... But Then Satan

Satan is THE ultimate rebel. If you want to learn all about Satanic Death cults and how evil they are well... you're going to be disappointed. Satanism is actually pretty normal? Tune in to find out more!

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Preston Meyer  00:12

Hey, Katie. I'm great. How are you?

Katie Dooley  00:15

I'm great. Are you ready for another episode of

Preston Meyer  00:18

holy watermelon podcast? I am. I am excited for today's episode.

Katie Dooley  00:24

I'm excited for you to be a part of today. I mean, you're a part of every episode, but

Preston Meyer  00:33

Right. It's a great thing that we share. So in our previous episode, we talked about how atheists don't worship Satan, which is a ridiculous thing to have other people contradict. But people keep saying that atheists worship Salman,

Katie Dooley  00:50

it's pretty common thing. If you don't worship God, then you must worship the devil.

Preston Meyer  00:56

Right? It's nonsense. And with

Katie Dooley  00:59

that segue, today, we're talking about devil worship.

Preston Meyer  01:03

Yeah, I wanted to start off with the idea of the devil. What is he? Where does he come from? How do we get these ideas?

Katie Dooley  01:13

See what I'm talking about who the devil is or what the devil is?

Preston Meyer  01:16

Yeah, the devil appears, usually four times in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, which is the Old Testament, He naturally shows up a lot more in the New Testament. And the nature of this figure changes a little bit. The word shed refers to evil spirits, in Hebrew, and that word is usually translated as devil. And, interestingly enough, it's spelt the exact same way in Hebrew because of the lack of vows, as the word shad and showed, showed, meaning a spoil like to destroy or to rob, and shed, as in breasts. Wow. Right. And that's an important detail we'll come back to in a minute, okay.

Katie Dooley  02:08

You would think breasts are important.

Preston Meyer  02:10

I mean, at some point in every human's life, they are either important or sought after. Fair. Alright. And the other word that is usually translated as devil in the Hebrew Bible, is Sayur, which is actually a word used to refer to saders, or to go to idols, or even sometimes broadly, just goats. And so, this these two ideas, the the Savior, the Seder, and the breasts, in form a lot of the typical idea of how we display the devil in art, especially the Baphomet statue, which is popular because of some other groups we'll talk about later in this episode. It's usually a Goat Man with breasts.

Katie Dooley  03:11

Ah, I just picking her like the muscular man breasts

Preston Meyer  03:16

with firm manly picks rather than the boobs. Yeah, there are both versions of the Baphomet in art. Yeah, but an awful lot of people prefer boobs.

Katie Dooley  03:29

I think everyone prefer boobs. Like I think statistically, 100% of the planet likes boobs.

Preston Meyer  03:37

I feel like part of our population isn't terribly interested in boobs, at least in their later life. Oh, I'm gonna go out and say gay men wrong. Probably less gay

Katie Dooley  03:48

men like boobs. All of them. I'm

Preston Meyer  03:53

Yes. I am perfectly willing to accept that many gay men appreciate boobs. That's a reality for sure. I don't think that you can say that there are no gay men who like boobs, or who don't like boobs.

Katie Dooley  04:08

Or a gay man who doesn't like boobs.

Preston Meyer  04:15

Let's keep the conversation.

Katie Dooley  04:19

Hitting conversation going. I stand by what I said now 100% The population like carry on.

Preston Meyer  04:27

So the the interesting thing about this, the way we see the devil in Scripture is that it's informed from other traditions outside of Israel. In fact, the the way that we see the devil in the more common Judeo Christian cosmology seems to be informed a lot by Zoroastrianism where there's a more almost equal duality of good versus evil in By the gods of Zarya, Zoroastrianism, which is mostly pretty strongly monotheistic, but isn't so strongly, monotheistic when you dig deeper.

Katie Dooley  05:13

Oh, like all of them. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  05:15

there's all theological models have layers,

Katie Dooley  05:20

like ogres and onion. Exactly.

Preston Meyer  05:24

So the devil as an idea is kind of an interesting one. And it's associated with idol worship in old Israel. And, oddly enough with goats for some reason. Out of all of the idols that exist, the devil is specifically tied to the to the goat.

Katie Dooley  05:46

I did some reading on why the goat per for Baphomet. And I know it's a pagan god. Yes, yeah. Is where that imagery was made popular in the early 1900s. In the context of Satanism, they, I think it was some popular story. And they use this pagan god that was a goat and brought it into devil worshipers in worship.

Preston Meyer  06:15

Especially for Christianity popping up a bit in it. Its base of power, if you will. The idea of Seders is an idea that Christians were super uncomfortable with, because they, as opposed to the Baphomet of boobs, as we've described, saders are all about having an extra huge penis, and they're super sexually aggressive, almost all the time.

Katie Dooley  06:42

And I mean, that comes from Greek and Roman mythology. Yeah, yeah. So it's not a new,

Preston Meyer  06:48

but it's a part of the environment in which Christianity grew up.

Katie Dooley  06:52

Yeah. So it was easy to like, adopt

Preston Meyer  06:55

and villainize. Yeah. It's weird to like individual Staters are pretty often antagonists in the stories of Greek and Roman mythology. But to say that they're the ultimate bad guy of the stories, that's a Christian

Katie Dooley  07:14

twist, are so cute.

Preston Meyer  07:18

They're less cute when they're half man with a huge penis.

Katie Dooley  07:23

Speaker yourself.

Preston Meyer  07:28

Alright, so moving on to ace what looks to me like I actually totally separate idea is Satan. And I just, it's hard to see Satan and the devil as identical things. There's an awful lot of overlap in the values that we have dumped on to these ideas. But the title Satan is using the Hebrew Bible 27 times, it shows up a lot more than that in the Christian New Testament. And broadly, in the New Testament, they are meant to be understood to be the same thing, or at least that's the way as people who look at it, yeah, it's typically understood that they're that meant to be the same figure. In the Hebrew Bible, Satan is a title, not a name, but a title. And it denotes an adversary or an accuser. So the way it's meant to be understood when you read the Hebrew Bible, the the Christian Old Testament, Satan is a member of the Heavenly Court, who stands to accuse each and every man and woman for the ways that they have transgressed the law. That God is the judge in that heaven and that there is why can't I think of the more common poetic term for defense attorney, Prosecutor know the prosecutor is Satan

Katie Dooley  09:03

sane? Different than

Preston Meyer  09:06

the defendant is you and me Hello, it bugs me that I've lost this word and I clearly should have written it down

Katie Dooley  09:15

the barrister

Preston Meyer  09:20

I don't know why this word is blanking me, i It'll come to me when we're done recording. That's the way it goes anyway. But Satan is a member of the court of heaven, who stands to accuse us of breaking the law. It's his job to keep track of that. And that's a little bit different feeling than we get that from the New Testament Satan, where he's the one who encourages us to break the law. And so it's, it's interesting to see that change of flavor. Yeah. And so there's there's an awful lot of theological exploration of this idea that He is doing both jobs, the two halves of that, that biblical split the Hebrew Bible versus the Christian Bible. They have different views. They're not necessarily contradictory.

Katie Dooley  10:13

So that he encourages you to do bad things. And then later he judges you for them.

Preston Meyer  10:17

Well, he's not the judge. He's the prosecutor. Yeah,

Katie Dooley  10:21

later. Yeah, wherever the thing you did that I encourage you to do Yeah. Guilty,

Preston Meyer  10:26

right. I mean, ultimately, we're all we are all responsible for our own actions. We can't say the devil made me do it. Because that's nonsense. We we choose what we do. Though. We are also a product of our environments, the various very different forces that act on us, but we get to make our own choices.

Katie Dooley  10:48

Wow. Oh, pep talk there.

Preston Meyer  10:52

Yeah, don't be a dick. I'm gonna find a way to work that phrase into most of our episodes. Like an Easter egg, right? Maybe we'll put it on a t shirt or a hat.

Katie Dooley  11:04

Yes, it is on my list of merch to make.

Preston Meyer  11:08

And with that note, check out our merch.

Katie Dooley  11:12

We have just launched our Spreadshirt store. So if you want some sweet Holly watermelon merch, check us out. Our link will be on our social media.

Preston Meyer  11:25

Just check out our link tree and get connected to that and our Discord server where we have great conversations

Katie Dooley  11:33

about whether gay men like boobs or not right.

Preston Meyer  11:37

Let us know. Anyway, let's get back on to the train. tracks that we have derailed all train tracks. Yep. Yeah. All right. So Lucifer. Lucifer is a great one. The there's, I feel very certain that somebody out in podcast land is happy to argue with me on this one. And let's just start with if you want to argue with me on this one, you're wrong.

Katie Dooley  12:05

Okay. That's the tolerance we like.

Preston Meyer  12:09

I'm not saying I won't discuss it with you. But what I'm about to share with you is widely agreed upon by the vast majority of scholars in the field. Lucifer is not the name of the depth, it is not Satan's name.

Katie Dooley  12:28

I believe that. Yeah. And he's like hard. Lucifer is hardly mentioned in the Bible, if I'm not mistaken. So

Preston Meyer  12:33

the name doesn't show up very much in the Bible at all. Yeah. And it's, I'm gonna distract myself just a little bit. You There are so many things in popular culture that love to make the name of the devil, Lucifer Morningstar,

Katie Dooley  12:51

is it? The hit show? Lucifer

Preston Meyer  12:55

is one of many cases. There's so many shows that Lucifer and one that's a lazy tautology. But, but second, that's not his name. The one time that we see Lucifer in the average English translation of the Bible, Lucifer is, it doesn't show up in the Hebrew, it doesn't show up in the Greek. It is added by the Latin translation, replacing the Hebrew name, hello, which I said name that's, that's still the wrong word. It's a title. And hello means shining, and refers to a shining one, specifically, in the context we have it. It's meant to refer to the title of the king of Babylon as referring to the Morning Star, that he's this bright God for the king. The one time we have the name Lucifer in the Hebrew Bible. It's not talking about the devil. It's Isaiah, the prophet addressing the king of Babylon. Calling him out for being such a powerful being who has fallen so far from grace by doing such great wickedness against Israel. not taught to Satan,

Katie Dooley  14:25

so it does have reference to to a person who did bad things, though,

Preston Meyer  14:32

was the king of Babylon. Yeah, but, and there are an awful lot of scholars who want to say that for this brief passage where Isaiah is using this title of Lucifer, that he's changed his subject, that he has stopped talking to the king of Babylon. The context doesn't make that statement make any sense by The name Lucifer has stuck in popular culture as the name of the devil.

Katie Dooley  15:05

You don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but I'd be interested to know why I got applied to the name of the devil.

Preston Meyer  15:10

Yeah, so I am also interested in curious to figure that out. And so far I haven't found an answer. Interesting. What's interesting to me is that the title of Morningstar is applied to Jesus several times in the New Testament. And Lucifer being a title that means light bringer, as a refers to the Morningstar that I mean, it's quite a positive title. It is a positive title. And so it makes sense that it applies to Jesus. And so of course, the the rationale behind it being applied to Lucifer is that he was one of the great angels before he rebelled. And so it's one of those names that show us how far he has fallen. But that just

Katie Dooley  15:58

fanfic, though, because there's no stories. Well, it's just Bible fanfic.

Preston Meyer  16:04

It looks an awful lot like fanfic from a biblical perspective,

Katie Dooley  16:07

just like the what is it? The Assumption of Mary? That Bible fanfic, too? Yeah, yeah. We should do an episode on that.

Preston Meyer  16:17

There's an awful lot of biblical fanfic out there. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  16:24

And I forced you to put this one in, I just like wrote the numbers 3666. The Beast?

Preston Meyer  16:33

Yeah, so it's a number that shows up in Revelation 1813, the number of the beast is a human number, and that number is 666. Some translations of the Bible, use slightly better language than that, saying that it's not the human number, as Iron Maiden says, but is the number of a man. A lot of translations prefer that wording. And the man according to almost all scholars on the subject, is Emperor Nero. There was, according to scholarship on the subject, an awful lot of people were really worried about Emperor Nero coming back from the dead, to wreak even greater Havoc than he had previously. And with the style of apocalyptic literature, that is super obvious in the Revelation of John, the story is that Israel will overcome even when Nero comes back. Now whether John was genuinely himself worried that Emperor Nero himself would come back, or somebody much like him, we can't say with any certainty.

Katie Dooley  17:48

So also nothing really to do with Satan or the Devil. We just lump it in there as an evil thing.

Preston Meyer  17:55

Yeah, like it's a connected idea. That's, I mean, all four of these numbers and titles are connected ideas in the way that we've associated them over the centuries, but they are all individual distinct things. What's interesting is that the number is 666. And many Greek manuscripts actually spell it out as 666. There are a few that use the numeral letters. And that's it's not numeral numbers that are numeral letters. anywhere else. Yeah. But smarter than Roman numeral. Okay. So Latin is super dumb that five is a V, and one is an AI. And there's no like you couldn't look at the alphabet and figure out why those letters were chosen to be those numbers. And you have to add them up in a way that makes doing math really hard. Greek and Hebrew and probably other languages did this really sensible thing where the first nine letters are 123456789. The next nine letters are 1020 3040 5060 7080 90. And then the next nine letters 100 200 300. so on, so there are some Greek manuscripts that spell out 666 There are some that use the numerals to this, like, it looks like 666 If you want to translate it accurately into English, but there are not three sixes Yes, seems like June 6 2006. A bunch of people were worried about it for some reason, because it was 666 is dumb, because it wasn't 666, which was the number that we're looking for. What's interesting, though, is there are also manuscripts in Greek for some reason, that instead of being 666, there 616 And the The odd thing about that is that it doesn't contradict the popular scholarly interpretation of it applying to Emperor Nero. It's instead applies one to the Greek spelling of Emperor Nero. And one to the Latin spelling of Emperor. Yeah, it's super weird. So. And it's a matter of adding up the value of the letters that spell up the name to get this number 666. Because John had to write in code, because he was in exile, when he wrote it, he needed this thing to be published. But, you know, anything that he's writing is getting read by his guards before it goes anywhere. Yeah. So that's kind of the idea there.

Katie Dooley  20:45

So he should be just as worried about the number 616 as 666 is not at all

Preston Meyer  20:52

correct. Okay. I'm really glad you finished it off with that last qualifier. Otherwise,

Katie Dooley  20:57

I just make a big deal about 666.

Preston Meyer  21:02

Yeah, people are super stressed out about it. Like if that's the number on your bill, they'll make sure that they change something six, seven.

Katie Dooley  21:08

Yeah, fun fact, I have a car payment is $667.

Preston Meyer  21:14

Nice. And that's how I remember it. That's fazed by the number. Because it's not quite there. Well, I

Katie Dooley  21:21

just know it's new 666 and I can make financial decisions.

Preston Meyer  21:31

Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of people who are really worried about the number. And that association isn't enough to make me feel like that fear is validated. But I mean,

Katie Dooley  21:43

especially once, you know, it's meant for Nero and not some supernatural beastie. Yeah, I mean, I guess they think he's coming back from the dead like a zombie. But

Preston Meyer  21:52

that somebody like Emperor Nero is going to come in the future. That either or it's not mean like having a number on a piece of paper being a danger.

Katie Dooley  22:03

I mean, chances are the people who believe in the 6x X would support someone who looked like an arrow was the way things are going.

Preston Meyer  22:11

There's way too much evidence to support that supposition.

Katie Dooley  22:17

All right. So let's get into the Satanism. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  22:22

there's a couple who talked about Devil's yeah, there's a couple of big groups that are both formed and named to deliberately antagonize Christians that have taken up that mantle of Satanism. Do they antagonize

Katie Dooley  22:37

Christians? Like there's nothing in their official statements that say they exist to,

Preston Meyer  22:45

I'm gonna show a couple of points to you through generally, the statement and the media presence of saying, I worship Satan is to one degree or another, sometimes it's really not an aggressive antagonism. And sometimes it has been, yeah, against Christians or Christianity in general, or sometimes just against the idea that there's a Christian supremacy in the state, which is hard to deny in North America. And depending on where you are in South America, it's actually a problem, too, that's quite visible.

Katie Dooley  23:24

Is there anything you want to share with the class before we start talking about Satanism? Preston,

Preston Meyer  23:29

there was a time when I was a Satanist. And it's, I mean, that's not the life I live now. But it was, it was part of who I was for a little while when I was in junior high and your identity is super flexible and constantly changing.

Katie Dooley  23:47

I mean, it was still valid.

Preston Meyer  23:51

I showed up in all black to my younger brother's Christian baptism. I'm sure that it wasn't that intense. It wasn't like super golf. I just haven't had black pants and a black T shirt. We're not going too crazy here.

Katie Dooley  24:04

You're a pretty vibrant guy.

Preston Meyer  24:08

Right? That's surprised I didn't do the I make up and dyed my hair darker.

Katie Dooley  24:14

Crossing your forehead.

Preston Meyer  24:18

It wasn't really even a long time thing. But it was a few months where I was like, yeah, no, it makes perfect sense that, you know, let's let's follow the first great philosopher. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, that some of the positions of these groups are interesting and worth exploring, which is part of why we're doing an episode. So first, I want to talk about the Church of Satan. This is I don't want to keep saying for each group. This is not the group I belong to because I don't belong to any group at all.

Katie Dooley  24:51

Yeah, so that's, that's where honestly, this episode was hard. It's because like, there's this church to say we're gonna talk about and then there's The Satanic Temple and then you can just actually be like a Satanist. Yeah, just like I mean, I guess you can be a Christian without prescribing to any particular denomination. And debt to death. It's a spectrum. So everything, everything's a spectrum. So the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple are actually quite different. Oh, yeah. So you can see just from the issue, that if you're involved in any sort of organized Satanism, there's two vastly different groups, and then anything and everything in between, including satanic ritual killing, which we'll get to.

Preston Meyer  25:43

All right, so the Church of Satan was founded in San Francisco in 1966. Not very old. Now. I like that they picked 66 To start with, do you think he just like sat on it for a little bit? Uh, you know what a little piece of me thinks he might have.

Katie Dooley  26:00

not time yet.

Preston Meyer  26:03

Was it June of 66? I don't know. Okay, a little piece of me now hopes it was June 6 66. But I don't know that that's the case file it today and has to be filed today. It was started by a fella named Anton LaVey. He's an interesting, weird duck. Yeah, he is. And we don't really have the time to get into all of his baggage. But he wrote the Satanic Bible. He didn't publish it until after the church had been around for a few years. And it is their official text.

Katie Dooley  26:39

Now, I think I have this in our notes later, but LaVey believed in magic. So we're gonna get into their beliefs a little more. So that's one big difference between the Church of Satan, which we're talking about now in the Satanic Temple, which we're talking about later, is that church of Satan strongly believes in magic in the use of magic, whereas the Satanic Temple is more humanist and doesn't believe in those superstitious things. So, if you're wondering how weird this guy is, he believes in magic.

Preston Meyer  27:11

Yeah, they're, they're into magic. But they do not at all subscribe to the familiar ideas of what the devil is.

Katie Dooley  27:22

And that really such subscribed me that really surprised me. I knew a little bit about Satanism. But the fact that none of these Satanists generally do not believe in Satan.

Preston Meyer  27:38

I don't know if it's fair to say generally, the bigger groups that is the case Yeah, yeah. It's, it's interesting that though they use this title, Satanist, they do not worship Satan,

Katie Dooley  27:51

and they actively discourage the worship of Satan as a deity. So yeah, there it is, in my notes, so the church's lean believes in magic or black magic, but not in a higher power. So it is both supernatural, but atheistic, which is kind of that was kind of weird for a moment for me to wrap my head around as a secular humanist. I was like, how can you believe in both the supernatural? How can you believe in the supernatural and not believe in God?

Preston Meyer  28:21

Well see, we've talked about a few religions where there's this spiritual cosmology, without a deity, any specific theology or deity, yeah, like even Buddhism is pretty fuzzy in the god department.

Katie Dooley  28:39

This is a quote I pulled LaVey taught that his infernal Majesty was a symbol of humanistic values such as self assertion, rebelling against unjust authority, vital existence and undefiled wisdom. So Satan is really just like a figurehead are a metaphor.

Preston Meyer  28:57

Yeah, for the Church of Satan. He's definitely more of a metaphoric symbol than a personal presence. But a positive one, which is feels weird in a pretty Christocentric society.

Katie Dooley  29:16

Yes, and there's going to be a lot of numbers coming up I'm gonna have a whole bunch of numbers that you guys what we like no, I love numbers, but the church of Satan has their own set of numbers and the the Satanic Temple has a different set of numbers. Yeah, so a nice summary of the so churches saying the nine satanic statements, so Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dream. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self deceit. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates. I'm excited for you and to unpack all these. Satan represents venture Instead of turning the other cheek, Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all fours, who, because of his divine spiritual and intellectual development has become the most vicious animal of all. Satan represents all the so called sins as they all lead to physical, mental or emotional gratification. And Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years. So what do you think of all that President?

Preston Meyer  30:37

Well, I mean, that's just nine separate things to unpack. I mean, some of them are deliberately in specifically meant to contradict teachings of the Church teaching straight out of the Bible. Others are less targeted, but still, there, that vein of thought, where it's meant to be in opposition to all of the fairly oppressive teachings of the Church over the centuries.

Katie Dooley  31:07

I mean, I was gonna say, these aren't all necessarily negative. I think we're just so used to these restrictive religions where that you have to make some sort of personal sacrifice to be part of it. And this doesn't have any level of personal sacrifice.

Preston Meyer  31:24

No, none at all. This is all about almost self deification, that you shouldn't be worshipping Lucifer at all according to these thoughts, but that you kind of put yourself up on the pedestal, and if somebody's gonna hurt you, they have wronged God, and you will hurt them.

Katie Dooley  31:42

Yeah, the one that represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. That one's a little. That's probably the worst 109. But

Preston Meyer  31:55

it's not a great way to be a neighbor.

Katie Dooley  31:58

No. Let's replace that with don't be a dick. And you have a pretty solid nine,

Preston Meyer  32:03

right? But these are just the satanic statements. We also have rules, which feel a little bit like the 10 commandments, but this time, there's 11 of them. I mean, if you want to explore the 10 commandments, even within the Decalogue, there's more than 10. All right, so the 11 Satanic rules of the Earth First, do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked love it. Right. That's actually pretty good. Do not tell your troubles to others, unless you're sure they want to hear them. Also kind of in that yeah, I'm into that. That's nice. When in another's lair, show him respect, or else do not go there. Yeah, my house. The word layer feels weird. But also good rule.

Katie Dooley  32:54

Yes. The sentiment is there. The wording, okay.

Preston Meyer  32:59

Yeah, I, every time I see the word layer in these writings, it's just like, you're deliberately you're affecting a feeling. And it doesn't feel natural. It doesn't slide smoothly, but I get it. You're making this

Katie Dooley  33:17

for a certain type of person?

Preston Meyer  33:19

Absolutely. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy, not. Unless I'm bored.

Katie Dooley  33:32

No one makes less sense. I'm pretty sure you can just ask them to leave.

Preston Meyer  33:35

Or hey, don't do that annoying thing. How to this isn't a translation issue. Anton LaVey wrote this in English. If somebody is annoying, you treat them without mercy. Not a great way to be a neighbor.

Katie Dooley  33:49

Pretty bad. That's pretty bad. I would have kicked I would have been really mean to a lot of people if that was

Preston Meyer  34:01

Here's another good one, though. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.

Katie Dooley  34:08

Love it. How can Christianity doesn't have that

Preston Meyer  34:11

effect? The kind of do but honestly not in such a well worded way. That it's great. That the wording again is a little bit weird. We don't talk about mating signals. I mean, it's not that we don't have them. It's just we don't call them that. But it's a good rule is such a good rule. 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 of it. Like so far, like we're halfway through this list. We've only found one that's objectionable. And certainly there's gonna be people arguing with us on how objection no bullet is on that's fine. Just, you know, whatever. But don't take what's not yours.

Katie Dooley  35:09

That's, that's good. I love it and lighten the load if you can lighten the load. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  35:14

it's great. Love it. And I like how it's tied into one statement, even though it's there's a negative and a positive there. Yeah. Next, 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. So just like in the deck log, the 10 commandments, we have one of the many commandments that actually has a promise attached to it. This is the one that we have, where you must acknowledge the presence of magic. And if you've used it and deny its power, then you will be punished for it. Within a self consistent thing, we're still solid. But magic,

Katie Dooley  36:11

I mean, is weirder than what any other religion asks us to believe,

Preston Meyer  36:17

as its own thing know. If you've successfully use magic, acknowledge that you've successfully use magic? I got it. Cool. All right. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.

Katie Dooley  36:32

Yes. Yes, I was just having this conversation the other day. We have a few people in our lives where the like, answer their texts, like this person, I don't want to text them and then they text them. I'm like, you know, you don't have to answer that text. You don't have to text someone

Preston Meyer  36:49

yet. Don't volunteer for suffering and then complain about it. Yeah, that's nonsense. And that's how I understand that amendment. Or, well, I guess it's not a commandment, it's rules of living. The earth is the next one another really good one. And here we have some really strong non contradictions with the teachings of Jesus. The rule is do not harm little children. I know a few strong and solid groups that can use that rule. Right? i Some churches even

Katie Dooley  37:26

that's what that's what I was getting at.

Preston Meyer  37:30

It's it's really hard to naysay some of these, you know, these are good rules.

Katie Dooley  37:37

Why would you want to naysay them? I don't think there's anything wrong with Satanism. Do you

Preston Meyer  37:43

get so far I haven't seen anything that's outright objectionable. Okay. Well, okay, that's not true. There was a couple of things. Mostly, that's a good way to live. Next, do not kill non human animals, unless you are attacked. Or for your food. Make sense? Don't go around stomping on things that don't mean you any harm. Don't go torturing animals for no reason. We've got enough people doing that it's a problem. kill animals for your food or your protection? Makes good sense to me. Yep. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

Katie Dooley  38:31

I went from like, zero to 110 Start escalated incredibly quickly. But the first half is not bad. Right? I like the first half. I mean, we've lived in sketchy enough neighborhoods, to know that you just keep yourself to yourself and keep your head down and don't bother people and you'll be fine. That being said, I think there are times people should intervene. But for the most part, the first part of that is

Preston Meyer  39:05

a good rule. Honestly, the whole thing looks pretty solid if you want to live the biblical life when you're not there yet in your Bible reading. But when Israel leaves Egypt and wanders around in the wilderness for 40 years, and makes their home in the Promised Land, that's exactly the way they made their their home was they wandered in peace, they promised peace to anybody that they came across. And when the people who had already set up their homes there, said, Hey, we don't want you and threatened to kill them. Then Israel fought back and destroyed them. Oh, lovely. So this is the way we see the existence in the Bible.

Katie Dooley  39:49

So Satanists are Christians slash anti Christians.

Preston Meyer  39:56

That's pretty fair. I'd say, well, we didn't actually explore the title of antichrist. I know that right now, but, and depending on who you ask, there are a good handful of different definitions for antichrist. Some people say it doesn't count as the Antichrist who is not the literal physical, embodied spawn of Satan. Which that's a really extreme position to hold to. I don't I don't want to call it a weird position but it's an it's an extreme one to say there's just the one thing that could ever be so where are we have this title showing up? In our oldest literature is right in the New Testament? And an antichrist is literally any person who denies that Jesus rose from the dead. Which we have an Antichrist in this room.

Katie Dooley  40:53

Oh, no. Where it's me.

Preston Meyer  40:58

And so realistically, and fairly and antichrist, depending on who you talk to, you can be anywhere in between those two extremes. Wow.

Katie Dooley  41:07

Everything from the literal spawn of Satan to Katie. Yeah. Wow, I'm gonna make a graphic. I'm gonna be all teary eyed, like thumbs up, and then they'll be like, the little little literal like Baltimore abortion. On the other side. Choose your antichrist. There's a meme in here. I need to

Preston Meyer  41:30

figure it out. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  41:34

Oh, dear.

Preston Meyer  41:35

Yeah. And so those were the rules. Those are the beliefs so

Katie Dooley  41:39

that you're just with a little digression in there. Um, so what does it look like if you're a practicing Church of Satanist?

Preston Meyer  41:49

Well, out on the streets, that most Satanists wouldn't look terribly out of place. Among any other group of professionals, you'd see, I think, but there's Satanist, weddings, funerals, even baptisms. Sometimes you hear the word anti baptism thrown around.

Katie Dooley  42:10

And baptism is popular in temple of Satan. Yes, Satan,

Preston Meyer  42:15

the satanic Satanic Temple.

Katie Dooley  42:18

Whereas you can get at satanist baptism through church of Satan. Yeah. There is a ranking system in the Church of Satan.

Preston Meyer  42:29

Oh, absolutely. It's not just your regular church, like it would be very foreign to say, your average evangelical Christian. And not just because it's Satan. But it's actually modeled after the old mystery schools where you've got sets of degrees that you progress through. And to be fair, the Church of Satan, very few people go up through all the degrees. But you'll have a few people who go up to second or third. It's kind of interesting that way.

Katie Dooley  43:04

Yeah. So it starts as a registered member, anyone can be a registered member, you can go on to churches st.com right now and register, and you'd be a registered member of the Church of Satan. And then to get your first trigger, you become an active member. And that's basically just showing your interest in the community building of the Church of Satan that you want to be involved and not just to have it on paper, that you're a member of the Church of Satan. The secondary agree is which are Warlock third degree is priest or priestess. Fourth Degree is Magister or magistra. And fifth degree is mega or magus, on their website, and I didn't do a ton of digging, it basically said to get in so they don't tell you how to get into the upper your degrees up approach. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  43:49

I did some digging,

Katie Dooley  43:50

I could find what those ranks are. It's on Reddit, for sure.

Preston Meyer  43:56

There's a very real chance having not looked into it at all, specifically myself, that once you've gotten to the point where somebody is comfortable inviting you up to these higher degrees, each individually, of course, you're probably not the kind of person who would decide to reveal those secrets.

Katie Dooley  44:18

I mean, there's always people who leave though. That's where I get my internal Intel

Preston Meyer  44:23

and the cult here your group is for sure you're gonna have people leaving. But based on the things we outlined in our cults episode, as much as Anton LaVey kind of set up a slightly authoritarian system. It's really not setting off my cult alarm bells. Yeah. And

Katie Dooley  44:45

that's the interesting thing about both this and the Satanic Temple is, you know, in the news, you'll hear about satanic cults. And these are not cults at all in in the danger cult zone. Right? You might call them a cult and turn memes of a small upstart religion, but definitely not danger call. These are full fleshed out regular old religions with tax exempt status with tax exempt status. When I guess, I guess controversial point, something if you've seen the exorcist or at all is the black mass. So the Church of Satan performance black mass, as does the Satanic Temple, which is basically this blasphemous version of a Catholic mass. The vestments are all black, hence black mass, and the alters the back of a naked woman, kind of sexy. Is that why teenage precedent was the sameness?

Preston Meyer  45:44

No, not at all, though, it certainly wouldn't have heard, it probably would have encouraged me to stick with it a little longer, maybe.

Katie Dooley  45:53

And then they, you know, they do things with the sacrament and whatever.

Preston Meyer  45:59

For sure. So in contrast with that, we have the Satanic Temple. It's a baby, right? It's pretty new. It's been around for about eight years. It was founded in Salem, Massachusetts, in 2013. The group was co founded by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jerry, and kind of like Moses and his brother air, and one of them was the spokesperson, that was Malcolm Jerry. So it's, it is pretty new. And the little parallel is kind of interesting to me. You know, things.

Katie Dooley  46:42

I actually like, I mean, I'm the to, like, if I had to pick, I'd pick the Satanic Temple, it seems like more modern, and there, they appear to be more active than the Church of Satan. And, yeah, they're doing some cool stuff in the community,

Preston Meyer  46:59

the Satanic Temple is really involved in helping secularize the state. That's one of their main drives.

Katie Dooley  47:08

Yeah, and this is where this is why we pick to do Satanism, I think a little bit after our apparently religions is that part of their job is to, you know, if if Christianity is getting certain privileges, that they're making sure that they get certain privileges, those privileges as well as a commentary on religion in the United States. So kind of like the flying spaghetti monster that if you can teach creationism in science class, you can teach spaghetti flying monster ism, Flying Spaghetti Monster ism in class. And one of their beliefs is that all churches should be taxed. And that's something that they advocate for So,

Preston Meyer  47:52

but in the meantime, since churches get to be tax exempt, they're taking full advantage of all of the benefits of being a church.

Katie Dooley  48:00

Absolutely. But I think that's where people go, you know, and we'll get to Satanic Panic in a little bit. But oh, my goodness, the church is saying, how can they be tax exempt? It's well, you know, turn around and look at literally any other group. And they're not actually doing anything bad.

Preston Meyer  48:19

Right? It's important to note that the Satanic Temple also does not claim to worship satan. They do discourage that, though, as we talked about earlier on in our podcast in history, go back to early episodes. When we define what is a God and what is worship. That's pretty nebulous, and it it does kind of look like both of these groups do kind of worship Satan. But it's, it's as true as saying Catholics worship saints.

Katie Dooley  48:55

Were where they avoid that. Yeah, so the Satanic Temple. Satan is a metaphor, a symbol for the eternal rebel. So I see what you're saying, Preston, but I think like

Preston Meyer  49:09

tonic Temple is even less theist. Oh, yeah, they're

Katie Dooley  49:13

like, actually, they believe in extra This is a quote, they believe in exercising reasonable agnosticism, and all things that religion should be divorced from superstition. superstition, I said that weird. I think the reason that they both say that. And junk. This is just an opinion piece to jump in. But there's this idea that I mean, we targeted Satan is evil. But I don't know from the

Preston Meyer  49:46

Christian New Testament

Katie Dooley  49:47

perspective. Yeah. But Satanists aren't evil. But then part of me goes then why did you pick Satan as your rap?

Preston Meyer  49:54

It's to specifically antagonize Christians, whether to a great degree or a minor degree. There's there is that spirit of antagonism there.

Katie Dooley  50:03

You know, I was talking to someone, they're like, oh, this person's a evil. They're a devil worshiper and I'm like, so usually not. Usually not. So that's just like, and chances are they're not a devil worshiper. Right? If you're saying this, you're not actually devil worshiper. So it is it interesting. So they I feel like yeah, they just picked the name to piss off.

Preston Meyer  50:25

Christians. Yeah. And it works.

Katie Dooley  50:31

Are you? Are you grumpy? No,

Preston Meyer  50:33

I think these groups are fascinating. And in particular, the Satanic Temple does great work. We'll look at a few points here later on,

Katie Dooley  50:41

carried carry the seven tenets do it? Yes. So they have seven tenants. So we have the nine and then we have the 11. And now we have seven. So number one, one should strive to act with compassion, empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason I can't complain about that ever to the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over our laws and institutions?

Preston Meyer  51:06

Absolutely. We've got an awful lot of people who, especially in the last year have been shouting for the rule of law, completely ignoring the need for actual justice.

Katie Dooley  51:20

Yes, law and justice are two different things. And the law doesn't always make sense.

Preston Meyer  51:25

Right? An awful lot of terrible things have been not just legal, but enforced by law, and an awful lot of righteous things have been banned by law. Yeah. So they are different and a lot of people seem to have a lot of trouble with that.

Katie Dooley  51:42

Number three, one's body is inviolable. I don't know. Is that how you say? Yeah, findable inviolable, subject to one's own will alone. So body autonomy? Yeah, perfect. I like it. I just looked up the umbrella of protection, like yesterday. Yeah. And I didn't like it. But I like this. The number four the freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend, to willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forego one's own. Yeah. Is that about what to say? Basically, every episode, don't be a dick. As long as you're not hurting anyone else. Go hard. Number five beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.

Preston Meyer  52:43

Right. We got way too many people doing that. Oh, many

Katie Dooley  52:47

I love the MIS Satanist.

Preston Meyer  52:50

I don't know are you You tell me. I don't like telling other people a thing that they are when they may not agree

Katie Dooley  52:59

with me, number six people are fallible if one makes a mistake once do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused? Absolutely agree. And stemmer number seven, every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought the spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word. Absolutely. I have no problems with these. These are less weird than love A's.

Preston Meyer  53:29

Right? Destroying. Yeah, our fellows in the Satanic Temple seem to be a lot. I don't want to say less rage motivated, even though that's what was going to come out of my mouth. Cuz there's definitely a perfectly reasonable anger against a very prejudiced system in place.

Katie Dooley  53:50

Yep. No, I like all of those. I have no problems with that sense of beliefs and it makes Satanic Panic even funnier. And actually, when I was researching this episode, I found an article I think it was the CBC and it was like news satanic cult makes its way to Canada. And it was Satanic Temple because it's fairly new. Like I had. I had just met my husband in 2013. Like we were just becoming friends in 2013. So this is a very new religion and it just, it just made me giggle at it was like on the CBC is this scary thing and then you read this and you're like, oh, there's nothing to disagree with. And if you can disagree with it, please leave a note on our Discord because I really want to know what you disagree with. Yeah, because those all seem super reasonable to me.

Preston Meyer  54:45

So far, it's great. So kind of like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As Katie mentioned, it's important for the Satanic Temple to remind legislators that religious freedoms need to be available to Every one that's no matter what it is you believe that we need to have both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Yep. Secularism is hugely important, as we talked about in our previous episode.

Katie Dooley  55:16

rituals that they do black mass, as I mentioned, prior, this is straight from their website. It's a celebration of blasphemy, which can be expression of personal liberty and freedom. They have the and baptism which I actually really liked. This is different than the satanic baptism with the Church of Satan. This is where if you were baptized as a child, you can renounce that baptism ceremony, which I think is kind of cool, because I know a lot of people that were baptized as babies, and now they're like, what? Well, and

Preston Meyer  55:49

I really appreciate that it's about going back on a thing that was done to you without your consent.

Katie Dooley  55:58

I mean, I think that goes back to the data of your body is your budget and bodily

Preston Meyer  56:01

autonomy? Absolutely.

Katie Dooley  56:04

They have a destruction ritual where participants destroy an object they own that symbolizes a source of pain in their lives, hopefully, cathartic, I was gonna say also very healthy. And they've a defiance ritual. So a pledge to challenge the status quo in a way that is personally meaningful.

Preston Meyer  56:20

I don't see an issue with that. I mean, I recognize that there is room for problems there. But broadly generically, I betcha that doesn't come up very often.

Katie Dooley  56:32

I mean, if you pair the Defiance ritual with the seven tenants, then you're probably going to pick something that would be

Preston Meyer  56:40

And realistically, you'd be doing this with a group and somebody's going to say, Hey, don't be a

Katie Dooley  56:47

tech, tenant hate.

Preston Meyer  56:51

No, I think that was already there. Just reading our words to you know, there's nothing wrong with restating your thing and rules. Like what's the second rule of fight club?

Katie Dooley  57:01

Don't be a dick.

Preston Meyer  57:04

It's the same rule is rule number one is, I've never seen Fight Club, we might need to fix that.

Katie Dooley  57:10

I think this came up in a previous episode now with John Wick was I feel like people are gonna start realizing how little TV I watch.

Preston Meyer  57:18

So on our Discord, somebody called me out on that, like, are they really that similar? To be fair, he said that he hadn't seen one of the films as well. And my comparison wasn't a strong comparison. But I stand by it that there is some parallels between the two. So one thing that I think is great, and will always be a wonderful highlight for me in the Satanic Temple organization's history is the pink mass of 2013. They were still brand new at this point babies. And it says an example of some deliberate antagonism, not that it's not deserved. In this case, it's very deserved.

Katie Dooley  58:09

It is an act of deliberate antagonists.

Preston Meyer  58:12

So the Westboro Baptist Church, right. We've talked about them in passing a little bit more in private than we have on the podcast. They are a very aggressive evangelical pain in the ass.

Katie Dooley  58:30

Man, like, if you think Satanists are bad, just look at the Westboro Baptist Church. Because Satanists are saints, Satanists, compared to the Westboro Baptist Church. Thank you for laughing at that really?

Preston Meyer  58:47

Great. So anyway, the Westboro Baptist Church had decided that they were going to pick at the funerals of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. I don't know if anyone can defend that choice. I'd like to hear it. I'm not going to love your argument, but I'm willing to hear it.

Katie Dooley  59:11

I really want to get oh my goodness, I forget her first name. The Phelps lady that left really want her on the podcast.

Preston Meyer  59:18

Sure. All right. So the Westboro Baptist Church wanted to pick it, the funerals of the victims of the bombing. Nonsense. So the satanists temple held a meeting over Catherine Johnson's grave. Catherine Johnson is the mother of the Westboro Baptist churches. Mm. Founder. Church has living founder, her mom, his mom is dead. They decided to have a meeting on her grave because of their decision to pick it. The funerals of the bombing victims and the way they decided to have this meeting is just Truly deliberately antagonistic. I love it. There's nothing I like about Westboro Baptist Church famously anti gay, so they made sure to have gay couple kiss on her grave directly over it. No ambiguity here. That's just hey, we're here to piss you off. Next part though, but then the leader of the organization decided to rub his junk on her headstone. But not just that he didn't just rub his junk on her headstone. He rubbed his junk on her headstone and cast a spell to change her sexual orientation post mortem. I love it. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  1:00:44

Especially because they don't believe in magic. Like he was just doing it to troll All right,

Preston Meyer  1:00:51

yeah. Love it. The whole thing is, no, everything's a spectrum. Not all Satanists are seriously constantly antagonistic. This event is a really great example of just how antagonistic they can be sometimes. And in this case, I not only do I find it hugely entertaining, but it's not like it's not deserved. The people that they're antagonizing asked for this kind of publicity and behavior.

Katie Dooley  1:01:22

And I mean, even the, oh, my goodness, my brain just stopped working even, you know, their political work is arguably deliberately antagonistic, but with good reason. Even if they don't ensure religious equality for themselves as a small, kind of weird group, as long as you know, they're working to ensure religious equality for all. So whether that's, you know, Sikhs or Muslims or Jewish people in in American Canada, if they can, you know, work towards for themselves that guarantees that everyone has it, too. And I think that's important.

Preston Meyer  1:02:03

And also, but as we talked about secularism, they want to reduce the anti atheist prejudice that exists all over North America. Yeah. And it's, it's so weird how much anti anti atheist prejudice there is, considering how many atheists there are here.

Katie Dooley  1:02:25

But I think and this was, I mean, this is last episode, but I was really quiet about my atheism for a long time. Because I didn't want people to be like, Oh, or like, have to defend it. So it's just easier to not say anything, and how that people assume what they want to assume. If you're a Christian chances are you assume that that nice white girl is probably a Christian to you, even though I'm not. I remember St. Item came up at work. This is like years ago, when I had a job. One lady was like, I'm Catholic, and other was like, I'm Christian. And I was like, I'm an atheist. And they're like, you would be like, Okay. I don't know what that means. But thank you. And that's when you know, finally I, you know, if it's going to come up, like I don't shove it down anyone's throat, but if it's going to come up, then yeah, I'll say I'm an atheist.

Preston Meyer  1:03:19

Well see, shoving a atheism down somebody's throat is a lot different than shoving fears on down someone's throat. They're both kind of annoying, let's be real. But you can also be a perfectly reasonable atheist. And I thank you.

Katie Dooley  1:03:37

Thank you. But I know, I've been in situations where people are like, Hey, you should check this out. And I'm just like, No, thank you. I'm an atheist.

Preston Meyer  1:03:49

So people are a lot more aggressive in their evangelism. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  1:03:53

But before I used to just like sit there quietly and take it, and now I'm like, if they are so bold to bring it up to me, why am I not so bold to respond with it? Right. So, anyway, that was a little bit of a digression. You added another small one that I just did about this morning, but I'd like to talk about it.

Preston Meyer  1:04:12

I think the Temple of set is a pretty interesting group. They were founded by Michael Aquino in 1975. So the the Church of Satan had been around for less than 10 years before this group decided to splinter off

Katie Dooley  1:04:27

from is a Satanic cult.

Preston Meyer  1:04:30

I'm not gonna apply the word cult now the danger call sect, they have sectored themselves off of the Church of Satan. And this group actually is more satanist than the other two that

Katie Dooley  1:04:49

we've covered in the stereotypical way we think of Satan, the temple of

Preston Meyer  1:04:53

set don't worship Satan, they worship set Okay, there's a but the, the whole idea of this group is that Satan appeared to the founder in a dream and revealed to him that his name is set. Satan, as we talked at the beginning of the episode is a title set is a name. So, most members of the Temple of set actually don't prefer to be called Satanists. They prefer to be setting nests, which is a little harder to say. But they actually don't worship him the same way Christians worship Jesus or the father, because let's admit there's some diversity in Christianity to they revere him as a leader and as a teacher, as the archetypical philosopher, the free thinker that is opposed to cruel and harsh and demeaning laws. But he is a real figure that exists in reality and is a person to be revered, which is different than the other two groups that we've talked about heaven. All right. So their sacred text is the book of Coming Forth by night. I'll admit I haven't read it. The title is intriguing. Yes. And it's going to be on my reading list. At some point,

Katie Dooley  1:06:38

we there should be a few books that we can get this out. But there should be a few books we tackle together and then do an episode on

Preston Meyer  1:06:45

for sure. All right, so the Temple of set like the Church of Satan is into magic. But the Temple of set doesn't have any prescribed ritual magics. It's more of a Yeah, we acknowledge magic, and you can go and use magic. And we can do it as a group sometimes, but we're not going to prescribe rituals to you. Kind of cool a little bit for you. inherence, are encouraged to celebrate their own birthdays. Yeah, there are Christians who are opposed to this. It's kind of interesting to see some contrast there. But there's actually no other holidays that they're required to observe. It's, you should recognize your own birthday, when we talked about worship months back. It's kind of interesting to me that this is the one thing that you were encouraged to observe. And as we look at how birthdays were considered couple 1000 years ago, that the important birthdays were the birthdays of the gods. And so I feel like that's kind of the feeling that's meant to be attached here is that when you are freed by Satan, or set from the overbearing other religions in the world, as they're thought to be in this group, that you become a God unto yourself?

Katie Dooley  1:08:11

Well, I think that's the common thread with all of these satanist groups is that you should be the center of your world. Absolutely. And I mean, as an atheist, I don't disagree. You may as well enjoy this life if you don't know if there's one coming after. Especially some of those really toxic Christianity's that are Calvinist comes to mind. The Hellfire. Yeah, and really depriving yourself for the promises something better. I guess they believe that there is something better, but I'm kinda right. Let's enjoy this road trip while we're on it. And if there's something better awesome, and if there's not, then we had a hell of a time,

Preston Meyer  1:08:55

right? So the Temple of set actually does teach that there is an afterlife, not one for everybody, not a universal afterlife. But if you achieve apotheosis or deification in this life, then you will move on to an afterlife that is yours. Otherwise, there's nothing you got nothing to worry about. There's you cease to exist when you die. So that's, that's not so bad. If you want to hope for an afterlife, you're going to do what it takes to have an afterlife worth having. And if you're terrible, then you got nothing anyway, which isn't very different from the Jehovah's Witness program, where the truly righteous will be resurrected, and others will simply cease to exist. So not terribly alien, though some aspects of it are not exactly mainstream.

Katie Dooley  1:10:00

So I wrote a couple paragraphs on Satanic Panic this morning. I noticed that yeah, I just thought it was a good way to wrap up all of this because I think a lot of the reasons we got requests, not that I didn't want to ask for it specifically was deeply concerned about Satanists, but I think it comes from truly from the Satanic Panic and link, there are these things to be scared of. So my first point is trigger warning. It's not terrible, but I am going to mention some potentially triggering things. So by potentially, or stay with me, so it is also Satanic Panic is also known as satanic ritual abuse that originated in the 1980s and still continues to some extent today, but it was really popular in the 1980s. I think this is unlike punk and metal were really starting to define themselves find themselves and we're becoming more mainstream and yeah, people were just worried about their kids. So it's basically Satanic Panic is basically that the Satanist groups, ritually abused people, physically and sexually. And then I put a price so do some Chris. I know that I said, but then again, so does the Catholic Church. So this includes everything. And then again, this is just a legend. This is cannibalism, child murder, torture, human sacrifice, etc. And then Katie's commentary so I'm not saying that this doesn't happen, but there's not much evidence for it. There's not much evidence at all for it and I have some notes coming down below. It is not this is not this happens just as much as in Satanism as it does in Christianity. So for every any group

Preston Meyer  1:11:51

that's big enough to have a difference of opinion between people is gonna have some issues. Yeah, child

Katie Dooley  1:11:57

per capita in Satanism in Christianity, I'm sure is about the same that faces some sort of abuse and because Christianity is bigger, probably a lot more kids gonna be that way. Yeah, so don't be locked into Satanists to stir up trouble. There's bigger fish to fry.

Preston Meyer  1:12:20

Yeah, if you've got a community problems, I'm gonna bet against Satanists being the root of that problem.

Katie Dooley  1:12:27

Yeah. And we have to be really careful with Satanic Panic. And this kind of ties into your note that we're gonna get to, but chances are the satanists you know, or have heard of, or have met, don't actually worship Satan. And Satanic Panic is often linked with unfounded conspiracy theory. So we have this Q anon with their pedophile Cabal, this this kind of ties into Satanic Panic, where we think there's this group of evil people doing these things. And

Preston Meyer  1:13:00

what we do know that there's a group of rich people who do terrible things,

Katie Dooley  1:13:03

absolutely. But Satanists, and we like to keep it up to be this. We're looking where they want us to look actually, that we're looking for and that's not the right way to be. Look,

Preston Meyer  1:13:14

it's a bad Cup game and we're losing. Yes. shell game is the word I'm looking for. Most people play with cups anyway, though, so I don't feel like I'm wrong. But I had to use words.

Katie Dooley  1:13:24

We're looking at the wrong cup in the shell game. Sure.

Preston Meyer  1:13:27

There you go.

Katie Dooley  1:13:29

So this is a study I believe it was from 2018, the National Center of on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted a study led by University of California psychologists Gail Goodman. This is a quote from an article, which found that among 12,000, accusations of satanic ritual abuse, there was no evidence for a well organized integrational satanic cult who sexually molested and tortured children. No evidence 12,000 cases of child abuse alleged child abuse. None of them were linked to any organized, satanist group. Although there was convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or couples who say that they involved, that they're involved with saying or use the claim to intimidate victims.

Preston Meyer  1:14:20

I can see them using Satan as an intimidation tool. But

Katie Dooley  1:14:24

I think especially if you're involved with a larger Satanists group, like the Satanic Temple, or the Church of Satan, you're involved in the community and you're not doing weird shit. Like I'm actually thinking of a serial killer case in particular. I don't even know if it's a serial killer case. It was a murder case where some of the stuff happened, but like these are the Jeffrey Dahmer is that killed animals and we're loners as kids. But if you're actively involved in you know, the Satanic Temple is a great example where there's a community and you're doing political activity and community outreach. chillin chances are you're not doing weird shit like this right? reason to not do weird shit like this. Yeah, so that's basically Satanic Panic. I had another note on more on the mysticism of Satan, but I don't know if that's another digression. Go for it. So I just I was thinking about this in my research and on you know how this devil figure comes from Zoroastrianism people are so worried about the Devil and Satan, but there are so many other dark demon deities for both a dark demon deities and other religions that nobody gives a shit about. Right. It's like I said, you know, this person I know all they're a devil worshiper. They're evil only. But what if there isn't Kali? That's evil? Goddess of death and destruction? Yeah. What is there a caller, you don't care if there are Kali worshiper or I'm not going to look up the Zoroastrian guy's name, or a Hades worshiper, or I'm sure there's, I mean, I know there's others. I just can't think of any other names and other religions. But

Preston Meyer  1:16:15

Hades is one that I think is actually really fascinating, and definitely worth bringing up here. Because there's not evil. There's so much Christian baggage thrown on to Greek mythology and cosmology that we've equated Hades with the devil. Yeah, in

Katie Dooley  1:16:35

the Sistine chapel's, that devil is Hades,

Preston Meyer  1:16:39

right? In the Disney movies. Hades is definitely the antagonist in the stories. But if you actually go back and read Greek mythology, these stories, Hades is a victim oftentimes, and not outright evil. He's the guardian of dead spirits, good and evil. That equating him with Lucifer, the devil, Satan of Christianity, makes no sense at all, especially when Zeus goes around raping people all the time. And he's the woman as well in our Disney animated classic. Beloved, Zeus is such a nice guy. And he is meant to resemble what a lot of people like to think of as the God of Christianity. And yet, if you read the stories about him, there's no personality overlap.

Katie Dooley  1:17:41

I think like my point is, if you didn't know about Christianity, you would never worry about devil worshippers. Right? And that's where, you know, we worry about Satanic Panic. Well, it's only because you have the context of Christianity if you're raised atheist or somewhere else in the world where Christianity is not as common. Back to last episode, this is where I, you know, question. religion as a whole is, you know, if you were never exposed to it, then it wouldn't exist. Right? It's like, why are Catholics the only ones who get exorcisms? We're gonna we were just talking about our exorcism episode. We're gonna do it this Halloween. So anyway, we'll talk more about that, then we'll get to us for the long teeth for the future. But I guess October's only a few months away. It's June. But anyway, that was just sort of my my last point after doing all this reading, especially because, you know, I get frustrated when people are like, cool. Satanists are evil, and they're really not. I'm actually super into it. If I had to pick one. Which religion? Yeah, it'd be. I hate you mean, the

Preston Meyer  1:19:02

Satanic Temple. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Thank you. Thank you as a Christian, I'm okay with that for

Katie Dooley  1:19:10

you. We're bridging. We're bridging we're building bridges and bridging gaps with those bridges

Preston Meyer  1:19:20

the concept isn't funny. It's just the way it was.

Katie Dooley  1:19:24

I was going for that. So I guess but then Satan,

Preston Meyer  1:19:28

right. Okay. It's we're gonna pretend this is a two parter from the previous episode to this one. All these people that keep getting accused of being Satan worshippers usually aren't that's that's the thesis I want you to take away from this. That anybody if they if you ever hear somebody say those Satan worshippers bet against them being right.

Katie Dooley  1:19:56

Actually questioned them a little bit and then Oh, for sure, but no one on our Discord calls Oh

Preston Meyer  1:20:02

yeah, we definitely are in this for the learning more about your weird communities that you're running into

Katie Dooley  1:20:09

well and fostering healthy conversations that promote critical thinking.

Preston Meyer  1:20:15

Exactly.

Katie Dooley  1:20:17

Well, where can you find us?

Preston Meyer  1:20:21

Instagram, Facebook? We're on Discord, but you're gonna have to get our links from our link tree which is on disk on Instagram and Facebook. Definitely email us. What's your email address?

Katie Dooley  1:20:33

Holly watermelon [email protected]

Preston Meyer  1:20:36

Perfect. A little bit.

Katie Dooley  1:20:40

And if you're liking our episodes, please think about sharing with a friend or family

Preston Meyer  1:20:43

member. Definitely check out our merch. Oh, yeah,

Katie Dooley  1:20:47

that's launching. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  1:20:49

we're just this month we've launched our

Katie Dooley  1:20:53

Spreadshirt store. And it's 15% off for two weeks guys. So from the launch of this episode to our next episode released 15% off your purchase, so we'd love to see your pictures sporting our merch.

Preston Meyer  1:21:07

Thank you so much for joining us on this wonderful exploration of say Ted