My Thoughts on The Satanic Temple

This is another opinion blog post that I’m doing here.  I’m going to be basing this on what I’ve read in Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing The Way We Talk About Religion (2020) by Joseph P. Laycock.  I wish the TST had something akin to The Satanic Bible or The Satanic Scriptures but I couldn’t find anything like it on their website page of list of literature, so Speak of the Devil is what I’ll be going by.

This is based on my best interpretation of what TST is like in my perspective, and I really tried my best to learn when I read Speak of the Devil.  Anyways, here it goes.

The main thing to remember is that The Satanic Temple and The Church of Satan are not the same thing.  These two groups are often confused for one another all the time and it’s gotten a bit annoying for both organizations and its people.  The CoS was started in 1966 by Anton Szandor LaVey while TST was started in 2013 by Malcolm Jarry and Lucien Greaves.  While Greaves did associate with members of the CoS for a while, he felt that the organization wasn’t doing much and felt that they should be involved in social and political activities.

The main difference that I think about is that the CoS is about the self and the ego while the TST is a socially and politically active religion.  Essentially, LaVeyan Satanists like myself worry more about our individual selves rather than what’s going on with the herd of society, and while TST Satanists also have a belief of the self, they also believe that tyrannical wrongs must be dealt with for social and political good.

There are some things that I personally don’t like about TST, so this is what they are:

First off, they are a tax-exempt religion.  In fact, they had to file as a Christian organization in order to claim tax-exempt status.  The CoS, as well as many individuals like myself, has always held the strong belief that all churches and religious organizations should pay taxes.  The Church of Satan does pay taxes.  TST doesn’t.  Yes, I know why TST did it.  It’s still hypocritical to be tax-exempt.

My other problem with TST is the social and political movement.  One of their strong viewpoints is that church and state should be separate.  But this is a religion that is constantly involved in the issues of politics.  I fail to see how there isn’t a contradiction here.  Also, the fact that an organization that is tax-exempt should be constantly involved in politics seems a bit weird and contradictory.  Christians have constantly tried to use their religion to influence politics and social life for hundreds of years, all while not paying a single tax dollar, at least in America.  I don’t see how that makes TST any different than the Christians.  Just because TST has different goals, morals, and viewpoints, that makes them different than the Christians?  To me, the answer is no. 

The CoS recognizes no other organizations that claim to be Satanic.  Magus Gilmore confirms this in The Satanic Scriptures where he states that “we do not support any other organizations calling themselves Satanic” (p. 180); this is mainly due to the fact that these organizations don’t abide by the philosophy of The Satanic Bible, the philosophy that was the first establishment of Satanism.  Herd-mentality activism was never part of Satanic philosophy for the last 50+ years and that stance hasn’t changed.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think that TST has some good ideas, especially when it comes to exposing the hypocrisy of the religious Christian Right.  But to me, when it comes to Satanism, they have a lot in contradictions.  Who they are as a whole is not for me.  Satanism was never about being an activist, and their herd mentality and sharing similarities to other spiritual religions (involvement of politics and tax-exemption) is just a huge turn-off for me.

I’m going to be blunt here: I don’t see TST as Satanists.  The CoS has been around for 55 years and has been actively defining, representing, and defending Satanism during these 55 years.  They were the first official recognized Satanic religion and they’re the ONLY true Satanic religion.

As I was reading through Speak of the Devil, I had one huge question in my mind: if TST didn’t use Satanic imagery, public rituals, and Satan’s name, would their missions and tactics have the attention and effects they have now?  Or would they just be considered a non-religious group whose only purpose is public challenge?  To me, it’s the same thing as metal bands who use the devil’s name and images without necessarily playing Satan’s game.  I do see that they use Satan as the role of the adversary when confronting situations of religious hypocrisy and oppression but my other beef with them is that what they call Satanism doesn’t have a sound philosophy.  The Seven Tenets are okay and all but how are they Satanic?  At least in The Satanic Bible, there’s a more concise connection to the name and figure of Satan with its philosophy, at least for me.

Many critics from TST, including Lucien Graves, have said that CoS Satanists “aren’t doing much, not doing anything” with its organization.  People like this just don’t understand the whole point about Anton LaVey’s philosophy: the whole point is to focus on furthering our own personal lives and living it to the fullest.  It’s never been about community, pen-pals, social and political movements, or doing after-school programs and other stuff like that.  We’re an anti-religion, we’re not supposed to be like every other religion.  If you still insist that an organization like CoS is supposed to do otherwise, I don’t know what to tell you.

There’s one other thing that irked me the most about TST.  This is just from one member of TST but I really have to talk about it because I’m pretty sure many other TST members think like this.  In Speak of the Devil, the author quotes TST member Felix Fortunato who says “‘LaVey was a fraud, but without him, we wouldn’t all be sitting here’” (p. 92).  They owe LaVey for their group’s existence yet they insult the man who brought us Satanism.  Alrighty, then...

What I like about REAL Satanism is that we don’t have to think the same way.  While we all abide by LaVey’s philosophy, we’re still individuals with our own ideas.  I’ve yet to see anything like that in TST, at least when it comes to having one’s own ideas about politics and social issues.  It almost seems like you either have to be an activist or you have to back it up 100%.  I'm no activist nor do I want to be one.  While Satanists are free to do what they want with their lives and be involved with activism, we don’t associate activism with the Satanic philosophy.  This may sound selfish, but I look out for numbero uno (me), and I think that's what Satanism is about.  After all, that’s what Satan is famously known for when he defied God, right?

Hail Satan!

-Manny

References

Gilmore, P. H. (2016). The Satanic Scriptures. Baltimore, MD: Underworld Amusements.

Laycock, J. P. (2020).  Speak of the Devil: how the satanic temple is changing the way we talk about religion.  New York: NY: Oxford University Press.