Duncan Trussell Family Hour - LUCIEN GREAVES

Episode Date: August 5, 2014

Lucien Greaves from the Satanic Temple joins the DTFH to talk about satanism, baphomet, and the many things the Satanic Temple is up to these days.

Hello, dear children of the night. It is I, Duncan Trussell, and you are listening to The Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast. And today's episode is about Satan. Hail Satan! Today on The Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast, we're going to be playing America's favorite game, Guess the Satanist. And now, please welcome to the guest of the Satanist Studios, the cutest little sweet little pink ball of pig meat in the known universe. It's the Tea Cup Pig! Thank you so much, Duncan, and a big thank you to our studio audience. Consisting solely of the mutilated corpses of children killed by bombs dropped by Christians, Muslims, and Jews. How are you doing today, studio audience?

Oh well, they can't cheer or applaud because they were blown to smithereens by followers of a god of love, peace, and truth. We're not going to let that stop us, though. Let's get on with the show. I'm going to play some sound clips, and I want you to pick which of these is a Satanist. Let's listen to our first sound clip. Is this man a Satanist? Who can make a sunrise? Sprinkle it with you. Cover it with chocolate and a miracle to the candy man. Ooh, the candy man can.

That's America's beloved entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr. Didn't drop any bombs on kids, but did record several hit songs like Mr. Bojangles. And Candy Man. Let's move on to our next potential Satanist. Is this man a Satanist? See if you can guess. Freedom is ingrained in people's souls. Freedom was not placed there by the United States. It was, in my judgment, it was placed there by something greater, the Almighty. Do we all worship the same god, Christian and Muslim? I think we do. Does.

We have different routes of getting to the Almighty. Does bin Laden, does Abu Musab al-Zarkawi pray to the same god that you and I do? I think they pray to a false god, otherwise they wouldn't be killing innocent lives like they have been. That's former President George W. Bush, who helped start the Iraq War, which resulted in the death of over 116,277 civilians. Do you think he was a Satanist? Now let's listen to our third sound clip. Of our President getting up and saying that it was all right for two women to marry, or two men to marry. I'll tell you right now, I was disappointed bad, but I'll tell you right there, as you're sorry,

as you can get the Bibles again it, God's again it, I'm again it, and if you've got any sense, you're again it. I had a way, I figured a way out, a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers, but I couldn't get it passed through Congress. Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 mile long, put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. And have that fence electrified until they can't get out, feed them, and you know what, in a few years they'll die out. Do you know why they can't reproduce?

You just listened to Charles Worley, a pastor from North Carolina, but was he a pastor in the Satanic Church? Okay, let's do it. Which of these three men do you think was a Satanist? Sammy Davis Jr., entertainer, George W. Bush, former president and murderer of over 100,000 civilians, or Pastor Charles Worley, who wants to put gay people in a leper colony? If you answered Sammy Davis Jr., then you were correct. Sammy Davis Jr. was a member of the Church of Satan founded by Anton Leves, author of the Satanic Bible, and a non-murderer of children, the other two men for Christians. Back to you, Duncan.

We've got a great guest today, Lucian Greaves, famed member of the Satanic Temple. We're going to get to that interview, but first, some quick business. Guess what I ate last night? It wasn't unicorn eggs, it wasn't organic mushrooms, and it wasn't trucker semen, or anything healthy at all. It was several slices of sugary birthday cake that Brendan Walsh gave me from his birthday party, and two bags of chips. Why did I do that? I did it because I was stoned and I ate what was laying around, and that's why I have rolls of fat around my stomach, because I eat what is laying around, just like some scavenging honey badger scooping up balls of eagle shit and shoving them into his mouth. That's what I do around my house with junk food.

I'll eat it, if it's there, I'll just eat it. If it's around, I chomp it up, just like one of my dogs who likes to eat turds that the other dog sprays out of his asshole. I will eat polluted, carcinogenic, salt laden, sugar laden, over-processed crisps of corporate pseudo food, with ingredients that read like pages from the necronomicon, and I do it shamelessly, and then in the morning when I wake up, I weep and drink my tears, and I walk out into my yard, and I look into the sky, and I scream into the sky. Why didn't I order Nature Box? All the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and all the scripture from the Bhagavad Gita combined cannot keep my hand out of a salty bag of doomed food if I'm stoned. I eat what's laying around, which is why NatureBox.com is a wonderful service.

Go to NatureBox.com and sign up and they will send you healthy, great tasting, delicious snacks that won't turn your liver into a curled up pig tail with a tiny eyeball at the end of it that grows out your asshole and stares up at your fat love handles. Go to NatureBox.com and they will send wonderful tasting snacks right to your door. What does that mean? It means that the whole thing where you think to yourself you're going to go to the grocery store and buy healthy food eventually, you no longer have to worry about that. Because NatureBox, like some kind of sweet, sexy, caring, elderly neighbor lady will deliver to your door boxes of delicious, healthy snacks. This used to be common back in the 40s and 50s. You would inevitably live next to a beautiful silver fox whose husband had passed away or fallen into a hole. And you would become friends with her and she would come over to your house in a short skirt wearing stockings and carrying a box of delicious, healthy food. And she'd place the food on your doorstep and you'd invite her in and she'd shove her stocking feet into your mouth and you'd make love with her for hours.

That's how it used to be and it can be that way again minus making love to the sweet, elderly lady. Now you can just get the box of delicious, healthy food placed on your door by the UPS guy. All you got to do is go to NatureBox.com and sign up for a plan. Once you sign up, you're going to get a healthy box of food placed on your doorstep every month. And that means that at least during the time that NatureBox is delivered the delicious food to your door, you're not going to be shoving Fukushima outflow into your body temple and turning what could be a slick, sleek, muscular, thin, healthy, taut, love-making machine. Into a giant, plumped out, radioactive, awful, landfill style body that smells like the underside of a rotting seal. Let's face it, you're like a scavenging dog eating whatever falls on the floor. You know that what's laying around is what you're going to eat.

Take the first step at becoming healthy. Go to NatureBox.com. Sign up for NatureBox. Go to NatureBox.com forward slash family hour. That's NatureBox.com slash family hour. And you will get 50% off your first box of delicious, zero-transfat, zero-high fructose corn syrup, gluten-free option food, including PB&J, power clusters, sweet potato fries. Guys, you're poor little body. You're poor mouth.

It can't do anything about that terrible hand of yours that loves to shove poison into it. So admit the fact that that awful scooping mechanism at the end of your arm is going to put whatever's laying around into your mouth and know that if you got healthy stuff laying around, not only are you going to eat healthier, you're going to feel better. And who knows? It could create the chain reaction that leads to you having one of those Brad Pitt style six packs that glistens by the pool while everybody looks at you in awe and they will fall at your feet and they will worship you and they will dance around you and they will offer their children to you and they will offer great bags of gold to you and you'll say to them, No, I don't want your children. I don't want bags of gold. All I want is nature box shoved into my mouth by some sweet silver hair darling. Go to naturebox.com.

Sign up. You get 50% off. All you got to do is go to naturebox.com slash family hour. Give it a shot, sweet friends. They sponsor this podcast, so they deserve some love. Hare Krishna. A big thanks to all of you who have been donating to the Duncan Tressel Family Hour podcast and to those of you who go through our Amazon portal, which is located at DuncanTressel.com. If you want to support this podcast and you don't feel like donating or buying one of our super magical, mystical, badass t-shirts, but you do go to Amazon, all you got to do is go through our Amazon portal located at DuncanTressel.com.

The next time you're going to buy something from Amazon, if the thought occurs to you, first go to DuncanTressel.com. Go through our portal. Amazon will give us a small percentage of whatever it is that you buy and it costs you nothing, but that is a damn good way to support this podcast. You could also support this podcast by going to our shop, buying one of our t-shirts, or you can support the podcast by coming to see a live show. I'm going on tour with Johnny Pemberton at the end of this month. I'm going to be in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, Asheville, Charleston, Durham, and then in September, I'm going to be in San Francisco and at the beginning of October, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and Calgary. So, go to one of these shows, say hello to me, buy your tickets in advance, the tickets are going really quick, so please buy your tickets right away, and I hope to see you at the end of the month or next month. Also, I'd like to throw in a quick apology to Pitbull owners out there.

In a song, I guess it was the podcast before last, I don't remember which one. I did a song about Don't Kill Kids, and I said something about Pitbulls killing kids, and even though Pitbulls have attacked kids, lots of other dogs have attacked kids, so I should have just said dogs instead of demonizing Pitbulls. I don't usually apologize for stuff because I think that can be really lame, but in this case, I think it's bad to increase the stigma against Pitbulls, which are generally some of the sweetest, most darling creatures ever, and the poor things are made to fight each other and have horrible lives, and I don't want to add to any Pitbulls misery by singing a line about Pitbulls eating children. I hope I don't seem like a coward to you hardcore comedy people out there, like, never apologize, but in this case, some very well-meaning sweetie sent me a tweet saying, Why do you gotta say that about Pitbulls? I've been friends with Pitbulls, and they're just goddamn sweeties, though I do sometimes feel a little scared when I'm around them, but really, you should be scared around anything that's got teeth, including human beings. So, I love the Pitbulls, and all my Pitbull listeners, my apologies, I want you all to have very healthy, happy lives, and please, please, please, please, please keep all dogs on a leash, including your Pitbulls, because no matter what, it's still a little spooky, I don't want to have my guts ripped out.

Okay, today's guest is Lucian Greaves, and as an introduction, I'm going to play a sound clip from a YouTube clip put together by the Satanic Temple, of which he's a member. This is a montage of all the press and feedback the Satanic Temple got for a recent campaign in which they are going to erect a statue of Baphomet next to the Ten Commandments at the Oklahoma City's Capital Grounds. I'll have video of this clip up on the comments section at DuncanTrustle.com on this podcast, but again, just to reiterate, the Satanic Temple believes that all religions deserve to be recognized, and if you get to put a Judeo-Christian monument at a public building, then you should also get to put a Satanic monument at a public building, and they are working on that very thing. Here is the clip. This Ten Commandments monument stands at the north end of the state capital, but at these steps, the Satanic Temple, once what it calls, equality. The Satanist came along and said, hey, well, if you get your Ten Commandments statue or monument, we get our Satanist monument. Are you kidding me now? Are we making a mockery of everything with regard to Christianity in this society? Now we're going to have a Satanic monument next to the Ten Commandments, really?

Yeah, and I think, unfortunately for civil libertarians, this type of sort of activist move by Satanists is going to be a lot more effective than all the legal job-owning over the First Amendment you could possibly do. Let me speak to the Satanic Temple of New York. Let me speak to you directly. You're making a big mistake. We don't see a way that the state can then deny other religions, whether it's Satanism, whether it's Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, Hindu, Buddhist, whatever. We don't think the state can pick and choose. I don't agree with the rabbi. Do you not that this is absolutely a mockery and ridiculous? Absolutely not mockery, not ridiculous. The separation of church and state is what makes America great. Religious freedom means the government doesn't take sides, one religion or another. You may not like the Satanists, guess what? That doesn't matter. So it's sort of a variation on if the state is going to allow the Christians to have, you know, if we're going to bust the wall of separation between church and state, then let's let multiple religions in, including the folks who are the Satanists. You don't want to dare set your little eye to God next to the word of God. All right, why can't Satanists do it? By the word religion in the First Amendment, the founders meant Christianity.

Absolutely emphatic. This is ridiculous. It's not just that it's a mockery. It actually demeans America. The last crowd that tried that was in the Temple of Dagon. The founders were thinking of Christianity, so the purpose was to protect the free exercise of the Christian faith. It wasn't about protecting anything else. Our language and its long-sighted, thank you, ma'am. It's a lot of myth. It's a strong, direct message, and that message is one more in line, I think, with our American values of inclusion and equality in the eyes of the long. They themselves started growing cancerous tumors on their genitals. After seven months, they gave birth to a young man. I promise you if you go down to Oklahoma and put a statue of the devil next to the word of God, you don't want to know.

It was like they went to the craziest group they could find. No sense. I want to shift gears a little bit, and I want to talk about Phantacons. Most recently, the Satanic Temple has taken on the Hobby Lobby ruling. You can find out more about all of their campaigns by going to thesatanictemple.com. You can donate, sign up for a Satanic Temple membership card, or just check out what's going on over there if you find Lucian Greaves interesting and compelling, which I certainly do. And a big thanks to Matt Dwyer from the podcast Conversations with Matt Dwyer for connecting me with Lucian Greaves. Now, everybody, please send out all the love and sweet energy that you can upon the dewy brow of this darling Satanist Lucian Greaves. Everybody, please welcome to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, Lucian Greaves.

Lucian Greaves from the Satanic Temple. Thank you so much for coming to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. Good to be here. Thank you. Awesome. So, yeah, man, I've been really looking forward to this interview, but prior to it, as I was considering interviewing you, I had some serious trepidation, just because so much horribleness is attached to the term Satanism. But then as I've been watching your interviews and looking at all the great stuff that you're doing out there, I can't find anything really that sinister at all about what you're doing. In fact, all of it seems like you are an act, a humanist and an activist who really wants the world to be a better place. And that is quite a paradox, because you're doing it under the label of Satanism, which a lot of people are terrified of that word and everything associated with it. Well, yeah, but look at the inversion of values. If we look at what type of values are reflected now in what we know as the conservative Christian movement and its exclusionary attitude towards homosexuals and others, it maligns so often. You know, of course, there's going to be different groups who say that's not a reflection of Christianity at all, but that's kind of the mainstream voice of what's called Christianity at this point. In Satanism has always been rather a kind of specter, an imaginary outgroup created by the dominant Judeo-Christian culture.

And so when you take on that label, you do have to kind of define it on your own terms. There were this kind of legend about the Jews defaming the consecrated host, murdering babies and that kind of thing. They were almost like the original Satanists, you know. If you go back earlier, the pagans actually demonized Christians in a similar way, and then sew on down the line until you have this kind of mythology about Satanists. But one of the books we use as the metaphorical construct for our type of Satanism is Revolt of the Angels by Anatoly France, and it's this very kind of clever book where Satan decides to revive the war on heaven, or at least this group of angels seeks him out to revive the war on heaven. And the end of the story, he kind of contemplates this, and he dreams that his army marches against Jehovah, and they win back the heavens. And then throughout time, he becomes complacent and sick with the power again, becomes the tyrannical force exactly as Jehovah was, and so the whole process continues. And he doesn't actually want that position, he doesn't take up the war on heaven again. So there's kind of a duty to the marginalized outgroup to stand up for their own in that kind of way, in a positive way. And so you feel that Satanism, or the type of Satanism you practice is sort of sticking up for the underdog, for the people who've been pushed to the periphery of society by the kind of what Terrence McKenna called the male dominator culture, which is I think it's a pretty good term for it. Yeah, well one thing I don't want to do is pretend that we have this kind of ancient tradition we're going off of. You hear from these Wiccans who hearken to this ancient tradition, which was arguably actually created in the 20th century by scholars who hatched onto this idea that there were these

dianic fertility cults that were maligned and that sort of thing. And you know, that's not necessarily true nor does it have to be. But with Satanism, you know, there's just a lot of mythology, and it's been this kind of imagery and symbology called together from this history of building outcasts, making outgroups in these violent, ugly purges against people we deem witches or Satanists and that kind of thing. So it really is our duty to recognize that and urge against it and force people to confront those kinds of fears and judge people for their real actions, their concrete actions in the real world, rather than based on these mythological fears. Right, because right now there's no Satanist dropping bombs on kids on beaches. Right, exactly. And there's no, you know, Satanic jihads or holy wars of any other type. You know, we're calling for people to actually look and reconcile themselves with these elements they fear about other religions. And nothing does that better than confronting them face first with the idea of Satanism. And that is what you are a genius at that's what you're doing is has this incredible is perfect balance of activism and comedy in it. It is so hilarious and so simple. What in, can you talk a little bit about the, for those of out there who don't know about this fantastic monument that you're building right now? Yeah, well, the monument idea was kind of a monument we had early on when we were first forming the satanic temple idea that was kind of something in the background, where, you know, we keep seeing these agendas being pushed through and they're being pushed through in the name of the religious agenda and that kind of thing is though there's only one religious voice in the United States, or, you know, so far there really has been one asserting itself.

But, you know, these, these religious, these religious based laws or bills that are passed or whatever they are necessarily constitutionally going to be open to any religion there is. So when you get a case like a Ten Commandments monument going up on public property, oftentimes you have people who they feel religious freedom is being upheld that, you know, that they, they, they cheer and they say that this is a, this is a proper message for, for this Christian nation and that kind of thing. And then you get secular groups and they, they get pissed off and they say they want this monument taken down. There should be no religious monuments on public land, given the separation of church and state, how they interpret the First Amendment that they feel it shouldn't stand. And what really hasn't happened is that another group comes along and says, okay, if you're going to have the Ten Commandments monument there, you've opened the door that any other religious group can have it there too, and they asked to have theirs put there. And that's exactly what we've done. And we said, okay, in Oklahoma and the state capital, they have put a Ten Commandments monument up. And their justification for that was they said it was privately donated by a state legislator named Mike Ritz, who happens to be a Baptist minister as well. And they said that being that was privately donated and not an item paid for by the state or otherwise adopted by the state, it bypasses the establishment clause, not being a church and state issue. Because they said that land, that territory of land where they allow the Ten Commandments monument was open to be a monument park and they envisioned future monuments being there, assumedly privately, privately donated as well.

So it was a perfect territory for us to say, well, that's perfect. We'd like to put a satanic monument there. And what was interesting to me is the response, because I knew this would get pressed, but I didn't realize it would get pressed so immediately, because when we first got pressed for this, the first round of press, which was really huge, only came as a result of us sending a letter to the Preservation Commission, which approves monuments or whatever else in Oklahoma, and stating our intention to donate a monument to the capital on the same principle as the Ten Commandments monument was donated. The press got ahold of that, and the response was huge. And people immediately started reaching out to us and saying they wanted to donate to the monument. And at that point, we hadn't even designed the monument. We just wanted to find out the process. We wrote the letter, said we want to donate our monument. So we hadn't done a cost analysis or anything. So we thought, well, we'll start an Indiegogo campaign and put it up immediately, because things like this in the press tend to peak and fall really fast. So while people were writing to us and saying they wanted to donate, we knew we would need that money. So we put up an Indiegogo and set the donation at 20 grand, the donation limit. You don't want to not reach your goal at Indiegogo where they take a higher percentage away from you is how it works. And we thought that 20 grand was kind of lofty goal, but that's about what the Ten Commandments monument costs. But we figured ours was probably going to be a bit more elaborate, but we couldn't count them more than 20 grand. So we made about eight grand before that media cooled down, and then donations died.

And that was about Christmas. And there's a finite time you have to collect your donations before they shut down your campaign on Indiegogo. So donations died so we knew we needed to revive it. So we worked during Christmas break and came up with the design. And so it was going to be a traditional image of Baphomet. And Baphomet's this androgynous goat headed creature traditionally has breasts, but we ultimately made the executive decision to take those off just because we don't want to argue with Oklahoma on the grounds of pornography. We don't want to give them that ammunition to say that it has nothing to do with one thing or the other, but that they're going to deny it on the grounds that there's breasts. You can put a goat statue up fine, but you're not putting tits on the goat, Satanist. Right, right. Well, it is ridiculous. Admittedly, it is ridiculous, but I feel like we would just be handing them something and I have no doubts that they would hammer on that. And that would be the grounds on which they would turn it down. And we'd have to fight a whole different battle than the one that we think deserves recognition. Maybe a tasteful bra.

We worked with different things with the artists. I was very much an advocate during the construction of this for putting breasts on in some way. Yeah, because the symbol is kind of the yin-yang. The issue that I took when I initially heard about this is with using Baphomet as the symbol for Satan, I thought to myself, well, that's not Satan at all. That's this beautiful symbol of the merging of the masculine and the feminine, a kind of magical union. I've always thought of it, well, not always. When you see it at first, it seems kind of scary. But when you consider what it means, I've always thought of it as representing balance or some kind of new balance being achieved in the world. So I thought, wow. It still does. It still does. And I hope people keep their perception of that. But in modern times, it has been sufficiently Satanized that it is recognized as a symbol of Satanism. And if you look at different religions, this is common. This is common that different past constructs get co-opted and Satanized or merged in with their religion in other ways. I mean, look at all the pagan elements in Christianity. Look at even Christmas or Easter or whatever else.

And it's kind of pointless to say, well, the Christmas tree isn't Christmas at all. It's pagan. Well, it's true. But also, it is now part of the Christian tradition. And plus, what is going to be an accurate representation of Satan? A lot of them previously are going to be things we wouldn't want to touch. They're either going to be too obscure to be recognized. We're not going to use a dragon of the type that looks more like a symbol for Chinese New Year or whatever. We want it to be obviously a Satanic symbol. And it's not going to be something offensive like a black, the Negro Satan, as it were. Or the Jewish Satan with horns, kind of like a pan type character, whatever. I love this symbol of the reconciliation of opposites and the balance. And it still has all these binary elements. And plus, putting it alongside the Ten Commandments adds to that as well. And then the message becomes one of that kind of balance. And it's really kind of ironic that there's all these threats against destroying it when that really ultimately is the message there. Right. Well, people don't understand that. People see that symbol and they freak out and they think that it is exactly what you're saying.

They just think that it's some kind of just awful thing. And then when I realized, you know, after I realized like, oh, shit, that's a symbol of balance. And then just like what you're saying, here is this thing balancing out the Ten Commandments or the sort of the way that Christianity is managed to or popular Christianity, which probably isn't Christianity at all, is managed to become what we call the mainstream religion. And here is something that balances that out. And in all that, it seems wonderful. And then with the addition of the two children standing next to the, to the, to Baphomet, it's hilarious. But do you, you do recognize how funny, do you see this as funny? Is that, is it, is it offensive that I see this as a kind of comedic art, a kind of like amazing conceptual bit of comedy that you're doing? No, I love it that people see it that way. I, but I also don't want it to be obscured to the point where people feel that there's nothing genuine about it,

or that this kind of symbolic system doesn't actually resonate and mean something to us, because it does. And even recognizing Satanism as being this rather modern religion where these different symbols are called from this mythology in the background, it still can't help but have deep meaning to us when we grow up in this kind of culture where it's been, you know, it's inextricable from our culture. It's something that's in the background. Like you can't get away from certain conceptions when you look at religious Christians imagery as well, whether you're an atheist or whatever else when you grow up in this culture. And with Satanism is quite the same. And I think, you know, even though I fully admit and embrace that I'm an atheist and I don't really, you know, and I don't subscribe to any supernaturalism about this, that I feel we have all the elements of a legitimate religion that what a religion should be, a sense of community, a shared sense of goals, a sense of identity, and, you know, in a kind of practice background, that kind of thing. So I don't want people to look and say, well, this is, this is a genius prank that's, it's fine that they think that so long as it doesn't marginalize it to the point where people think that there's nothing authentic in what we're doing,

or that it's all on a lark and that there hasn't been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears going into this because there certainly has. This has not been, despite what it might look like, this has not been an easy year for those of us, those few of us in the inner circle here who are actually doing this thing. And it's really quite harrowing and it's been a complete upheaval in my life. So I want to keep that humor element and I'm glad people are very much amused, but I don't want to marginalize it just the same. I see. And can you talk a little bit about some of the harrowing moments that have happened as you've found yourself catapulted into the public eye? Well, as you know, my name is Doug, but I started out with this, you know, putting forward the name Lucian Greaves, which I still use in connection with this. But, and I kind of, I really didn't know how big this would get. And I kind of thought maybe I could just be a voice for the organization and have this name, you know, this pseudonym out, out in the front. And which was fine by me because I've never really been interested in developing myself as a character, you know, turning this into the story of my autobiographical self, even though I'm revealed for who I am, I just don't engage in that with journalists and that kind of thing.

But it doesn't, you know, it's, you get into the situation where you start talking to journalists and the first things they dive at it. Where did you go to school? Where did you grow up? Where do you work and those kinds of things? Right. I think, are you fucking crazy? Why are you asking me that? Especially in the position I am in. And then when this gets really big, of course, I have Ann Coulter tweeting about me saying that, you know, tweeting my name and saying that this is all just a plot for me to run away from a Jewish name. I'm not Jewish to begin with anyway, but I don't know what her whole point is. But I feel like it's almost, it almost has the tone of a threat to me when these people say, you know, come off like, well, we found out who you are and we're going to tell people. And that's the kind of attitude I got from like Laura Ingram and like I said, Ann Coulter and these different Fox News assholes who interview me. And to the point where on Fox News, even Imus has a show. I didn't even know that old bastard had a show, but he has a show on Fox and one of his sidekicks, I guess, who does his panel discussions with him all the time,

actually called for us to be murdered. He said we should be lined up next to our monument and shot. Wow. And so, yeah. So, you know, that really did distress me. And I haven't pushed for media coverage for things we're doing, like actively reaching out to people. In most cases, we just put out a press release or whatever and it rolls on its own momentum or it doesn't. This was something where immediately I contacted our lawyer. He wrote a letter to Fox and at first they were very dismissive. You know, they were real pricks about it. And then I was reaching out directly with media. I felt I had a good relationship with really pushing them to cover this story because I really wanted this to be recognized. I didn't want somebody to get away with calling us to be murdered, calling for us to be murdered because, you know, I'm deeply concerned about that. And it got to the point where raw story ran a story. They've always been really good to us. They ran a story calling it some type of outrage.

And then the young Turks, they do this kind of video news show. I don't know if it's only on YouTube or where, but, you know, they've been good too. And they were openly saying that this guy should be fired from Fox and all that. So before it was going to get any deeper, I think Fox realized that this was going to gain momentum. They had that guy air an apology, but Fox themselves never took the opportunity to say that as a network, they don't condone that kind of violence or that kind of speech or anything. You know, they just sent us a letter that essentially said we wash our hands of it and now go piss off or whatever. But so there was that and plus, you know, there's always the threats now. And I feel like it's only going to get worse because, you know, within the next couple of days here, we're going to be rolling out a campaign that's going to leverage the Hobby Lobby ruling. And we've found that it looks like we'll be able to use that in defense of pro-choice initiatives.

Can you tell me what's planned? What's up? What's going on with that? What do you have planned for the Hobby Lobby? Well, since Roe vs. Wade, nobody's managed to overturn it. You know, essentially his legalized abortion back in 73, I believe it was, is Supreme Court hearing. But since then, there's been all these what I call weasel bills introduced to try to make abortion more difficult for women to get. Whether it's informed consent laws, as they call them, where there's state mandated medical information, they call it to give to the woman, which most of it's not scientifically valid or medically legitimate in any way. Like they have information saying that abortion increases risks towards breast cancer, which is not proven. It's very dubious, spurious data. You know, show them pictures of fetuses and that kind of thing.

It's really trying to scare people out of what's already a difficult situation. Our feeling is that fundamentally, you know, your choice is your own and your choices should be made with the best available material scientific evidence. And this doesn't qualify. And our stance there was, you know, similar to our children's campaign. I don't know if you saw where we had a letter of exemption written up saying, for kids, where they didn't have to be subjected to corporal punishment. And we have a letter drawn up and we had lawyers vet it and everything. So we have this letter drawn up that people will be able to download from our website and women can bring it to their care provider and have them sign it. And essentially, it says that, you know, given our beliefs, we're not subject to this state mandated information because we believe in actual scientific information, that kind of thing. We thought part of the problem we might run into with that is that even though a lot of this legislative material is openly not scientifically legitimate,

or at least a part of a minority belief within medicine or science, that we might get dragged through the courts with the state hiring a medical witness saying, well, you know, it's legitimate to us. So the state is allowed to legislate in favor of a pro-life position. And that's true. That's where it's fallen. But given the Hobby Lobby decision, where they've decided that due to the deeply held beliefs of this corporation, that they can choose to believe that contraceptives are a board of fashions when they are, in fact, not, we don't have to argue the medical legitimacy of this information. We can simply say we don't fucking like it. So we don't want it. And we feel like now, given Hobby Lobby, that's a home run. So that's the first bit of, that's the first weasel bill we're going to take on with abortion. And there's three more after that. Can you, but can you sum up what you just said? I kind of got a little lost in it. It's a letter that people who work for places like the Hobby Lobby can bring to their medical provider that, can you explain, can you simplify that a little bit because I'm a dummy?

Yeah, well, on this particular, on this first initiative, and it may seem a small step, but it's all going to come together in different initiatives where it's an all out protection of a pro-choice position. But with this particular one, we're taking on this idea that women need to be subjected to state mandated information. That women need to be subjected to images of fetuses and information telling them that abortion will kill them, cause them to commit suicide or whatever else. We think that's needlessly stressful. So in essence, what we're doing is we're giving them a letter of exemption. And if the doctor says, I need to give you this information, I need to ensure that you go through the trauma of seeing this and all the rest, they are then subject to being sued on the grounds that they violated our religious liberty. Wow. Okay, cool. Right. That is really smart, man. That is very, very smart. Wow. Wow. That's so cool. This hobby lobby ruling is so ridiculous. I read in her dissent, it was amazing how she's pointing out like, well, now, you know, Scientologists, if you work for Scientologists, they can say that you don't, you can't get antidepressants. Or if you work for an Islamic company, then they can say that you can't get anything that has any kind of pig product in it if they want to. It's a can of worms, man. It's a can of worms.

Yeah, well, that's just another case where obviously they weren't thinking of other religious groups, which was actually surprising to me because earlier on, some couple months ago, there was a case in Greece, New York, and the town of Greece in New York. And it went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court saw in favor of the town of Greece. And what was going on there is that they were having these public town meetings being opened up by these Christian convocations. They would have like a minister come in and he would do a Christian prayer or whatever. And somebody was pissed off and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, no, you know, you can do a public prayer opening up a town meeting. But the idea, of course, is that it should be open to anybody. And then the LA Times reached out to me and they said, well, is there a satanic prayer we could do? And I wrote one up for them and they published it. It was nice. But it was interesting in the Supreme Court case, Scalia did mention Satanists. He mentioned like, well, what about Satanists? Can't they give? Can't they open up the town hall meeting with a prayer? That question did come up. So I find it kind of surprising that they don't think of it in a broader context of something like Hobby Lobby where, like you say, it's far more of a disaster. And of course, Scientology now, it would be well within their rights to say they cut psychiatry out from any of those because they have a longstanding history of being anti-psychiatry.

When do you start picking and choosing what you actually, it's like picking and choosing what you're paying taxes for, like saying, oh, no, I don't have kids who go to school. You know, I'm going to pay this percentage less or whatever. I don't want to pay for drones dropping bombs on people. I don't want to pay for, I don't want any of my money to go to those bombs. This is, to me, it's just, when I think of Satanism, I don't think of what you're doing. When I think of Satanism, I think of something sinister. When I think of the symbol of Satan, I think of something sinister. And I don't think of Baphomet. I think of whatever warp exists in the universe, there are a fraction in the lens of the time-space continuum that pushes people away from truth. That's what I think of when I think of Satanism. I don't think of what you're doing reminds me of Christianity. What you're doing makes me think of what an activist Christian would be doing out in the world.

It seems like a very positive, beautiful thing. I get so freaked out when I hear about the death threats that you're getting, because it makes me... I would argue that it has to be Satanism. It has to be Satanism and it couldn't be anything else, because any time you have something that's going to go against the status quo like this, that's going to be the propaganda about it. If you're going against the power, as it were, the mainstream structure, you're always going to be demonized in this way. In an outcast, you don't look at the Satan of that kind of propaganda. Look at the idea of Satan as put forward by Milton in Paradise Lost or Anatole Francis' Revolt of the Angels, where you have this kind of eternal rebel against the tyrannical power.

That's what Jesus is when I read the New Testament and it says, I'm sure you have. When I read that, I still remember the first time I read it when I was on acid. Reading about this, getting to look at it from the perspective of having none of the indoctrination of being raised a Christian. Just reading it from the perspective of what Christ was doing. It seems like he was this rebellious being that was fighting against the religion of the day and ended up getting murdered for it. If you're a Satanist, then I guess I'm one too. I just wouldn't use that word for it, that's all. Maybe it's a useful tool because it allows you to fly in the face of these people who called it.

I wouldn't call what these people are doing Christianity. I wouldn't call him a Christian. The thing is, I like your confusion. I like that you're confused and I like that a lot of people are confused. I actually think that that's progress for you and for other people who are confused. I know it's painful for some people and a lot of people come to me like this and they say, I just can't get behind calling it Satanism. I actually think we kind of thrive on that because we know we're forcing people to, it's shaking them up.

It's forcing them to reevaluate things and from here on, if somebody defines themselves as a Satanist, you're going to be forced to think twice about what that might mean or might not mean. Of course, you're going to find rotten people who self-identify as Satanists. You find rotten people who self-identify as Christians. You'll find good and both and bad, but I do find there to be some truth in the left-hand path, right-hand path distinction that's made between Judeo-Christian culture and Satanism. The right-hand path is more people seeking wholeness with the one, assimilating into this kind of mass consciousness or whatever else. There's nothing wrong with that. There's this drive towards it.

At its worst though, you're talking kind of mindless conformity. Left-hand path is kind of the opposite. People developing their pure self as an isolate intelligence. That too is a noble goal, right? But at its worst, you could have this kind of antisocial, anti-human behavior. It can go that way too. So they both got there good and bad and people go one way or they go the other. It's funny because there's a book called Lords of the Left-Hand Path where it actually at one point asks the question whether or not Jesus Christ might have been a Lord of the left-hand path,

which seems really paradoxical by that point, but it's kind of what you're touching on now. I definitely think that. That's why you start getting into this real confusion when you start going down this particular path. Because what you have happening right now, if you follow the news today, Israel drops bombs on a beach and kills four kids. Have you heard about that? Did you hear about that? Yeah, I've heard of the Palestinians murdered some Israelis. Now this is not necessarily done in the name of religion.

It's done in the name of a territorial conflict. But when you look at the religion of George W. Bush, or if you look at the religion of Barack Obama, or you look at the religion of any of the people who feel okay about dropping bombs on kids, you will find that it is always either Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. It's always those religions, the people who follow those religions somehow have managed to work into those religions the idea that from time to time you have to incinerate children to make things better in the world. This is the exact thing that they've accused Satanists of forever. Satanists, they're going to take your kid into the woods, set him on fire, chop him in half.

Meanwhile, these sons of bitches are flying jets over foreign countries incinerating babies. Now to me, that is Satanism. And that's where it gets really spooky to think that perhaps the true religion of the day is this kind of violence, this kind of random, financially based insanity. And what you're doing, or what you're actually doing is true Christianity, and that is why they want to kill you. Just like they wanted to kill our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God. Well, to refer back to Revolt of the Angels, that's the whole nature of the story.

It's the kind of corruption of being the ubiquitous power and becoming complacent in your feelings of entitlement. And it leads you to this kind of tyrannical complacence against the lives of the outcast, the other or whatever else might threaten that power. Yes, that's it. And again, as you've said, you're an atheist. You don't believe in some kind of, I don't know, external disembodied evil or external disembodied rebellious force outside of the rebellious force that manifests in your heart or in your actions. But so we're just using symbols here, you know?

And so that's a funny thing. This is when you get into, you know, in Gnosticism, a lot of the idea was that the God that most people are worshiping is, what do they call that God? Fuck. You know, in Gnosticism, what do they call the Demiurge, which was a kind of confused God hatchling. Do you know anything about this? Yeah, yeah, I've read Gnostic material. I've been through quite a lot of comparative religion, actually.

Every now and again, I'm actually invited to speak to comparative religion classes and all different types of classes, really. Yeah, well, I can, I believe it. I mean, one thing that's really, that I'm learning from this conversation is that you are, this is truly your religion. I wasn't sure if you were just using it as a form of tool for social activism, but I see that this is an actual religion for you. Would you consider yourself a religious person? Well, yeah, actually I would. And I've gone through a great effort to explain to people what that means because, like I said, I end up on these Fox shows or whatever, and sometimes the entire point of what they're trying to get across is that we're not a real religion.

And what I like to do is just laugh and turn it back around and say, well, then you're giving me an advantage. So if you want to say we're not actually a religion, we don't have to fight any establishment clause issues. If you want to make that argument for us, then you can say, okay, if the state adopts the Ten Commandments and then people argue that that's a religious item, well, then we don't have to make the argument that ours is, you know what I'm saying? It's kind of ridiculous that they go that way. But I'm saying that we can separate supernaturalism from religion and that you don't need to subscribe to a supernatural deity to have a religion. And, you know, and part of that is seeing kind of secular Jews, you know, they still engage in the rituals and that kind of thing. And I've met a lot, you know, I didn't when I was growing up, but when I moved, I met a lot of Jewish people.

And it was kind of new to me to see that they embraced it as a cultural ancestral background, that kind of thing. And it gave them a sense of meaning and that kind of thing. And there's nothing wrong with that. And I think there's very positive things to be gained from that. I think when you start losing ground on the positive nature of it is really when you start subscribing to untenable beliefs believing that you have to believe them to be a part of that religion. And when you start getting these dogmatic beliefs that the voice of some deity compels your hatred towards different groups or whatever else and that you can't assimilate or adjust to the reality of today, you know, which is far better than the reality of the time most of these texts were written or whatever else. Well, I mean, what's more terrifying than the idea that some invisible being is like having conversations with George W. Bush who has control of a nuclear arsenal.

That's not the person you want to have the keys to nuclear weapons. The guy talking to an invisible homophobic lunatic thing. That's like a very dark, dark religion. Well, maybe it's just a matter of like not getting caught up in definitions. Maybe that's the point because one thing that we can't escape from is the fact that even though we have manifest in this dimension as individuals, there's no way around that. You're an individual. I'm an individual. George W. Bush is an individual.

We are not all individuals, but then simultaneously we are connected to this gigantic thing called a universe, an inexplicable, ununderstandable thing. And this human tendency to say, well, I'm a Christian or I'm a Satanist or I'm a Zoroastrian or it seems to be kind of, it seems like people end up getting lost in that. What we really are as humans living on a planet together, you know, that's filling up with many more of us, you know. Right, right. Well, you know, I think one of the greatest evils though that has come out of religion in general is the tendency to create these outgroups, to create the idea of Satanists, the idea of a certain people that are the embodiment of evil and that if we can just destroy them, everything will be okay. Right. The people who are working against the entire moral fabric of the universe and are so depraved that they'll act against every human impulse that's known and they're just a conspiracy of cruelty in the background. It just hasn't existed and the sooner we realize that, the better off we'll be and I think we go a long way toward making that happen.

Well, you know, I have to disagree with you there about this conspiracy of cruelty. I think there is a conspiracy of cruelty, but I think the conspiracy of cruelty isn't engineered by Satanists, especially the sect of Satanism that you're a member of, but obviously this conspiracy of cruelty exists in whatever group of people are currently building weapons that get dropped on kids. I don't mean to keep going back to that, but when you're listing like bad things to do in the world, you know, that's got to be at the top of the list, right? Like when you're talking... Oh, yeah, yeah. Like dropping... You make a valid point, so let me amend that. When I talk about the conspiracy that doesn't exist, I'm talking about the one that's supposed to be hidden in the background that's running parallel to our society that knows it's acting against the better...

The better impulses of our culture and everything else that's working against the greater good. The real conspiracy of evil is happening in the name of the greater good by a lot of people who are very misguided into believing that they're working towards those ends. Right. When they're doing these kinds of things. They're doing it in the name of righteousness and justice and they're co-opting these labels. They're misappropriating them. That's a hell of a lot creepier. That's a hell of a lot creepier than a group of people wearing robes gathered together muttering weird, lovecraftian incantations and some grove in the forest.

It's a million times creepier because it's the, you know, this... And you say they're misguided, but I wonder, are they misguided? Are they misguided? Is it really just like a, whoops, we're just sort of confused. Or maybe these really, these people have become so addicted to power and so drunk on the whatever weird feeling you get when you realize that you are on a daily basis turning humans into hamburger meat with $100,000 bombs that they're not misguided at all. They're just, they're no more misguided than somebody wandering into a jerk-off theater and, you know, spraying jizz all over the floor. You know, that guy's not necessarily misguided. That guy, being me, it's at one point in my life, I wasn't misguided.

I knew exactly what I was doing, you know? Right. There again, though, we're dealing with the balance of power and you're going to find that from people who are secure in the idea that they hold the power. You know, it's really, it doesn't seem like a real human characteristic that you're going to find that from the outgroup. You find people who self-identify as Satanists continually trying to justify themselves and show that they're not so bad after all. And then you find people a lot of times doing things in the name of mainstream religion and they're acting like rotten bastards because they feel they have a certain entitlement. They've already defined themselves as having the moral high ground. Yes.

So they can act as immoral as they feel, as they feel as convenient. Well, that's, and what a man, I've got to tell you, that's got to be the gr... And it's like, you know, if you can eliminate, like truly just eliminate guilt from, you know, from blowing people up, like you don't just eliminate guilt. You know, you actually like transform guilt into this kind of exhilarating what's better than like, you know, being engaged in some modern crusade, you know, where you really are acting in the name of some higher power. I mean, God, you don't just get to experience the rush of blowing people up. You get to get that mixed in with the idea that you're some kind of messianic savior of the world. Wow, man. Well, then we have to come up with a new name for this religion that these people are engaged in because it's not Christianity.

And I'm not going to call it Satanism because I don't want to offend you because whatever you're doing sounds great. So we have to come up with a new religion that they're following. They're engaged in some kind of, I don't know what you would call it. I call that God that they worship loon loon, some kind of insane, some being that over the course of eternity lost its mind and is, you know, really upset over these like microscopic monkey descendants putting their cocks in the wrong asshole. That's a crazy God. That's like a loony God. And that's what, that's what they worship. But you, this Satanism that you're talking about, what is the school?

What is the specific? This is, is this a Levan Satanism? Is this, what type of Satanism would you call this? Well, I would call it more of a literary Satanism, actually. I mean, we do draw from Leve, but I feel like Leve was also a product of his time. We saw four evolving with the times and seeing where the, you know, what the best available evidence is for us today. And something I was explaining in an interview I was doing on NPR was that in Leve's time, you know, he started in the sixties, his church of Satan, and he died in the late nineties. And, you know, he would talk a lot of kind of police state politics.

And he would, and he said that his Satanism was kind of Anne Rand philosophy dressed up in religious trappings. Right. And we can see kind of now where the Tea Party ultimately leads us with Anne Rand. I don't think it's really fair to her, but with the police state politics, I think you have to keep in mind that in Leve's time, sixties to nineties, violence was out of control in the United States. It was getting worse and worse. And you kind of see it in the apocalyptic films and everything of the day, still in Cold War period and those kinds of things. Everything, you know, these post apocalyptic futures were being seen.

The idea was that everything was eventually going to get worse and people were looking for those kinds of solutions. What do we do? You know, and it's in Leve's idea was like increased police state kind of thing. Now, since Leve's died, you know, at about 95, I think it peaked. And now violence in general has just been decreasing exponentially, rapidly. We're doing something right, you know, something that, you know, there are, there are good things happening and violence has been decreasing very much. And Steven Pinker, cognitive science professor at Harvard wrote a book, Better Angels of Our Nature, that kind of explores this topic of the decrease in violence. And we're at a point now where we can look at what we could be doing right and what we could maybe be doing more of to stay away from this.

And I think a lot of the police state rhetoric now sounds a bit outdated and just wrong, you know. So I feel like we are, we're different in that way. We don't really, we're not his right wing, I don't think is some of Leve's rhetoric was. But I don't necessarily think that he would object today. It's, you know, you can't say really what, what would Leve say today, you know, for one thing, it doesn't really matter. For another thing, he might agree with us entirely, you know, who knows. But I think, but I think we're coming from, coming from things at a very pragmatic level and we're looking at what works best when, when you're going to organize and put forward certain agendas and in collective ideals that work well for us. And I think, you know, the way we go about it in such a way that shakes up the status quo really is best embodied in the symbolism of Satanism.

So, okay, so here's what Satanists want. The Satanists that you are, this is what the agenda of a Satanist these days is. One, keep kids from getting spanked in public schools. Is that correct? Well, yeah, if we're going to talk about kids getting spanked in women's rights pro-choice, those can be summed up in the ideal personal sovereignty. And that's something we advocate for on all fronts. I mean, you abdicate some of that and, you know, if justice is going to be called against you, if you violate the personal sovereignty of another. But beyond that, we feel your personal sovereignty is inviolable, you know. Your body is yours alone, subject to your own will alone.

So that means, okay, your body is yours alone, subject to your own will alone. That means that legalization of drugs, legalization of, you should be allowed to take any drug you want. Is that fair to say that's a Satanic ideal? Yeah, yeah, it's your choice. It's your choice. Whatever you want to do, it's just, under the influence of a certain drug, if you break laws that go against another person's personal sovereignty, then you have to face justice. Right, right. And that's not to say we advocate taking any drug, you know. It's just to say that it's up to you, right? I don't feel there should be some central authority really legislating that, your ability to do so.

So, okay, so it seems like the roots of this religion are personal sovereignty and autonomy. It's the freedom of the individual to express themselves without impinging on another person's freedom. Right, absolutely. So what are some other tenets of this religion outside of personal sovereignty? Well, we've written seven of them. I think we originally had nine and we want to make them malleable, but it all comes down pretty much to the idea of, you know, keeping within the material world, you know, keeping a rationalistic perspective of the world on the best available evidence and just not being under the thumb of some tyrannical power. And really we try to keep it as broad and we're not trying to micromanage people's beliefs per se.

We're keeping to very general values just because we don't think it's really appropriate to micromanage people's beliefs. We're going to have people who self-identify as Satanists who have a variety of beliefs. But we feel like these are certain things, you know, there's just certain core values we can agree with and we really don't want to tighten our grip beyond those because I think then already you're running into problems. Already then you're becoming the kind of power you didn't want to be, the kind of thing you were rejecting all along. And that's part of the reason when people ask, well, why didn't you put your tenants, why don't you have your tenants carved into the stone on the monument you're putting up? And, you know, to me the idea of having, you know, fiat's etched in stone as though they can never be altered or changed is kind of offensive on its own. They should be, your thinking should be open to change. It should be open and available to new information.

What would a satanic planet look like? Well, huh, a satanic planet. You know, I think it would have to be like Revolt of the Angels again, like we would always be the minority group. It loses its meaning and it loses its value and it becomes something else if you become the dominant power structure. Satanism by its very nature I think always has to be the out group or the other. So that's an interesting thing. So if you achieve your agendas and this spread, what happens if people hear these interviews that you're doing and what you're calling self identifying with Satanism, it just happens that everyone's like, yeah, I guess I'm a Satanist. This sounds fantastic. Let's just imagine this is never going to happen.

But let's imagine that it happened. It spreads through the planet. Everyone's like personal sovereignty. Let's stop blowing people up. Let's figure out a way that we can all enjoy this planet together. What does that look like? Everyone's a Satanist now. You're saying that the moment that happens, it eradicates itself. Right. Well, that's something to shoot for, isn't it? I mean, I think some of the people who've been used to Satanism just being an excuse to dress up in all black and a fedora or a cape or whatever and frighten their neighbors, they're very upset at what they're doing.

And I think some of them are very upset about it because we're bringing it out into the open like this. And just by doing that, the very nature of doing that, you begin to change what it is. And they don't want that. They want it to be this obscure little personal club of theirs. But I feel like it's not worth anything either if you're not going to do anything with it. I mean, you have to set the pendulum swinging or get stagnated where you are. It's a really interesting conundrum here because if you have a religion that has as its rebel, as its hero, then the moment that you... Yeah, it's so funny that even within Satanism or sects of Satanism feel threatened by what you're doing and are trying to oppress you. That's hilarious so that the thing just keeps...

It's interesting. It's a really fascinating conundrum. Do you meet for services or do you have any kind of ceremonies that you do regularly? No, and it's funny because I don't know if you heard about the black mass we had scheduled to do at Harvard, but we were invited by a student group to perform a black mass. But the thing was, as I knew that would cause controversy, but I thought we could get rid of the controversy by promoting this as a black mass reenactment, which it was to be. We weren't claiming this to be an actual black mass because the actual black mass is kind of a figment of the imagination. It was always this kind of propaganda by the Catholic Church where people would claim these rituals took place. It kind of transmogrified from the witches' Sabbath to the black mass in which babies murdered and all those kinds of things.

The consecrated host is violated and everybody in the whole world falls apart thereafter or whatever. What we were going to do is rather an academic presentation. As part of that presentation, I was going to explain that given the general satanic loathing of rote protocol, procedure, and thoughtless ritualistic behavior, we're not really, this isn't really something we do, but nonetheless, there have been people who have latched on to the idea of doing a black mass, and for them it means something, and usually this is for people who are just kind of walking away from the religion that they were indoctrinated in. It's not meant to be like a focused attack against Catholics. It's really a declaration of personal independence. It's these people seeing that they can blaspheme or whatever else, and it really doesn't have an effect on them. It feels liberating to them. It's for them. It's not against the other guy, right?

Against Catholicism. Right, right. It's kind of against the general cultural programming that they feel that they've been oppressed by or whatever. And of course, that message never made it out. I didn't expect the kind of outcry that came up in the Boston Archdiocese where he released this ignorant statement where he was talking about opening the door to dark forces. He used that kind of terminology. It was insane. And there was this big uproar about it, but yeah, we don't typically do rituals or that kind of thing. When we do, they definitely have meaning. You know, I'm ordained now. We're a legitimate religious organization now.

So I understand the value of funerals, weddings, those kind of rituals that commemorate a point in time where you want to show respect for what's happening at this moment in time, you know, that kind of thing. So I do appreciate ritual on that level, but regular services, no, we're going to be opening chapter houses and they, you know, they may engage in those kinds of things. We're going to request that they have some kind of regular meetings and submit to us their minutes and it's up to them if they have those kinds of those kinds of events or not. Now, yeah, I understand what you're saying. Well, that's too bad. You know, everybody I talked to, you know, nobody's putting on robes anymore and that just seems fun to me. Throw on some black robes, mutter some things, see how you feel. It seems like a blast. We'll do it. We'll do it. No, in the pageant, she's great. I'm just saying we don't do it as regular services. You're not going to find us like every third Friday doing that or whatever. It's as the moment calls for. I don't know if you saw that we did our pink mask, but that was something where that was an event specific kind of ritual and that was an ad hoc ritual that we made just to offend that old fucker Fred Phelps. And I dumped my nuts on his mother's grave and we said that now she's a lesbian in the afterlife and you're obligated to believe that she is so.

Yeah, that's what a ritual is for. I mean, we were really doing something with that ritual. It wasn't some kind of hidden little event where we were hiding in the bushes and nobody knew that happened. No, we did that for, you know, ultimately that got out to a general audience and that that really worked its magic for lack of a better word in the real world. Wouldn't you say you're a good guy? I wouldn't say that. I don't think it's really up to me to decide. But when you're looking at like the hierarchy of good, you seem to be on like Fred Phelps. If we're going to like not that you're supposed to create a hierarchy, everything is one and everything ultimately originates from some big bang that we don't really understand. We are inextricably connected to each other. We're all part of this one beautiful force and there's no way out of that. We all are part of one thing. You don't have to call the force beautiful, but Fred Phelps, if I'm going to create a hierarchy of good, then I'm going to put Fred Phelps at the lowest end that I can possibly find. And I'm going to put somebody like you, a social activist who is fighting for personal autonomy, who is trying to help gay people get married, who wants to fight for women's rights.

I hate to say it, but you seem like a really great person and you seem driven by impulse to help the world become a better place. Is that fair to say? I think that's fair to say. I don't think it's really fair for me to say it because I don't want myself to become the focus of the story. I think this is something a lot of people can get behind. It doesn't really matter who I am or I don't need to be built up to be this kind of remarkable person. That's what every great person says. Sorry, Lucian. You have to deal with it, man. All the great people say it's not me. I don't want the focus to be on me, but it's an interesting thing. And I think that the more people can, you know, what I'm guilty of the opposite, I'm guilty of doing what the Christians do to you, to the Christians. Because when I think of Ann Coulter and when I think of the Pope coming out and saying only 2% of our priests are molesting kids, did you hear about that? When I hear these things again and again and again or when I hear about, you know, I don't mean to keep going back to it, but I just think of like when I was a kid at the beach, I'm there with my brother, I'm hanging out at the beach and all of a sudden I'm barbeque. And when I think about that and I think about that in some way being connected to a type of religion, or when I think of the opposite side shooting missiles randomly into a city, not caring where they land, all of these things, I get angry.

And I marginalize those people in my mind. And it seems like what you're doing is trying to keep that from happening on both sides. You know, the idea being that we're all allowed to be whoever we want to be in this world as long as we don't hurt other people. That makes you a great person. Well, thank you. Can you, would you mind two things and then we can wrap up? Do you have a second? Yeah, yeah, no problem. One thing would be for people listening who, what's something somebody listening could do right now to connect with the spirit of your religion and to make their lives better? What advice would you give to someone listening right now who is self identifying now as a Satanist? What's something that they could do to amplify their life or give some advice to the folks listening right now to make their lives better? See, I often stay away from giving people a direct advice because it is about finding your own way, but I will direct them to our website. You know, I do have a recommended reading list.

It explains where we're coming from. I have a few essays available and that kind of thing. And I really, you know, that really is kind of my focus is not trying to bring about followers, but really trying to give people the tools to be leaders themselves, to be leaders of their own lives. What's a tool? What's a tool? Name a tool that someone could do to start becoming a leader of their own lives. Oh, just kind of the educational tools. Just the kind of learning tools that are available to us now. Just the kind of critical thinking tools that are available to all of us. You know, just the kind of information we're privy to now is at, you know, so much exponentially larger than at any other time in history and we should really capitalize on that. And plus, we really are, I mean, despite the bombs being dropped and that kind of thing, that is all horrific, but we are in really the most peaceful time in our history and we should do our best we can to enjoy it. There's plenty of work to be done and, you know, people can see what kind of initiatives we're working on if they check on the website also. But I would really, you know, strongly encourage people if they're really looking for somebody to show them the way, I would, I would say, I would tell, I would encourage them not to find somebody to show them the way. Yes, no shit.

Beautiful, beautiful. And I'm going to apply that to my own life too. The last thing is, is it possible since you are an ordained minister, can we close this podcast with this satanic prayer? Oh, yeah, you know, let me, let me look up the one that I gave to the Los Angeles Times. Perfect. And this was, this was in response to, as I said, the, the Supreme Court decision to allow the public prayers. And the Los Angeles Times immediately reached out to me, given that decision and asked if there were any satanic prayers that could open the town meeting. And I turned it in. And here's what I offered. Let me know what you think.

Great. Let it, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism and all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is done Hail Satan.

Hail Satan. That's awesome. What a beautiful prayer. Wow. Thank you so much for giving me this time and for doing this interview. It's been quite enlightening talking with you. And what are some ways that people listening can reach out to you? Twitter is at Satanic Psalms, S-A-T-A-N-I-C-P-S-A-L-M-S. And our website is TheSatanicTemple.com. Beautiful. Oh man. And find us on Facebook too. We do a lot of updates on Facebook.

That's the most Satanic thing you've said so far. Yeah. Well, a lot of the action seems to be there. Okay, cool. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. And I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening everybody. That was Lucian Greaves. And a big thanks to Nature Box. Don't forget to go to naturebox.com. 4- slash family hour and start waging war against the dark demon that lives inside your love handles.

A million times worse than Satan. Litany to Satan. From Baudelaire. Translated by James L. Roy Flecker. Read by Stephen Collins. O Granus of the Angels, and most wise, O fallen God, fate driven from the skies. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. O first of exiles who endurest wrong, yet growest, and thy hatred still more strong. Satan, at last take pity on our pain.

O subterranean king, omniscient, healer of man's immortal discontent. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. Two lepers and two outcasts thou dost show, that passion is the paradise below. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. Thou, by thy mistress death has given to man, hope, the imperishable courtesion. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. Thou give us the guilty, their calm mean, which damns the crowd around the guillotine. Satan, at last take pity on our pain.

Thou knowest the corners of the jealous earth, where God is hidden jewels of great worth. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. Thou dost discover by mysterious signs, where sleep the buried people of the mines. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. Thou stretches forth the saving hand to keep, such men as roam upon the roofs and sleep. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. Thy power can make the halting drunkard's feet, avoid the peril of the surging street. Satan, at last take pity on our pain.

Thou, to console our helplessness, displot, the cunning use of powder and of shot. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. Thy awful name is written, as with pitch, on the unrelenting foreheads of the rich. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. In strange and hidden places thou dost move, where women cry for torture in their love. Satan, at last take pity on our pain. Father of those whom God's temptuous ire has flung from paradise with sword and fire. Satan, at last take pity on our pain.

Prayer Satan, to thee be praised upon the height, where thou wast king of old and in the night, of hell, without a stream on silently. Grant that one day beneath the knowledge tree, when it shoots forth to grace thy royal brow, my soul may sit that cries upon thee now.