuckers, Chuck Bryant. That's pretty good, yells above himself and there is um old scratch to my right. Matt, Matt, do you let people well know your last name? Oh? Yeah, you're a personality, Matt Frederick, But I don't want him

to get kidnapped. Guest producer Matt Frederick of The Old Days, Uh, co host of Stuff They Don't Want You to Know and now supervising producer for Podcasts man, we don't let our producers talk on our episodes, so we're gonna have to beat that out. Matt says, that was a huge announcement. You just said, yeah, nice, well congrats Matt, and Matt's been working here forever just like us. Nice lovely wife, lovely child, great family, loves Indian food. I didn't know that.

Oh yeah, yeah, it's as bread and butter as it were. It's a gey and non. Now he's afraid to talk, which he should be. Uh, Matt's here. Yeah, so thank you, Matt. And Hail Satan. I was gonna say, Hail Satan, Hal Satan, Chuck Hal Satan. Josh. It's funny I it from and when reading this, the thinking Satanists are just libertarians too. No, Satanis are kind of Republicans. And I don't mean that. You'll see what I mean philosophically in some ways I don't mean. And then I thought, I'm a Satanist. Did

you did you have a wit? I mean, I've read some of the stuff and the there f a Q on their website and some of their fundamentals, and they're there. There are eleven rules of Earth and their nine Satanic statements will read all that stuff. I thought, geez, I agree with a lot of stuff. They're thirteen things to avoid getting gouged at the grocery store. What Satanists are not, almost assuredly, are not ah evil people who meet in dark churches to perform ritual blood sacrifice and eat hearts

and draw pentagrams on they may draw pagrams. Yeah, that's that part is actually true. But there's there's more things that Satanists are not. I think if you're coming into this blind um without knowing anything, you'll probably be surprised about just how kind of groovy they are. And this is the Church of Satan. But I'm talking about mainly.

Uh No, I think you can. You can apply to what you just said to all Satanists, because if you're a Satanist, you would take umbrage at the idea that somebody who actually believes in the supernatural entity Satan as not a Satanist, because Satanism, by definition, at least modern Satanism by definition, is an atheistic philosophy. So there's no supernatural entities of any kind to Satanists, So somebody who worships Satan would be a devil worshiper is a completely

different kind of thing. Yeah, and I didn't even finish the last thing. Well, no, I mean I got off track. The last thing I thought when I was reading about the Temple of Satan is that these are just liberal hippies. The temple is Satan, the Satanic Temple, sat Temple. They are, they are. Um. I saw them compared to or analogized as a dark yes men. You know the yes Men. No, oh, you gotta check out the yes Men. There's a couple of yes Men documentaries and they basically do this, but

it's not satanically associated. And I wonder why it was satanically associated, Like it sounds like you're a bunch of liberal hippie scientists to me, Well, we'll get into all that. Okay, Okay, So we're talking Satanists and Satanism. If you couldn't tell, because we have been saying Satan a lot um and if, like Chuck said, um, you're coming into this blind, let us illuminate for you. Let us bring the light. And we both group gotes for this episode exactly typically and

shaped our heads and horns. John and Strickland actually could do a sort of an amateur Anton LaVey if he wanted to, he could. I'm sure he does at home, if you know what I mean. All right, so let's go back and this is a grabstor article, so you know it's got the goods um and talk a little bit about the origin story of Satan, which, um, we will lead up to sort of what the modern version of that is. But if you're thinking red guy with a pitch fork and pointy hooves, it's uh tries to

lure people away from God to do bad things. That kind of came around later. So we need to go back further to the Hebrew Bible, which the Christian Old Testament is derived from. And there's a lot of uncertainty on what Satan actually meant, depending on how you want to translate the Hebrew term, right. And the reason there's uncertainty is because Satan wasn't a figure in early Judaism. Because the early Jews believed that all God was all things.

God was good, God was evil, God was responsible for everything in the universe. There wasn't what we understand now or anybody who thinks of the Judeo Christian ethic now, Um, there wasn't dualism, which is, there's good and the bad, there's light and the dark, and they they equal each

other out. And early Judaism this didn't exist. It was all in one, so there was no need for Satan, right, But as this concept of an all benevolent, loving God spread, this question arose, which was, well, wait a minute, if God is just so benevolent and loving, why does he why does he or she um let bad things happen?

And so the need for the concept of Satan emerged later on, and because of the um early Judaism's proximity to Persia, which was ruling the land at the time at about like the six to third centuries b c. E um. Persia had Zoroastrianism, which had dualism. So they kind of introduced, uh, the Hebrew faith to dualism, and hence Satan was originally born. Yeah, so there's no like consensus when you look at these old texts what these translations mean. Sometimes it is an adversary or an opponent

to God. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's, uh, he's like the the an attorney and Heaven's legal system. Throw in the book at people like um al Pacina. Oh yeah, quite literally, what didn't you play the devil or did he as a lawyer? Right, devil's advocate with Keanu. I don't think I ever saw that. I didn't either, but I mean we're both alive at the time, so we know, uh, they're uh you know. You look at all these different forms of what the word meant back then before it

became the modern version we all know. And the one kind of common thread through all of them, though, is that Satan was an outsider who was sort of against the man and these established values that everyone else seemed to believe in right, or established rules, or just even the establishment in general. Yes, he's the antithesis of that. Correct.

You get into the Christian New Testament and it starts to clear up a bit um where there is a single being called Satan who is supernatural and it's a direct opposition to God and is usually used as a as a tool God uses as a in the Bible, at least as a test like go down there and test these humans to see if see see which way their allegiance lay. Right. Um. That Satan's called the scriptural

Satan or Satan of the scriptures, right, yeah. Um, he also kind of comes out of nowhere in the New Testament to tempt Jesus in the desert, I believe, um. And I mean you know all this right, am I right? It was in the desert? Well yeah, and I think by the way, just to back up to that last episode when the stuttering, when I didn't hear the story about Moses the Bible with a coal in his mouth or whatever, everyone wrote in it was like, it's not

in the Bible. Don't feel bad. It was from something else, right, it was from the Disney movie. So um. But in one of the gospels in the New Testament, um, And no need to write in to let us know. But it's in one of the gospels in the New Testament that Satan appears to Jesus to try to tempt him, and he's kind of brought in almost like he's a character there. Everybody should know. But if you're just reading the New Testament from beginning to end, you're like, what,

who's this guy? But they apparently another gospel makes mention that Satan was the serpent in the garden of Eden. So he's a big tempter. He's he's bent on corrupting man, getting man to stray from God's flock basically, yeah, and they're these Uh, there's certain demons that are named properly in the Bible, um, like Beelzebub and belial Um. And again it's just sort of conjecture on our part whether or not that's referring to Satan or whether it's a

generic evil. Um, it's just sort of difficult to what it wasn't was the devil with the horns and the pitchfork that we all think about. No, In those earliest names for the devil, like Beelzebub are actually corruptions or alterations of competing religions gods. Right, So early Christianity and um, I guess Middle Judaism had this kind of tendency to take other religions gods and make them the evil characters and their religions because they wanted Christianity to flourish, right,

exactly wanted to make the competition look bad. As a way to do it was a smear tactic and a campaign to get converts. Right. So, Bael's Abub is actually a corruption of ballalls of which is you know, I'm sorry, blals of al, but all the ball, the exalted um and ball be a Apostrophe A l was the main deity of the Canaanites and the Phoenicians who were competing with the early Christians at the time. And um, if you say balls of that means Lord of the flies,

not Lord the Exalted. So it was like it was a slam on their the main their competition's main god. And that's where biel's Abub came from. And that's actually that will become a common play in the Christian playbook of smearing the other guy's gods by making them um evil figures in Chris and mythology Platoo rata bals abub. Remember there was a Dead Milkman album called Bill's a Bubba, Yes, had like that guy in a tractor on the cover

that was bil Um. Well, the same with Lucifer. And when we finally got the English language King James Bible in sixteen eleven, Lucifer was really a Latin term for morning star. But in that version of the Bible they say, no, what that really is is the name of Satan, right, And he was the lightbringer, the one who would reveal the truth to people that they were actually being held down by God, which is not the Christian way right.

So what you were saying by co opting all these are not co opting but well kind of co opting these bad religions another band um that's actually a real band name. Yeah, correct, uh, these bad religions and saying those are the bad ones they would. That's how the like the devil that we know to today, the Satan sorry that we know today has taken shape because they, like the Greek god Pan had the cloven hoofs and

the horns back us. The Roman god is where you get this instatiable um Bacchanalian decadence um, which, as we'll see with the Church of satan Um isn't too far off. They certainly love their orgies and they're trades of fine meats and roasted meats and Jesus um. So in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, then this this mythology, Christian mythology has expanded. You get a couple of books that were very key into shaping who we think of today

as Satan. One was John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, and then of course Dante's Divine Comedy Um. This is where we got the idea that Satan was an angel expelled from heaven because of his pride, who then said, Tony will defeat of the Lord. These are actually from

two books written by dudes. Yeah, a lot of the mythology about Satan that Christians understand as Satan, and that just people in the culture generally understand that Satan don't show up anywhere in the actual Bible or Old Testament or New Testament. All that stuff came afterwards, So chuck the The Enlightenment was another turning point then for the conception of Satan. And this is his evolution as like a scary, supernatural, otherworldly figure. Um. Takes a different turn

because the Enlightenment was based on rational thought. Secular humanism finds its roots in the Enlightenment, and um, they started to come to see Satan as a kind of a creative force almost yeah, uh full ill to the establishment this idea that Satan is um the opposite of the established norms and customs and moral goods um, and that he's kind of like a handy archetype for that. So he stops, he loses some of his supernatural um yes,

and is replaced by metaphorical Yeah. And I think that's that seems to be the one that the Church of Satans sort of identified with a little more. Was it Satan was just a just a freethinking dude. Yeah, apparently that's where they got That's where it finds its roots.

Was the Enlightenment very interesting, which makes sense because most Satanists would be probably humanists, secular humanists, um, although their individualists, but you can make a case that that's an individual humanism, um, and that's you know, that comes out of the Enlightenment as well. So, um, you want to take a break and then keep going, or you want to keep going. Now, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit

about witches right after this. So I promised talk of witches. Um, we did it in the Jeez, that was a long time ago. We did an episode on witchcraft, um, many many years ago. And if you are a witch or a Western esoteric, you were probably one of two groups of people to be accused of worshiping Satan in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Um. Basically, anything anything in

opposition to organized Christianity was Satan worship, right. And that's the same thing as as saying your God, your creator, deity is like Satan and our religion. It's the same thing. Anything that's in opposition to Christian thought is automatically heretical, heretical, and the kind of almost like the lazy shorthand way of describing it is it's satanic. You know, Satan, He's

scary and evil, right, Well, what these people think is satanic? Yeah, And if you listen to the episode on witchcraft, um, and we haven't, I know stuff you miss in history class did a good episode on what really happened in Salem, which will probably cover that at some point I mentioned, but I think everyone pretty much knows at this point about sixty people, mainly women, were put to death in the American colonies, in Europe and UM under the guise

of being Satan worshippers and witches and practicing witchery, and by all accounts, they generally were you know that, I don't like the way that lady looked at me in the town today, or you know what she I think she stole milk from my cow, or I want her land, or I want her land, or um, my wife is jealous of her. Um. So they're all which is let's burn them, let's throw them in lakes and see if they float, um, and let's burn them, because if they

don't float, then they're not, which is drowned. And and early physicians had more than just a small hand in this as well. They in accusing especially like folk healers and midwives of being, which is again to basically force the competition out. Yeah, where do we talk about that

one in that's more recent? Remember? Maybe talk about that in Great Robbing feels like there were also things called esoteric orders, which were I don't even know what you would call that today, basically kind of any group that didn't subscribe to mainstream Christianity, so like the Mason's or the Illuminati thing, uh uh yeah, and like they were Christian at base, but then they had like yeah, they

had this other occult ideas in addition to it. Right, So like the Kayther's or Cather's are a good example of that. They were in I think like the twelfth of fourteenth century France, and they were like Christian plus right, they were they the Kither's means like the pure ones. Um, they were so Christian that they felt like just being a normal pious Christian wasn't enough, and you actually had to be baptized again but basically like a born again

Christian process. But in again like twelve thirteenth century France, they were considered heretics and they were persecuted. You could call them an esoteric order because it didn't follow prescribed Christianity, orthodox establishment Christianity to a t. It either was lacking some or had extra and then you're you're a heretic. And hence Satanists and esso terric order believed in Dan Brown books basically that that all that stuff is true,

all the stuff he writes about is about like esoteric orders. Well, and here's the thing though, they were all labeled as Satanists, but but there's there's no evidence whatsoever that any of them we're Satanic and like in truth, yeah, you know, well, I was reading about one the Luciferians. They actually they may have been, although their concept of Satan wasn't that

he was evil. Their concept was that he was the one true deity and that he had been tricked into being kicked out of heaven unfairly by a treacherous Jehovah, and that um, it was actually Lucifer who was supposed to be in charge, and that Jehovah was oppressing everybody. So if that's true, then yes, as far as the Church goes out, is as satanic as you can possibly get in your beliefs, because they were in total opposition

to the Church in their beliefs as well. But that's I mean, for the most part, most of these other groups were not in any way, shape or form satanic as as you would think of it today. Well, yeah, and Ed even points out and here the grabster that by that that there's there's no evidence in world history that there's ever been any long term organized group of

people that worship Satan as some evil entity. That's a huge one, because that's that's one of the ways that Christianity was able to smear its rivals by by suggesting that they were part of a huge, massive cult satanic colt.

And I mean, like, if if there's a supernatural entity that's bent on getting you and making your life terrible, and there's actually people on earth who are following this person, it's going to make you stay to the straight and narrow of your prescribed religion even more, right, Baron Brimstone and whatnot. Yes, I grew up with that, you know, Yeah, I was. I can't remember which show. I think it

was during Satanic Panic. We talked about the Devil worship House in Stone Mountain that it was the scariest place I had ever driven past on the way to steak in Ale Man I mistaken, Ale. Are they done? They're surely they're around. Right, there's probably like one in Vegas and one in Hong Kong or something weird like that. It would be funny for the one on Hong Kong was like this retroob themed American thing, you know, it's like America in the eighties. Um, all right, well let's

talk about Anton LaVey. Then what time has come? Oh wait, I want to I want to say one more thing. Um. So, in the I think the fourteenth century, the Knights templar another esoteric but in military order, we're accused of worshiping Batha Met and bath mat Is Satan with like the goat's head and horns. Yeah. Um, that's the great looking

statue they tried to put up in Oklahoma. Right. Well, Batha Met is most likely an alteration or mistranslation or something of Mohammed, and that it was used to basically include Mohammed as uh Satan in the Christian Ethos when the Christians first encountered Muslims during the Crusades. So it was like the same thing, but a thousand years after they did it to Biel's Abub, they did it to Mohammed and we should do like a tin parter on the Crusades starting now. I just tried to think of

I would be up for that. Yeah, I don't know, I don't think so. Um, all right, can we invite Anton Laveyand yes, now you can come in the ghost of Anton LaVey. It is Jonathan's Strickland. Uh so this dude, he was born. He is the founder of the Church of Satan. If you did not know that, um, a cup of picture of him, you probably seen him before.

Bald head goatee, that guy. Uh. You know what does bug me about all Satanists is if you just look up photos of prominent ones or meetings, they're always doing these faces. Yeah, like you never I mean actually, ironically, the only one I've ever seen smile in a picture is the current Hygh priestess. His name is Peggy, which I think is adorable. She's this is a cute old lady. Yeah, and not even that old, but yeah, she's like really

old lady. Huh yeah, oh no, uh she smiles and photos, but every other picture, like you know, their eyes are big and they're frowning or they're licking their teeth or something. Come on. I was on the Church of Satan website yesterday and um, I saw a picture of some Satanists all smiling. But it was because Anton LaVey had a naked woman over his knee and his spanking here. So they do smile in some pictures. Okay, yeah, well that

makes sense. So Levey was born Howard Howard Leave, Howard Stanton Leave, Chicago, and um, the more I read about him and his early years, supposed early years, the more he sounded like l Ron Hubbard. Yeah kind of because um, l Ron Hubbard and Anton LaVey both, if you ask them about their backgrounds, they'll tell you one thing. If you ask someone else, others who like Lawrence Right who does research, they say, I really can't find any evidence

of this stuff that they claimed. Yeah. I mean, if there was anyone who subscribed to lying, it's just as much as you possibly could as a form of showmanship. Anton LaVey was definitely that guy. Yeah, so he says that he had a very colorful upbringing. He worked at a circus, he was worked at side shows. He was a police photographer, which may have been true. Uh, he

was a very talented organist who worked burlesque shows. Um. If you ask other people who have done research, they say, no, kind of was this suburban kid in suburban San Francisco not super interesting. Um. One thing that everyone will say though, is that he was interested in the occult. He was interested in pulp horror novels and magazines, lovecraft, love love craft,

and he was interested in Uh. He was very much turned off by the double standards what he perceived to be the double standards of mainstream Christianity, because supposedly he would playing these burlesque shows and see how these men there, then the next day see them in the churches, and that had a real impact on him. Supposedly that he was just like this is b s. Yeah, he didn't like phonies, drove him crazy. Him and holding Caulfield right.

Uh So the in um the nineteen sixties, and this is kind of like with Ron Hubbard again, he started Levey started hosting these lectures on paranormal and he had a lot of h Flair, and everyone was like, man, who is this guy. He's kind of cool, and he talks about things like indulging in all the worldly things. You shouldn't feel bad about it. You should masturbate and have sex and have sex with tons of people at once if you want, and just do whatever pleases you.

It's fine, don't worry about it. And so people in the sixties were like, there was a time in the

late sixties where he was. There's this great article in the Telegraph when when he seduced Hot When Satanism seduced Hollywood or something like that, where it was sort of the thing two be a Satanist and to go to these parties because you would go in and and there would be drugs and drink and nakedness like eyes wide shut up in there, and everyone from like some of the Beach Boys to Sammy Davis Jr. Two Liberaci Liberacci was a Satanist, he said he was for a while. Uh,

Sammy Davis Jr. Definitely was. He even had a TV pilot that he tried to get made about, like a sitcom that was sat and friendly that he worked for the Devil or something to find that we have to find that to be really bad, and he only made one of them. But um, oh so there is so it's out there somewhere. Well supposedly made a pilot that never went beyond that. Jane Mansfield was another famous Satanist. Yeah, so it was a big thing and Charles Manson kind

of ruined all that. Oh yeahs ruined a lot of stuffs being cool to go to the Church of Satan. But at any rate, Leve was making waves and in nineteen sixty six created officially the Church of Satan. In nineteen sixty nine published the Satanic Bible, which is pretty interesting to read through. I never read it all, but

I read quite a bit of So. One of the things that he's accused of is um plagiarism, and his his adherent still to this day they kind of acknowledge it a little bit, but they more put it like, no, he was building on an earlier work he didn't really give credit to. But there was a book. Um, so he wrote the Satanic Bible in sixty nine. Um, there was a book published in eighteen ninety I think it was um called Might is Right and it was written

pseudonymously by um a guy named Ragnar red Beard. Ragnar Red Beard wrote this book and it was extremely um into social Darwinism. It was individualistic to the point of being anarchistic. Uh. It had all of the requisite eighteen nineties racism and sexism attendant to it as well. But um, the point of it was is like, like, why would you, you know, love your enemies? This whole doctrine of love is bs where animals And if you have an enemy you should go out and beat him up because he's

your enemy. You don't need to love him, you need to love yourself. And um. It was really just a surprising book that apparently still a lot of people read today. Um. And apparently Anton LaVey read it and adopted a lot of it. But then he also wrote a lot about ritual and stuff as well, and prescribe certain kinds of rituals in the Satanic Bible, and supposedly the three main types of rituals of greater magic. There's greater magic and

lesser magic. But in the greater magic UM rituals there is UH compassion, there's uh and that's not just for others but also yourself. There's lust, and then there is um destruction and all of them are meant as they're meant for you, the person doing this, they're meant for you. They're meant as it what was called the intellectual decompression chamber, where you can just get rid of this baggage that

you've got. And they're like, it's it's nothing more than this little psycho drama that you're performing for yourself to just make yourself feel better. Yeah, Like lust is to release your sexual urges. Like they'll say, Christianity teaches you to repress all that stuff that ain't that ain't no good for you. You need to go release uh these urges. Yeah, you're walking around with all this stuff that's like hanging on you, Like, get rid of it so you can

go be happy and stop dwelling on this. It's the same with destruction, cleansing oneself of anger towards someone who has done you an injustice, Like why I sat on that? Deal with it? You're sitting there stewing about it. Smash the face, go put on your velvet robe. Well no, no, that was that was but that was that's a That's something that Satanism has long been accused of, is like being violent toward others. And I don't think that they

say like, no, don't be violent toward others. Um they even say like you don't certainly don't owe anybody being nice to him or anything like that. But um, there there seems to be kind of a I haven't seen any overt calls to violence that it seems to be like if if that's what you deem is right, as long as you're following these other prescribed paths that seem to kind of avoid violence, that it's more just like you. It's it's centered on you, and you need to focus

on yourself. And if you focus on yourself, then you're probably going to stop wanting to smash that other guy in the face because you're gonna get rid of that baggage. Can I read the eleven Satanic rules of the Earth? Please? Number one, do not give opinions or advice unless you were asked. Okay, not bad. Number two. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them. Yeah, it's it's not bad. Number three, when in another's layer, show him respect or else, do

not go there respects some one's home. Number four, if a guest in your layer annoys, you treat him cruelly and without mercy. Number five, do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal. That's sort of got good job, good job. That's a sixties way of saying, I'm down with affirmative consent. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved. Okay, like you know, don't rob people of stuff. Relieve me

of this glass of diet coke. I can't stop drinking. Number seven. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained. That's a little pretty. I didn't even hear that full when I trailed off long. Number eight. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself. And finally, yeah, that's a good

I think that one bears repeating. Oh wait, I say finally, that's only right. Oh, you only to repeat that at least. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself. Number nine, do not harm little children. I should probably repeat that one too. Do not harm little children,

because that's a big deal. There are all these people that think, like you know you who uh you, You've sacrificed children and you have performed sex with children, and that's what Satanists do, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no,

no no, we're not into that at all. No. One of the things that the Satanic Temple who will talk about in a little while point out is that um, there have been a lot of cases of um people who are supposedly exercising demons from children, who have actually harmed and in fact killed children, and that there's no doubt. I think we talked about this in the Satanic Panic

episode two. There's no documented cases of Satanists harming children because are against it, and in fact, they won't even accept anyone under the age of eighteen into the Church of s Yeah, because self consent is extremely important to Satanists of all stripes. The idea of being forced into indoctrinated into any church before you're you can make a decision for yourself really goes against the idea of individual liberty,

and thus Satanic thought number ten. Do not kill non human animals because like you said they called humans animals too. In fact, they said that we're not much better even than animals. Is an animal reminder it is, do not kill non human animals unless you are attacked or for your food. Like if a cheetah pounces on you, kill it. If you want to eat the cheetah, kill uh. And then finally, drum roll eleven Satanic rules of the Earth. When walking into open territory, bother no one. If someone

bothers you asked him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him. Nice. It sounds like a tenacious d lyric. It does. But the way you you counted down it was like a letterman list like that. That was good man, I miss Dave. I wonder how many um long time listeners we've lost with this episode. I don't know. Uh. Do you want to take another break? Yeah, I mean there's still so much more, but we go to break at some point. Yeah, We're gonna take a break, all right, Chuck,

We're back with Satan. Remember the kids in the hall? Oh yeah, Kevin McDonald, I think with Satan? Uh? Was that him? Yeah? Good stuff. Uh. So we've been talking a little bit about the philosophies of the church of Satan um just real quickly, there are nine Satanic sins and again I hate to say it, but this is

sort of appealing to my brain. The nine Satanic sins or stupidity, pretentiousness, solop si um self, deceit heard, conformity, lack of perspective, forgetfulness, forgetfulness past orthodoxes, counterproductive pride, and lack of aesthetics. A lot of those are really really tough to explain. Anton LaVey, Well, some of them are pretty self evident, but um forgetfulness of past orthodoxes. Leve wrote this list in seven and it's on the Church of Satan website. If you're interested to go check it

out because it's some of them. You're like, oh, it kind of makes sense. Eighty seven and I saw as copyrighted. So the takeaway is that what's Leavey what the Church of Satan and lava in Satanism, what it really is is atheistic anti Christian. Ah, well, that is something that you you said as really important. The Church of Satan, specifically the one founded by Anton LaVey, is has positioned

itself as count or to Christianity. He really does not like Christianity um and as a result, it's allowed itself to kind of be drawn into a lot of pedantic nous and arguments that it shouldn't and it almost seems like they feel they need to justify themselves because of putting themselves in that position. Um so if that kind of turns you off, well, then friends, you're gonna love

the Satanic Temple. Yeah. And if if you were interested in that, you can become a member of the Church of Satan by sending two hundred dollars to a po box right that you can find on their website. But you get a membership card. That's it. That's all you get. Yeah, And there's there's actually a lot of criticism amongst Satanists of the Church of Satan because, um, you know, they

they haven't done anything for a really long time. And a lot of people give credit to Levy for founding the Church of Satan and that while he was alive the churches started thriving, but after he died, the church kind of died with him in the eyes of a lot of and it's especially Satanic Temple adherents that I've seen. Yeah, it's now headed by Peter Gilmore, who I think I think John Hodgman is actually sort of a pal of his.

Now I believe that. I have to say it showed a lot of restraint by Peter Gilmore and not to change his name to Peter grim More. Uh. And then as I mentioned earlier, Peggy the drama as a high priestess right now, Um, but I agree. Moving on to the Satanic Temple, it's pretty fun because they have something out there called the Satanic Children's Big Book of Activities. I think it was given to me by by Matt Frederick, was given to me by someone, but it's called the

Satanic Children's Big Book of Activities. Uh, and it's wonderful. We talked about that for sure on Internet round Up for sure. And um, that was just like one in a string of I don't want to say countless because if I bothered too, I could count them. But there was. There's like a string of basically political Satanic based political um projects that the Satanic Temple has taken on that

really kind of define who they are, right. They are part performance art very much political activists and are trying to basically use they say that they they're using Satanism, although they all subscribe to philosophical atheistic human secularism, Satanism minus the social Darwinism and the iron ran libertarianism. Um. That they're they're using Satanism though in the popular conception

as a poison pill for the church versus State debate. Right, yeah, and you can also buy shirts and hoodies and coffee monks. So with this they use this poison pill. These lists of projects. One of them was the Satanic Children's Activity Book, which they printed up to distribute at schools. I think there's a school in Florida where Christian evangelists were handing

out pamphlets at a public school. So the Satanists said, oh, well, great, well if they can do it, then any religion can do it because the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of any religion or endorsement of religion by the by the government, so we can go do it too. So they start handing out Satanic stuff. And anytime the Satanists roll into town and say us too, that usually means that the local city council or the state even puts an end

to the implicit Christian endorsement of that's going on. Christian endorsement via politics. Um. And by the way, when I say that that children's work book is wonderful and if you're out there going why did you say that? Let go check it out. It's literally stories about kids being more accepting of others and being friendly and sharing, and it's like any children's book, but the kids wearing like the Instagram teachers stuff. Yeah, which makes me wonder, like

what about this? Why called themselves that? It seems like they just are another trying to ravel rouse and get attention. But I think they might get a little further if or maybe that's the whole point I think, well, in part using it as the like if you this actually happened. There's a town in Arizona. I'm not sure which one, but they had a habit of opening their city council meetings with a Christian prayer. Well, most likely every single person in that town that the city council represents is

not Christian UM. But since it was, there was a there was some landmark court ruling I can't remember when, maybe two thousand fourteen UM or the Supreme Court said uh no, it's actually okay as long as they don't prohibit any religions from doing this. The Satanists showed up and said well, here comes of Satanists. We're gonna give a benediction to open up your city council meeting. And the city council said, okay, nobody's gonna do prayers anymore.

That's kind of what their job is, to shut it down. But if they if they just did it like, well, the secular humanists are here and we're gonna say a prayer, body be like, well, who cares. That's fine. But the people who are so afraid of Satanists are so afraid of Satanists that they are um there there. They would just they would rather stop the city council implicitly endorsing the Christian prayer then to allow the Satanic prayer as well. That's how it works. And it's the same with the

statue in Oklahoma. He said, oh, well, you're gonna put up your statute. We're we're gonna put up one of what's it called baffa mat which again, I know you've seen the statue. We both love it just because it's so cool looking. It looks like the cover of some great heavy metal album. It does. But it's like, yeah, the two kids looking up adoring Le and Chuck, the Satanic Temple. As another thing going on right now too, a new initiative that they started right which is the

after school Satan Club. And again I have to laugh. It just sounds funny, but what it is. It's an after school curriculum um to teach reasoning and social skills to kids basis. And again as a counter something called the Good News Club, which is an Evangelical Christian after school program. So again they're saying, you got yours, will have ours. Yeah, And there's another two thousand one Supreme Court ruling that said, you know what, sure, we can

have religious after school programs. And the the just the floodgates opened, and the Lucian grieves, whose name is Doug Mesner, he's one of the founders of the Satanic Temple. He says, we're doing this because the Good News Club is creating a need for it. If they were, if they were just doing this in churches rather than public schools, we wouldn't have our after school Satan Club. But they are,

so we are. Yeah, here's a quote. While the Good News Club focuses on indoctrination still in children with a fear of hell and God's wrath after school Satan clubs will focus on free inquiry and rationalism. We prefer to give children appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of an everlasting otherworldly horror. Uh. However, being a member of the Satanic Temple or the Church of Satan is not to say that you can just be

very much out with it. These days, a lot of those folks, even if they are really just secular humanist atheist at heart, they do want to associate with the Satanic templary Church of Satan. They a lot of times, you'll still keep it quiet, keep it a secret, because, um, you will get people don't get what it's about, and they will think, well, again, the people still believe that they, you know, have blood sacrifice and you know, sacrifice animals

and eat the hearts out of goats and things like that. Right. And there have been people in history, um, who have killed in the name of Satan. Sure, and that's who people point to and say, see see Satanists or killers. And it's like, no, that person was out of their mind. They're mentally ill, or they were pretending to be mentally ill so that they would get a lighter sentence and

that's what they were doing, that they weren't actual Satanists. Again, a true Satanists will point out that um Satanists are atheists, that they see Satan as a construct, as a metaphor shorthand for something that goes against the norms, that questions the establishment and says, how do you know what you're saying is right? Is right? Who says yeah? And we don't even worship Satan per se. We really, if you want to say anything, worship ourselves as individual gods. Peter

Gilmore calls it a theism. Isn't it the lower case I. He's like, yes, Gilmore, Eugenius, but he says his name should have been grim more and more or kill more. Um. Yeah. Richard Ramirez David Berkowitz, son of Sam, talked about demons

um Ricky Casso famously in the seventies. I was an American teen who killed someone in the name of Satan and much too Angus Young Chagrin was hauled into court with this a C d C T shirt on Uh, We're not gonna get too much into this because you can go listen to our great episode on the Satanic Panic of the eighties from January but um, in short, it was a It was a time where people like Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest were making use of Satanic

imagery purely for gags and selling records. Uh, none of it was. I mean, today there are some legit creepy dark metal bands. They are very much more overt with their lyrics and things. But I think Ozzy Osbourne has definitely been outed as you know, not some satan worship being ghoule. You know, anyone who's ever seen him on television can tell you that. Yeah, And I mean it bears fleshing out. There are there are, like supposedly the goths scene in um Germany in particulars where um neo

Nazism and neopaganism kind of come together. A lot of people point to that as some sort of neo Satanism. But again, if you're talking about Satanism with a capitalist as an atheistic philosophy, and somebody murdering in the name of Satan holds about as much water as somebody murdering in the name of the Easter bunny. Do you got anything else? Yeah? This is let me quote with a finish with a passage from the Satanic Bible. On love. Satanism has been thought of as being synonymous with cruelty

and brutality. This is only so because people are afraid to face the truth, and the truth is that human beings are not all benign, are all loving. Just because the Satanist admits he is capable of both love and hate, he's considered hateful. On the contrary, because he's able to give vent to his hatred through ritualized expression, he is far more capable of love, the deepest kind of love, by honestly recognizing and admitting to both the hate and

the love he feels. There's no confusing one emotion with the other. Without being able to experience one of these emotions, you cannot fully experience the other. Wow. Either Dr SEUs or Intonay, that's Zoroastrian dualism. If I've ever heard of uh, well, if you want to know more about Satanism, well go look up this article. It's a grab star article um on how stuff works dot com. And since I say grabs, there's time for listener mail. Hello Chucking, Hello Chuck Bryant,

and Josh Clark. Hello, very formal. Uh. On stuttering, I've stuttered from most of my life I say most of my life because it started when I was five. As you mentioned your show, there are several as several different ways it can happen. I would always try to think of a different word to use when I got stuck, and that would result in very strange sounding sentences. I would define stuttering his inability to coordinate breath flow with words. Blocking on a word or sound would often result in

a cessation of breathing entirely. Kind people often tell me that stuttering does not bother them, But the fact is, when I stutter, my internal reaction is that I feel and sound like a fool. I rationally, I know that is not true, but that is what I often feel. Nonetheless, and of course, unkind people abound, and I often heard as a child reactions like don't you know what you want? From other kids and adults, laughter and derision. Often n'd

hair just sing it. And while it's true that singing and speaking are operated by different parts of the brain, life is not a musical and besides, I hate musicals. So at the age of sixty seven, I would never have thought that I'd end up talking on the phone and dealing with the public for a living. I still occasionally stutter and sometimes feel pretty badly, but I've learned to just live with it. Sometimes feel as I get older, I just don't give a darn anymore. That allows me

to relax and stutter less. That is a perk of aging. Sure, I'm not caring. Uh. Stress brings it out and does as as talking about my difficult intes our childhood. I'm a singer. I'm one of the resident shanty singers at the National Maritime Historical Park at Hyde Street Pierre in San Francisco, and it performed in front of large audiences. Singing is not a problem, but introducing songs can be. You might say I'm the mel Tillis traditional song and

that lovely email well from Richard adrian Owitz. Thank you Richard. I love that one. Good one. Nice And everybody who's in San Francisco down to go down to Fisherman's Wharf and see Richard. Yeah, check out the show The mel Tillis of Shanty Singing. I love it. If you want to get in touch with this, you can hang out with on Twitter at s y s K podcaster joshuam Clark. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook, dot com or at stuff you Should

Know UM. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot Com has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. H