Upper leadership is rife with predatory behavior, Lucien Greaves has said a lot of really problematic racist and white supremacist stuff, and there’s a difference between schools of Satanism within the temple. Basically, there’s an amoral, “might makes right” interpretation of Satanism that can act as an ideological framework to enable all sorts of abuse, and then there’s the “one’s own body is inviolable, support queer liberation” style of Satanism. The upper leadership (in my experience) is mostly the former type of Satanist, whereas the general membership are the latter. So the org has a lot of problems.
IIRC, The Satanic Temple started as a satirical project (“if cruelty and oppression is Christian, what if Satanism was about being nice?”) and then ran away. When the flaws in the organisation/the founders’ histories came to light, dissatisfied members/supporters formed new groups more sincerely committed to basically humanism and social justice in Satanistic theatrical costume, such as the Global Order of Satan.
Both of these groups are still ahead of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, which started as an Ayn Rand-inspired backlash against 1960s hippie peace-and-love, but these days would be indistinguishable from Republican Christianity except for the symbols.
Some of it’s my own personal experience, I’ve been a Satanist for the last 15 or so years. But some of it’s also from Dead Domain’s videos on the Satanic Temple.
Upper leadership is rife with predatory behavior, Lucien Greaves has said a lot of really problematic racist and white supremacist stuff, and there’s a difference between schools of Satanism within the temple. Basically, there’s an amoral, “might makes right” interpretation of Satanism that can act as an ideological framework to enable all sorts of abuse, and then there’s the “one’s own body is inviolable, support queer liberation” style of Satanism. The upper leadership (in my experience) is mostly the former type of Satanist, whereas the general membership are the latter. So the org has a lot of problems.
IIRC, The Satanic Temple started as a satirical project (“if cruelty and oppression is Christian, what if Satanism was about being nice?”) and then ran away. When the flaws in the organisation/the founders’ histories came to light, dissatisfied members/supporters formed new groups more sincerely committed to basically humanism and social justice in Satanistic theatrical costume, such as the Global Order of Satan.
Both of these groups are still ahead of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, which started as an Ayn Rand-inspired backlash against 1960s hippie peace-and-love, but these days would be indistinguishable from Republican Christianity except for the symbols.
Do you have sources for this? I’d like to read more about it
Some of it’s my own personal experience, I’ve been a Satanist for the last 15 or so years. But some of it’s also from Dead Domain’s videos on the Satanic Temple.
Well put, thank you.