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The former carnie and devoted showman used the platform for playful jabs at the morality and hypocrisies of the status quo, but the Church – and indeed, Satanism itself – went quiet in the decades that followed as he retreated from public life. It wasn’t until The Satanic Temple emerged in the last decade, with its political and social activism combined with media savvy, that Satanism began to be noticed by the mainstream – but in ways the original Church wasn’t too happy about. Rue Morgue spoke to Church of Satan magister Dave Harris and Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves about their competing takes on some of modern Satanism’s most contentious issues.
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ON LAVEYAN SATANISM Church of Satan: “The biggest appeal is its grounding in reality and its empha- sis on individualism and self-empowerment. With so many collectivist philos- ophies permeating the social structure in 2019, Satanism stands alone as a cham- pion of individualism and one’s ability to carve out a path for oneself.” The Satanic Temple: “There are certain core values that persist from LaVeyan Sa- tanism into the Satanic Temple: personal sovereignty, free inquiry, the rejection of arbitrary authority, and a non-theistic con- textualization. [But] much of what LaVey said was contradictory and self-negating to the point that he used his philosophy of personal independence and rebellion to advocate for autocratic governance.”
ON ORGANIZED RELIGION CoS: “We’re not opposed to organized re- ligion. We are an organized religion. We’re
opposed to all forms of spirituality because it’s all just silly pipe dreams. Sa- tanists are atheists, and our religion is a carnal one; a religion of the flesh. Life in the here, and now is where we find our happiness.” TST: “The Satanic Temple’s fight is not against religion; it is against superstition and authoritarianism. We are a religion that values the individual’s sovereignty and encourages the cultivation of the individual will and self-determination.”
Dave Harris
ON MAGIC CoS:“Magic serves as much or as little purpose for the modern-day Satanist as they individually see fit. And magic, as defined in The Satanic Bible, means many different things. People employ lesser magic every day, whether they re- alize it or not. They groom themselves, they tailor their behaviour to situations, they change their speech patterns to affect the moment. This is all magic.” TST: “The short answer is that magic has no place in modern Satanism. Some define ‘magic’ so broadly – as any act of will that manifests its intended result in the real world – that merely having tea in the morning could be considered an act of magic.”
ON POLITICAL ACTIVISM CoS: “Every Satanist is an individual, and individuals’ needs differ. Thus, there can be no unified satanic political agenda because no two Satanists’ political philosophies are the same.”
TST: “We are apolitical insofar as we will not align with a particular politi- cal party, but we do have well-defined affirmative values of our own. When theocrats openly seek to unify the world under a single religious identity, it would simply be cowardly and laughably un- convincing of us to proclaim our failure to engage as a principled example of re- specting the separation between Church and State.”
Lucien Greaves
ON WHAT THE OTHER SIDE IS DOING CoS: “[The animosity between TST and CoS] stems from their feeble attempts to appropriate our name for their non- sense. Will it ever be resolved? I don’t
know and I don’t care.” TST: “The animosity is derived from the fact that the Church of Satan feels enti- tled to sole ownership over the religious identification of Satanism. The Church of Satan simply is not active as an organization, and they are unaware of what it means to operate as one. We have no interest in carrying on or fuelling the conflict, however, as it only serves to feed a misimpression that we are institu- tions of equal status.”
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