Stuff You Should Know - How Satanism Works

Episode Date: August 31, 2017

Satanism may be the most misunderstood "religion" in the world. Part of that is because there are, and have been, many offshoots of Satanism, from The Church of Satan to The Satanic Temple. One thing is sure though, none of them are filled with evil humans who perform ritual blood sacrifice and worship a cloven-hoofed devil. Learn all about Satanism in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's us, Josh and Chuck, and we just wanted to say that if you have very strong religious beliefs, I don't know, you may wanna skip this one. Yeah, you know, we talk about Satanism in this episode

and what seems like glowing terms, but for my part at least, I was just trying to have a little fun with it. So I hope that comes across. Yeah, we have an intellectual conversation about Satanism, how about that? All right, agreed. All right, well, on to the show, Chuck.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, seated directly across from me is Juan Charles W. Wayne, Charles Chuckers Bryant. That's pretty good. Oh, yells above himself. Yup, and there is old scratch to my right. Matt, do you let people know your last name?

Oh yeah, you're a personality. Matt Frederick. But I don't want him to get kidnapped. Guess producer Matt Frederick of the old days, co-host of Stuff They Don't Want You to Know, and now supervising producer for podcasts. Whoa, man, we don't let our producers talk on our episodes. So we're gonna have to beep 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. Yup. Lovely child.

Yes. Great family. Loves Indian food. I didn't know that. Oh yeah. Yeah? It's bread and butter, as it were. It's his ghee and naan.

Now he's afraid to talk, which he should be. That's good. Matt's here. Yeah. So thank you, Matt, and Hail Satan. I was gonna say Hail Satan. Hail Satan, Chuck. Hail Satan, Josh.

It's funny, I went from, and when reading this, the thinking Satanists are just libertarians. Yeah. To, no, Satanists are kind of Republicans. And I don't mean that, you'll see what I mean. Okay. Philosophically in some ways. I don't mean, and then I thought, I'm a Satanist.

Okay. Did you, did you have an awakening? Well yeah, I mean, I read some of this stuff in their FAQ on their website, and some of their fundamentals, and their 11 rules of Earth, and their nine Satanic statements. We'll read all that stuff.

Yeah. I thought, well, geez, I agree with a lot of this stuff. There are 13 things to avoid getting gouged at the grocery store. What Satanists are not, almost assuredly, are not evil people who meet in dark churches to perform ritual blood sacrifice, and eat hearts, and draw pentagrams on it.

Well, they may draw pentagrams. Yeah, that part's actually true. But there's more things that Satanists are not. I think if you're coming to this blind without knowing anything, you'll probably be surprised about just how kind of groovy they are. And this is the church of Satan,

that I'm talking about mainly. No, I think you can apply what you just said to all Satanists. Yeah, true. Because if you're a Satanist, you would take umbrage at the idea that somebody who actually believes in the supernatural entity, Satan,

is not a Satanist. Right. 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, which is a completely different kind of thing. Yeah, and I didn't even finish. The last thing that I thought, 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.

Temple of Satan, It's such a rain. Satanic temple? Yeah, Satanic temple. They are, they are, I saw them compared to, or analogized as a dark yes-men. Remember, 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. I'm 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. And if, like Chuck said, you're coming into this blind, let us illuminate for you.

Let us bring the light to your eyes. Yes, and we both grew goatees for this episode. Yeah, exactly. That's specifically shaped our heads. And horns. John and Strickland actually could do a, Oh man. Sort of an amateur Anton Levet, if you 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 Grabster article. So you know, it's got the goods and talk a little bit about the origin story of Satan, which 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, that 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. Right. 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 uncertainties is because Satan wasn't a figure in early Judaism, because the early Jews believed that 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, there wasn't dualism, which is there's good and the bad, there's light and the dark, and they equal each other out. In 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 or she let bad things happen? And so the need for the concept of Satan emerged later on, and because of the early Judaism's proximity to Persia, which was ruling the land at the time

at about like the sixth to third centuries BCE, Persia had Zoroastrianism, which had dualism, so they kind of introduced 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 he's like an attorney in the heavens legal system, throwing the book at people. Like Al Pacino. Oh yeah, quite literally. What, didn't he play the devil? Or did he?

As a lawyer. Right. Devil's advocate. Right. With Keanu. I don't think I ever saw that. I didn't either. Okay.

But I mean, we were both alive at the time, so we know. Yeah. 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. He gets into the Christian New Testament,

and it starts to clear up a bit 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 tool. God uses in the Bible at least as a test, like go down there and test these humans. Go get that guy. To see which way their allegiance lay.

Right. That Satan's called the scriptural Satan, or Satan of the scriptures, right? Yeah. He also kind of comes out of nowhere in the New Testament to tempt Jesus in the desert, I believe. And I mean, you know all this, right? Yeah.

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 it's stuttering, when I didn't hear the story about Moses and 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.

Oh, good. It was from something else. Right. It was from the Disney movie. Yeah. So, but in one of the gospels in the New Testament, 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 that everybody should know, but if you're just reading the New Testament from beginning to end, you're like, what, who's this guy? Yeah. 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 bent on corrupting man and getting man to stray from God's flock, basically. Yeah. And there are these, there are certain demons that are named properly in the Bible, like Beelzebub and Belial. 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, 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? Yeah.

So early Christianity and I guess middle Judaism had this kind of tendency to take other religions, gods, and make them the evil characters in their religions. Because they wanted Christianity to flourish. Right, exactly. They wanted to make the competition look bad as a way to do it. It was a smear tactic and a campaign to get converts, right?

So Beelzebub is actually a corruption of Bilal Zavuv, or no, I'm sorry, Bilal Zavuv, Bilal the Exalted. I think if you say that one more time, people appear here. Right, that's true. And Bal, B-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 if you say Bal Zavuv, that means Lord of the Flies, not Lord the Exalted. So it was like a slam on their competition's main god and that's where Beelzebub came from. And that's actually, that will become a common play in the Christian playbook of smearing the other guys' gods by making them evil figures in Christian mythology. Plato, Orata.

Beelzebub. Remember, there was a dead milkman album called Beelzebubba? Yes. That had like that guy and a tractor on the cover. That was Beelzebubba. Yeah. Well, the same with Lucifer

and when we finally got the English language King James Bible in 1611, Lucifer was really a Latin term for a 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 light bringer, the one who would reveal the truth to people that they were actually being held down by God.

Yeah. Which is not the Christian way. Right, so what you were saying by co-opting, all these are not co-opting, but what kind of co-opting these bad religions, another band. That's actually a real band name. Yeah, correct.

These bad religions and saying those are the bad ones, they would, that's how like the devil that we know today, the Satan, sorry that we know today has taken shape because they, like the Greek god Pan had the cloven hooves and the horns, and the Bacchus, the Roman god is where you get this insatiable Bacchanalian decadence, which as we'll see with the church of Satan,

is it too far off? They certainly love their orgies. Sure. And their trays of fine meats and roasted meats and cheeses. Jugs of wine. So in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, then this mythology, Christian mythologies expanded, you get a couple of books that were very key

into shaping who we think of today as Satan. Right. One was John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, then of course, Dante's Divine Comedy. This is where we got the idea that Satan was an angel expelled from heaven because of his pride, who then said, and I will defeat the Lord. Wow, 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 as Satan don't show up anywhere in the actual Bible, Old Testament or New Testament. All that stuff came afterwards. So Chuck, the enlightenment was another turning point then. Big time.

For the conception of Satan. This is, his evolution as like a scary supernatural otherworldly figure takes a different turn because the enlightenment was based on rational thought. Yeah. Secular humanism finds its roots in the enlightenment. And they started to come to see Satan as a kind of a creative force almost.

Yeah. A foil to the establishment. This idea that Satan is the opposite of the established norms and customs and moral goods. Yeah. And that he's kind of like a handy archetype for that. So he stops, he loses some of his supernatural. Jewish?

Yes. And is replaced by metaphorical Jewish. Yeah, and I think that seems to be the one that the church of Satan sort of identified with a little more. Was it, Satan was just a free thinking dude? Yeah, apparently that's where they got, that's where it finds its roots with the enlightenment.

Very interesting. Which makes sense because most Satanists would be probably humanists, secular humanists although they're individualists, but you could make a case that that's an individual humanism. Yeah. And that comes out of the enlightenment as well. So you wanna take a break and then keep going

or you wanna keep going? Yeah, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit about witches right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. And it's like it's just a little shock. So I promised talk of witches. We did in the, geez, that was a long time ago. We did episode on witchcraft 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. Basically anything, anything in opposition to organized Christianity was Satan worship. Right. And that's the same thing as saying your God, your Creator deity is like Satan in our religion. It's the same thing. Anything that's in opposition to Christian thought

is automatically heretical. And the kind of almost like the lazy short-hand way of describing it is it's Satanic. Yeah. 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 and we haven't, I know stuff you miss in history class

to the good episode on what really happened in Salem, which we'll probably cover that at some point, I imagine. But I think everyone pretty much knows at this point about 60,000 people, mainly women were put to death in the American colonies in Europe. And under the guise of being Satan worshipers and witches and practicing witchery. And by all accounts, they generally were,

I don't like the way that lady looked at me in the town today. Or you know what, I think she stole milk from my cow. Or I want her land. Or I want her land. Or my wife is jealous of her. Right. So they're all witches.

Let's burn them. Let's throw them in lakes and see if they float. And let's burn them. Because if they don't float, then they're not witches for the drown. 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 witches, again, to basically force the competition out. Yeah. What did we talk about that one in? That seemed more recent. I can't remember. Grave robbing? Did we talk about that in Grave Robbing?

Feels like it. It does. 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 the mainstream Christianity. So like the Masons or the Illuminati today? Yeah.

Yeah. And like they were Christian at base. Gnostics. But then they had like, yeah, they had this other occult ideas in addition to it, right? So like the Cathars or Cathars are a good example of that. They were in, I think like the 12th to 14th century France. And they were like Christian plus, right?

They were, the Cathars means like the pure ones. They were so Christian that they felt like just being a normal Pius Christian wasn't enough. And you actually had to be baptized again. It was basically like a born again Christian process. But in again, like 12th, 13th 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 a heretic and hence Satanist. And esoteric order believed in Dan Brown books basically. 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 Satanist, but there's no evidence whatsoever that any of them were satanic and like in truth. Yeah. 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. Oh, interesting. And that 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 that is as satanic

as you can possibly get in your beliefs. Cause 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 you would think of it today. Well, yeah, and Ed even points out in here, the Gravster that 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. Right. That's a huge one because that's one of the ways that Christianity was able to smear its rivals by suggesting that they were part of a huge massive cult, satanic cult. And I mean, like 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 gonna make you stay to the straight and narrow of your prescribed religion even more. Yeah, yeah. Right? Fire and brimstone and whatnot.

Yes. I grew up with that, you know. Yeah. And that 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 Staken Ale.

Right. Man, I miss Staken Ale. Are they done? There's surely they're around, right? There's probably like one in Vegas and one in Hong Kong or something weird like that. That'd be funny if the one on the Hong Kong was like this retro, Bobrack themed American thing, you know?

Yeah. It's like America in the 80s. Right. All right, well, let's talk about Anton LeVe then. Let's. Time has come. Oh, wait, I wanna say one more thing. Okay.

So in the, I think the 14th century, the Knights Templar, another esoteric order, but a military order, we're accused of worshiping Baphomet. And Baphomet is Satan with like the goat's head and horns. Yeah. That's the great looking statue they tried to put up in Oklahoma.

Right. Well, Baphomet is most likely an alteration or a mistranslation or something of Muhammad. And that it was used to basically include Muhammad as Satan in the Christian ethos when the Christians first encountered Muslims during the Crusades. Yeah.

So it was like the same thing, but a thousand years after they did it to Beelzebub, they did it to Muhammad. And we should do like a tin parter on the Crusades. Yeah, we should. Starting now. Just tried to think if I could, I would be up for that. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't think so. All right. Can we invite Anton LeVe in? Yes, now we can come in. The ghost of Anton LeVe? It is Jonathan Strickland. So this dude, he was born, he's the founder of the Church of Satan,

if you did not know that. Look up a picture of him. You've probably seen him before. Bald Head, Goatee. Look at all that guy. 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 high priestess. His name is Peggy, which I think is adorable. Sure. There she is, this is cute old lady. Yeah.

I know even that old, but. Yeah. She's like, oh, really? Old lady, huh? Yeah. Oh, no. She smiles in photos, but every other picture are like, you know, their eyes are big and they're frowning or they're licking their teeth or something.

Yeah. Come on. I was on the Church of Satan website yesterday and I saw a picture of some Satanists all smiling. Oh, yeah. But it was because Anton LeVe had a naked woman over his knee and was faking it. So they do smile in some pictures.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. LeVe was born Howard, Howard LeVe, Howard Stanton LeVe in 1930 in Chicago. All right. And the more I read about him and his early years, supposed early years,

the more he sounded like Elron Hubbard. Yeah, kind of. Because Elron Hubbard and Anton LeVe both, if you ask them about their backgrounds, they'll tell you one thing. Right. If you ask someone else. Their mothers.

Like Lawrence Wright, who does research. Right. 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, just as much as you possibly could as a form of showmanship.

Nah. Anton LeVe 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. He was a very talented organist

who worked for Lesk shows. 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. One thing that everyone will say though is that he was interested in the occult. He was interested in pulp horror novels and magazines.

Like Lovecraft. Love Lovecraft. And he was interested in, he was very much turned off by the double standards, what he perceived to be the double standards of mainstream Christianity. Right. Cause supposedly he would play in these burlesque shows

and see all 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 BS. Yeah. He didn't like phonies. Didn't like phonies. Phonies drove him crazy. Him and Holden Caulfield.

Right. So in the 1960s, and this is kind of like with Elron Hubbard again. He started, Levet started hosting these lectures on paranormal and he had a lot of flair and everyone was like, man, who is this guy? He's really got something. 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. Sure.

And so people in the 60s were like, there was a time in the late 60s where he was, there's this great article in the telegraph when Satanism seduced Hollywood or something like that, where it was sort of the thing to be a Satanist and to go to these parties because you would go in and there would be drugs and drink and nakedness. Like eyes wide shut up in there.

Right. And everyone from like some of the Beach Boys to Sammy Davis Jr. to Liberace. Liberace was a Satanist? He said he was for a while. I didn't know that. Sammy Davis Jr. definitely was. He even had a TV pilot that he tried to get made

about like a sitcom that was Satan friendly. That he like works for the devil or something. We've got to find that. We have to find that. It was supposed to be really bad and they only made one of them, but. Oh, so there is, so it's out there somewhere. Well, supposedly he made a pilot

that never went beyond that. Gotcha. Jane Mansfield was another famous Satanist? Yeah, so it was a big thing and Charles Manson kind of ruined all that. Oh yeah. Manson ruined a lot of stuff. It's being cool to go to the Church of Satan.

But at any rate, LaVe was making waves and in 1966 created officially the Church of Satan. And in 1969, published the Satanic Bible, which is pretty interesting to read through. I haven't read it all, but I read quite a bit of passages. So one of the things that he's accused of is plagiarism. Yeah, for sure. And his adherents 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 that he didn't really give credit to, but there was a book. So he wrote the Satanic Bible in 69. Published in 1969, yeah. There was a book published in 1890,

I think it was called Might is Right. And it was written pseudonomously by a guy named Ragnar Redbeard. Ragnar Redbeard wrote this book and it was extremely into social Darwinism. It was individualistic to the point of being anarchistic. It had all of the requisite 1890s racism and sexism attendant to it as well.

But the point of it was is like, why would you love your enemies? This whole doctrine of love is BS, we're animals. And if you have an enemy, you should go out and beat him up because he's your enemy and you don't need to love him. You need to love yourself. And it was really just a surprising book that apparently still a lot of people read today.

And apparently Anton LeVay read it and adopted a lot of it. But then he also wrote a lot about ritual and stuff as well and prescribed 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 rituals, there is compassion.

And that's not just for others, but also yourself. There's lust and then there is 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 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 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 he'll say, Christianity teaches you to repress all that stuff. That ain't no good for you. You need to go release 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 stuff. It's the same with destruction, cleansing oneself of anger towards someone who has done you an injustice. Like, why sit on that? Why deal with it?

You're sitting there stewing about it. Smash the face. Go put on your velvet robe. Well, no, no, 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. They even say like, you know,

certainly don't owe anybody being nice to them or anything like that. But there seems to be kind of a, I haven't seen any overt calls to violence. It just seems to be like, if that's what you deem as 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 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 11 Satanic rules of the earth? Please.

Number one, do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked. Okay. Not bad. Yeah. Number two, do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them. Yeah, that's right.

Not bad. Number three, when in another's lair, show him respect or else do not go there. Yeah. Respect someone's home. Number four, if a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy. Number five, do not make sexual advances

unless you are given the mating signal. Cocoa. This is sort of... Cock-a-chaw, cock-a-chaw. That's a 60s 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 it. 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 fruity. I didn't even hear that full when I trailed off so 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 number eight. Oh, you want me to repeat that? Please. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself. Yes.

Number nine, do not harm little children. Well, you 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 sacrifice children and you perform 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, and one of the things of the satanic temple who we'll talk about in a little while, point out is that there have been a lot of cases of people who are supposedly exercising demons from children who have actually harmed and in fact killed children

and that there's no, I think we talked about this in the satanic panic episode two. There's no documented cases of satanists harming children. Right. Is there against it? And in fact, they won't even accept anyone

under the age of 18 into the church of satan. Yeah, because self-consent is extremely important to satanists of all stripes. The idea of being forced into, indoctrinated into any church before you can make a decision for yourself really goes against the idea of individual liberty and thus satanic thought.

Number 10, 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. No, which 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. Yeah, if you wanna eat the cheetah. Kill it. And then finally, drumroll, 11 satanic rules of the earth. When walking into open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop.

If he does not stop, destroy him. Nice. Sounds like a tenacious D lyric. It does, but the way you counted down, it was like a letterman list. I know, I like that. That was good, man. I miss Dave.

I wonder how many long time listeners we've lost at this episode. I don't know. You wanna take another break? Yeah, I mean, there's still so much more, but we gotta break at some point. Yeah, we're gonna take a break. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, we're back with Satan. Remember the kids in the hall? Oh yeah. Kevin McDonald, I think, with Satan? Was that him? Yeah. Yeah, that's good stuff.

So we've been talking a little bit about the philosophies of the Church of Satan. 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 are stupidity, pretentiousness, solipsism, self-deceit, herd conformity, lack of perspective, forgetfulness, forgetfulness, a past orthodoxy, counterproductive pride, and lack of aesthetics. A lot of those are really, really tough to explain.

Anton Leves, well, some of them are pretty self-evident, but forgetfulness of past orthodoxies. Leves wrote this list in 1987, and it's on the Church of Satan website, if you're interested, go check it out. Because some of you are like, oh, it kind of makes sense. 87, 67. 87, nice, well. Oh, really?

Well, it was copyrighted in 1987. So the takeaway is that the Church of Satan and Leveyon Satanism, what it really is, is atheistic, anti-Christian ideals. Well, that is something that you said that is really important. The Church of Satan specifically, the one founded by Anton Leves. Yes. Is, has positioned itself as counter to Christianity. It really does not like Christianity.

Right. And as a result, it's allowed itself to kind of be drawn into a lot of pedanticness 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. So if that kind of turns you off, well, then friends, you're going to love the Satanic temple. Yeah.

And if you were interested in that, you can become a member of the Church of Satan by sending $200 to a PO box that you can find on their website. But you get a membership card and that's it. That's all you get. Yeah. And there's actually a lot of criticism among Satanists of the Church of Satan. Oh, yeah. Because, you know, they haven't done anything for a really long time.

And a lot of people give credit to Levey for founding the Church of Satan and that while he was alive, the Church was thriving. But after he died, the Church kind of died with him in the eyes of a lot of Satanists, especially Satanic temple adherents that I've seen. Yeah. It's now headed by Peter Gilmore, who 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

not to change his name to Peter Grimmore. And then, as I mentioned earlier, Peggy Nadramia is the high priestess right now. Yeah. But I agree. Moving on to the Satanic temple is 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 Matt Frederick. It was given to me by someone, but it's called The Satanic Children's Big Book of Activities.

And it's wonderful. We talked about that for sure on Internet Roundup, for sure. And that was just like one and a string of, I don't want to say countless because if I bothered to, I could count them, but there was like a string of basically political, Satanic-based political 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're using Satanism, although they all subscribe to philosophical, atheistic, human secularism, Satanism.

Minus the social Darwinism. Right. And the Ain-Ran Libertarianism. 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 mugs. So, with this, they use this poison pill, these list of projects. One of them was The Satanic Children's Activity Book, which they printed up to distribute at schools. I think there was a school, I don't know, where they used it, but they used it.

The Satanic Children's Activity Book, which they printed up to distribute at schools. I think there was a school in Florida where Christian evangelists were handing out pamphlets at a public school. Yeah. 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 government. So, we can go do it too. So, they start handing out Satanic stuff. And any time 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 what's going on.

Like sanctioned Christian endorsement via politics. Yep. And by the way, when I say that that children's workbook is wonderful, and if you're out there going, oh, why don't you say that? Like, 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, Instagram t-shirts and stuff. Right. Yeah. Which makes me wonder, like, what about this? Why call themselves that? It seems like they just are another trying to rabble rouse and get attention. But I think they might get a little further if, or maybe that's the whole point.

I think we'll, 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. Right. Well, most likely, every single person in that town that the city council represents is not Christian. Right. But since it was, there was a, there was some landmark court ruling, I can't remember when, maybe 2014, where the Supreme Court said, no, it's actually okay, as long as they don't prohibit any religions from doing this. Right.

The Satanist showed up and said, well, here come the Satanists, we're going to give a benediction to open up your city council meeting. And the city council said, okay, nobody's going to do prayers anymore. Well, that's kind of what their job is. Right. To shut it down. But if they, if they just did it like, well, the secular humanists are here and we're going to say a prayer, they'd 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, they're, they would just, they would rather stop the city council implicitly endorsing the Christian prayer than to allow the Satanic prayer as well. That's how it works. Yeah. And it's the same with the statue in Oklahoma. Yeah. They said, oh, well, you're going to put up your statue or we're going to put up one of,

what's it called? Baphomet. Baphomet, which again, I know you've seen the statue. We both love it just because it's so cool looking. Looks like the cover of some great heavy metal album. It does. But it's like nine feet tall. Yeah.

The two kids looking up adoringly. And Chuck, the Satanic temple has 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 to teach reasoning and social skills to kids.

Yeah. And again, as a counter to something called the Good News Club, which is an evangelical Christian after school program. So again, they're saying, you got yours? We'll have ours. Yeah. And there's another 2001 Supreme Court ruling that said, you know what? Sure, we can have religious after school programs and the just the floodgates opened.

And the Lucian Greaves, whose name is Doug Mezner. 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 weren't, 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, instilling children with the 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. 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 humanists, atheists at heart,

they do want to associate with the Satanic temple or church of Satan. They, a lot of times, will still keep it quiet, keep it a secret, because you will get, people don't get what it's about and they will think, well, again, they people still believe that they have blood sacrifice and sacrifice animals and eat the hearts out of goats and things like that. Right, and there have been people in history who have killed in the name of Satan, and that's who people point to and say, see, see, Satanists are killers. And it's like, no, that person was out of their mind.

Yeah, 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 Satanist will point out that Satanists are atheists, that they see Satan as a construct, as a metaphor, a 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 atheism. Oh, that's catchy. Isn't it? The lowercase I. He's like, yes, Gilmore, you genius. What did you say his name should have been?

Grimmore. Or Kilmore. Yeah, Richard Ramirez, David Berkowitz, son of Sam, talked about demons. Ricky Casso, famously in the 70s, I was an American teen who killed someone in the name of Satan, and much too, Angus Young Chagrin was hauled into court with his ACDC t-shirt on. Right. We're not going to get too much into this because you can go listen to our great episode on the Satanic Panic of the 80s from January 5th, 2016.

But in short, it was a time where people like Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest were making use of satanic imagery purely for gags and selling records. None of it was, I mean, today there are some legit creepy dark metal bands that 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 worshiping ghoul, you know? Anyone who's ever seen him on television can tell you that. Yeah, I mean, if there's fleshing out, there are supposedly the goth scene in Germany in

particular is where neo-Nazism and neo-paganism kind of come together. Yeah. A lot of people point to that as some sort of neo-Satanism. But again, if you're talking about Satanism with a capital S 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. You got anything else? Yeah.

Just 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 or all loving just because the Satanist admits he is capable of both love and hate. He is considered hateful. On the contrary, because he is 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 is 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. Seuss or Anton Levé. Yeah, that's Zoroastrian dualism if I've ever heard it. Yeah.

Well, if you want to know more about Satanism, well, go look up this article. It's a Grabster article on HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said Grabster, it's time for Listener Mail. Hello, Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark. Hello. Very formal. This is on stuttering. I've stuttered for most of my life.

I say most of my life because it started when I was five. As you mentioned in your show, there are 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 as 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.

Or actually, 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 I'd hear, 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 67, 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.

Not caring. Yeah. Stress brings it out and does, as I was talking about my difficult and bizarre childhood, I'm a singer. I'm one of the resident shantysingers at the National Maritime Historical Park at Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco. Nice. And I've 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 was from Richard Adrian Owitz. Thank you, Richard. I love that one. Yeah. Good one. Nice.

And everybody who's in San Francisco go down to go down to Fisherman's Wharf and see Richard. Yeah. Check out the show. The Mel Tillis of Shantysing. I love it. If you want to get in touch with us, you can hang out with us on Twitter at S.Y.S.K. Podcast or Josh Elm Clark. You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook.com

or at Stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.