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How Satanism Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's us Josh and Chuck, and we just
0:03
Speaker 1: wanted to say that if you have very strong religious beliefs,
0:06
Speaker 1: I don't know, you may want to skip this one. Yeah.
0:08
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about Satanism in this episode and
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Speaker 1: what seems like glowing terms, but um, for my part
0:15
Speaker 1: at least, I was just trying to have a little
0:17
Speaker 1: fun with it, So I hope that comes across. Yeah,
0:20
Speaker 1: we have an intellectual conversation about Satanism. How about that?
0:23
Speaker 1: All right? Agreed? Alright, Well, onto the show. Chuck, welcome
0:28
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
0:38
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Seated directly
0:41
Speaker 1: across from me is one Charles w Wayne, Charles Chuckers,
0:46
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. That's pretty good, yells above himself and there
0:52
Speaker 1: is um old scratch to my right. Matt, Matt, do
0:59
Speaker 1: you let people well know your last name? Oh? Yeah,
1:01
Speaker 1: you're a personality, Matt Frederick, But I don't want him
1:05
Speaker 1: to get kidnapped. Guest producer Matt Frederick of The Old Days, Uh,
1:10
Speaker 1: co host of Stuff They Don't Want You to Know
1:12
Speaker 1: and now supervising producer for Podcasts man, we don't let
1:17
Speaker 1: our producers talk on our episodes, so we're gonna have
1:20
Speaker 1: to beat that out. Matt says, that was a huge announcement.
1:24
Speaker 1: You just said, yeah, nice, well congrats Matt, and Matt's
1:28
Speaker 1: been working here forever just like us. Nice lovely wife,
1:34
Speaker 1: lovely child, great family, loves Indian food. I didn't know that.
1:40
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's as bread and butter as it were.
1:43
Speaker 1: It's a gey and non. Now he's afraid to talk,
1:45
Speaker 1: which he should be. Uh, Matt's here. Yeah, so thank you, Matt.
1:53
Speaker 1: And Hail Satan. I was gonna say, Hail Satan, Hal Satan,
1:56
Speaker 1: Chuck Hal Satan. Josh. It's funny I it from and
2:01
Speaker 1: when reading this, the thinking Satanists are just libertarians too. No,
2:10
Speaker 1: Satanis are kind of Republicans. And I don't mean that.
2:14
Speaker 1: You'll see what I mean philosophically in some ways I
2:16
Speaker 1: don't mean. And then I thought, I'm a Satanist. Did
2:23
Speaker 1: you did you have a wit? I mean, I've read
2:25
Speaker 1: some of the stuff and the there f a Q
2:28
Speaker 1: on their website and some of their fundamentals, and they're there.
2:32
Speaker 1: There are eleven rules of Earth and their nine Satanic
2:35
Speaker 1: statements will read all that stuff. I thought, geez, I
2:38
Speaker 1: agree with a lot of stuff. They're thirteen things to
2:40
Speaker 1: avoid getting gouged at the grocery store. What Satanists are not,
2:45
Speaker 1: almost assuredly, are not ah evil people who meet in
2:54
Speaker 1: dark churches to perform ritual blood sacrifice and eat hearts
2:59
Speaker 1: and draw pentagrams on they may draw pagrams. Yeah, that's
3:04
Speaker 1: that part is actually true. But there's there's more things
3:07
Speaker 1: that Satanists are not. I think if you're coming into
3:09
Speaker 1: this blind um without knowing anything, you'll probably be surprised
3:15
Speaker 1: about just how kind of groovy they are. And this
3:19
Speaker 1: is the Church of Satan. But I'm talking about mainly.
3:22
Speaker 1: Uh No, I think you can. You can apply to
3:25
Speaker 1: what you just said to all Satanists, because if you're
3:28
Speaker 1: a Satanist, you would take umbrage at the idea that
3:31
Speaker 1: somebody who actually believes in the supernatural entity Satan as
3:39
Speaker 1: not a Satanist, because Satanism, by definition, at least modern
3:44
Speaker 1: Satanism by definition, is an atheistic philosophy. So there's no
3:49
Speaker 1: supernatural entities of any kind to Satanists, So somebody who
3:53
Speaker 1: worships Satan would be a devil worshiper is a completely
3:57
Speaker 1: different kind of thing. Yeah, and I didn't even finish
4:01
Speaker 1: the last thing. Well, no, I mean I got off track.
4:03
Speaker 1: The last thing I thought when I was reading about
4:05
Speaker 1: the Temple of Satan is that these are just liberal hippies.
4:08
Speaker 1: The temple is Satan, the Satanic Temple, sat Temple. They are,
4:13
Speaker 1: they are. Um. I saw them compared to or analogized
4:17
Speaker 1: as a dark yes men. You know the yes Men. No, oh,
4:22
Speaker 1: you gotta check out the yes Men. There's a couple
4:24
Speaker 1: of yes Men documentaries and they basically do this, but
4:27
Speaker 1: it's not satanically associated. And I wonder why it was
4:30
Speaker 1: satanically associated, Like it sounds like you're a bunch of
4:33
Speaker 1: liberal hippie scientists to me, Well, we'll get into all that. Okay, Okay,
4:37
Speaker 1: So we're talking Satanists and Satanism. If you couldn't tell,
4:41
Speaker 1: because we have been saying Satan a lot um and if,
4:44
Speaker 1: like Chuck said, um, you're coming into this blind, let
4:49
Speaker 1: us illuminate for you. Let us bring the light. And
4:53
Speaker 1: we both group gotes for this episode exactly typically and
4:57
Speaker 1: shaped our heads and horns. John and Strickland actually could
5:00
Speaker 1: do a sort of an amateur Anton LaVey if he
5:04
Speaker 1: wanted to, he could. I'm sure he does at home,
5:06
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. All right, so let's
5:10
Speaker 1: go back and this is a grabstor article, so you
5:11
Speaker 1: know it's got the goods um and talk a little
5:15
Speaker 1: bit about the origin story of Satan, which, um, we
5:19
Speaker 1: will lead up to sort of what the modern version
5:21
Speaker 1: of that is. But if you're thinking red guy with
5:25
Speaker 1: a pitch fork and pointy hooves, it's uh tries to
5:30
Speaker 1: lure people away from God to do bad things. That
5:34
Speaker 1: kind of came around later. So we need to go
5:36
Speaker 1: back further to the Hebrew Bible, which the Christian Old
5:39
Speaker 1: Testament is derived from. And there's a lot of uncertainty
5:43
Speaker 1: on what Satan actually meant, depending on how you want
5:46
Speaker 1: to translate the Hebrew term, right. And the reason there's
5:49
Speaker 1: uncertainty is because Satan wasn't a figure in early Judaism.
5:56
Speaker 1: Because the early Jews believed that all God was all things.
6:03
Speaker 1: God was good, God was evil, God was responsible for
6:06
Speaker 1: everything in the universe. There wasn't what we understand now
6:11
Speaker 1: or anybody who thinks of the Judeo Christian ethic now, Um,
6:16
Speaker 1: there wasn't dualism, which is, there's good and the bad,
6:20
Speaker 1: there's light and the dark, and they they equal each
6:24
Speaker 1: other out. And early Judaism this didn't exist. It was
6:26
Speaker 1: all in one, so there was no need for Satan, right,
6:29
Speaker 1: But as this concept of an all benevolent, loving God spread,
6:35
Speaker 1: this question arose, which was, well, wait a minute, if
6:39
Speaker 1: God is just so benevolent and loving, why does he
6:42
Speaker 1: why does he or she um let bad things happen?
6:47
Speaker 1: And so the need for the concept of Satan emerged
6:52
Speaker 1: later on, and because of the um early Judaism's proximity
6:58
Speaker 1: to Persia, which was ruling the land at the time
7:03
Speaker 1: at about like the six to third centuries b c.
7:07
Speaker 1: E um. Persia had Zoroastrianism, which had dualism. So they
7:12
Speaker 1: kind of introduced, uh, the Hebrew faith to dualism, and
7:17
Speaker 1: hence Satan was originally born. Yeah, so there's no like
7:20
Speaker 1: consensus when you look at these old texts what these
7:24
Speaker 1: translations mean. Sometimes it is an adversary or an opponent
7:29
Speaker 1: to God. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's, uh, he's like
7:34
Speaker 1: the the an attorney and Heaven's legal system. Throw in
7:39
Speaker 1: the book at people like um al Pacina. Oh yeah,
7:44
Speaker 1: quite literally, what didn't you play the devil or did
7:46
Speaker 1: he as a lawyer? Right, devil's advocate with Keanu. I
7:51
Speaker 1: don't think I ever saw that. I didn't either, but
7:54
Speaker 1: I mean we're both alive at the time, so we know, uh,
7:59
Speaker 1: they're uh you know. You look at all these different
8:02
Speaker 1: forms of what the word meant back then before it
8:05
Speaker 1: became the modern version we all know. And the one
8:07
Speaker 1: kind of common thread through all of them, though, is
8:09
Speaker 1: that Satan was an outsider who was sort of against
8:14
Speaker 1: the man and these established values that everyone else seemed
8:17
Speaker 1: to believe in right, or established rules, or just even
8:20
Speaker 1: the establishment in general. Yes, he's the antithesis of that. Correct.
8:25
Speaker 1: You get into the Christian New Testament and it starts
8:28
Speaker 1: to clear up a bit um where there is a
8:31
Speaker 1: single being called Satan who is supernatural and it's a
8:36
Speaker 1: direct opposition to God and is usually used as a
8:40
Speaker 1: as a tool God uses as a in the Bible,
8:43
Speaker 1: at least as a test like go down there and
8:45
Speaker 1: test these humans to see if see see which way
8:49
Speaker 1: their allegiance lay. Right. Um. That Satan's called the scriptural
8:53
Speaker 1: Satan or Satan of the scriptures, right, yeah. Um, he
8:57
Speaker 1: also kind of comes out of nowhere in the New
8:59
Speaker 1: Testament to tempt Jesus in the desert, I believe, um.
9:05
Speaker 1: And I mean you know all this right, am I right?
9:08
Speaker 1: It was in the desert? Well yeah, and I think
9:10
Speaker 1: by the way, just to back up to that last
9:12
Speaker 1: episode when the stuttering, when I didn't hear the story
9:15
Speaker 1: about Moses the Bible with a coal in his mouth
9:17
Speaker 1: or whatever, everyone wrote in it was like, it's not
9:20
Speaker 1: in the Bible. Don't feel bad. It was from something else, right,
9:24
Speaker 1: it was from the Disney movie. So um. But in
9:29
Speaker 1: one of the gospels in the New Testament, um, And
9:33
Speaker 1: no need to write in to let us know. But
9:34
Speaker 1: it's in one of the gospels in the New Testament
9:37
Speaker 1: that Satan appears to Jesus to try to tempt him,
9:40
Speaker 1: and he's kind of brought in almost like he's a
9:43
Speaker 1: character there. Everybody should know. But if you're just reading
9:45
Speaker 1: the New Testament from beginning to end, you're like, what,
9:48
Speaker 1: who's this guy? But they apparently another gospel makes mention
9:52
Speaker 1: that Satan was the serpent in the garden of Eden.
9:54
Speaker 1: So he's a big tempter. He's he's bent on corrupting man,
10:00
Speaker 1: getting man to stray from God's flock basically, yeah, and
10:05
Speaker 1: they're these Uh, there's certain demons that are named properly
10:09
Speaker 1: in the Bible, um, like Beelzebub and belial Um. And
10:14
Speaker 1: again it's just sort of conjecture on our part whether
10:17
Speaker 1: or not that's referring to Satan or whether it's a
10:20
Speaker 1: generic evil. Um, it's just sort of difficult to what
10:26
Speaker 1: it wasn't was the devil with the horns and the
10:29
Speaker 1: pitchfork that we all think about. No, In those earliest
10:32
Speaker 1: names for the devil, like Beelzebub are actually corruptions or
10:35
Speaker 1: alterations of competing religions gods. Right, So early Christianity and um,
10:45
Speaker 1: I guess Middle Judaism had this kind of tendency to
10:50
Speaker 1: take other religions gods and make them the evil characters
10:55
Speaker 1: and their religions because they wanted Christianity to flourish, right,
10:59
Speaker 1: exactly wanted to make the competition look bad. As a
11:02
Speaker 1: way to do it was a smear tactic and a
11:04
Speaker 1: campaign to get converts. Right. So, Bael's Abub is actually
11:09
Speaker 1: a corruption of ballalls of which is you know, I'm sorry,
11:15
Speaker 1: blals of al, but all the ball, the exalted um
11:24
Speaker 1: and ball be a Apostrophe A l was the main
11:27
Speaker 1: deity of the Canaanites and the Phoenicians who were competing
11:31
Speaker 1: with the early Christians at the time. And um, if
11:34
Speaker 1: you say balls of that means Lord of the flies,
11:38
Speaker 1: not Lord the Exalted. So it was like it was
11:42
Speaker 1: a slam on their the main their competition's main god.
11:46
Speaker 1: And that's where biel's Abub came from. And that's actually
11:49
Speaker 1: that will become a common play in the Christian playbook
11:53
Speaker 1: of smearing the other guy's gods by making them um
11:57
Speaker 1: evil figures in Chris and mythology Platoo rata bals abub.
12:05
Speaker 1: Remember there was a Dead Milkman album called Bill's a Bubba, Yes,
12:10
Speaker 1: had like that guy in a tractor on the cover
12:13
Speaker 1: that was bil Um. Well, the same with Lucifer. And
12:18
Speaker 1: when we finally got the English language King James Bible
12:20
Speaker 1: in sixteen eleven, Lucifer was really a Latin term for
12:24
Speaker 1: morning star. But in that version of the Bible they say, no,
12:27
Speaker 1: what that really is is the name of Satan, right,
12:29
Speaker 1: And he was the lightbringer, the one who would reveal
12:32
Speaker 1: the truth to people that they were actually being held
12:36
Speaker 1: down by God, which is not the Christian way right.
12:42
Speaker 1: So what you were saying by co opting all these
12:44
Speaker 1: are not co opting but well kind of co opting
12:47
Speaker 1: these bad religions another band um that's actually a real
12:52
Speaker 1: band name. Yeah, correct, uh, these bad religions and saying
12:56
Speaker 1: those are the bad ones they would. That's how the
12:58
Speaker 1: like the devil that we know to today, the Satan
13:00
Speaker 1: sorry that we know today has taken shape because they,
13:05
Speaker 1: like the Greek god Pan had the cloven hoofs and
13:07
Speaker 1: the horns back us. The Roman god is where you
13:11
Speaker 1: get this instatiable um Bacchanalian decadence um, which, as we'll
13:18
Speaker 1: see with the Church of satan Um isn't too far off.
13:21
Speaker 1: They certainly love their orgies and they're trades of fine
13:25
Speaker 1: meats and roasted meats and Jesus um. So in the
13:33
Speaker 1: Middle Ages and the Renaissance, then this this mythology, Christian
13:36
Speaker 1: mythology has expanded. You get a couple of books that
13:40
Speaker 1: were very key into shaping who we think of today
13:43
Speaker 1: as Satan. One was John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost,
13:48
Speaker 1: and then of course Dante's Divine Comedy Um. This is
13:52
Speaker 1: where we got the idea that Satan was an angel
13:56
Speaker 1: expelled from heaven because of his pride, who then said,
14:01
Speaker 1: Tony will defeat of the Lord. These are actually from
14:06
Speaker 1: two books written by dudes. Yeah, a lot of the
14:09
Speaker 1: mythology about Satan that Christians understand as Satan, and that
14:15
Speaker 1: just people in the culture generally understand that Satan don't
14:19
Speaker 1: show up anywhere in the actual Bible or Old Testament
14:22
Speaker 1: or New Testament. All that stuff came afterwards, So chuck
14:26
Speaker 1: the The Enlightenment was another turning point then for the
14:31
Speaker 1: conception of Satan. And this is his evolution as like
14:35
Speaker 1: a scary, supernatural, otherworldly figure. Um. Takes a different turn
14:42
Speaker 1: because the Enlightenment was based on rational thought. Secular humanism
14:47
Speaker 1: finds its roots in the Enlightenment, and um, they started
14:52
Speaker 1: to come to see Satan as a kind of a
14:56
Speaker 1: creative force almost yeah, uh full ill to the establishment
15:01
Speaker 1: this idea that Satan is um the opposite of the
15:06
Speaker 1: established norms and customs and moral goods um, and that
15:13
Speaker 1: he's kind of like a handy archetype for that. So
15:17
Speaker 1: he stops, he loses some of his supernatural um yes,
15:23
Speaker 1: and is replaced by metaphorical Yeah. And I think that's
15:28
Speaker 1: that seems to be the one that the Church of
15:29
Speaker 1: Satans sort of identified with a little more. Was it
15:33
Speaker 1: Satan was just a just a freethinking dude. Yeah, apparently
15:37
Speaker 1: that's where they got That's where it finds its roots.
15:39
Speaker 1: Was the Enlightenment very interesting, which makes sense because most
15:43
Speaker 1: Satanists would be probably humanists, secular humanists, um, although their individualists,
15:52
Speaker 1: but you can make a case that that's an individual humanism, um,
15:57
Speaker 1: and that's you know, that comes out of the Enlightenment
16:00
Speaker 1: as well. So, um, you want to take a break
16:03
Speaker 1: and then keep going, or you want to keep going. Now,
16:05
Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit
16:07
Speaker 1: about witches right after this. So I promised talk of witches. Um,
16:33
Speaker 1: we did it in the Jeez, that was a long
16:35
Speaker 1: time ago. We did an episode on witchcraft, um, many
16:38
Speaker 1: many years ago. And if you are a witch or
16:42
Speaker 1: a Western esoteric, you were probably one of two groups
16:45
Speaker 1: of people to be accused of worshiping Satan in the
16:48
Speaker 1: Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Um. Basically, anything anything in
16:53
Speaker 1: opposition to organized Christianity was Satan worship, right. And that's
16:59
Speaker 1: the same thing as as saying your God, your creator,
17:03
Speaker 1: deity is like Satan and our religion. It's the same thing.
17:08
Speaker 1: Anything that's in opposition to Christian thought is automatically heretical, heretical,
17:13
Speaker 1: and the kind of almost like the lazy shorthand way
17:17
Speaker 1: of describing it is it's satanic. You know, Satan, He's
17:20
Speaker 1: scary and evil, right, Well, what these people think is satanic? Yeah,
17:25
Speaker 1: And if you listen to the episode on witchcraft, um,
17:28
Speaker 1: and we haven't, I know stuff you miss in history
17:30
Speaker 1: class did a good episode on what really happened in Salem,
17:34
Speaker 1: which will probably cover that at some point I mentioned,
17:37
Speaker 1: but I think everyone pretty much knows at this point
17:40
Speaker 1: about sixty people, mainly women, were put to death in
17:43
Speaker 1: the American colonies, in Europe and UM under the guise
17:47
Speaker 1: of being Satan worshippers and witches and practicing witchery, and
17:52
Speaker 1: by all accounts, they generally were you know that, I
17:56
Speaker 1: don't like the way that lady looked at me in
17:58
Speaker 1: the town today, or you know what she I think
18:02
Speaker 1: she stole milk from my cow, or I want her land,
18:05
Speaker 1: or I want her land, or um, my wife is
18:09
Speaker 1: jealous of her. Um. So they're all which is let's
18:13
Speaker 1: burn them, let's throw them in lakes and see if
18:14
Speaker 1: they float, um, and let's burn them, because if they
18:18
Speaker 1: don't float, then they're not, which is drowned. And and
18:21
Speaker 1: early physicians had more than just a small hand in
18:24
Speaker 1: this as well. They in accusing especially like folk healers
18:29
Speaker 1: and midwives of being, which is again to basically force
18:33
Speaker 1: the competition out. Yeah, where do we talk about that
18:36
Speaker 1: one in that's more recent? Remember? Maybe talk about that
18:42
Speaker 1: in Great Robbing feels like there were also things called
18:45
Speaker 1: esoteric orders, which were I don't even know what you
18:50
Speaker 1: would call that today, basically kind of any group that
18:52
Speaker 1: didn't subscribe to mainstream Christianity, so like the Mason's or
18:57
Speaker 1: the Illuminati thing, uh uh yeah, and like they were
19:03
Speaker 1: Christian at base, but then they had like yeah, they
19:07
Speaker 1: had this other occult ideas in addition to it. Right,
19:11
Speaker 1: So like the Kayther's or Cather's are a good example
19:15
Speaker 1: of that. They were in I think like the twelfth
19:18
Speaker 1: of fourteenth century France, and they were like Christian plus right,
19:23
Speaker 1: they were they the Kither's means like the pure ones. Um,
19:28
Speaker 1: they were so Christian that they felt like just being
19:31
Speaker 1: a normal pious Christian wasn't enough, and you actually had
19:34
Speaker 1: to be baptized again but basically like a born again
19:37
Speaker 1: Christian process. But in again like twelve thirteenth century France,
19:41
Speaker 1: they were considered heretics and they were persecuted. You could
19:45
Speaker 1: call them an esoteric order because it didn't follow prescribed Christianity,
19:51
Speaker 1: orthodox establishment Christianity to a t. It either was lacking
19:56
Speaker 1: some or had extra and then you're you're a heretic.
20:00
Speaker 1: And hence Satanists and esso terric order believed in Dan
20:04
Speaker 1: Brown books basically that that all that stuff is true,
20:07
Speaker 1: all the stuff he writes about is about like esoteric orders. Well,
20:10
Speaker 1: and here's the thing though, they were all labeled as Satanists,
20:13
Speaker 1: but but there's there's no evidence whatsoever that any of
20:17
Speaker 1: them we're Satanic and like in truth, yeah, you know, well,
20:23
Speaker 1: I was reading about one the Luciferians. They actually they
20:27
Speaker 1: may have been, although their concept of Satan wasn't that
20:30
Speaker 1: he was evil. Their concept was that he was the
20:33
Speaker 1: one true deity and that he had been tricked into
20:36
Speaker 1: being kicked out of heaven unfairly by a treacherous Jehovah,
20:41
Speaker 1: and that um, it was actually Lucifer who was supposed
20:44
Speaker 1: to be in charge, and that Jehovah was oppressing everybody.
20:48
Speaker 1: So if that's true, then yes, as far as the
20:50
Speaker 1: Church goes out, is as satanic as you can possibly
20:53
Speaker 1: get in your beliefs, because they were in total opposition
20:56
Speaker 1: to the Church in their beliefs as well. But that's
21:00
Speaker 1: I mean, for the most part, most of these other
21:02
Speaker 1: groups were not in any way, shape or form satanic
21:05
Speaker 1: as as you would think of it today. Well, yeah,
21:07
Speaker 1: and Ed even points out and here the grabster that
21:10
Speaker 1: by that that there's there's no evidence in world history
21:14
Speaker 1: that there's ever been any long term organized group of
21:18
Speaker 1: people that worship Satan as some evil entity. That's a
21:24
Speaker 1: huge one, because that's that's one of the ways that
21:27
Speaker 1: Christianity was able to smear its rivals by by suggesting
21:33
Speaker 1: that they were part of a huge, massive cult satanic colt.
21:38
Speaker 1: And I mean, like, if if there's a supernatural entity
21:41
Speaker 1: that's bent on getting you and making your life terrible,
21:47
Speaker 1: and there's actually people on earth who are following this person,
21:50
Speaker 1: it's going to make you stay to the straight and
21:52
Speaker 1: narrow of your prescribed religion even more, right, Baron Brimstone
21:57
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Yes, I grew up with that, you know, Yeah,
22:01
Speaker 1: I was. I can't remember which show. I think it
22:03
Speaker 1: was during Satanic Panic. We talked about the Devil worship
22:06
Speaker 1: House in Stone Mountain that it was the scariest place
22:11
Speaker 1: I had ever driven past on the way to steak
22:13
Speaker 1: in Ale Man I mistaken, Ale. Are they done? They're
22:18
Speaker 1: surely they're around. Right, there's probably like one in Vegas
22:21
Speaker 1: and one in Hong Kong or something weird like that.
22:25
Speaker 1: It would be funny for the one on Hong Kong
22:27
Speaker 1: was like this retroob themed American thing, you know, it's
22:31
Speaker 1: like America in the eighties. Um, all right, well let's
22:35
Speaker 1: talk about Anton LaVey. Then what time has come? Oh wait,
22:39
Speaker 1: I want to I want to say one more thing. Um. So,
22:42
Speaker 1: in the I think the fourteenth century, the Knights templar
22:46
Speaker 1: another esoteric but in military order, we're accused of worshiping
22:51
Speaker 1: Batha Met and bath mat Is Satan with like the
22:56
Speaker 1: goat's head and horns. Yeah. Um, that's the great looking
23:00
Speaker 1: statue they tried to put up in Oklahoma. Right. Well,
23:02
Speaker 1: Batha Met is most likely an alteration or mistranslation or
23:08
Speaker 1: something of Mohammed, and that it was used to basically
23:12
Speaker 1: include Mohammed as uh Satan in the Christian Ethos when
23:19
Speaker 1: the Christians first encountered Muslims during the Crusades. So it
23:24
Speaker 1: was like the same thing, but a thousand years after
23:26
Speaker 1: they did it to Biel's Abub, they did it to
23:28
Speaker 1: Mohammed and we should do like a tin parter on
23:31
Speaker 1: the Crusades starting now. I just tried to think of
23:37
Speaker 1: I would be up for that. Yeah, I don't know,
23:39
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Um, all right, can we invite
23:42
Speaker 1: Anton Laveyand yes, now you can come in the ghost
23:44
Speaker 1: of Anton LaVey. It is Jonathan's Strickland. Uh so this dude,
23:50
Speaker 1: he was born. He is the founder of the Church
23:52
Speaker 1: of Satan. If you did not know that, um, a
23:55
Speaker 1: cup of picture of him, you probably seen him before.
23:57
Speaker 1: Bald head goatee, that guy. Uh. You know what does
24:00
Speaker 1: bug me about all Satanists is if you just look
24:02
Speaker 1: up photos of prominent ones or meetings, they're always doing
24:06
Speaker 1: these faces. Yeah, like you never I mean actually, ironically,
24:10
Speaker 1: the only one I've ever seen smile in a picture
24:11
Speaker 1: is the current Hygh priestess. His name is Peggy, which
24:15
Speaker 1: I think is adorable. She's this is a cute old lady. Yeah,
24:20
Speaker 1: and not even that old, but yeah, she's like really
24:24
Speaker 1: old lady. Huh yeah, oh no, uh she smiles and photos,
24:29
Speaker 1: but every other picture, like you know, their eyes are
24:32
Speaker 1: big and they're frowning or they're licking their teeth or something.
24:36
Speaker 1: Come on. I was on the Church of Satan website
24:38
Speaker 1: yesterday and um, I saw a picture of some Satanists
24:42
Speaker 1: all smiling. But it was because Anton LaVey had a
24:46
Speaker 1: naked woman over his knee and his spanking here. So
24:49
Speaker 1: they do smile in some pictures. Okay, yeah, well that
24:52
Speaker 1: makes sense. So Levey was born Howard Howard Leave, Howard
24:58
Speaker 1: Stanton Leave, Chicago, and um, the more I read about
25:03
Speaker 1: him and his early years, supposed early years, the more
25:07
Speaker 1: he sounded like l Ron Hubbard. Yeah kind of because um,
25:12
Speaker 1: l Ron Hubbard and Anton LaVey both, if you ask
25:15
Speaker 1: them about their backgrounds, they'll tell you one thing. If
25:18
Speaker 1: you ask someone else, others who like Lawrence Right who
25:22
Speaker 1: does research, they say, I really can't find any evidence
25:25
Speaker 1: of this stuff that they claimed. Yeah. I mean, if
25:27
Speaker 1: there was anyone who subscribed to lying, it's just as
25:32
Speaker 1: much as you possibly could as a form of showmanship.
25:36
Speaker 1: Anton LaVey was definitely that guy. Yeah, so he says
25:40
Speaker 1: that he had a very colorful upbringing. He worked at
25:42
Speaker 1: a circus, he was worked at side shows. He was
25:46
Speaker 1: a police photographer, which may have been true. Uh, he
25:49
Speaker 1: was a very talented organist who worked burlesque shows. Um.
25:54
Speaker 1: If you ask other people who have done research, they say, no,
25:58
Speaker 1: kind of was this suburban kid in suburban San Francisco
26:01
Speaker 1: not super interesting. Um. One thing that everyone will say though,
26:05
Speaker 1: is that he was interested in the occult. He was
26:09
Speaker 1: interested in pulp horror novels and magazines, lovecraft, love love craft,
26:15
Speaker 1: and he was interested in Uh. He was very much
26:19
Speaker 1: turned off by the double standards what he perceived to
26:22
Speaker 1: be the double standards of mainstream Christianity, because supposedly he
26:27
Speaker 1: would playing these burlesque shows and see how these men there,
26:31
Speaker 1: then the next day see them in the churches, and
26:34
Speaker 1: that had a real impact on him. Supposedly that he
26:36
Speaker 1: was just like this is b s. Yeah, he didn't
26:38
Speaker 1: like phonies, drove him crazy. Him and holding Caulfield right.
26:46
Speaker 1: Uh So the in um the nineteen sixties, and this
26:50
Speaker 1: is kind of like with Ron Hubbard again, he started
26:52
Speaker 1: Levey started hosting these lectures on paranormal and he had
26:56
Speaker 1: a lot of h Flair, and everyone was like, man,
27:00
Speaker 1: who is this guy. He's kind of cool, and he
27:03
Speaker 1: talks about things like indulging in all the worldly things.
27:06
Speaker 1: You shouldn't feel bad about it. You should masturbate and
27:09
Speaker 1: have sex and have sex with tons of people at
27:11
Speaker 1: once if you want, and just do whatever pleases you.
27:15
Speaker 1: It's fine, don't worry about it. And so people in
27:18
Speaker 1: the sixties were like, there was a time in the
27:20
Speaker 1: late sixties where he was. There's this great article in
27:23
Speaker 1: the Telegraph when when he seduced Hot When Satanism seduced
27:26
Speaker 1: Hollywood or something like that, where it was sort of
27:29
Speaker 1: the thing two be a Satanist and to go to
27:33
Speaker 1: these parties because you would go in and and there
27:36
Speaker 1: would be drugs and drink and nakedness like eyes wide
27:40
Speaker 1: shut up in there, and everyone from like some of
27:44
Speaker 1: the Beach Boys to Sammy Davis Jr. Two Liberaci Liberacci
27:48
Speaker 1: was a Satanist, he said he was for a while. Uh,
27:52
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. Definitely was. He even had a TV
27:55
Speaker 1: pilot that he tried to get made about, like a
27:58
Speaker 1: sitcom that was sat and friendly that he worked for
28:02
Speaker 1: the Devil or something to find that we have to
28:05
Speaker 1: find that to be really bad, and he only made
28:08
Speaker 1: one of them. But um, oh so there is so
28:10
Speaker 1: it's out there somewhere. Well supposedly made a pilot that
28:12
Speaker 1: never went beyond that. Jane Mansfield was another famous Satanist. Yeah,
28:16
Speaker 1: so it was a big thing and Charles Manson kind
28:19
Speaker 1: of ruined all that. Oh yeahs ruined a lot of
28:22
Speaker 1: stuffs being cool to go to the Church of Satan.
28:26
Speaker 1: But at any rate, Leve was making waves and in
28:29
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six created officially the Church of Satan. In
28:33
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine published the Satanic Bible, which is pretty
28:38
Speaker 1: interesting to read through. I never read it all, but
28:41
Speaker 1: I read quite a bit of So. One of the
28:44
Speaker 1: things that he's accused of is um plagiarism, and his
28:49
Speaker 1: his adherent still to this day they kind of acknowledge
28:53
Speaker 1: it a little bit, but they more put it like, no,
28:55
Speaker 1: he was building on an earlier work he didn't really
28:58
Speaker 1: give credit to. But there was a book. Um, so
29:01
Speaker 1: he wrote the Satanic Bible in sixty nine. Um, there
29:07
Speaker 1: was a book published in eighteen ninety I think it
29:10
Speaker 1: was um called Might is Right and it was written
29:13
Speaker 1: pseudonymously by um a guy named Ragnar red Beard. Ragnar
29:19
Speaker 1: Red Beard wrote this book and it was extremely um
29:24
Speaker 1: into social Darwinism. It was individualistic to the point of
29:30
Speaker 1: being anarchistic. Uh. It had all of the requisite eighteen
29:34
Speaker 1: nineties racism and sexism attendant to it as well. But um,
29:39
Speaker 1: the point of it was is like, like, why would you,
29:42
Speaker 1: you know, love your enemies? This whole doctrine of love
29:45
Speaker 1: is bs where animals And if you have an enemy
29:48
Speaker 1: you should go out and beat him up because he's
29:50
Speaker 1: your enemy. You don't need to love him, you need
29:52
Speaker 1: to love yourself. And um. It was really just a
29:56
Speaker 1: surprising book that apparently still a lot of people read today. Um.
30:02
Speaker 1: And apparently Anton LaVey read it and adopted a lot
30:05
Speaker 1: of it. But then he also wrote a lot about
30:08
Speaker 1: ritual and stuff as well, and prescribe certain kinds of
30:11
Speaker 1: rituals in the Satanic Bible, and supposedly the three main
30:17
Speaker 1: types of rituals of greater magic. There's greater magic and
30:20
Speaker 1: lesser magic. But in the greater magic UM rituals there
30:25
Speaker 1: is UH compassion, there's uh and that's not just for
30:30
Speaker 1: others but also yourself. There's lust, and then there is
30:35
Speaker 1: um destruction and all of them are meant as they're
30:41
Speaker 1: meant for you, the person doing this, they're meant for you.
30:45
Speaker 1: They're meant as it what was called the intellectual decompression chamber,
30:49
Speaker 1: where you can just get rid of this baggage that
30:52
Speaker 1: you've got. And they're like, it's it's nothing more than
30:56
Speaker 1: this little psycho drama that you're performing for yourself to
31:00
Speaker 1: just make yourself feel better. Yeah, Like lust is to
31:04
Speaker 1: release your sexual urges. Like they'll say, Christianity teaches you
31:08
Speaker 1: to repress all that stuff that ain't that ain't no
31:10
Speaker 1: good for you. You need to go release uh these urges. Yeah,
31:15
Speaker 1: you're walking around with all this stuff that's like hanging
31:17
Speaker 1: on you, Like, get rid of it so you can
31:19
Speaker 1: go be happy and stop dwelling on this. It's the
31:21
Speaker 1: same with destruction, cleansing oneself of anger towards someone who
31:25
Speaker 1: has done you an injustice, Like why I sat on that?
31:28
Speaker 1: Deal with it? You're sitting there stewing about it. Smash
31:31
Speaker 1: the face, go put on your velvet robe. Well no, no,
31:35
Speaker 1: that was that was but that was that's a That's
31:37
Speaker 1: something that Satanism has long been accused of, is like
31:40
Speaker 1: being violent toward others. And I don't think that they
31:43
Speaker 1: say like, no, don't be violent toward others. Um they
31:46
Speaker 1: even say like you don't certainly don't owe anybody being
31:50
Speaker 1: nice to him or anything like that. But um, there
31:53
Speaker 1: there seems to be kind of a I haven't seen
31:57
Speaker 1: any overt calls to violence that it seems to be
32:00
Speaker 1: like if if that's what you deem is right, as
32:03
Speaker 1: long as you're following these other prescribed paths that seem
32:07
Speaker 1: to kind of avoid violence, that it's more just like you.
32:11
Speaker 1: It's it's centered on you, and you need to focus
32:15
Speaker 1: on yourself. And if you focus on yourself, then you're
32:18
Speaker 1: probably going to stop wanting to smash that other guy
32:21
Speaker 1: in the face because you're gonna get rid of that baggage.
32:25
Speaker 1: Can I read the eleven Satanic rules of the Earth? Please?
32:28
Speaker 1: Number one, do not give opinions or advice unless you
32:30
Speaker 1: were asked. Okay, not bad. Number two. Do not tell
32:34
Speaker 1: your troubles to others unless you are sure they want
32:36
Speaker 1: to hear them. Yeah, it's it's not bad. Number three,
32:40
Speaker 1: when in another's layer, show him respect or else, do
32:44
Speaker 1: not go there respects some one's home. Number four, if
32:48
Speaker 1: a guest in your layer annoys, you treat him cruelly
32:50
Speaker 1: and without mercy. Number five, do not make sexual advances
32:56
Speaker 1: unless you are given the mating signal. That's sort of
33:00
Speaker 1: got good job, good job. That's a sixties way of saying,
33:04
Speaker 1: I'm down with affirmative consent. Do not take that which
33:08
Speaker 1: does not belong to you unless it is a burden
33:10
Speaker 1: to the other person and he cries out to be relieved. Okay,
33:13
Speaker 1: like you know, don't rob people of stuff. Relieve me
33:15
Speaker 1: of this glass of diet coke. I can't stop drinking.
33:19
Speaker 1: Number seven. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have
33:21
Speaker 1: employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny
33:23
Speaker 1: the power of magic after having called upon it with success,
33:27
Speaker 1: you will lose all you have obtained. That's a little pretty.
33:31
Speaker 1: I didn't even hear that full when I trailed off long.
33:34
Speaker 1: Number eight. Do not complain about anything to which you
33:37
Speaker 1: need not subject yourself. And finally, yeah, that's a good
33:40
Speaker 1: I think that one bears repeating. Oh wait, I say finally,
33:43
Speaker 1: that's only right. Oh, you only to repeat that at least.
33:46
Speaker 1: Do not complain about anything to which you need not
33:48
Speaker 1: subject yourself. Number nine, do not harm little children. I
33:52
Speaker 1: should probably repeat that one too. Do not harm little children,
33:55
Speaker 1: because that's a big deal. There are all these people
33:57
Speaker 1: that think, like you know you who uh you, You've
34:01
Speaker 1: sacrificed children and you have performed sex with children, and
34:05
Speaker 1: that's what Satanists do, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no,
34:07
Speaker 1: no no, we're not into that at all. No. One
34:09
Speaker 1: of the things that the Satanic Temple who will talk
34:11
Speaker 1: about in a little while point out is that um,
34:14
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of cases of um people
34:18
Speaker 1: who are supposedly exercising demons from children, who have actually
34:22
Speaker 1: harmed and in fact killed children, and that there's no doubt.
34:25
Speaker 1: I think we talked about this in the Satanic Panic
34:27
Speaker 1: episode two. There's no documented cases of Satanists harming children
34:32
Speaker 1: because are against it, and in fact, they won't even
34:35
Speaker 1: accept anyone under the age of eighteen into the Church
34:38
Speaker 1: of s Yeah, because self consent is extremely important to
34:45
Speaker 1: Satanists of all stripes. The idea of being forced into
34:50
Speaker 1: indoctrinated into any church before you're you can make a
34:55
Speaker 1: decision for yourself really goes against the idea of individual liberty,
34:59
Speaker 1: and thus Satanic thought number ten. Do not kill non
35:04
Speaker 1: human animals because like you said they called humans animals too.
35:09
Speaker 1: In fact, they said that we're not much better even
35:11
Speaker 1: than animals. Is an animal reminder it is, do not
35:15
Speaker 1: kill non human animals unless you are attacked or for
35:17
Speaker 1: your food. Like if a cheetah pounces on you, kill it.
35:20
Speaker 1: If you want to eat the cheetah, kill uh. And
35:23
Speaker 1: then finally, drum roll eleven Satanic rules of the Earth.
35:28
Speaker 1: When walking into open territory, bother no one. If someone
35:32
Speaker 1: bothers you asked him to stop. If he does not stop,
35:35
Speaker 1: destroy him. Nice. It sounds like a tenacious d lyric.
35:42
Speaker 1: It does. But the way you you counted down it
35:44
Speaker 1: was like a letterman list like that. That was good man,
35:48
Speaker 1: I miss Dave. I wonder how many um long time
35:51
Speaker 1: listeners we've lost with this episode. I don't know. Uh.
35:56
Speaker 1: Do you want to take another break? Yeah, I mean
35:58
Speaker 1: there's still so much more, but we go to break
36:00
Speaker 1: at some point. Yeah, We're gonna take a break, all right, Chuck,
36:24
Speaker 1: We're back with Satan. Remember the kids in the hall?
36:30
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Kevin McDonald, I think with Satan? Uh? Was
36:34
Speaker 1: that him? Yeah? Good stuff. Uh. So we've been talking
36:38
Speaker 1: a little bit about the philosophies of the church of
36:40
Speaker 1: Satan um just real quickly, there are nine Satanic sins
36:45
Speaker 1: and again I hate to say it, but this is
36:47
Speaker 1: sort of appealing to my brain. The nine Satanic sins
36:51
Speaker 1: or stupidity, pretentiousness, solop si um self, deceit heard, conformity,
36:57
Speaker 1: lack of perspective, forgetfulness, forgetfulness past orthodoxes, counterproductive pride, and
37:04
Speaker 1: lack of aesthetics. A lot of those are really really
37:07
Speaker 1: tough to explain. Anton LaVey, Well, some of them are
37:11
Speaker 1: pretty self evident, but um forgetfulness of past orthodoxes. Leve
37:17
Speaker 1: wrote this list in seven and it's on the Church
37:20
Speaker 1: of Satan website. If you're interested to go check it
37:22
Speaker 1: out because it's some of them. You're like, oh, it
37:25
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense. Eighty seven and I saw as copyrighted.
37:32
Speaker 1: So the takeaway is that what's Leavey what the Church
37:37
Speaker 1: of Satan and lava in Satanism, what it really is
37:42
Speaker 1: is atheistic anti Christian. Ah, well, that is something that
37:48
Speaker 1: you you said as really important. The Church of Satan,
37:53
Speaker 1: specifically the one founded by Anton LaVey, is has positioned
37:58
Speaker 1: itself as count or to Christianity. He really does not
38:02
Speaker 1: like Christianity um and as a result, it's allowed itself
38:08
Speaker 1: to kind of be drawn into a lot of pedantic
38:11
Speaker 1: nous and arguments that it shouldn't and it almost seems
38:15
Speaker 1: like they feel they need to justify themselves because of
38:18
Speaker 1: putting themselves in that position. Um so if that kind
38:22
Speaker 1: of turns you off, well, then friends, you're gonna love
38:25
Speaker 1: the Satanic Temple. Yeah. And if if you were interested
38:29
Speaker 1: in that, you can become a member of the Church
38:31
Speaker 1: of Satan by sending two hundred dollars to a po
38:33
Speaker 1: box right that you can find on their website. But
38:36
Speaker 1: you get a membership card. That's it. That's all you get. Yeah,
38:39
Speaker 1: And there's there's actually a lot of criticism amongst Satanists
38:42
Speaker 1: of the Church of Satan because, um, you know, they
38:46
Speaker 1: they haven't done anything for a really long time. And
38:50
Speaker 1: a lot of people give credit to Levy for founding
38:52
Speaker 1: the Church of Satan and that while he was alive
38:54
Speaker 1: the churches started thriving, but after he died, the church
38:57
Speaker 1: kind of died with him in the eyes of a
38:59
Speaker 1: lot of and it's especially Satanic Temple adherents that I've seen. Yeah,
39:04
Speaker 1: it's now headed by Peter Gilmore, who I think I
39:08
Speaker 1: think John Hodgman is actually sort of a pal of his.
39:10
Speaker 1: Now I believe that. I have to say it showed
39:12
Speaker 1: a lot of restraint by Peter Gilmore and not to
39:15
Speaker 1: change his name to Peter grim More. Uh. And then
39:18
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, Peggy the drama as a high
39:22
Speaker 1: priestess right now, Um, but I agree. Moving on to
39:27
Speaker 1: the Satanic Temple, it's pretty fun because they have something
39:31
Speaker 1: out there called the Satanic Children's Big Book of Activities.
39:35
Speaker 1: I think it was given to me by by Matt Frederick,
39:37
Speaker 1: was given to me by someone, but it's called the
39:39
Speaker 1: Satanic Children's Big Book of Activities. Uh, and it's wonderful.
39:44
Speaker 1: We talked about that for sure on Internet round Up
39:47
Speaker 1: for sure. And um, that was just like one in
39:50
Speaker 1: a string of I don't want to say countless because
39:54
Speaker 1: if I bothered too, I could count them. But there was.
39:58
Speaker 1: There's like a string of basically political Satanic based political
40:05
Speaker 1: um projects that the Satanic Temple has taken on that
40:10
Speaker 1: really kind of define who they are, right. They are
40:14
Speaker 1: part performance art very much political activists and are trying
40:20
Speaker 1: to basically use they say that they they're using Satanism,
40:24
Speaker 1: although they all subscribe to philosophical atheistic human secularism, Satanism
40:31
Speaker 1: minus the social Darwinism and the iron ran libertarianism. Um.
40:38
Speaker 1: That they're they're using Satanism though in the popular conception
40:42
Speaker 1: as a poison pill for the church versus State debate. Right, yeah,
40:48
Speaker 1: and you can also buy shirts and hoodies and coffee monks.
40:50
Speaker 1: So with this they use this poison pill. These lists
40:53
Speaker 1: of projects. One of them was the Satanic Children's Activity Book,
40:57
Speaker 1: which they printed up to distribute at schools. I think
41:01
Speaker 1: there's a school in Florida where Christian evangelists were handing
41:04
Speaker 1: out pamphlets at a public school. So the Satanists said, oh, well, great,
41:08
Speaker 1: well if they can do it, then any religion can
41:10
Speaker 1: do it because the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of
41:14
Speaker 1: any religion or endorsement of religion by the by the government,
41:19
Speaker 1: so we can go do it too. So they start
41:21
Speaker 1: handing out Satanic stuff. And anytime the Satanists roll into
41:24
Speaker 1: town and say us too, that usually means that the
41:28
Speaker 1: local city council or the state even puts an end
41:31
Speaker 1: to the implicit Christian endorsement of that's going on. Christian
41:38
Speaker 1: endorsement via politics. Um. And by the way, when I
41:42
Speaker 1: say that that children's work book is wonderful and if
41:44
Speaker 1: you're out there going why did you say that? Let
41:46
Speaker 1: go check it out. It's literally stories about kids being
41:50
Speaker 1: more accepting of others and being friendly and sharing, and
41:53
Speaker 1: it's like any children's book, but the kids wearing like
41:55
Speaker 1: the Instagram teachers stuff. Yeah, which makes me wonder, like
42:00
Speaker 1: what about this? Why called themselves that? It seems like
42:03
Speaker 1: they just are another trying to ravel rouse and get attention.
42:08
Speaker 1: But I think they might get a little further if
42:10
Speaker 1: or maybe that's the whole point I think, well, in
42:14
Speaker 1: part using it as the like if you this actually happened.
42:19
Speaker 1: There's a town in Arizona. I'm not sure which one,
42:23
Speaker 1: but they had a habit of opening their city council
42:26
Speaker 1: meetings with a Christian prayer. Well, most likely every single
42:31
Speaker 1: person in that town that the city council represents is
42:34
Speaker 1: not Christian UM. But since it was, there was a
42:38
Speaker 1: there was some landmark court ruling I can't remember when,
42:41
Speaker 1: maybe two thousand fourteen UM or the Supreme Court said
42:46
Speaker 1: uh no, it's actually okay as long as they don't
42:49
Speaker 1: prohibit any religions from doing this. The Satanists showed up
42:53
Speaker 1: and said well, here comes of Satanists. We're gonna give
42:55
Speaker 1: a benediction to open up your city council meeting. And
42:58
Speaker 1: the city council said, okay, nobody's gonna do prayers anymore.
43:01
Speaker 1: That's kind of what their job is, to shut it down.
43:04
Speaker 1: But if they if they just did it like, well,
43:06
Speaker 1: the secular humanists are here and we're gonna say a prayer,
43:09
Speaker 1: body be like, well, who cares. That's fine. But the
43:11
Speaker 1: people who are so afraid of Satanists are so afraid
43:15
Speaker 1: of Satanists that they are um there there. They would
43:19
Speaker 1: just they would rather stop the city council implicitly endorsing
43:26
Speaker 1: the Christian prayer then to allow the Satanic prayer as well.
43:29
Speaker 1: That's how it works. And it's the same with the
43:31
Speaker 1: statue in Oklahoma. He said, oh, well, you're gonna put
43:34
Speaker 1: up your statute. We're we're gonna put up one of
43:37
Speaker 1: what's it called baffa mat which again, I know you've
43:41
Speaker 1: seen the statue. We both love it just because it's
43:43
Speaker 1: so cool looking. It looks like the cover of some
43:46
Speaker 1: great heavy metal album. It does. But it's like, yeah,
43:50
Speaker 1: the two kids looking up adoring Le and Chuck, the
43:54
Speaker 1: Satanic Temple. As another thing going on right now too,
43:57
Speaker 1: a new initiative that they started right which is the
44:01
Speaker 1: after school Satan Club. And again I have to laugh.
44:06
Speaker 1: It just sounds funny, but what it is. It's an
44:09
Speaker 1: after school curriculum um to teach reasoning and social skills
44:13
Speaker 1: to kids basis. And again as a counter something called
44:17
Speaker 1: the Good News Club, which is an Evangelical Christian after
44:21
Speaker 1: school program. So again they're saying, you got yours, will
44:24
Speaker 1: have ours. Yeah, And there's another two thousand one Supreme
44:26
Speaker 1: Court ruling that said, you know what, sure, we can
44:29
Speaker 1: have religious after school programs. And the the just the
44:33
Speaker 1: floodgates opened, and the Lucian grieves, whose name is Doug Mesner,
44:38
Speaker 1: he's one of the founders of the Satanic Temple. He says,
44:42
Speaker 1: we're doing this because the Good News Club is creating
44:46
Speaker 1: a need for it. If they were, if they were
44:48
Speaker 1: just doing this in churches rather than public schools, we
44:51
Speaker 1: wouldn't have our after school Satan Club. But they are,
44:54
Speaker 1: so we are. Yeah, here's a quote. While the Good
44:57
Speaker 1: News Club focuses on indoctrination still in children with a
45:00
Speaker 1: fear of hell and God's wrath after school Satan clubs
45:03
Speaker 1: will focus on free inquiry and rationalism. We prefer to
45:06
Speaker 1: give children appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not
45:09
Speaker 1: a fear of an everlasting otherworldly horror. Uh. However, being
45:15
Speaker 1: a member of the Satanic Temple or the Church of
45:18
Speaker 1: Satan is not to say that you can just be
45:22
Speaker 1: very much out with it. These days, a lot of
45:24
Speaker 1: those folks, even if they are really just secular humanist
45:29
Speaker 1: atheist at heart, they do want to associate with the
45:32
Speaker 1: Satanic templary Church of Satan. They a lot of times,
45:34
Speaker 1: you'll still keep it quiet, keep it a secret, because, um,
45:39
Speaker 1: you will get people don't get what it's about, and
45:42
Speaker 1: they will think, well, again, the people still believe that they,
45:46
Speaker 1: you know, have blood sacrifice and you know, sacrifice animals
45:51
Speaker 1: and eat the hearts out of goats and things like that. Right.
45:54
Speaker 1: And there have been people in history, um, who have
45:57
Speaker 1: killed in the name of Satan. Sure, and that's who
46:01
Speaker 1: people point to and say, see see Satanists or killers.
46:04
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, that person was out of their mind.
46:06
Speaker 1: They're mentally ill, or they were pretending to be mentally
46:09
Speaker 1: ill so that they would get a lighter sentence and
46:11
Speaker 1: that's what they were doing, that they weren't actual Satanists. Again,
46:15
Speaker 1: a true Satanists will point out that um Satanists are atheists,
46:19
Speaker 1: that they see Satan as a construct, as a metaphor
46:23
Speaker 1: shorthand for something that goes against the norms, that questions
46:27
Speaker 1: the establishment and says, how do you know what you're
46:30
Speaker 1: saying is right? Is right? Who says yeah? And we
46:34
Speaker 1: don't even worship Satan per se. We really, if you
46:36
Speaker 1: want to say anything, worship ourselves as individual gods. Peter
46:41
Speaker 1: Gilmore calls it a theism. Isn't it the lower case I.
46:46
Speaker 1: He's like, yes, Gilmore, Eugenius, but he says his name
46:50
Speaker 1: should have been grim more and more or kill more. Um. Yeah.
46:56
Speaker 1: Richard Ramirez David Berkowitz, son of Sam, talked about demons
47:00
Speaker 1: um Ricky Casso famously in the seventies. I was an
47:04
Speaker 1: American teen who killed someone in the name of Satan
47:08
Speaker 1: and much too Angus Young Chagrin was hauled into court
47:12
Speaker 1: with this a C d C T shirt on Uh,
47:15
Speaker 1: We're not gonna get too much into this because you
47:17
Speaker 1: can go listen to our great episode on the Satanic
47:20
Speaker 1: Panic of the eighties from January but um, in short,
47:26
Speaker 1: it was a It was a time where people like
47:29
Speaker 1: Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest were making use of Satanic
47:33
Speaker 1: imagery purely for gags and selling records. Uh, none of
47:40
Speaker 1: it was. I mean, today there are some legit creepy
47:44
Speaker 1: dark metal bands. They are very much more overt with
47:49
Speaker 1: their lyrics and things. But I think Ozzy Osbourne has
47:53
Speaker 1: definitely been outed as you know, not some satan worship
48:00
Speaker 1: being ghoule. You know, anyone who's ever seen him on
48:04
Speaker 1: television can tell you that. Yeah, And I mean it
48:06
Speaker 1: bears fleshing out. There are there are, like supposedly the
48:11
Speaker 1: goths scene in um Germany in particulars where um neo
48:16
Speaker 1: Nazism and neopaganism kind of come together. A lot of
48:20
Speaker 1: people point to that as some sort of neo Satanism.
48:23
Speaker 1: But again, if you're talking about Satanism with a capitalist
48:27
Speaker 1: as an atheistic philosophy, and somebody murdering in the name
48:32
Speaker 1: of Satan holds about as much water as somebody murdering
48:35
Speaker 1: in the name of the Easter bunny. Do you got
48:37
Speaker 1: anything else? Yeah? This is let me quote with a
48:40
Speaker 1: finish with a passage from the Satanic Bible. On love.
48:45
Speaker 1: Satanism has been thought of as being synonymous with cruelty
48:48
Speaker 1: and brutality. This is only so because people are afraid
48:52
Speaker 1: to face the truth, and the truth is that human
48:54
Speaker 1: beings are not all benign, are all loving. Just because
48:57
Speaker 1: the Satanist admits he is capable of both love and hate,
49:00
Speaker 1: he's considered hateful. On the contrary, because he's able to
49:03
Speaker 1: give vent to his hatred through ritualized expression, he is
49:07
Speaker 1: far more capable of love, the deepest kind of love,
49:10
Speaker 1: by honestly recognizing and admitting to both the hate and
49:14
Speaker 1: the love he feels. There's no confusing one emotion with
49:17
Speaker 1: the other. Without being able to experience one of these emotions,
49:21
Speaker 1: you cannot fully experience the other. Wow. Either Dr SEUs
49:26
Speaker 1: or Intonay, that's Zoroastrian dualism. If I've ever heard of uh, well,
49:33
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Satanism, well go
49:36
Speaker 1: look up this article. It's a grab star article um
49:39
Speaker 1: on how stuff works dot com. And since I say grabs,
49:42
Speaker 1: there's time for listener mail. Hello Chucking, Hello Chuck Bryant,
49:49
Speaker 1: and Josh Clark. Hello, very formal. Uh. On stuttering, I've
49:53
Speaker 1: stuttered from most of my life I say most of
49:55
Speaker 1: my life because it started when I was five. As
49:58
Speaker 1: you mentioned your show, there are several as several different
50:00
Speaker 1: ways it can happen. I would always try to think
50:03
Speaker 1: of a different word to use when I got stuck,
50:05
Speaker 1: and that would result in very strange sounding sentences. I
50:07
Speaker 1: would define stuttering his inability to coordinate breath flow with words.
50:11
Speaker 1: Blocking on a word or sound would often result in
50:13
Speaker 1: a cessation of breathing entirely. Kind people often tell me
50:16
Speaker 1: that stuttering does not bother them, But the fact is,
50:19
Speaker 1: when I stutter, my internal reaction is that I feel
50:21
Speaker 1: and sound like a fool. I rationally, I know that
50:23
Speaker 1: is not true, but that is what I often feel. Nonetheless,
50:27
Speaker 1: and of course, unkind people abound, and I often heard
50:31
Speaker 1: as a child reactions like don't you know what you want?
50:34
Speaker 1: From other kids and adults, laughter and derision. Often n'd
50:37
Speaker 1: hair just sing it. And while it's true that singing
50:39
Speaker 1: and speaking are operated by different parts of the brain,
50:42
Speaker 1: life is not a musical and besides, I hate musicals.
50:45
Speaker 1: So at the age of sixty seven, I would never
50:48
Speaker 1: have thought that I'd end up talking on the phone
50:50
Speaker 1: and dealing with the public for a living. I still
50:52
Speaker 1: occasionally stutter and sometimes feel pretty badly, but I've learned
50:55
Speaker 1: to just live with it. Sometimes feel as I get older,
50:57
Speaker 1: I just don't give a darn anymore. That allows me
51:00
Speaker 1: to relax and stutter less. That is a perk of aging. Sure,
51:04
Speaker 1: I'm not caring. Uh. Stress brings it out and does
51:09
Speaker 1: as as talking about my difficult intes our childhood. I'm
51:11
Speaker 1: a singer. I'm one of the resident shanty singers at
51:14
Speaker 1: the National Maritime Historical Park at Hyde Street Pierre in
51:17
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and it performed in front of large audiences.
51:21
Speaker 1: Singing is not a problem, but introducing songs can be.
51:24
Speaker 1: You might say I'm the mel Tillis traditional song and
51:28
Speaker 1: that lovely email well from Richard adrian Owitz. Thank you Richard.
51:34
Speaker 1: I love that one. Good one. Nice And everybody who's
51:38
Speaker 1: in San Francisco down to go down to Fisherman's Wharf
51:41
Speaker 1: and see Richard. Yeah, check out the show The mel
51:44
Speaker 1: Tillis of Shanty Singing. I love it. If you want
51:46
Speaker 1: to get in touch with this, you can hang out
51:48
Speaker 1: with on Twitter at s y s K podcaster joshuam Clark.
51:51
Speaker 1: You can hang out with Chuck at Charles W. Chuck
51:54
Speaker 1: Bryant on Facebook, dot com or at stuff you Should
51:58
Speaker 1: Know UM. You can send us an email to Stuff
52:01
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff Works dot Com has always joined
52:04
Speaker 1: us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should
52:05
Speaker 1: Know dot com For more on this and thousands of
52:12
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. H