Episode 24 – Satanic Bible Study

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Simone 0:04
Welcome to Black Mass Appeal, a podcast that brings modern Satanism to the masses. Today on Black Mass Appeal, we’re hitting the books and finally delving in between the covers of that most infamous of all Satanic scriptures, Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible. Also, Satanic San Francisco gets maternal, we get the post office to do the devil’s work, and the Satanic Panic goes to Hollywood. Today, joining me, I have Daniel.

Daniel 0:31
Hello, my name is Daniel. I’m a member of the Satanic Temple and a spokesperson for Satanic San Francisco. This, I know, because the Bible tells me so, although probably not the Bible we’re talking about today.

Simone 0:42
Yeah, the Bible that we’re talking about today, I don’t think has a lot of nursery rhymes associated with it.

Daniel 0:47
It could use some. I’m just gonna float that.

Tabitha 0:49
Yeah, agreed. Yeah, I’m there with you.

Simone 0:51
We could write them. Also joining me today is Tabitha.

Tabitha 0:55
Hi, I’m Tabitha. I’m a member of Satanic San Francisco and a member of the Satanic Temple, and today I’m made of magicccc. *chuckles*

Simone 1:03
And my name is Simone. I’m a member of the Satanic Temple and a member of Satanic San Francisco, and I stayed up late doing my homework last night, *Tabitha chuckles* doing my book reports. And you’ll notice that today, it’s just us. We’re going to go back and visit the Satanic Bible. We figured we just dive right in and get into it, so.

Daniel 1:26
Also, let’s face it, we should be good enough for you just on our own. *laughter*

Tabitha 1:30
Aren’t we good enough? Aren’t we?

Simone 1:32
Are you- do you, do you want to see other people? *Tabitha laughs* I mean, if we want- if you want an open thing, like, we can discuss it,

Daniel 1:38
First of all, they’re not even *seeing* us-

Simone 1:40
Yeah!

Daniel 1:40
This is an entirely auditory relationship.

Simone and Tabitha together 1:42
Do you want to hear other people? *laughter*

Tabitha 1:46
Do you want to experience other, other podcasts? It’s okay. Like, we’re, you know, I understand. You gotta play the field. *laughs*

Simone 1:54
As usual, we are all members of the Satanic Temple and of Satanic San Francisco, but on this show, we speak for ourselves and we do not speak on behalf of the Satanic Temple national organization. This is a podcast for Satanists to discuss modern Satanism, its history, left-leaning political activism, and how Satanism relates to current events and pop culture. We’re for people who want to learn more about modern Satanism, whether you’re a newbie or you’re already involved in Satanic groups. And speaking of Satanic groups, what has Satanic San Francisco been up to lately?

Daniel 2:26
I feel like there’s got to be at least a couple listeners out there, by now, who are sick of hearing us talk about Rosemary’s Baby, so- *laughter*

Simone and Tabitha together 2:34
Too bad!

Tabitha 2:35
It’s done, though! It’s the last time!

Daniel 2:36
That’s right. Last time we had an episode, that episode dropped a couple of days after Rosemary’s Baby Shower, but we recorded it right before, so we didn’t know how it went, so, now, we can tell every- to, to, to your relief, I’m sure, the event actually came off pretty well. The headcount on the house was about 30 people. Everybody had a good time. Concessions went really well.

Tabitha 2:59
Yeah, Satanic Bake Sale went off without a hitch.

Simone 3:02
Yeah!

Daniel 3:02
Couple of people I talked to had never seen the movie before, so that was quite an experience for them, and we ended up raising- what was it? About $300 for A Woman’s Place?

Simone 3:12
340.

Daniel 3:13
300- Wow, ok.

Simone 3:14
With that last 40 kicked in by Jane, who you’ll remember from the ‘Satan On Screen’ episode.

Daniel 3:19
Oh, really, that was, that was-

Simone 3:20
Yeah.

Tabitha 3:21
That was awesome.

Daniel 3:21
That was quite a gesture of her. She could not make it to the actual event, so that was, that was- it’s, uh, double nice of her to support the cause.

Simone 3:30
Yeah.

Daniel 3:31
So, again, that’s not a lot of money in the grand scheme of what their operating budget is every year, I’m sure, but a little goes a long way when you’re doing the Devil’s work. *chuckling*

Simone 3:41
Yeah, and, you know, we’re trying to contribute what we can and, also, as we continue to do these events, like, we get better at doing them. We figure out what we need to do different next time, and so hopefully over, as time goes by, our fundraising events will be more efficient. We’ll be able to raise more money for more good works.

Tabitha 4:01
Bigger bake sales! More cakes! *laughs*

Simone 4:05
Tiered, tiered wedding cake.

Tabitha 4:07
Yeah! Devil-y wedding cakes. *moans*

Simone 4:09
Devil’s Food Cake.

Tabitha 4:10
Yes! Covered in chocolate. *laughs*

Simone 4:13
That’s what Satanism- Satanist food is: it’s covered in chocolate.

Daniel 4:16
Just want to give a couple of special thank you-s here- a special thank you to our host, Trevor, who was incredibly enthusiastic and supportive. Special thank you to the folks from TST Santa Cruz for making the trek up and for helping us promote the event. Hope we get to do it again sometime soon. Also, a special thanks to all of our volunteers. I want to make sure I, I’m afraid of forgetting anybody on this list but thank you, Brigid, thank you, Mo, thank you, Greg, thank you Elephus [spelling?]- Elephus did the giant, glowing inverted cross that some of you might have seen if you were there.

Simone 4:46
Yeah, we posted some pictures on social media and I’ll try and get them up on our website, as well.

Daniel 4:51
Thank you, Simone, of course, as always, we could not do this without you. Thank you very much to Tabitha and to Tabitha’s mother for kicking in for the bake sale.

Tabitha 4:57
Yeah, Mama Slander made cookies.

Simone 4:59
And let’s not forget Becky and Bali.

Daniel 5:02
Becky and Bali, thank you. There you go- see, I’m always gonna forget somebody, and I’m probably forgetting somebody, even as it is, but-

Simone 5:09
And then thank you to everybody who came and just enjoyed the show.

Daniel 5:12
Yes, of course, absolutely.

Tabitha 5:13
And thank you to our listeners, and thank you to, uh, the person who I bought coffee from today. *laughter*

Simone 5:20
Oh, and of course, Minnie and Roman performed our black mass.

Tabitha 5:23
Right.

Simone 5:24
So thank you very much to you guys, too.

Daniel 5:26
I know all the thank yous kind of, probably, sound- can, can sound a little bit dull to people, but I will tell you that- I don’t know after it- once, once the black mass wrapped up and the movie started, I started to feel a little bit overwhelmed because I saw, ‘wow, everybody worked really, really hard on this to make it work-‘

Tabitha 5:43
Yeah.

Daniel 5:43
-and the whole thing would have gotten to pieces if not for everybody’s contribution.’ So it really does mean a lot if, if you, if you’ve organized anything on your own, especially if it’s relying on volunteers and a lot of goodwill, those gestures do really count for a lot, so.

Tabitha 5:59
Yeah.

Simone 5:59
Yeah.

Tabitha 6:00
Agreed.

Simone 6:00
So, our next thing that we have coming up is more of just a, one for funsies. It’s our trip to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, that we’ve talked about before. We now have a Google Form up on our website, so if you are in the Bay Area, and you’re interested in coming, please fill out the form so that: A, we know who you are, and B, you can vote on what day would work best for you and figure out how we’re going to all get over there because we’re going to try and arrange for some carpools.

Tabitha 6:35
Satanic carpools. Because it’s not good- *Simone chuckles* unless you put ‘Satanic’ in front of it- *laughter*

Simone 6:39
It doesn’t count.

Tabitha 6:40
Yeah, doesn’t count.

Simone 6:42
So if you are interested in doing that, please fill out the form before July 1st. July 1st is when we will actually decide on the day and take plans from there.

Daniel 6:51
And yes, even if you’re just a fan of the show, and you’ve never actually met us, please feel free to come along, we would love to have some new faces in the crowd. And for anybody who’s never been to the Rosicrucian Museum, we talked about it a little bit in a previous show. It’s a cool building. It’s really weird. The place is fairly retro because it’s obvious it hasn’t been updated, hasn’t been renovated in about 50 years or so. The Rosicrucians themselves are a slightly furtive Fraternal Order whom I’m a little bit curious about, but the collection is really awesome, so it’s a really wild medley of different competing elements there that makes for quite an entertaining afternoon if you’ve never been.

Simone 7:34
Yeah, and, and as we said before, the Rosicrucians are not Satanists, but we are doing these trips, like we did with the OTO, the Blazing Star OTO, to kind of help define what Satanism is and isn’t. And also, you know, Egyptian mythology has had a big influence on western occult practices, so-

Daniel 7:56
For better or worse.

Tabitha 7:57
Yeah. *chuckles*

Simone 7:57
For better, for worse. For appropriation or-? No, just appropriation.

Tabitha 8:01
Pretty much just appropriation. *laughs*

Simone 8:03
But it’s still interesting to see.

Tabitha 8:06
And you know what, these field trips are fun, like-

Simone 8:08
Yeah!

Tabitha 8:08
-I think more than anything else, it’s really fun to see just ‘Esoteric Bay Area.’ *laughs*

Simone 8:14
And then, we just came off of, like, a big event that was, like, kind of stressful, and we had to plan, and, you know, do a lot of work, and this one’s just going to be a fun one.

Tabitha 8:22
Yeah.

Simone 8:22
We’re just going to show up. Have a good time. See some mummies and peace out.

Tabitha 8:27
Yeah.

Daniel 8:28
I think we are also planning a poetry reading in the garden beforehand to get a little bit of Egypt, Egyptology-themed, esoteric literature under people’s belts.

Simone 8:38
Set the mood for the afternoon.

Daniel 8:40
Set the mood- also the garden there is gorgeous-

Simone 8:42
Yeah.

Daniel 8:42
– and weird.

Simone 8:42
Yeah.

Tabitha 8:43
*laughing* Do you think they’d get mad if, like, we showed up, like, in costume? *continues laughing*

Daniel 8:48
Define costume.

Tabitha 8:49
*laughing* Costume! Like, Egyptian costumes!

Simone 8:53
Oh, mmm.

Tabitha 8:54
*laughing more hysterically* I’m sorry!

Daniel 8:56
I think if we did that, they might get a little annoyed. If, like, if you showed up as Baphomette, I think they’d be weirded out, *Tabitha starts laughing again* but I don’t think they turn because we are spending money.

Tabitha 9:04
That’s not- I meant, like, dressing up, like, we all just have like Cleopatra. *continues laughing hysterically and Daniel is trying to not laugh* You can cut this out of the show- *more laughter* – I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.

Simone 9:15
I’m just gonna bring a cat.

Tabitha 9:17
There you go.

Simone 9:17
*in a baby-ish voice* ‘Cuz I worship my cats.

Daniel 9:19
That’s good. That’s- do they allow cats?

Simone 9:21
Probably not.

Tabitha 9:22
I could bring my stuffed cat. *chuckles* It’s a stuffy cat not, like, an actual, like-

Daniel 9:27
Ha!

Simone 9:28
Not a taxidermy cat.

Tabitha 9:28
*still chuckling* Yeah, not a taxidermy cat. [Tabby is apparently giggly today]

Simone 9:32
Just another mention of something that we’ve participated in recently is: Here at Black Mass Appeal, we were contacted by some students, some high school film students at Mount Tam High School, which is in the Marin area of the Bay Area, and they were just doing a little class project, a little documentary, on modern Satanism. And, so, I spoke to them, I participated, they interviewed me. They also talked to Sadie from Santa Cruz and Lana from Santa Cruz, and a gentleman from- I can’t remember the church in Berkeley, but a, a religious Christian man who did not grasp what modern Satanism is about, at least.

Tabitha 10:16
Mmhmm.

Daniel 10:16
Our Lady of the Total Buzzkill, I believe, was the doctrine he was representing. *laughter*

Simone 10:21
They put together this little documentary and they asked us questions about, you know, what modern Satanism is, especially the Satanic Temple, and asked a couple questions about the Satanic Panic, and they put together a little six-minute documentary that’s available on YouTube, so good job, you guys, it was fun!

Daniel 10:39
And I think we’ll link that- I think I linked that, at the time, that they uploaded it. We’ll do it again after this show. One of the things that I find interesting is we’ve got a lot of requests from students-

Simone 10:50
Yeah.

Daniel 10:50
-over the last year or so- usually college students, and, in fact, that’s part of the genesis of how we started doing Black Mass Appeal- was Simone and I did an interview with a college student here in San Francisco, and it was the first experience that, I think, either of us had talking about our experiences and feelings about Satanism to somebody with a- to a third party, and that got us to talking a little bit more- that, that was an audio project that he was doing.

Simone 10:50
Yeah.

Daniel 10:51
I can see how that got the snowball rolling.

Simone 10:56
I was gonna say, you know, he was doing it for some sort of audio class and he was just- they had to pick a topic that they were interested in, so it was something that he was interested in, but we got the experience of speaking on mic about it. And- I’ve been wanting to do a podcast anyway, just to kind of go back to some of my, my media skills, and I’ve been kind of looking for a topic, and then when we had this interview with this student, it really *clicked.*

Daniel 11:45
But, I just-

Tabitha 11:46
And here we are. *chuckles*

Daniel 11:46
I find the gratifying to see that academic curiosity floating around out there, and it’s also interesting to see what kinds of questions people are interested in asking you about.

Simone 11:56
Yeah.

Daniel 11:57
Like, oftentimes, there are topics that will take you by surprise or things that you don’t actually spend a lot of time dwelling on yourself, but you realize seem more prominent to somebody with an outsider’s perspective.

Simone 12:08
Yeah, the students who did the documentary for Mount Tam were so lovely and they had clearly done research into this topic because they were able to provide me with questions ahead of time before I met with them, but I was still a little bit surprised by some of the questions that they had because they were really trying to veer into the Satanic Panic territory, and one question was, ‘how did Charles Manson contribute to the Satanic Panic?’ And I was just, like-

Tabitha 12:39
Uhhh…

Simone 12:39
-He…didn’t.

Tabitha 12:39
*chuckling* Did that happen?

Simone 12:43
As I said to them, like, Charles Manson had nothing to do with Satanism; he was not a Satanist. You know, his whole murder spree, or his, his family’s murder spree, was an attempt to get a race war started. However, later, in like the 80s, like, Geraldo interviewed him, and that was when the throes of the Satanic Panic were really happening and, you know, we had serial killers like Richard Ramirez who were actually claiming to be Satanists.

Tabitha 13:09
Mmhmm.

Simone 13:10
So at the time, Charles Manson was not contributing to the Satanic Panic, but just, like, I think he just kind of hopped on the train because he thought it was trendy. I don’t know.

Tabitha 13:21
Yeah, and I guess there’s something to be said about, like, the whole cult aspect.

Simone 13:24
Yeah.

Tabitha 13:24
I guess that’s where it kind of stems from? I don’t know. I, I don’t know- understand why people take anything of what Charles Manson said, like, as any sort of fact-

Simone 13:34
Yeah.

Tabitha 13:34
-especially after he was arrested because- I mean, you’ve seen pictures of him. *laughter* I-

Simone 13:40
But just, like, it just showed that, like, they had done this research and this is where they- it had led them and I was happy to contribute that…

Tabitha 13:49
No? *chuckles*

Simone 13:50
Not so much.

Tabitha 13:51
No? question mark. *laughs*

Daniel 13:53
I would actually float a couple of things in response to that: One, I think that the Baby Boomers’ reflexive fear of cults and cult conspiracies probably is very much tied to Manson. A lot of other things, too, but that’s the big one.

Simone 14:10
Well, I mean, Rosemary’s Baby came out in ’68; Satanic Bible came out in ’69, and the Manson killings were in the latter part of ’69, I believe.

Daniel 14:24
That’s another thing that I was going to bring up: as perverse, and stupid, and alogical as this is, because of- because of who the victims of the Manson killings were-

Simone 14:34
Mmhmm.

Daniel 14:34
-and because Roman Polanski was on the periphery of that crime-

Simone 14:38
Mmhmm.

Daniel 14:38
-around the same time when he was very strongly associated with Rosemary’s Baby, I guess in the minds of middle America-

Simone 14:45
Yeah.

Daniel 14:45
-down on a subconscious level, there, the- that bridge to those two things. I think it was that book that Tabitha gave me where Nick Shrek was writing about the history of Satan and Satanism in movies, there are even some people who pushed this idea that misfortunes in the lives of people related to the film-

Simone 14:45
Oh, oh, that it was cursed. Yeah. Mmhmm.

Daniel 14:59
-are somehow- Yeah, or somehow divine retribution or the Devil’s work. Which is dumb, but is also an idea that creeps around-

Simone 15:11
Mmhmm.

Daniel 15:11
-especially around horror movies a lot, so.

Simone 15:14
Urban legends become legend for a reason.

Tabitha 15:17
Yep.

Daniel 15:17
Yeah. So, you know, underneath the surface, there’s this big, roiling cauldron of technically unrelated but sort of resonant ideas-

Simone 15:26
Mmhmm, mmhmm.

Daniel 15:26
-that just kind of stick together for no good reason, but once they’re together, they’re hard to, they’re hard to separate.

Simone 15:26
Yeah, totally.

Daniel 15:34
So I could actually see, I could actually see people exploring that idea a little bit.

Tabitha 15:37
Like some kind of super glue. *chuckles* A, kind of, spiritualist’s super glue? *laughter*

Daniel 15:43
Satan glue! *laughter*

Simone 15:45
And finally, we have another update on our Satanic Chick Tracts- they’re shipping!

Tabitha 15:52
Woohoo!

Daniel 15:53
Hopefully, by the time this episode comes out, most or all of those will be either in our backers’ hands or on the way to them. Right now, it’s slow-going because-

Tabitha 16:06
It’s just us. *laughs*

Daniel 16:08
Yeah. We got so many more back- that campaign was so much more popular than I had anticipated, and we got about 100, over 120 people to service, and we’re so grateful for the backers and we really want to get those to you as quickly as possible because we know that expediency is important when people trust you with their money in a crowdfunding campaign like this. We’re doing it as fast as we can. *chuckles*

Tabitha 16:30
Oh, and when you get them, send us a picture that you got them and maybe a picture of you with your thumb up *Simone chuckles* and the tract, being like, ‘I got mine! You should get yours. Soon.’ *laughs*

Simone 16:43
And then smile real big, and then you just hear bling from the teeth.

Tabitha 16:46
Yeah, exactly.

Simone 16:47
Like an infomercial.

Tabitha 16:48
And then you can tell all your friends that they should buy them because you can buy them on our website. *chuckles*

Simone 16:53
But wait, there’s more!

Tabitha 16:54
Yeah. *laughs*

Daniel 16:55
This is a true story, by the way, Tabitha and I actually went and delivered a few door to door to some of our Bay Area backers last week, which turned into quite an expedition.

Tabitha 17:03
*laughing* Yeah! Oh, that was something else. I don’t really like driving in the mountains. Guess what I did a bunch of?! *laughter*

Daniel 17:13
One of our, one of our most generous backers has a place up in the Oakland Hills, and we, uh, yeah, we went on-

Simone 17:20
Gets a little windy up there.

Daniel 17:21
We did a little night drivin.’

Tabitha 17:22
*nervously laughing* Yeah, night driving in the mountains! *groaning and laughing at the same time*

Daniel 17:26
And on top of that, we had actually just left the movies. That being having seen- well, that, that’ll, that’ll lead into our new segment in a little bit.

Tabitha 17:33
Yeah.

Simone 17:33
Indeed, indeed.

Daniel 17:34
But it was, it was a colorful excursion. Point is, we were going- I was gonna say, the extra mile, but there were actually many miles involved with that.

Tabitha 17:41
Yeah.

Daniel 17:41
Just to make sure people are getting these in a timely fashion.

Simone 17:44
All right, well, let’s move on to our iTunes reviews. And so, as we try and serve you, you can help serve us by leaving us an iTunes review, so we welcome listener feedback and all of its forms, but if you go on iTunes, and subscribe, and leave a review, it just helps to raise our visibility so people can find us easier. Our first review, from ToothFairy666-

Tabitha 18:11
Cute.

Simone 18:12
-who says, “Great and informative, no matter your religious identity. I’ve been listening since episode one and the show has really developed a groove. Episodes are entertaining, funny, and informative, even to someone who doesn’t identify as a Satanist or an atheist. And Simone is a babe.”

Tabitha 18:30
*loud cat purring noises*

Simone 18:31
I did not. *Tabitha laughing* I know who wrote this.

Tabitha 18:35
*laughing* Hi!

Simone 18:36
Thank you. Love you. It’s my work wife. *Tabitha chuckles* And she was actually giving me a little bit of crap. She’s like, “You haven’t read my, my review yet!” Well, now I have.

Tabitha 18:47
There. It’s done!

Simone 18:48
Thank you, thank you Tooth Fairy. And, so- the reason that she has the name Tooth Fairy is- if you might recall, we spoke about our Friday the 13th black mass, the one that happened before The VVitch in October and we were all bringing things for the cauldron, and she had just had her wisdom teeth pulled.

Tabitha 19:06
Woof.

Simone 19:07
And she threw those things in the cauldron, her blood and bone, as she said, and it was totally badass.

Tabitha 19:12
Yeah.

Daniel 19:13
Show us all right the fuck up.

Simone 19:14
Yeah!

Tabitha 19:14
Yeah, she won, she won. *chuckling* She won the ritual.

Simone 19:18
It’s not a competition, but yes, she did.

Tabitha 19:21
Mmhmm. *chuckles*

Simone 19:22
Our second review is from Schizo3845, who says, “Hooked. Just happened to find this podcast and now I’m binging like crazy. The hosts are smart, funny and passionate, I just wish I could rate it higher.” Yeah, we should really probably contact iTunes about just raising it up, it’s, like- they have six stars-

Tabitha 19:40
Yeah.

Simone 19:41
Point 6,6…

Tabitha 19:42
6 point 66 stars.

Simone 19:44
Yeah…

Tabitha 19:44
Yeah, they’re totally going to be into that. *laughter*

Simone 19:48
And in addition to leaving iTunes reviews, something else that’s really helpful to the show is our Patreon. Our Patreon just helps to cover our expenses plus anything additional, we’re going to be distributing to charity, so part of it will go to the Satanic Temple because of their, you know, work with reproductive rights and all the legal issues, and then we will select another charity to, you know, benefit, so we’re still deciding on that and as soon as we are ready to cut the check, we’ll let you know, and in the meantime, if you have suggestions for an organization you think we should give our dollars to- and let’s be clear, it’s *small* dollars. *Tabitha chuckles* But he- it’s a little bit of dollars, but every little bit helps. Yeah, so you can always go to patreon.com/blackmassappeal if you would like to contribute.

Daniel 20:39
Now, before we wrap up the fan feedback part of the show, I’m going to have to hijack the program a little bit, with apologies to Simone, because I have been promising Tabitha a surprise for a little while now. [I think Tabitha is making a weird lip-smacking/blowing sound, but I honestly don’t know. She’s a squeaky one.]

Simone 20:55
The look on Tabitha’s face. *Tabitha laughs*

Daniel 20:59
And I haven’t-

Simone 20:59
I don’t know what’s gonna happen either, but-

Daniel 21:01
I haven’t told her what it is, but it was because when we finally got the chick tracts back from the printers the other day, it was- we’ve been working on this, the chick tract for more than a year. It was a big project. It was a big enterprise; the next one won’t take nearly as long, but-

Tabitha 21:14
It’ll be done in about a month. *laughs*

Daniel 21:16
It was such a rewarding moment and I wanted to find some way to specially thank Tabitha for all the work that she put into it because this would not have been possible without her, and I do know that, as anybody who does creative work knows, it’s really hard. It’s really demanding, and a lot of the time you don’t have anybody to rely on but yourself when you’re trying to create.

Tabitha 21:36
And the cat.

Daniel 21:37
Yes. *Tabitha laughs* Yourself and the cat.

Daniel 21:39
So I asked our Kickstarter backers to submit a couple of comments, or a couple of responses, or a couple of reviews specifically of Tabitha’s artwork-

Simone 21:50
Ooh.

Daniel 21:50
-and for artwork on the comic-

Simone 21:53
Aww!

Daniel 21:53
-and here’s a few of the things that they said.

Tabitha 21:56
*nervously laughing* Oh, my god!

Daniel 21:56
An [I think?] says Tabitha’s work is “inspiring, hilarious and perfect.” *Tabitha nervously laughing* Lana from Santa Cruz says, “Tabitha’s artwork makes my little Satanic heart flutter. I can’t wait to see more.” Dominique says, “Thank you Satanic San Francisco; I’m very excited for the track. Tabitha’s artwork is too cute. Love the podcast and everything else.” Darren says, “As a collector of chick tracts and legis to try this Tabitha [I have no idea what Daniel is actually saying here, sorry friends], you cannot have the vaguest idea what your current project means to me personally. I highly recommend your art for anyone, anybody’s heart desires. Tabitha is the real deal. Uncompromising and detained- I think that means detailed- I think he had a typo in there. Her work is modern, nostalgic, and innovative, all wrapped into one. All others pale in comparison.” Tamra says, “Tabitha, thank you so much for making this tract. I’ve been excited about it since I first heard about it. I’m so glad you created something I never knew I always wanted.” Alex says, “I’ve been following Tabitha on Twitter since I first listened to Black Mass Appeal. I love all of her art; I can’t wait to get my tracts. My D&D group was thinking about asking her if she does commissions so she can draw our characters.”

Tabitha 23:01
I do! *laughs*

Daniel 23:03
Jason, and you know this is an artist whose work you like an awful lot, on Twitter says, “I love Tabitha’s work. She brings fun, hip aesthetic to Satanic-themed artwork and that’s always fun to see. She’s the main reason I wanted to back the Satanic Chick Tract Project, just to see her draw me in the second issue. *Tabitha chuckles* It’s always fun to follow an artist’s journey and I’m so happy Tabitha is sharing her unique vision with us as she finds her own dark path.” *Tabitha laughs again* Mary says, “Tabitha’s art is the perfect amalgam of adorable and transgressive. It’s instantly recognizable and puts joy in my heart when I see it in the wild. My friends and I often link to her Baphomette illustration to cheer each other up on rough days.”

Tabitha 23:41
Oooh!

Daniel 23:41
Grimgower says, “I’m so grateful for to have this creative mind and the special way she chooses to share her awesome skills. I love how provocative her art is. Despite whether others like it or not, it’s impossible not to be engaged by it, and that is truly art. I live in the Bible Belt and people are going to crap themselves *laughter* when they see these amazing tracts lying around. It’s more than that, though. It’s the amazing way she chooses to share herself by being an activist, by speaking out on the podcast, by sharing her time and who she is, and that’s what matters. From this anonymous Mississippi woman who’s going to stir up hella trouble in the Deep South, I want to say thank you for playing such a huge part in this process, Tabitha.” Dasha says I’m a big fan of Tabitha’s work plus she’s hilarious on the show.” And Jacqueline shares, “My recommendation for Tabitha: her work on constitutional rights was everything I hoped for. The visuals are key to the style the project was going for and her work fits it perfectly, capturing the style while it may be imitated [not sure] while also being eye-catching and lovely. She also has incredible composition, line work, and great humor. I couldn’t recommend her work more.” And so, that’s *some* of the comments that came in and-

Daniel 23:41
I’m gonna barf. *laughter*

Daniel 23:53
I apologize.

Tabitha 23:58
*groaning* Help!

Simone 24:47
She did lose her glasses.

Tabitha 24:48
I- I’m gonna fall- I’m gonna fall over! Jeez, thanks, everybody!

Daniel 24:53
I thought, I thought some words of encouragement might be what you ordered, so-

Tabitha 25:01
Thank you.

Daniel 25:01
You’re welcome.

Tabitha 25:02
I appreciate it.

Daniel 25:03
Also, our anniversary is coming up, so I thought I would get one in early. *Simone laughs, Tabitha groans*

Simone 25:07
Oh, good boyfriend!

Tabitha 25:08
I’m gonna barf. *laughs*

Simone 25:10
And if you’d like to see more of Tabitha’s art for yourself, her Instagram will be linked in the show notes.

Tabitha 25:17
And also, I will throw in my email address if you actually do want to commission me for something.

Simone 25:21
Yeah!

Tabitha 25:22
I have actually made d&d characters before, so-

Daniel 25:24
They’re really good.

Tabitha 25:25
I can totally do that. I even made one for myself, which is a topic for another time. *laughs*

Simone 25:31
All right, well, so speaking of- we’ll wrap this topic and then we will come back with the news.

Black Mass Appeal 25:36
*interlude music*

NEWS

Simone 25:48
This week for the news, we’re gonna go to the movies. The new movie Hereditary, starring Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, came out what? Last Friday, I believe, or maybe two Fridays ago at this point. It’s a new horror movie that’s been getting a lot of buzz. All three of us have seen it.

Tabitha 26:05
Yep.

Simone 26:05
And it has, well- we’re gonna get into some spoilers here because the end of the movie has some stuff that is of interest to Satanists, so if you have not seen the movie, and you plan on seeing the movie, and you don’t want to be spoiled, skip ahead. [42:12] If you have seen the movie, or you don’t care, or whatever, then you can go ahead and *chuckles* listen to our spoiler-filled news section. And, I have to say, a couple of friends were asking me, like, “Oh, did you like it? Do you think I should go see it?” And, my advice is that if you have doubts, or if you are not usually a horror person, don’t go.

Tabitha 26:50
Yeah.

Simone 26:51
If you are excited about this movie, and you like horror movies, like, it’s your thing? Totally go.

Tabitha 26:58
Yes.

Simone 26:58
So-

Tabitha 27:00
I want to say, I really enjoyed it myself.

Simone 27:03
Yeah, I liked it. I was not quite as scared as I was, sort of, building up for myself, but…

Tabitha 27:09
Mmhmm. It scared the crap out of me.

Simone 27:11
Well, we’ll get into why I wasn’t so scared in just a second, so I’m going to start the clock. 15 minutes from…now. Okay. So, I’m going to read this article from Todd Vanderworth, from Vox, called “The Real-life Horrors behind the ending of Hereditary: How the Satanic Panic of the 1980s has become an unlikely indie horror influence.” “When the movie finally ends with [Anne} Dowd’s character calmly and pleasantly explaining to the now-probably-possessed boy that he is now ‘Paimon, one of the eight kings of Hell,’ then a whole bunch of naked people calling, ‘Hail Paimon!'” Am I saying that right?

Daniel 27:51
Paimon. [pronounced ‘paymin’]

Simone 27:51
Paimon. “-you’d be forgiven for thinking that the movie had completely shredded whatever slow-building tension it had mounted throughout its first two acts…Now, I would maintain that you could still read this final act as a metaphor, as one final snap from reality occurring in the head of the film’s protagonist, Annie, played by Toni Collette, who has clearly been on the very edge of mental stability all movie long. There’s a rich, metaphorical reading of Hereditary that treats everything that happens as a kind of empathetic tale of a mother who has finally had enough and takes her own life and that of her husband, possibly sparing her son, but to a life in which he’s accidentally killed his sister and seen both of those parents died, but let’s not treat this movie as a metaphor. Let’s talk about those final scenes as if they really happened. And let’s talk about why the movie’s [Devil] cult has less to do with our reality and more to do with the way horror movies briefly influenced our reality in the 1980s and ’90s. Let’s talk, in other words, about the Satanic Panic. One complaint about Hereditary that I have some sympathy for is that the [Devil]-worshipping cult pulling strings is very much a cult straight out of a movie, not the more mundane horror of a real cult, which strips people of their connections, their means, and often their lives. Movie cults are boogeymen that leap out of the shadows in the third act and reveal their dark intentions to the protagonist. Yet I can’t entirely shake the cult in Hereditary, or the very similar cults in other indie horror movies of the 21st century, like Ti West’s 2009 House of the devil, or Robert Eggers’ 2016 The Witch-” Which as you know, is a Black Mass Appeal favorite.

Tabitha 29:30
Yep.

Daniel 29:31
One thing we should mention is that Hereditary comes from A24, the same company that produced The Witch, and a lot of other horror movies recently, but for obvious reasons, that’s the one we’re preoccupied with.

Simone 29:41
Yeah, they’ve got a really- that, that company has a really good horror track record. Back to the article: “-very similar cults in other indie horror movies of the 21st century…because it feels, to me, like a throwback to the Satanic Panic, a very real, completely unfounded fear that gripped America in the 1980s and ’90s, leading to very real unjust [convictions] and the infamous McMartin preschool trial. In brief, the Satanic Panic was a belief, driven by a wide variety of not particularly scrupulous sources, that the United States had become infiltrated by a large number of Satanists and other practitioners of the dark arts who were conspiring to abuse and assault the nation’s children, commit human sacrifices, and turn the country over to the Dark Lord.” Well, we wish.

Tabitha 30:29
I know, I know we’ve talked, we’ve talked about this before- oh so many times, but I just- *chuckling* it’s so unfathomable to me that these people thought this way, but anyway.

Simone 30:37
Yeah!

Daniel 30:38
One thing that, I think- I feel like mentioning, for the sake of listeners, is when we started doing the show, Satanic Panic is an obvious, is a glaringly obvious topic that we’ve never really dedicated an entire episode to, and I think the reason for that is-

Simone 30:55
But it keeps coming up over and over and all of our episodes, practically.

Tabitha 30:57
Mmhmm. Right.

Simone 30:57
It does, I guess, yeah, in a way, almost every episode we’ve ever done is a Satanic Panic episode, *Simone laughs* but the reason why we’ve never done a big one is because when I try to plan an episode around that, it’s such a huge story, it’s hard to know where to approach it from.

Simone 31:11
Yeah, we’d have to like section it off because, like, there’s the McMartin trial, there’s Paradise Lost, that documentary about the-

Daniel 31:17
The West Memphis Three.

Tabitha 31:19
Mmhmm.

Simone 31:19
Mmhmm. Well, so the author of this article will tie this into the movie in just a second, so back to the article. “What was [vaguely] remarkable about the Satanic Panic was how it felt as if it had arrived in our reality straight from a horror movie. When you look at some of the ‘true accounts’ of [Devil] cults [on the] evangelical Christian circuit in the 1980s, many of them sound less like anything that could really happen. And much more like the third act of movies like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen…This is, of course, how horror often works- in a feedback loop with reality. Our real-life horrors, in this case, a millennia-old belief in [a] dark being constantly trying to turn humanity against its better [natures] get translated into horror tales, which get translated into real-life scares, which later become other horror tales…And so it is with the Satanic Panic. The directors of these recent indie horror movies are the perfect age to have been cognizant of either the initial wave of Satanic Panic reports or a smaller wave of them in the ’90s, to say nothing of a small wave of dark horror tales of Satan’s misdeeds that arrived in the ’80s and ’90s, such as the 1987 horror film, The Gate, or even the 1995 X-Files episode-” *sort of holding her breath* It’s in German! *Tabitha laughs* [‘Die Hand Die Verletzt’]. ToothFairy666 is going to have my head; she speaks German. “When you hear these dark and gruesome stories, it’s only natural to wonder, hey, what if they really happened?” So, in the movie, Hereditary, basically, a general plot is that this family, the grandmother dies, she had been sort of estranged from her daughter, who’s played by Toni Collette, who has a family of her own, and it affects the family really strangely. Annie has a son and a daughter, and the daughter is a very odd little girl *Tabitha mmhmm’s* who, and again, because we’re gonna go full spoiler here, dies at the end of the first act in this really gruesome car accident.

Tabitha 33:24
Oh man, it’s so heinous. *laughs*

Simone 33:26
Like, that- this movie did not scare me a whole lot, but this- basically she’s, she’s in a car. Her brother is driving, she’s in the middle of an allergic reaction, she can’t breathe, so she rolls down the window, leans her head out of the window, and gets it knocked clean off by a telephone pole! And you just hear this ‘thunk!’

Tabitha 33:47
Yeah.

Simone 33:47
And then the car skids to a stop and you just see the son in the driver’s seat, like, in cold, full freakout. Then, the rest of the movie is them dealing with the death of their daughter; Annie tries to start contacting her daughter with the help of Anne Dowd’s character, who is not what she seems, and it all turns out that this was orchestrated to get the son possessed by the demon Paimon by the grandmother and the cult that she ran.

Daniel 34:20
So, two-thirds of this movie is just a psychological drama about grief, and PTSD, and maybe some ghosts but maybe not, and then-

Tabitha 34:33
Well, yeah. Just, kind of, family- very deep family drama. *laughs*

Daniel 34:37
-and then in the last half hour, all of a sudden, the fucking- it turns out the fucking Devil did it all.

Tabitha 34:41
*laughing* Yeah.

Simone 34:41
Yeah! And so, like, *sighs* I was, like, really hooked into this movie with- for the visceral, like, grief because the- Annie is mourning her mother and then she’s mourning her daughter, and it’s, like, it’s so raw, and then I started to pick up, like, hang on a second. Because she’s going through her mother’s old things and she sees- like, finding these witchcraft books-

Tabitha 34:41
Mmhmm.

Simone 34:46
-and then she meets this character played by Anne Dowd, who is secretly a follower of the mother’s cult, and you get these little clues, and I’m sitting there thinking, “Is this, is this Rosemary’s Baby?” *Tabitha chuckles* Is this, specifically, is this the plot to Paranormal Activity 3? *Tabitha laughs again* Which was not a super great movie, but it was basically the tale of, you know, the, the girl from the Paranormal Activity movies, I guess her grandmother had promised her to this demon and was taking out people who were standing in her way. So, in the last half of the movie, all of a sudden, you get random naked cult members surrounding this boy telling him he’s the new, like, King of Hell and Hail, Hail.

Tabitha 35:47
Yeah, see, I never, it- none of that occurred to me and I just petrified. *laughs* I was, like, sitting there, like, why is this happening?! What is? *laughing* Why?!

Simone 35:59
Well, I have to say, it was beautifully shot; the cinematography was, was so good, and the acting was so good.

Tabitha 36:05
Mmhmm. The acting was amazing.

Daniel 36:06
Well, here’s what I’ll say about the movie, is, I am sensitive to some people’s criticism that they feel that the Satanic cult element just sort of swoops in out of left field-

Simone 36:06
Yeah, it kinda, it really does.

Daniel 36:10
-and undermines the more human drama of the first two-thirds of the film, but just like when we talked about, we were [?] upset about Rosemary’s Baby, there is something perversely gratifying about that almost apocalyptic tableau where you learn that yes, everyone is against you.

Simone 36:38
Mmhmm.

Daniel 36:38
Yes, the world really is as dark and terrible as you always feared, and all of these powers at- all, all the bad things that have happened in your life are, quite literally, the work of Evil, and it’s a silly notion, but something about it is very compelling and I think the connection that this writer for Vox is making with our cultural superstitions is a little distant, but it is there, I can see that. We are ironically interested in exploring these ideas, once they’ve been introduced to us, as allegedly true, even when debunked. That’s the way your brain goes, like, ‘well, what if it was true? What would that be like?’

Tabitha 37:19
Mmhmm.

Simone 37:19
Yeah, yeah. To look at it from the perspective of the character of the son- you know, he’s just going about living his everyday life, his grandma dies, that sucks, and then he has this horrible, complete acc- well, he believes it’s a complete accident that he accidentally kills the sister.

Tabitha 37:36
Mmhmm.

Simone 37:36
Later on, we get suspicious that the cult put this together all along because there’s a mysterious symbol carved into the telephone pole where the daughter hits her head. But I guess, just like in Rosemary’s Baby, you wouldn’t suspect your neighbors and your friends to be these crazy cultists who are like putting spells on people to murder them. It really would, kind of, come out of left field to you, you know?

Tabitha 38:01
Which- I mean, going back to the whole Satanic Panic thing is that kind of that, that same sentiment that, like, you wouldn’t expect it to be your neighbors, but hey, it might be.

Simone 38:11
Mmhmm.

Tabitha 38:11
You know, ‘I remember seeing, you know, David down the street with some weird paraphernalia, and I remember this, you know-‘ I guess that’s just to show how easy it is for us to, kind of, go down that rabbit hole, I guess?

Simone 38:23
Yeah.

Tabitha 38:23
I was trying to make the connection.

Simone 38:25
Well, it’s, because- in Rosemary’s Baby, it plays on that paranoia, it builds that paranoia-

Tabitha 38:29
Mmhmm.

Simone 38:29
-like, way longer.

Tabitha 38:30
Yeah.

Simone 38:31
Like, and Rosemary thinks it’s, like, a conspiracy to, like, steal her baby from- I don’t know, like, halfway through the movie-ish, a little bit later?

Tabitha 38:39
Yeah.

Simone 38:40
This movie- the fact that it’s all being done by cultists doesn’t cross anybody’s mind-

Tabitha 38:46
Yeah, that’s true.

Simone 38:47
-until it’s, like, in their face.

Tabitha 38:48
Yeah, that’s very true.

Daniel 38:50
Incidentally, that weird symbol on the telephone pole that pops up elsewhere in the movie, I believe, actually is the Goetic Seal for Paimon from the Key of Solomon, so-

Simone 38:59
Yeah, it is. I looked it up.

Daniel 38:59
I guess if you’re really into esoterica, you might pick up on this vibe earlier in the movie, although it’s still kind of gets ya-

Tabitha 39:00
*chuckling* It’d be a stretch, yeah.

Daniel 39:04
*also chuckling* It’s still probably going to come out of left field.

Simone 39:10
I mean, I guess, like, because your first evidence that there’s something really supernatural going on, is the boy has, like, auditory hallucinations of the little sound that the girl makes.

Tabitha 39:23
Mmhmm.

Simone 39:23
Annie, Toni Collette, she has, like, a little seance, and she basically gets the spirit of her daughter to move a glass across the table. And then, shit just takes a left turn and goes completely bonkers, and people are being set on fire and fucking flying and sawing their heads off at the same time.

Tabitha 39:41
Mmhmm. Yep.

Daniel 39:41
I think that’s, like, in part of that catharsis of the, the cultural paranoia is, yes, everybody’s against you, and everything you’re afraid of is true, and in the end of this movie, it’s going to be exactly as bad as you were always afraid it might be. *laughter

Tabitha 39:57
I think the, I think something actually about the set really scared me is the fact that I’ve had nightmares that are eerily similar to some of the imagery *Simone makes an excited noise* in that, especially the, like, headless woman floating around. I know that- it’s, like, okay, this is very specific and this is just for me, but, like, that, for some reason, scared me so much more than I think maybe the average person who’s going to see this because I have had actual nightmares with floating, headless women in them before? *laughs*

Simone 40:28
Well, it was really visually striking, the whole beheading thing, throughout the movie because the little girl gets her head basically torn off of her body.

Tabitha 40:35
Yeah.

Simone 40:35
We learned that the grandmother who died, before the movie begins, her body has been, like, moved-

Tabitha 40:41
Yeah. *in a metal voice* Desecrated.

Simone 40:42
-to their attic.

Tabitha 40:42
She doesn’t have a head either, does she?

Simone 40:44
She doesn’t have a head, either. And then, Toni Collette saws her own head off, and so you’ve got these, the headless body of grandma, the headless body of Annie, in this, like, treehouse in front of this mannequin that has the head of the dead daughter on it, as part of the ceremony to crown the son as the new King of Hell, or whatever.

Tabitha 41:06
That was a cool crown, too. I liked that, that crown.

Simone 41:08
That, that crown. *sort of sighs* It looked like it was made of skin.

Tabitha 41:13
Yeah, it kind of did, yeah.

Simone 41:14
It was, that was, kind of, actually creeping me out. I’m like, ‘We’ve got, like, an Ed Gein situation here.’ *Tabitha chuckles* But yeah, the- a lot of, a lot of people losing their heads in this movie.

Tabitha 41:23
Op, that’s it. I- we’ve run out of time for… *laughter*

Simone 41:28
So, that’s how Hereditary is connected to the Satanic Panic, and if you want to know more, go see it if you haven’t.

Tabitha 41:37
Or read this article. Or both.

Simone 41:38
Or read this article, which will be linked in the show notes.

Tabitha 41:41
Both things.

Simone 41:41
Or just get at us on social media because I *will* talk about this movie because there’s a lot to pull apart.

Tabitha 41:46
Yeah, I will also talk about it. Although, mine will probably just be like, *in a silly voice* I was scared!’ *laughs*

Daniel 41:50
Or, just wait for the dark occultic powers that are gradually inflat- infiltrating your life *chuckling* to manifest in new and horrifying, more tangible ways as your sanity unravels, as we’ve now learned, will inevitably happen.

Simone 42:05
Yeah. All right. Can’t wait for that!

Tabitha 42:07
Huzzah!

Simone 42:08
Okay, we will come back and we will go into our main topic.

Black Mass Appeal 42:12
*interlude music plays*

MAIN TOPIC

Simone 42:43
Love it or hate it, there’s no getting away from Anton LeVey’s Satanic Bible. Originally published in 1969, this how-to manual for LaVeyan Satanists has never been out of print and continues to get people in a tizzy nearly 50 years later, but is the gospel truth, or does it belong in our bad books? Today, we are going to be diving into the Satanic Bible. Daniel, we’ve already talked about this a little bit in our, one of our previous episodes about the different sects of Satanism, but why don’t you give us a little refresher?

Daniel 43:15
Yeah, we’ve talked about this a couple of times in previous shows and I’m sure a lot of our listeners are very up on this material on their own, but for the benefit of anybody who doesn’t know, LaVey was a San Francisco eccentric in the middle of the 20th century, living here in the ’60s. He started giving lectures at his house about black magic and the history of occultism. In fact, we got a flyer about that from an old-timer at one of our events once. Really loved having them- really loved to see that. Eventually, he parlayed that- he called that the Order of the Trapezoid, parlayed that into the Church of Satan, and three years at- Church of Satan founded in 1966; three years later, he publishes the Satanic Bible, which, according to him and his unfaithful followers, was something that he created for their benefit. The other story, that we’ve heard before, is that it was Avon public- the publishers, Avon, wanted to cash in on his fame and on the interest in supernaturalism in the late 60s, and approached him with this as a, as an opportunity, so.

Simone 44:19
Partially caused by Rosemary’s Baby coming out just the year before.

Daniel 44:23
Yeah.

Simone 44:24
So, there’s another tie-in.

Daniel 44:25
Oh, we’re gonna keep coming back to that. *chuckles*

Tabitha 44:27
We’re never gonna stop talking about Rosemary’s Baby! *laughs*

Daniel 44:30
So Simone, when was the first time you read the Satanic Bible? We referenced this in the show before.

Simone 44:35
Yeah, so, the first time I read the Satanic Bible was a couple of years ago, probably about a year before I joined TST. I had been just, sort of, interested in Satanism in general and I figured this is the place to start, so I had a copy. I started reading it and, as I’ve said before on the show, there were some things in there that I was like, ‘Yeah, that that’s- I agree with that. That makes sense.’ And then, there would be a sentence in there or be like, ‘Whoa! That’s…no.’ *Tabitha laughs* So, I’m like, this is really close, but this is not quite something that I can connect to, which eventually led me into discovering the Satanic Temple and clicking with that one. Yeah, I basically was just, like, reading it in bed over the course of a couple nights. Kind of going, “huh,” to myself every now and again, but not, you know, getting too deep into it at the time.

Daniel 45:33
One thing we should make clear, in case there’s anybody who doesn’t know this, the Satanic Temple is *not* a Satanic Bible-based organization-

Simone 45:40
Mmhmm.

Daniel 45:40
-and neither is Satanic San Francisco. Intentionally.

Simone 45:43
But, I mean, a lot of Satanists that I know, were like myself, and started by reading the Satanic Bible, and whether or not you kept with it, you know, it’s a big piece of Satanic history, so it definitely is worth talking about specifically.

Daniel 45:59
I read the Satanic Bible when I was in college. I had a class that talked about the Satanic Panic, which involved a little bit of review of the Church of Satan and what they actually believe and what really atheistic Satanism is, and that made me curious, so I went out and bought it and furtively read it where my roommates wouldn’t see it and ask questions. *laughter* And, obviously, I was very attracted to Satanism, and the aesthetic, and some of the ideas that were being put forth, but when I was in college, I was not in a good place personally, and upon finishing this book, my first thought was, ‘I don’t think any of this is going to make me healthier, emotionally or psychologically, so I’m not going to pursue this any further.’ And it, it would take many years for Satanism to introduce itself into my life in a way that I found was more useful for me and many years for me to be in a place where I felt like this is something that will be good for me, for who I am now.

Simone 47:03
Tabitha, how about yourself?

Tabitha 47:05
I am going to probably lose Satanic Brownie Points [how do I make that little TM symbol? Because it’s totally a thing. Yup.] because I read this for the first time two days ago. *laughter* It’s never been something that was actually very interesting to me. In a historical sense, yes, of course, at some point I was going to read it; this is just a good excuse, but it’s not something that has really ever interested me that much. Satanism isn’t something that I came at from a historical point, if that makes sense. Like, it was just something that, when it came up, and I found out about what the Satanic Temple was, that’s what drew me to it, not kind of where it came from, and what Satanism was before. I think-

Simone 47:48
So you just skipped straight into TST. You didn’t, like, bother with the other stuff before.

Tabitha 47:52
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, I like the imagery and stuff. You know, I like bats and, and upside-down stars, and etcetera. I love that stuff, but the history of it wasn’t something that I was really interested in. Although, now, it was very interesting to go through the book. It was not- I don’t know what I was expecting, but some of this was definitely not it. I probably should’ve expected that, but I didn’t. *laughter*

Simone 48:20
Well, as I said, in our previous episode, the Satanic Bible is made up of four different books. There’s the first book, the Book of Satan, then there’s the Book of Lucifer, the Book of Belial, and the Book of Leviathan. To get us introduced to the content of this book, I’m going to skip straight to the Satanic Statements, which provide structure for the rest of the book.

Tabitha 48:45
And a lot of exclamation points.

Simone 48:46
*in an exasperated voice* So many exclamation points! *Tabitha laughs* I mean, I realize, you know, maybe it’s just not my writing style or maybe it was like an effect of the time, but, man, he just peppered this thing with exclamation points all over the place.

Tabitha 49:01
It actually made me- like that- It’s so funny that that to me was, like, the first thing that made me think this is very retro.

Simone 49:07
Yeah.

Tabitha 49:07
Is the amount of exclamation points in it because you just don’t see that much anymore.

Simone 49:11
And, I have to confess, it makes me take it a little bit less seriously *Tabitha chuckles* because, in writing, I guess, especially now, like, we’re, kind of, told not to have that many exclamation points. Otherwise, you’re going to have, like, a, kind of, a tone of, like, silliness?

Tabitha 49:25
Yeah, or excitement?

Simone 49:26
Or not, not being serious?

Tabitha 49:27
Yeah.

Simone 49:28
So, I’m reading this and I’m like, ‘Man!’ I almost can’t take it seriously. It sounds like-

Simone 49:31
Calm down a little bit. *laughs*

Tabitha 49:31
-Cheesy. Or something.

Tabitha 49:31
Yeah. *laughs* Chill out, Anton. Come on.

Simone 49:32
The, the content itself is not necessarily cheesy, but the writing style, this particular piece, makes it seem that way. So, the Nine Satanic Statements. Number one, “Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!” Two, “Satan represents vital existence and sort of spiritual pipe dreams!” And, again, all of these end with an exclamation point.

Tabitha 50:01
*in a silly cadence* Spiritual pipe dreams! *laughter*

Simone 50:04
Three, “Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!” Four, “Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!” Five, “Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!” Six,” Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!” *Tabitha giggles* Seven, “Satan represents man has just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those who walk on all-fours, who, because of his, ‘divine spiritual and intellectual development,’ has become the most vicious animal of all!” Eight, “Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!” And finally, nine, “Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!”

Tabitha 51:04
I feel like the psychic vampire thing, like, when I read this for the first time, I was like, ‘Wow, kind of leading in with-‘ Like, I feel like that should be deeper into the book. Like, you know, we’re right at the beginning and I don’t even know what a psychic vampire is. Like, maybe you could just use a different phrase until we get into the meat of it, but you know, okay! *laughs*

Simone 51:23
Well, so the, the structure of the book, the second book, the Book of Lucifer, aka The Enlightenment, is a collection of essays that go off of these Satanic Statements. The first book, however, is the Book of Satan, the Infernal Diatribe, which is-

Daniel 51:40
Wait. Before we, before we move on past the Satanic Statements, I do want to say, one of the things that particularly struck me about this book upon reading it, again, for this show, is I’m surprised- I feel that LaVey actually spends relatively little time talking about Satan. *Simone and Tabitha both ‘mmhmm’ in agreement* There’s no talking here about the myth of Satan, there’s no talking here about Satan as an artistic or literary character, or the development of that through time, or how it informs these definitions that he presents. It seems, to me, that LaVey, often, is assuming that his readers come from a, say, certain cultural background and are familiar with the same kind of middle-class American morality that he’s pushing back against, and that he establishes Satan as contrary to that, but didn’t spend a lot of time talking about why or how.

Simone 51:40
Well, I’m gonna push back on that a little, tiny bit because I did take note that he cited- I think it was in the Book of Lucifer, in one of the essays where he’s talking about the differences between the origins of Satan versus the origins of Lucifer, with Satan being from the Hebrew tradition and Lucifer being Roman. And, also, he talks about a lot of the similar gods from other cultures. So, you’re correct, he does not get deep into, especially, the Romantic version of Satan that a lot of TST people go to, but he does talk about it a little bit.

Tabitha 53:15
He touches on it.

Simone 53:16
Yeah. So, the first book, the Book of Satan, otherwise known as the Infernal Diatribe, is very, very short. It is only, let’s see here, 1, 2, 3, 4 pages long. *in a condescending voice* Well, front and back, so eight pages long. *Tabitha laughs* And it’s, basically, I mean, it is a diatribe. It is- got a lot of, a lot more exclamation points in here.

Tabitha 53:44
Yep.

Daniel 53:44
I guess you could call this a sermon, for lack of a better word.

Simone 53:47
That’s, that’s a good way of putting it. It’s written definitely in a more formal language than the subsequent books and it’s got the little, you know, the watch-a-ma- call-it’s, the different lines are, are numbered, like, an, any other-

Daniel 54:03
It’s numbered verses.

Simone 54:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tabitha 54:04
Numbered verses, yeah. [because I know all three of these dorks and I can hear the very small noises in the background, I can say with 1000% Tabby absolutely, totally, without a doubt, knew exactly what Daniel was talking about. Totally. Definitely.]

Daniel 54:06
So, this is one of the most widely quoted and most quotable parts of the entire book. I’ve got a few, I’ve got a few of my favorites in here singled out, as quote, “I question all things…Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought!…No creed must be accepted upon authority of a ‘divine’ nature. Religions must be put to question…There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy! He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all unwisdom…The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie- the lie everyone believes to [a] be model truth…Life is the great indulgence- death is the great abstinence. [Therefore] make the most of life- HERE AND NOW! There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy!…Say unto thine own heart, ‘I am my own redeemer.'” And it goes on like this. So, you can see why this is, this is provocative stuff and why people tend to gravitate towards this material and why, out of context, it can sound- it’s got a good hook and it’s not hard to imagine the kinds of people that this appeals to. Can I bring up the elephant in the room? [I can hear the oncoming giggle.]

Simone 55:33
Oh, please.

Daniel 54:06
LaVey didn’t write none of this shit. *laughter* The entire Book of Satan is cribbed almost word for word off of an anonymous 1890 book called ‘Might is Right,’ written by some weirdo named Ragnar Redbeard and people have argued for over 100 years over who that might be and what pen name that is. *chuckling* Might is Right, I’ve read some of, not all of. It is a…

Daniel 55:34
It sounds like it’s a book that’s a little hard to stomach from what I’ve heard.

Daniel 55:44
Well, I mean, if- there’s a lot of things you can say about Might is Right as a book. People call it a Proto-fascist book; people call it a white supremacist book they cited for antisemitism and for misogyny, and that’s all a pretty fair rap. None of that material, or at least very little of that material, makes it into the Satanic Bible, here. LaVey seems to rather like it just as- its iconoclastic attitude that he wanted to include in his own work, but what’s really weird about this is there’s no reference in the Satanic Bible to the fact that this is an extrapolation from another work, something that LaVey-types are really defensive about these days, I might add.

Simone 56:44
Yeah, there’s no footnotes, or source citations, or anything of the sort. It really is portrayed as being written just by LaVey’s own hand.

Daniel 56:54
In fact, can I bring up- if you go to the Church of Satan’s endless FAQ, *laughter* when you get to the apparently frequently asked question about plagiarism, here’s what they say, “When LaVey refers to an idea, concept, or quote derived or taken from someone else, he often cites the author, either in the paragraph or in the indexes.” Notice ‘often,’ which is a fancy way of saying, ‘and not always.’ *laughter*

Simone 57:19
My copy doesn’t have an index…

Tabitha 57:21
*snarkily* Hmmm…

Daniel 57:21
“If anything LaVey writes seems similar to past concepts, oftentimes it is augmented with modern circumstances as well as his own thoughts.” So, ‘oftentimes,’ so ‘not this time.’ *chuckles* Kind of tap-dancing around the issue there. I guess the one argument that you can make for this is it is maybe a little tiresome for people, always having to talk about it, acknowledge the fact that a lot of stuff in the Satanic Bible was just sorta yoinked from other sources-

Tabitha 57:48
Mmhmm.

Daniel 57:49
-with very spotty references. Maybe that does get boring having to talk about over and over again, but I don’t know. It seems like that, that people don’t really want to own up to this.

Simone 57:59
It’s not just the book Might is Right. The research that I did for a previous episode said that he was also pulling from Ayn Rand and other sources, so it’s not just the one.

Tabitha 58:11
And I’m sure he didn’t source Ayn Rand or anything, either. *chuckles*

Simone 58:14
Didn’t see her name come up.

Tabitha 58:16
Mmhmm.

Daniel 58:16
But putting that aside, like, what do we think about the Book of Satan? I mean, how does this speak to us? If it does.

Simone 58:24
I viewed it, pretty much, like what you said, that it’s a sermon. It’s kind of fire and brimstone-y. It is- I just imagined people shouting all of these lines, just shouting and shouting. *Tabitha chuckles* I can see how it would be the, the part that- I mean, it’s, it’s the first thing that you encounter, it’s in pretty short sentences. It’s a pretty short book, so I’m guessing it’s likely the thing that people managed to make it through when they’re reading this for the first time.

Tabitha 58:54
Right.

Simone 58:55
And it does leave quite an impression of being very strong and passionate in these beliefs and vehemently rejecting the ideas of Christianity, so, kind of, your more emotional, passionate, Satanist right up at the front.

Tabitha 59:14
Mmm.

Daniel 59:15
In fact, for any of our listeners not familiar with the work, when we say ‘vehemently reject,’ I believe the terms it uses are ‘splitting open the head of Christianity with an axe.’ *chuckling* That’s apparently a paraphrase, so vehement! Yeah. Tabitha, how do you feel about it?

Tabitha 59:30
I think, here, is where we have the kernel of actual, like, modern Satanism, as far as you know, rejecting, kind of, Christianity and, and religion itself. This is coming out kind of slowly for me, because it’s, it’s, like, it’s, it’s getting there, at least for me of, like, what I, kind of, think, but not- I mean, of course, not exactly what this says, but in the sense that it’s starting to get to what I like to- I don’t I want to say believe. Ugh. I just don’t know what I’m trying to say here. *laughs*

Tabitha 1:00:06
Well I mean, if I can jump in, it’s, like, this is the showy language.

Tabitha 1:00:09
Yeah.

Simone 1:00:09
This is the performance piece.

Tabitha 1:00:11
Yeah.

Simone 1:00:11
And then, once you get into the next book, the Book of Lucifer, is where the language is a little bit more reader-friendly.

Tabitha 1:00:17
Yeah.

Simone 1:00:18
And, it’s essays that go more in-depth on individual topics, so it’s, like, this is the opening number-

Tabitha 1:00:25
Yeah.

Simone 1:00:25
-the curtain goes up and Anton LaVey is there yelling at you with exclamation marks.

Tabitha 1:00:30
Yes, lots and lots of exclamation marks. But there’s something in here, a little bit, of just, like, the rejection of, you know, modern sensibilities that is starting to get to what I, what I like about Satanism, but it’s not, it’s not all the way there, but I can make connections. Whereas most of the rest of this book, I have no idea what’s going on. *laughter* And I don’t- like, I, I understand it, in the sense that I can read it and I understand what the words mean, but, like, I don’t understand, really, where he’s coming from.

Daniel 1:01:02
I understand all the words you’re using and the order they’re in, just not why!

Tabitha 1:01:06
Yeah.

Simone 1:01:06
And also, just as I’m flipping through the pages, I mean, this book is broken up into five parts itself, and the last part, part five, is kind of parodying the Christian Bible by going, “Blessed are the Strong for they shall possess the earth- Cursed are the weak for they shall inherit the yoke,” and it goes on in that manner. So, again, it’s the very theatrical-

Tabitha 1:01:30
Right.

Simone 1:01:30
-turning of, turning things upside down.

Tabitha 1:01:33
Oh, yeah, and this, and this part, I don’t actually have this, this- this little section does not have the kernel of truth that I am part of because this is- the part’s not very good. *laughs*

Simone 1:01:42
Yeah. Well, I mean, so, as Daniel was saying, the book Might is Right, that a lot of this is cribbed from was Proto-fascist, and Proto-racist, and very Social Darwinist, and it’s this kind of twisting of the idea of the ‘survival of the fittest,’ without any kind of charitable or, you know, empathetic views, so in this last part, when he gets into, ‘Blessed are the strong…Cursed are the weak.” He says, “Blessed are the Powerful, for they shall be reverenced among men- Cursed are the Feeble for they shall be blotted out.” I mean-

Tabitha 1:02:16
No. *laughs* Nope.

Simone 1:02:16
That’s not cool!

Tabitha 1:02:17
Yeah, nope.

Daniel 1:02:18
You know, here’s what I’ll say. I’ve heard some people speculate that Ragnar Redbeard’s book is in some ways satirical or ironic and I don’t know enough about the work or the subject to say whether that’s true or not. I tend to turn a skeptical eye towards that; I tend to think if you write a book that says something, you should work pretty hard to let us know whether you’re being sincere about it or not-

Simone 1:02:41
Add, add an emoji.

Daniel 1:02:43
Yes.

Simone 1:02:43
Yeah.

Simone 1:02:44
A winky emoji.

Tabitha 1:02:45
There you go.

Daniel 1:02:45
What I will say is, I guess, if I had to come up with some sort of value for this dia- for the statements at the end of this diatribe, I guess you could point out that when he says, you know, ‘blessed him to the strong, they’ll inherit the earth.’ That’s an unpleasant idea, but it is probably true. *Tabitha and Simone mmhmm in agreement* So, you could make the argument, ‘well, you know, these, these are unpleasant and difficult true statements that he’s making,’ and I guess that’s, I guess that’s accurate. Living in the age of the internet, as we do, I think maybe the idea of telling it like it is, in upsetting ways. might be overrated. *laughter*

Daniel 1:03:20
*chuckling* Yeah, true.

Daniel 1:03:21
So, I tend not to put much stock in that either, but maybe that does it for some people.

Simone 1:03:27
And, I mean, considering the time period in which it was written, it was probably a bit more effective.

Tabitha 1:03:32
Yeah.

Simone 1:03:33
Moving on to the Book of Lucifer, The Enlightenment- and, also, just kind of an interesting note, is that all these books also are associated with an element, so the Book of Satan is associated with the element of Fire, Book of Lucifer is associated with Air, Book of Belial is Earth, and Leviathan is Water. So, the Book of Lucifer is a collection of 12 essays that, kind of, go into the Nine Satanic Statements, and then some. A selection of essay titles include “Wanted!: God- Dead or Alive!”

Tabitha 1:04:08
*singing in a metal voice* Dead or Alive!

Simone 1:04:09
*singing* Dead or Alive! When I interned at a radio show, we had a game called ‘Dead or Alive,’ and they would just name a celebrity who was very, very old and you had to guess if they were alive. *laughter* And, someone always threw in Abe Vigoda, which always threw people off because he was alive for a long time!

Tabitha 1:04:29
I think he was a mummy. *laughs*

Daniel 1:04:30
Well, that was also- there was a famous snafu where, I don’t remember which paper it was, but they incorrectly read his obituary.

Simone 1:04:39
Yeah!

Daniel 1:04:40
And then he did a photo op of them sitting in a coffin, with that front page, *laughter* laughing about it. There was even a website for a while called, I don’t remember the title, but the whole point of it was saying-

Simone 1:04:50
Is Abe-

Daniel 1:04:50
Abe Vigoda is alive, and then when it- and then when he finally died, it switched over.

Simone 1:04:51
Oh, well, at least you seem to have a good sense of humor about it. Some of the other topics covered are: “The God you SAVE may be Yourself,” “Hell, the Devil, and How to Sell your Soul-” Although, actually, you’re not selling your soul. “Love and Hate,” “Satanic Sex-” and not sects, like, s-e-c-t-

Tabitha 1:05:18
No. Yeah, no, we’re not-

Simone 1:05:18
-but, you know, *doing* it.

Simone 1:05:20
Yeah. Like George Michael’s, “I want you’re.” *laughter*

Simone 1:05:26
“Not all Vampires Suck Blood,” is where he goes into the psychic vampires-

Tabitha 1:05:30
*groaning* Oh boy.

Simone 1:05:32
“Indulgence…NOT a compulsion,” *Tabitha chuckles* “Life After Death through Fulfillment of the Ego,” “Religious Holidays,” and “The Black Mass.” So…what are your thoughts on- any, any particular passages that you like, Daniel?

Daniel 1:05:46
Well, I will say one thing, like, if this is not a very long book, or a very long read to begin with, but if you are in a serious hurry, you can probably read just the book of Lucifer and get-

Simone 1:05:58
I would agree.

Daniel 1:05:59
pretty, pretty much everything you need to know about LaVeyan Satanism. Let me…

Simone 1:06:06
Because these are, like, the philosophical essays that dive into the topics and, kind of, outline in more plain language what is believed about indulgence? What is believed about sex?

Tabitha 1:06:18
Mmhmm.

Daniel 1:06:19
I guess if I was going to broach my big takeaway from the Book of Lucifer, it would be in this essay, “The God You SAVE may be Yourself,” where LaVey writes- here’s where he starts to brook the idea of atheistic religion, where he says, “All religions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man…God can do all the things man is forbidden to do…kill people, perform miracles…control without any apparent responsibility…If man needs such a god and recognizes that god, [then] he is worshipping an entity that a human being invented. Therefore, HE IS WORSHIPPING BY PROXY THE MAN THAT INVENTED GOD…Man needs ritual and dogma, but no law says an externalized god is necessary [in order to] to engage in ritual and ceremony in that god’s name!…When all religious faith in lies has waned, it is because man has become closer to himself and farther from ‘God;’ and thus closer to the ‘Devil.'” So, so that’s an intriguing concept, actually, this idea that we take these things about ourselves and our egos that we’re uncomfortable with, we project them onto a fictional idea that we give greater authority to ourselves, and then in a really weird, neurotic way, we’re empowered by that, but also sort of demeaned by that. And, this is one of the bits about this book that I like, because something that, a problem that you’ll run into, occasionally, with the Satanic Temple is people who want to use it as a platform to rail against religion, full stop, because we tend to think of theism and religion as synonyms. I think it’s hard but important to communicate to people this idea that atheism and religion can go hand in hand and that these, that’s actually necessarily not such a bad idea, and I guess LaVey touched on that- struck on that idea himself 50 years ago, where he says, ‘No, religion isn’t the issue. Religion can be; good ritual and ceremony can be good. It’s our psychology that’s the problem. We’re what’s weird about this system.’

Simone 1:08:18
Yeah, he definitely says, and goes into greater detail in later books, about how important religion and dogma are as a kind of building of strength, personal empowerment, psychic strength, and, and catharsis.

Tabitha 1:08:36
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:08:36
So, I mean, that’s something that I get down with.

Tabitha 1:08:39
Yeah, that’s, that’s something that I can really, actually kind of relate to, unlike most of the rest of this. *laughs* There’s actually something that I am very curious about, is this whole thing about the ‘psychic vampires?’

Daniel 1:08:39
Ookay.

Tabitha 1:08:39
It’s something that I’ve been, kind of, focused-

Daniel 1:08:56
Yeah, let’s skip to that part. *chuckles* That’s an interesting-

Tabitha 1:08:58
I mean, I know I’m kind of skipping around a little bit though-

Daniel 1:08:58
No, that’s-

Tabitha 1:08:59
I’m sure we want to talk about Satanic sects and stuff, but-

Simone 1:09:02
Yeah, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be skipping around-

Tabitha 1:09:04
-this is something I just want to bring up now. It just seems, to me, that there were some, kind of, like, jerks or something in Anton’s life and he felt the need to include how he deals with people in the Bible?

Daniel 1:09:18
So, wait, wait. I don’t want, I don’t want to interrupt you-

Tabitha 1:09:21
No! Go right ahead, go right ahead.

Daniel 1:09:20
For, again, for, for people who don’t know, there’s a section in here on ‘psychic vampires,’ which is Anton LaVey’s strange nickname for exploitative and emotionally needy people who fuck with your life.

Daniel 1:09:22
Everyone, turn to page 75.

Tabitha 1:09:26
Yeah.

Simone 1:09:27
‘Cuz, I mean, it’s funny because we both have the same copy. Like, the same edition. It’s that, kind of-

Daniel 1:09:44
Same one everyone has, I think.

Simone 1:09:45
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:09:45
Yeah.

Simone 1:09:45
Dark purple-ish with the Baphomet and Pentagram in hot pink on the cover-

Tabitha 1:09:51
Hot, hot pink!

Tabitha 1:09:52
-and then Anton’s photo and *hot* pink on the back.

Daniel 1:09:56
So, Tabitha, you were saying?

Tabitha 1:09:57
I just find it really funny that he’s, like, that this- he felt this was important enough to put in here, I think is more than anything else is that, you know, if there are these very specific kinds of people in your life, which there probably are, this is how exactly you deal with them, which is not, it’s just not gonna work like that. *chuckles* I just don’t think that in any situation, in *every* situation, you’re going to be able to use the words that he puts in here as your answer to problematic people in your life.

Simone 1:10:30
And, and, correct me if I’m wrong, but, I mean, so, so many of these passages are in direct response to something that’s already included in Christianity, but, to my knowledge, there’s not a whole lot of psychology of, like, how to deal with the mean folk in your life.

Tabitha 1:10:48
Yeah, no. This is, this seems very, kind of-

Simone 1:10:50
So it’s coming from somewhere. It’s coming from him.

Tabitha 1:10:52
Yeah, it feels like he sat down on his typewriter one day because there was some lady or something that was giving him- or maybe a gentleman, who knows- giving him a bunch of trouble about something and he’s like, “You know, what?! These motherfuckers…!” And, you know, started furiously typing about-

Simone 1:11:07
That could be, like, ‘The Satanic Bible, colon, These Motherfuckers.’ *cackling ensues*

Tabitha 1:11:11
*laughing* Yeah.

Simone 1:11:13
Because he’s just railing at ‘these motherfuckers-‘

Tabitha 1:11:16
For most of the book. I mean-

Simone 1:11:17
Yeah. Different motherfuckers, but.

Tabitha 1:11:20
I mean, this is a pretty long passage, to, comparatively, to some of the other ones. Like, he talks about psychic vampires for a long time and, I mean, it’s not, it’s not all terrible advice, you know, just being, like, you know, ‘you don’t have- you know, you have to learn how to say no’-

Simone 1:11:34
Mmhmm, mmhmm.

Tabitha 1:11:34
-is basically what he’s saying in here, which is not terrible advice. It’s just a very strange thing to have in your Bible. *chuckles*

Daniel 1:11:41
His degree of preoccupation with it,-

Tabitha 1:11:43
Yes.

Daniel 1:11:43
-it seems telling.

Tabitha 1:11:44
Yeah.

Daniel 1:11:45
This is one of those things that always kills me about old Anton, here. Here’s a man who would clearly, *clearly* wanted to be the center of attention, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, at the same time, he also wanted to spend an awful lot of time telling you, ‘let me tell you how much I hate putting up with fucking people.’ *chuckles*

Tabitha 1:12:02
Yeah.

Daniel 1:12:03
You’re at cross purposes with yourself, here, man, I’m just gonna say.

Tabitha 1:12:06
Yeah, which one do you want?

Daniel 1:12:06
I guess, again, if I want to be charitable, which maybe is against the spirit of the book, *chuckling* maybe the reason why he brings this up is because this idea, he says, he says, ‘look, you know what? We’re gonna turn you into a Satanist. We’re gonna make you into this profound, powerful intellect, and so you’re gonna start attracting these people just like I have, so let me tell you how to deal with this.’

Tabitha 1:12:28
Ookay.

Daniel 1:12:29
But you notice, that’s not what he says in here.

Tabitha 1:12:30
No.

Daniel 1:12:30
Maybe I’m just supposed to be- maybe if I’m the ideal reader for this book, I’m smart enough to catch on to that myself. I don’t know. Seems like sloppy editing to me. *chuckling* Simone?

Simone 1:12:41
So, I touched on this in our previous episode about one of the things that I was, sort of, surprised, pleasantly surprised by was his openness and acceptance of different sexualities.

Tabitha 1:12:55
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:12:55
Because his whole thing is, by denying our urges, we’re sort of betraying ourselves and fucking up ourselves so the thing to do is to just go with them.

Tabitha 1:13:06
Yeah.

Simone 1:13:07
But that leads him to the acceptance of- and, again, this was written in 1969, or was published in 1969, at least, and he is fully- he’s not just accepting of homosexual people, but bisexual, asexual, trans people. He puts in this book that we should just let people be.

Tabitha 1:13:30
Yeah.

Simone 1:13:30
And so, I appreciated that. He also goes ahead and makes clear that this should only be done between consenting adults who want to be doing these things, so things like rape or molestation are clearly, like, not good.

Tabitha 1:13:49
Very much frowned upon.

Simone 1:13:50
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:13:51
You’re not a Satanist if you practice.

Simone 1:13:53
He *does,* kind of, go into way more detail about masturbation than I thought he would…

Tabitha 1:13:59
Or that was *probably* necessary. *laughs*

Daniel 1:14:01
Page, after page, after page!

Simone 1:14:02
Seriously! Like, four pages, at least, about just how it’s okay to jerk it. *Daniel chuckles*

Tabitha 1:14:08
And, I don’t think, I don’t- I mean, was it- I know it was looked down upon, say in, like, Catholic, and that sort of thing-

Simone 1:14:13
Sure, sure, sure.

Tabitha 1:14:14
-but was it really, I mean, we’re talking about the, you know, the end of the ’60s, and Free Love, and, and all that hippie dippie shit, so it doesn’t seem, to me, like that would be something that would be *so* frowned upon that he felt like he needed to talk about it for so long.

Simone 1:14:27
Yeah, he, he only barely touches on stuff like, something like homosexuality-

Tabitha 1:14:32
Yeah.

Simone 1:14:33
-and goes on for four pages about masturbation.

Tabitha 1:14:35
*laughing* It’s, like, ‘it’s cool if you’re a homo. Now back to my ding dong!’ *laughter*

Daniel 1:14:40
That’s, that’s something I feel that we need-

Simone 1:14:42
‘The Satanic Bible, colon, Back to my Ding Dong.’ *Tabitha cackles*

Tabitha 1:14:45
‘These Motherfuckers, colon, My Ding Dong.’ *laughing*

Daniel 1:14:48
That’s something that I feel that we need to bring up. I mean, it is true. In here, he does say it’s nobody’s business what your sexual orientation or proclivities are and it’s nobody’s business what you’re doing as long as it’s consenting and safe, and, you know what? That’s, that’s, that’s great. It’s wonderful that that’s there in black and white. That said, there’s no denying this is an extremely heteronormative book.

Simone 1:15:08
Yes!

Tabitha 1:15:08
Oh my goodness!

Daniel 1:15:09
And, especially when we get into the shit about magic that’s going to become very clear- *Tabitha groans*

Simone 1:15:13
Mmhmm!

Daniel 1:15:13
-and I realized that term ‘heteronormative’ would be anachronistic in 1969 and there’s only so much we can expect out of a guy like LaVey to begin with. But at the same time, let’s not have rose-colored glasses about this. *chuckles*

Simone 1:15:24
Oh yeah.

Tabitha 1:15:25
Well, especially if he can be so open and stuff about other sexualities, but still have a very interesting opinion of women. *chuckles*

Simone 1:15:32
Yeah. It’s, like, he’s very progressive in some ways, and then in other ways, he’s going back to these conservative ideas.

Tabitha 1:15:39
Very conservative ideas.

Simone 1:15:41
So, why don’t we forge ahead and let’s go to the next book.

Tabitha 1:15:48
There’s more- if you want, you can read this, probably in an afternoon if you tried hard enough, so. *chuckles*

Daniel 1:15:53
Wait, actually before we skip ahead, there’s one more thing I want to bring up. It wasn’t until we were reading this again the other day, that- again, I’ve read this book several times- reading it with Tabitha and being there with somebody who was approaching it for the first time, *chuckling* I started to notice some things that had never stood out to me before. Like, the book is very redundant.

Simone 1:16:12
Very.

Tabitha 1:16:13
Oh, my godddd. *chuckles*

Daniel 1:16:14
LaVey- like, his, his thesis is: people and religion should favor what our natural impulses are-

Tabitha 1:16:20
Mmhmm.

Daniel 1:16:20
-which is, is a perfectly fine idea to base a book around. He says that- numbers don’t exist for the number of times that he says that in those terms-

Tabitha 1:16:29
Yeah.

Daniel 1:16:29
– in these essays again, and again, and again. Here’s something that I find- here’s what I’m curious about. On the one hand, he says we should follow our natural instincts; those are what’s going to make us healthy people. On the other hand, this book is very prescriptive and he very often says, ‘definitely don’t do these things while you’re following your instincts.’ And, it seems to me, I guess, those are purely pragmatic prohibitions that he’s putting on these things, but what authority is he invoking in that?

Simone 1:16:59
Yeah.

Daniel 1:16:59
It’s not a god. It’s not Satan. It’s not conventional morality. He never really says what the ‘stick’ is. Like, you know, if you want to do this, what is supposed to be stopping us?

Tabitha 1:17:12
Hmm.

Daniel 1:17:13
So on the one hand, he very soundly rejects the idea that you have to answer to anyone but yourself and your own needs and gratification. On the other hand, he very often tells you, ‘be sure not to do this or this.’ That seems like a contradiction that I’ve never managed to resolve. What does everybody else think?

Simone 1:17:33
I mean, *sighs* every religion is basically putting arbitrary restrictions on people. They just cite different sources for why and, not that I know the man, but I can imagine Anton LaVey being- believing that, ‘I think this is right, therefore it is right. Therefore, I don’t need to even question this or cite this, it just is.’ If that makes sense?

Daniel 1:17:59
I suppose, but, I mean, I thought that was one of those things that we’re trying to fix with this idea of Satanism: is to do away with arbitrary authority of established religions.

Simone 1:18:07
You would think, but, I mean, he’s still…a man, so.

Tabitha 1:18:11
Yeah, I’m under the impression that he thought quite highly of himself, and he thought-

Daniel 1:18:16
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a minute, wait a minute! Don’t get carried away! *laughter*

Tabitha 1:18:19
Well, but I do. Like, I think that he, he thought highly of himself and that he really thought when he was writing this stuff that he had, it- that his opinions were good enough to write as laws and that he can say these things and contradict himself and you have to just, kind of, deal with it.

Daniel 1:18:40
To be honest, I keep coming back to, frankly, a very cynical reading of this. I think that LaVey felt he had to write things in this book saying, ‘don’t kill or molest anybody because if you do, *laughter* I’ll get in trouble for telling that you’ve to answer to yourself,’ so I think this is, like, a purely mercenary, covering your own ass kind of thing. And, this plays into- going back to the Church of Satan’s FAQ, which could be a Satanic Bible in itself, by the way.

Tabitha 1:19:05
Probably should-

Simone 1:19:05
I’m, I’m kind of shocked that they haven’t printed it out,-

Tabitha 1:19:07
Right?

Simone 1:19:08
-and published it, and sold it.

Tabitha 1:19:09
*chuckling* ‘The Satanic Bible, colon, FAQ.’ *laughter*

Daniel 1:19:11
*chuckling* Here, they’re actually writing about digital piracy, but- and I wrote about this on the blog recently- the Church of Satan has this weird, fuddy-duddy attitude about, ‘we are a law-abiding organization-‘

Simone 1:19:25
Yeah!

Daniel 1:19:25
‘-and law-breakers are troublemakers and we don’t want to attract them!’ Because that’s the story of Satan, right? *Simone chuckles* Somebody who was very, very, very, very, very strict about the rules.

Simone 1:19:35
I mean, they said, and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m just trying to remember the Twitter interaction, but they said that ‘felons’ are not allowed to be members of the Church of Satan, is that right?

Daniel 1:19:44
They’re not allowed- there’s, they’re, they’re allowed to be members. There’s certain active roles that they’re not allowed to take, if you’ve got a criminal record, which people on Twitter had a lot of fun, *chuckling* making- mocking them for, as they should-

Tabitha 1:19:55
Mmhmm.

Daniel 1:19:55
-because this is very much- I, I, it’s-

Tabitha 1:19:59
Completely ridiculous? *laughs*

Daniel 1:20:01
I like to picture, I like to picture Peter Gilmore as Seymour Skinner whenever I read these things. *laughter* And- but in those cases, like, they’re, they’re very frank where they point out they say, ‘hey, you know what? We would be inviting trouble if we told you anything differently,’ so this-

Simone 1:20:15
Well, I mean, I get, I get covering your ass legally.

Daniel 1:20:18
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:20:18
I get it. But, it does seem to be counterintuitive when you look at the spirit of the thing.

Daniel 1:20:24
This is what I talk about when I say I feel like LaVey spends very little time on Satan as a character.

Simone 1:20:29
Mmhmm, mmhmm.

Daniel 1:20:30
I often have trouble- whereas, I can look at the Satanic Temple and I can very much see how they draw their values and their actions from Satan as a literary character in the sources that they cite. When I look at LaVey of, like- I don’t see a through-line between this story and this book he wrote very often.

Simone 1:20:50
Are you saying that you feel that LaVey’s selection of ‘Satan as metaphor’ is more arbitrary, in your mind?

Daniel 1:20:59
I don’t see what, like- when I read Ayn Rand and Nietzsche-

Simone 1:21:02
Mmhmm.

Daniel 1:21:02
I don’t see what the fuck that has to do with the Devil and I never have- except as this idea of a counterpoint to Christian morality.

Simone 1:21:09
Mmhmm, Mmhmm. So you might say- and I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, I’m trying to understand- so you might say that LaVeyan Satanism uses Satan as a more direct contradiction of Christianity, whereas the Satanic Temple uses Satan as the Romantic metaphor?

Daniel 1:21:29
I think it’s a difference between being reactive and being contrarian.

Tabitha 1:21:32
Mmhmm.

Daniel 1:21:32
That’s me. That’s my read.

Simone 1:21:33
Okay. Oh, that’s good- Okay.

Tabitha 1:21:34
Okay.

Simone 1:21:35
Cool.

Daniel 1:21:37
Moving on?

Tabitha 1:21:38
Yeah.

Simone 1:21:38
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:21:38
Awesome.

Simone 1:21:39
Moving on to the Book of Belial-

Daniel 1:21:42
Oh, now we’re getting into the meaty stuff. *chuckling*

Simone 1:21:44
The interesting stuff. ‘The Mastery of the Earth’ and the element associated with it is the Earth. This is where he talks about magic- greater magic, lesser magic, ritual magic-

Tabitha 1:21:57
He, he means actual magic, by the way. *chuckles*

Simone 1:21:59
“The definition of magic, as used in this book, is: ‘The change in situations or events in accordance with one’s will, which would, using normally accepted methods, be unchangeable.’ This admittedly leaves a large area for personal interpretation.” You don’t say. “It will be said, by some, that these instructions and procedures are nothing more than applied psychology, or scientific fact, called by ‘magical’ terminology- until they arrive at a passage in the text that is, ‘based on no known scientific finding.'” That is kind of, he’s very much- what’s that quote? “Any technology sufficiently advanced will appear to be magic.”

Tabitha 1:22:38
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:22:39
So he’s like, ‘I’ve got this magic stuff-‘

Tabitha 1:22:41
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:22:41
‘alright, guys? It’s magic- it’s still science, but science just hasn’t caught up to my magic yet.’

Tabitha 1:22:47
Yeah. See, I get, kind of- this section, but then, like, kind of contradicted by the next section, is kind of this, like, ‘The Secret,’ kind of thing to me?

Simone 1:22:57
*gasps* I wrote that down!

Tabitha 1:22:58
Yeah.

Simone 1:22:58
I totally wrote that down! Because he talks a lot about the visualization, like, the use of visualization.

Tabitha 1:23:05
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:23:05
And he’s, it’s basically, like, *in a silly voice* ‘create a vision board for what you want and picture it in your mind! And if it’s something that you want so bad to happen to other people, make a voodoo doll!’ And I’m like, he’s halfway to the book, The Secret.

Tabitha 1:23:17
Yeah! Like, there is so- like, it would not surprise me if The Secret- which, of course, I have not read, but I do know about it- had like, you know, a little annotation where, ‘we, like, oh, yeah, we learned something about this from Anton LaVey.’ Because that’s, it’s, like, totally in here!

Simone 1:23:30
Yeah, ‘cuz- so I actually did we read the secret a while ago. Some friends are reading it so I thought I would just check it out, and ultimately, I decided that was not for me, but it’s very much the idea of using, like, positive thinking and visualization to manifest things in your life that you want. The thing that’s a little sillier about The Secret is that they try and be kind of literal with it. Like, if you want a Porsche, cut out a picture of a Porsche and look at your Porsche picture every day, *Tabitha starts giggling* and then eventually, somehow, you will get a Porsche.

Tabitha 1:24:05
*giggling* Frame, frame the picture of the Porsche on your- and keep it on your nightstand-

Simone 1:24:10
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:24:11
-and…lick it every night. I don’t know! *giggling*

Daniel 1:24:14
I’m laughing because, I think it was just a week ago, that some poor guy wandered into the Satanism subreddit and actually introduced this very topic. He said, ‘Hey, Satanism kind of reminds me of The Secret. Does anybody else get that?’ *Tabitha starts cackle-giggling*

Simone 1:24:27
Oh, my god, what happened?!

Daniel 1:24:27
*laughing* The LaVey groupies on the r/Satanism subby responded with, if I may paraphrase, ‘No! You should die and then feel bad about yourself, idiot!’ *laughter*

Tabitha 1:24:40
*giggling* It totally is! I mean, there’s nothing wrong with drawing parallels between these two things- I don’t think, anyway. I mean, maybe it’s because I’m not part of that, but I still don’t think that that’s really that big of a problem.

Simone 1:24:41
I mean, I actually- I don’t really have a problem with positive thinking and visualization. Like, if you want to achieve a goal, you need to define for yourself explicitly what that goal is.

Tabitha 1:25:03
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:25:04
Because if you just have, like, a nebulous, like, *in a dreamy voice* ‘oh, I want to, I want to have a good job.’

Tabitha 1:25:09
Yeah, I want to have enough money.

Simone 1:25:10
Well, then, how do you have action items to get that good job?

Tabitha 1:25:13
Right.

Simone 1:25:13
You need to visualize, or at least, you know, in your mind, determine what, what does your good job look like?

Tabitha 1:25:18
Yeah.

Simone 1:25:18
Then, therefore, you can figure out, how do you achieve it?

Tabitha 1:25:21
Right.

Simone 1:25:21
I don’t think that this is *magic,* so, so I’m not, I’m, like, kind of, halfway there with them.

Tabitha 1:25:27
Well, which is funny because it’s partly, kind of, this, kind of, practical, ‘secret’ kind of thing, but then it’s also, like, very much, like, ‘No! No, you-‘ He tries to make it clear, ‘No, this is real mag- like, this is actual magic. Magic, like- magic is real-‘

Simone 1:25:40
Mmhmm.

Tabitha 1:25:40
‘-and you have to believe in it.’ And it’s, like, didn’t we just spend a bunch of time talking about how we didn’t believe in supernatural stuff like God? *chuckles*

Simone 1:25:50
Yeah.

Daniel 1:25:50
Well, here’s, here’s all I’m going to say about this because if we don’t, if I don’t bring this up, we’re gonna get emails. Usually, if you bring this up today, somebody who is really into the Satanic Bible and really into LaVeyan Satanism will say, ‘No, you don’t understand. Magic is all psychology. It’s all in your head; it’s all about your emotions. It’s-‘

Tabitha 1:26:11
It’s all about The Secret. *chuckling*

Daniel 1:26:12
They say, they say, ‘You were just using the word ‘magic’ in a way you don’t understand and you need to read the book again.’ But, I frankly feel that the Satanic Bible contradicts that exact sentiment in passages we just read.

Tabitha 1:26:26
Yeah.

Simone 1:26:26
Yeah, I mean, he does talk about psychology- applied psychology in this book a lot, but, to your point, Daniel, like, he’s also use- conflating it with magic all the time.

Daniel 1:26:38
Like, if magic is just applied psychology, why the fuck are we calling it magic?

Simone 1:26:41
Exactly! Just if-

Tabitha 1:26:42
Yeah.

Simone 1:26:42
Yeah. If you’re not into the supernatural and it is applied psychology, just call it that. Now, if he’s calling it magic because he wants to stress the importance of ritual and ceremony? Okay, I kinda get it. But then, I don’t see why you can’t make a bigger distinction between the two. Like, you don’t need to call applied psychology ‘magic’ in order to also have a ritual. You can have the science and you could have the ritual. One does not, you know, negate the other.

Tabitha 1:27:11
It just sounds like, to me, he’s just, like, angry at, kind of, the hippie dippie, kind of-

Simone 1:27:17
Oh, for sure.

Tabitha 1:27:17
-magician kind of thing that I think was, may be drug-induced, *chuckles* but was going on at the time, and was, like, *in a stupid voice* ‘their magic is stupid and fake, but my magic is real!” *laughs*

Daniel 1:27:29
That’s another thing that we skipped over on the Book of Lucifer; he spends *a lot* of time railing against, against Wiccans-

Simone 1:27:38
Mmhmm.

Daniel 1:27:38
-and New Age magicians-

Simone 1:27:40
The Right-Hand Path, the White Magic; he is not fond of them.

Tabitha 1:27:43
No.

Daniel 1:27:43
Right. And, like…okay! *chuckling* If you’re really that worked up about it, but why do I, 50 years later, give a fuck about what, you know, you were mad about Haight Street wizards *laughter* in the Summer of Love, man, you know?

Simone 1:28:00
There were a couple of interesting passages to, kind of, further our discussion of magic as psychology. In some of Book of Leviathan, he talks about how people should be, kind of, as children because children unknowingly visualize their, their desires, like-

Tabitha 1:28:20
Right.

Simone 1:28:20
You know, they make a wish on a birthday candle, essentially.

Tabitha 1:28:23
Yeah.

Simone 1:28:24
And-

Tabitha 1:28:24
They really feel like that’s going to-

Simone 1:28:26
Exactly. And, adults don’t actually wish on birthday candles anymore.

Tabitha 1:28:30
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:28:31
But maybe we should be open to it?

Tabitha 1:28:34
Yeah.

Simone 1:28:34
And then he, kind of, also goes on to say it’s, like, sort of, the same visualization is when, like, a child is playing with a toy car. In his mind, that toy car is a real car.

Tabitha 1:28:43
Right.

Simone 1:28:44
So, they’re exercising their visualization in the hopes of making it manifest-

Tabitha 1:28:51
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:28:51
-in, like, this childlike way. Another thing that he talked about that I thought was really interesting, *chuckles* is that his magic seems to be the, kind of, ‘set it and forget it’ kind. *Tabitha cackles* [As someone who sets her hair with rollers, I get it, Anton] Because he says, basically, when you’re doing a ritual, you need to put all of your mental, psychic energy into it-

Tabitha 1:28:51
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:28:52
-and you should have *nothing* leftover.

Tabitha 1:28:56
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:28:56
So, if you’ve done a ritual where you want to, I don’t know-

Tabitha 1:29:02
Get a Porsche? *laughs*

Simone 1:29:03
Get a Porsche! You’re doing a ritual and you’re gonna get a Porsche. If you worry about getting a Porsche later, if you think about that Porsche later, then, clearly, you have leftovers in your mind *Tabitha chuckles* that were not expelled during this ritual, so you didn’t do the ritual right. If you did the ritual right, you’d be so confident that you’re getting your Porsche, it would not even occur to you to worry about it.

Tabitha 1:29:42
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:29:42
It’s, like, that’s kind of interesting.

Tabitha 1:29:44
It’s just, it’s- to me, it sounds like an out. Like, ‘well, you obviously were worried about it. That’s why you haven’t gotten your Porsche yet, jeez!’ *laughs*

Simone 1:29:50
Yeah, it does seem like an out but I think his point was more of, like, putting all, your all into these rituals and then releasing them.

Tabitha 1:30:01
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:30:02
And, I have a friend who has a tattoo that says, ‘let go your wishes.’

Tabitha 1:30:06
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:30:06
You know, make your wish, and then let it go and don’t expend your energy worrying about it. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. The attitude of ‘if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen’ seem- is contradictory to, I guess, the point of doing this magic, but-

Simone 1:30:23
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:30:23
-they kind of rang the same, to me.

Tabitha 1:30:25
Yeah. Yeah, right. I understand.

Simone 1:30:27
The last thing, I thought, that was interesting is he talks about how you, kind of, have to be honest with yourself about your talents versus your desires.

Tabitha 1:30:36
Mmhmm. *starts giggling*

Simone 1:30:36
So, he’s, like, ‘if you are a terrible singer, there’s no fuckin’ point in doing a ritual about being a rock star because it’s just not gonna happen.’

Tabitha 1:30:44
I know. I like that- because this is fully an out. Like, this is fully, like-

Simone 1:30:48
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:30:48
-come on, man! Like…*starts laughing*

Simone 1:30:49
It’s, like- you know, so- some of the, they talk about different kinds of rituals. There’s a sex ritual, which is about, you know, finding, finding, like, desire and finding, like, a person to, um, have sexy times with.

Tabitha 1:31:02
Yeah, and lots of masturbation, *Simone chuckles* but that’s neither here nor there. *chuckles*

Simone 1:31:05
There’s compassion. You know, you’re gonna help something.

Tabitha 1:31:09
Yeah.

Simone 1:31:10
Help someone; help yourself.

Tabitha 1:31:10
Help yourself or, or help someone else.

Simone 1:31:12
And then there’s destruction, which is voodoo dolls. Not actually voodoo dolls, but it’s the idea.

Tabitha 1:31:16
I know; he talks about voodoo dolls. *chuckles*

Simone 1:31:18
He mentions it, and that’s, like, it’s part of the, the visualization. Like, if you’re gonna do, like, a destruction ritual, go ahead and have, like, a voodoo doll and-

Tabitha 1:31:25
*chuckling* Go ahead and appropriate voodoo.

Simone 1:31:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, one of them was, like, if you are a woman who, *chuckles* and again, this is where the sexism creeps in, because his example is, like, if you’re a woman who is not attractive, don’t do a sex ritual to try and attract a dude who’s out of your league because it ain’t gonna happen.’

Tabitha 1:31:44
Yeah, yeah. And, he kind of makes it sound like, ‘just, you know, maybe a little more generalized, just somebody to love you.’ *starts chuckling* It’s, kind of, what- the idea that I got from it was, like, ‘wow, dude! Like, thanks?’ *chuckles*

Daniel 1:31:56
You know, that idea of creating an out for yourself reminds me of when I read Eliphas Levi’s Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic where the fucking magical rituals in there are like Rube Goldberg devices. *laughter* How complicated they are, and how much prep you need, and how much room there is for error, and it specifically tells you many times, it says, ‘you know, if you mess this up, it’s not gonna work. You’ve got to do everything exactly right,’ and I could not help but interpret that as a way of insulating yourself from criticism-

Tabitha 1:32:30
Right.

Daniel 1:32:30
-if people can’t get the magic to work for them.

Tabitha 1:32:32
Right.

Daniel 1:32:33
And, I know that’s cynical, but at the same time, I’ve read some books of magic. They’re all- there’s always an out.

Tabitha 1:32:39
Yeah.

Daniel 1:32:39
There’s always an escape hatch in there somewhere.

Simone 1:32:42
Yeah, I mean, he has a couple of outs. He has a section in -there’s a section called “The Ingredients Used in the Performance of Satanic Magic;” he talks about desire, like you need to fully visualize and really, really desire the thing that you desire.

Tabitha 1:32:58
Your Porsche. *chuckles*

Simone 1:32:59
Your Porsche. He talks about timing, which I thought was interesting because he’s, like, if you’re doing a ritual, kind of, like, at somebody, do it when they’re sleeping!

Tabitha 1:33:10
Yeah, I always thought that was weird, too- and that it should be easy for you because you’re obviously a night person! *laughs*

Simone 1:33:15
Which- I am, like, such a grandma. I am in bed by nine; *Tabitha laughs* I’m up at five. I- clearly, I’m not cut out for this ritual shit.

Daniel 1:33:23
Shit, now our readers know when to cast spells- or know when to cast spells on you!

Tabitha 1:33:27
*gasps* Dun, dun, dunn!

Daniel 1:33:27
You just told them!

Simone 1:33:28
Oh! Also, he’s, like, if you’re casting a spell at a *lady,* find out what her menstrual cycle is.

Tabitha 1:33:34
*bursts out laughing* Oh, yeah! And, you want it to be right before or right after, and if you were an animal, you’d know, but because we’re so far, you know, removed from animals that now people don’t, you know, don’t know.

Simone 1:33:46
He is so, he is so into, like, body odor and pheromones.

Tabitha 1:33:49
Mmhmm. *giggles*

Simone 1:33:49
And, he’s, like, decrying that humans, like, can’t smell *Tabitha is trying to hold in her giggles* each other’s, uh, cycle points? And, he’s, like, talking about, like, don’t worry about if you smell bad, you don’t, you don’t have to take a shower, *Tabitha still trying not to giggle* like, revel in the oils of your body. It’s, like, ew…

Daniel 1:34:06
An- anybody who read LaVey’s later book, The Satanic Witch, knows that he’s *really* preoccupied with menstrual blood-

Simone 1:34:13
*obviously grossed out. Yeahhhh…

Daniel 1:34:13
-which, to be fair, is a traditional magical reagent in a lot of folk traditions, but I’m not completely convinced *Simone giggles* that’s why he keeps bringing it up.

Simone 1:34:13
Right. What are the other ingredients? Direction, I thought was sort of interesting; he’s, like, you should, like, kind of, do it pointing towards the west? Which, they didn’t really…

Tabitha 1:34:36
Because he’s left-handed?

Simone 1:34:37
I don’t know. Pass that, there’s, like- he actually, like, prescribes the steps for Satanic rituals. He’s got some notes about *Tabitha trying not to chuckle* what to do to prepare, some notes about what you should do during it, including, like, dress-

Tabitha 1:34:55
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:34:55
-and he’s pretty specific about dress. He thinks that-

Daniel 1:34:58
Can I, can I just read this part because I’ve been waiting the whole episode for this.

Simone 1:35:03
Uh oh.

Tabitha 1:35:03
Chompin’ at the bit.

Daniel 1:35:03
And, uh, people who have talked to me about this book before *chuckles* know exactly what bit I’m about to pick out here. You know, I’m not even going to editorialize; I’m just- this is just exactly what it says on the page, here. Under [the] “Clothing” section of “Devices in a Satanic Ritual, “Black robes are worn by male participants. The robes may be cowled or hooded, and if desired cover the face. The purpose in covering the face is to allow the participant the freedom to express emotion…without concern. It also lessens distraction on the part of [one] participant towards [another.]” So far, this is o- oh, I said wasn’t going to editorialize. *laughter* He continues, “Female participants wear garments which are sexually suggestive; or all black clothing for older women-” *laughter*

Simone 1:35:09
Yeah, older!

Tabitha 1:35:17
Yeah.

Daniel 1:35:17
“-Amulets bearing the sigil of Baphomet, or the traditional pentagram of Satan are worn…Robes are donned by men before entering the ritual [chamber]…Men may substitute all black clothing for black robes. Black is chosen for the attire in the ritual chamber because it is symbolic of the Powers of Darkness. Sexually appealing clothing worn [is] by women [for] the purpose of stimulating the emotions of [the] male participants, and thereby intensifying the outpouring of adrenal or bio-electrical energy which will ensure a more powerful working.”

Tabitha 1:36:19
You can go get fucked, Anton LaVey! *laughter*

Daniel 1:36:22
Yes, I’m-

Simone 1:36:22
That’s- yeah, that’s the point!

Daniel 1:36:23
I’m sure that’s exactly what he had in mind!

Tabitha 1:36:26
Oh, right! True. *laughter*

Daniel 1:36:27
So, um- *laughs*

Simone 1:36:29
That’s what he was after.

Daniel 1:36:30
That’s a- I love the bit where I’m wearing a hood so I don’t get distracted by other people but I’ve got to be stimulated for *bio-electrical energy…* [it sounds like Daniel is, like, doing jazz hands or something]

Simone 1:36:38
So you gotta look at those titties!

Tabitha 1:36:39
Yeah.

Daniel 1:36:39
*laughing* By the women around me.

Tabitha 1:36:41
Well, I like, I just like the idea, too, it’s, like, you can wear a hood in case you got to cry about it or whatever, but not the ladies! We’ve got to make sure that there as naked as possible because, you know, it’s important.

Daniel 1:36:50
Oh, but-

Simone 1:36:50
They are fully on display for the men to look at.

Tabitha 1:36:52
Ew, unless you’re, like, over 40? Grody! Put some clothes on. *laughs*

Simone 1:36:58
Yeah.

Daniel 1:36:58
*groans* I never get over that part.

Tabitha 1:37:00
*groans* So-

Daniel 1:37:01
I *never* get past that.

Tabitha 1:37:04
So, it’s, it’s so- like, I, I have a hard time thinking of women who would have read this, even at the time, and been fully 100% on board. Like, even if you are, like, an exhibitionist, someone who likes to get naked in front of people, or whatever, you know, you’re into.

Simone 1:37:23
At the very least, you’d be, like, ‘Why can’t the dudes do this, too?’

Tabitha 1:37:26
Yeah, exactly.

Simone 1:37:26
Let’s see some naked dudes!

Tabitha 1:37:27
Exactly. Like, that’s, that’s- and that’s where this all stems from. It’s just, like, I just, it’s- I have such a hard time envisioning women being, like, ‘really? Like, can’t, can’t we all just wear the same thing?’ Or, ‘I’d like to wear a robe this time. Can I wear a robe this time?’ They’d be, like, ‘no, no, no. No, you have a really nice rack, *Simone chuckles* so we need to make sure you got that going on. *laughs*

Daniel 1:37:27
I just want to point out- we were talking about this before on the drive over. This is *literal* objectification. [Seriously, Anton. Like, really?]

Simone 1:37:51
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:37:51
Yeah. *laughs*

Daniel 1:37:51
*laughing* That’s not even a met- there’s not even a- you know.

Tabitha 1:37:54
Yeah.

Daniel 1:37:55
There is, if you read LaVey’s next book, Satanic Rituals, which for the record, I actually like. When you read the “Ceremony of the Stifling Air,” -one of my favorites- there, he specifically points out that the nude woman in the ceremony may be substituted for a nude man, if that’s your thing. That’s the *only* time, in his entire corpus of works, that he makes that admission.

Tabitha 1:38:16
Also, the altar is a person? At all? It can’t be a…table? *laughs*

Simone 1:38:23
Well, he does say, like, if ya lack a lady, or if you’re just a lady doing it by yourself, you don’t have to be your own altar.

Tabitha 1:38:28
*laughing* Can you just imagine just laying there and, like, putting stuff on top of yourself?

Daniel 1:38:33
Well, here’s what I’ll say, at the risk of being pedantic, which some listeners have let me know I am- *laughter* If you read Jules, but- I’m never sure if it’s Jules [Me-shu-lay] or Michelle [it’s spelled Michelet]- somebody out there help me because we never say any- pronounce any names correctly.

Tabitha 1:38:48
You have to say it more wrong; you have to be, like, *in sort of a deep voice* ‘Ma-sha-sha-sha.’ *laughs*

Daniel 1:38:50
Jules Michelet [he pronounces it ‘Michelle’], the French historian who wrote Satanism and Witchcraft, when *he* was writing his description of the black mass, he also was the one who introduced the idea that during the black mass the altar should be a woman’s body. However, he writes about it in a much more empowering way, in a way-

Tabitha 1:39:07
Hmm.

Daniel 1:39:07
-that is- that woman trying to liberate herself from the stigma of ‘original sin’ placed on her by the church. I’m not saying this is necessarily a more tasteful idea in practice, but I find it intriguing that this 19th-century man was coming at it from a much more forward-thinking point of view. *Simone and Tabitha both ‘mmhmm’ in agreement* I don’t know if that was LaVey’s source for this, although I’d find it very- I’d be very suspicious of anybody that tried to say it was a coincidence.

Simone 1:39:30
So, apart from the clothing, apart from the altar, he talks about some of the, you know, kind of, tchotchkes *Tabitha chuckles* you need to have a ceremony. Like, um, symbol of Baphomet. You need some candles.

Tabitha 1:39:44
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:39:45
So, everyone make your grocery list.

Tabitha 1:39:46
Okay.

Simone 1:39:47
You need some candles.

Tabitha 1:39:48
Candles, k.

Simone 1:39:49
Black candles are preferred; you can have one white candle, but you don’t want to have too many white candles.

Tabitha 1:39:53
Right, you have to have at least one, though.

Simone 1:39:55
Well, but a- white magicians use white candles. You don’t want *too* many of those.

Tabitha 1:39:59
Oh! Oh. *flaps lips* Yeah, heck to that. [I guess?]

Simone 1:40:01
You need a bell.

Simone 1:40:02
K, a bell. Good.

Simone 1:40:03
A chalice.

Tabitha 1:40:04
Oh, chalices are nice.

Simone 1:40:05
Ideally, the chalice would be silver because, again, those white magicians, they like gold and we’re trying to not be those people.

Tabitha 1:40:11
Right.

Simone 1:40:12
You need an elixir, which, basically, is something to drink.

Tabitha 1:40:15
Yeah.

Simone 1:40:16
Some wine.

Tabitha 1:40:17
Maybe a little water?

Simone 1:40:17
Maybe a nice Cabernet?

Tabitha 1:40:18
Yeah.

Simone 1:40:19
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:40:19
What can I say about this elixir? *chuckles*

Simone 1:40:21
You need a sword. You also need a phallus.

Tabitha 1:40:25
A what?! *laughs*

Simone 1:40:27
So, I’m taking that to mean a wand. Am I? Like, a phallic symbol, not like a literal dick. *Tabitha giggles* I mean, maybe, maybe someone wants to have a big dildo on their altar; I’m not judging, but-

Tabitha 1:40:40
It has to be a big floppy one, though, *Simone starts laughing* since you have to point it in the cardinal directions? It’s gotta be, like, ‘buh, buh, buhh; buh, buh, buhhh.’ [like the sound of the little door stopper thingy] *Simone starts cackling*

Daniel 1:40:46
Great. Everyone who took my advice and watched that YouTube documentary about the Church of Armand knows, nope, some people really do just break out the dildo.

Simone 1:40:56
What?

Tabitha 1:40:56
I do appreciate the fact that, in Daniel’s copy of the book, after the phallus part, he has just written, “Why?” *laughs*

Simone 1:41:02
*laughing* Scribbled in the margin.

Tabitha 1:41:05
*laughing* Yeah.

Daniel 1:41:06
Well, wait- what I’m asking there is, he points out, he says, ‘the phallus is only necessary in large group rituals,’ and he does not explain *why* it’s only necessary then.

Simone 1:41:14
That is true. He does not-

Tabitha 1:41:17
*laughing* Like, you could have just written ‘why’ after the word phallus [and it] would have been okay, but alright.

Simone 1:41:20
I’m just saying, uh, if I’m using a phallus, I tend to be by myself. *Tabitha cackles* Uhh, so-

Tabitha 1:41:27
It goes back to the whole masturbatory thing, too. *Simone laughs*

Simone 1:41:30
You also need a gong.

Tabitha 1:41:32
I just want a gong.

Simone 1:41:33
I just-

Tabitha 1:41:33
Like, when I read this, I was, like, ‘ooh, gong!’ *laughs*

Simone 1:41:35
I- yes. Because, in an earlier part, when he’s talking about the rituals, apparently, like, after, I think it’s after you say ‘Hail Satan,’ you’re supposed to hit the gong? Is that-

Daniel 1:41:45
Mmhmm.

Tabitha 1:41:45
We need a gong. *laughs*

Simone 1:41:46
Yeah! I wanna do that! I want, I want to bang a gong.

Tabitha 1:41:51
Same.

Simone 1:41:51
*singing quietly* Get it on… [idk this song] *Tabitha chuckles* You also need parchment, but paper will do, in a pinch. What’s the, what’s the- the Barefoot Contessa in a garden? She’s just like, organic and-

Tabitha 1:42:05
Oh, yeah. *in a silly voice* I grow this in my yard.

Simone 1:42:06
*in a condescending voice* But, but storebought is fine.

Tabitha 1:42:09
Yeah. Oh, thanks.

Simone 1:42:10
Paper is fine if you can’t get real sheepskin parchment.

Tabitha 1:42:14
Although, I do enjoy the fact that he’s in there, you know, ‘don’t sacrifice an animal just for this.’

Simone 1:42:19
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:42:20
‘Make sure that they’re sacrificing it for something else and then use the parchment.’ *laughs*

Simone 1:42:24
Well, I will give him the credit that he’s, like, not into the harming of animals unnecessarily-

Tabitha 1:42:29
True.

Simone 1:42:29
-back when they talked about sexuality and they talk about consent, he’s, like, ‘well, animals can’t consent, so please don’t diddle your dog.’

Tabitha 1:42:35
*chuckling, then groaning* Which is, just- oh! I mean, I’m, I’m- good, it’s good it’s in there because then people won’t, *straining her voice* but it shouldn’t be necessary. *laughing*

Simone 1:42:44
You would, you would think. Well, that wraps up the Book of Belial, and that moves us on to the final book, the Book of Leviathan, aka The Raging Sea, and, of course, the element is water. This is a lot of padding; you’ve got some invocations here…

Tabitha 1:43:05
You got this nice list of names. *chuckles*

Simone 1:43:07
Yeah, just, like, it’s called “The Infernal Names;” the Infernal Names are listed in alphabetical order, purely to simplify referral to them. These are, like, the names that you could just call during your ceremonies, I suppose.

Tabitha 1:43:18
Yeah.

Simone 1:43:18
Loki; Mammon; Mania; Mantis.

Tabitha 1:43:21
I do enjoy the fact that he actually says in here, like, ‘you probably shouldn’t call them out in alphabetical order.’ *Simone chuckles* Like, the, you know, they must be taken out of the rigidly organized form in which they are listed here. Like, you can’t- don’t just go- start from the top and list them all. *laughs*

Simone 1:43:39
You gotta put them on shuffle.

Tabitha 1:43:40
Yeah.

Simone 1:43:41
Then he has the invocations for the different types of rituals; the “Invocation towards the Conjuration of Lust,” the “Invocation Employed towards the Conjuration of Destruction,” and the “Invocation Employed towards the Conjuration of Compassion.” And that, that kind of wraps up the, I guess, the practical bits; the scripts that you can use.

Tabitha 1:44:02
Yeah.

Simone 1:44:02
And then, fully, the last *third* of the book are “The Enochian Keys.” Now, the Enochian Keys, Daniel, they are- John Dee, the mystic-

Daniel 1:44:13
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:44:13
Yeah, tell us about ’em.

Daniel 1:44:14
Again, here, the Enochian Keys, are not LaVey’s creation. These date to John Dee, the court magician for Queen Elizabeth the First, who *allegedly* received these in dreams or visions from an angel, and, supposedly, Enochian is the language angels speak, which, by the way, it is much scarier sounding than I would have anticipated in that context. And- but, I believe the version that LaVey is using here come not from Dee, but from the Golden Dawn, and, of course, he has gussied them up with some references to Satan, instead…

Tabitha 1:44:14
Which, by the way, he actually references all this stuff. Unlike the beginning of the book, where he doesn’t reference, you know-

Daniel 1:44:52
That, that is true.

Tabitha 1:44:53
-Redbeard-

Daniel 1:44:53
That is true. Okay, yes.

Tabitha 1:44:54
But in this, he actually- he says John Dean in here, he talks about Golden Dawn; like, he says exactly where these came from- although, gussied up.

Daniel 1:45:00
That’s, that’s true. That’s fair; we should bring that up. I still allege that this is *entirely* padding. *chuckling*

Simone 1:45:07
Oh, yeah. It’s, like I said, fully the last third of the whole book, here.

Tabitha 1:45:11
And each page has, like, three or four lines of text.

Simone 1:45:15
Yeah, it’s, like, there’s one, one key per page, and then-

Tabitha 1:45:19
And then, there’s, like-

Simone 1:45:20
-there’s, like, a title page for the next key.

Tabitha 1:45:22
Yeah, so ridiculous. *chuckles*

Simone 1:45:25
Now-

Daniel 1:45:25
Hug a fuckin’ tree, Anton. Come on- *Simone laughs*

Simone 1:45:29
That’s too hippie dippie for him.

Tabitha 1:45:30
Yeah, come on, now.

Simone 1:45:31
When Tabitha and I participated in the black mass that we did before the screening of the movie, The Witch, for our Halloween ritual, Minnie helped us learn one of the parts of the Enochian Key because it was used in the movie. Now, it was- what was it? The 11th key?

Tabitha 1:45:48
11th, yeah.

Simone 1:45:50
So-

Tabitha 1:45:50
Which is funny because it’s- “herald the coming of the dead.”

Simone 1:45:54
When you read the Enochian Keys, it is, it’s in a foreign language-

Tabitha 1:45:59
Mmhmm.

Simone 1:45:59
-it’s in this angel language, so when Minnie was writing The Witch ritual, The Witch screening ritual, she wrote it phonetically for us. Do you, do you still remember it?

Tabitha 1:46:11
I think so.

Simone 1:46:12
I think I do, too.

Simone and Tabitha together 1:46:12
You wanna do it?

Tabitha 1:46:13
Yeah.

Simone 1:46:13
Okay. *Tabitha chuckles*

Simone 1:46:14
One, two… [jesus christ, here we go…]

Simone and Tabitha together 1:46:15
Zeh-caw-deh-kuh-otz-ah-moo-rhan. Oh-do-key-kah-lei-caw-ah. Zo-rei-zeh-zee-lah-no-oh. *Tabby gets really into in this last part* Ho-at-tah-huh-say-tan! *Tabitha giggles* Yay! [*cracks knuckles* OKAY. ACTUAL test now: “Oxiayala holado, od zodirome O coraxo das zodiladare raasyo. Od vabezodire cameliaxa od bahala: NIISO! salamanu telocahe! Casaremanu hoel-qo, od ti ta zod cahisa soba coremefa i ga. NISSA! bagile aberameji nonucape. Zodacare eca od Zodameranu! odo cicale Qaal Zodoreje, lape zodiredo Noco Mada, hoathahe Saitan!” I’m guessing they didn’t pronounce the whole thing? I honestly don’t have the mental capacity to check lolz]

Tabitha 1:46:20
Oh my god, okay. I, I- that was the first time-

Simone 1:46:32
Oh, we just summoned him!

Tabitha 1:46:33
-I did that since The Witch, *Simone chuckles* so I’m really glad I actually did, kind of, remember it. Uhh. *chuckles*

Simone 1:46:38
I’ve, I’ve done it to, like, freak out friends. *Daniel cackles* Because it sounds- it does sound, um, a little-

Tabitha 1:46:44
I do- I totally believe that.

Daniel 1:46:45
You know what? When your neighbors start making that hammering noise again, *Simone chuckles* you should just start doing that late at night. *Tabitha chuckles*

Simone 1:46:52
Oh my- *laughs* Yeah, we are currently recording in my apartment. I have one neighbor who seems to like to hang pictures at random times? *Tabitha chuckles* And take a long time doing it. I haven’t quite figured it out. But, yeah, maybe I should just go stand at the wall and just chant the eleventh Enochian Key at them.

Tabitha 1:47:09
I think that’s a great idea.

Simone 1:47:12
Well, that actually wraps up this book. That wraps up the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey.

Daniel 1:47:18
So, do we want to do closing thoughts? Closing opinions?

Simone 1:47:23
Yeah. I will say that, upon my rereading of this book, I actually found more that I agreed with-

Tabitha 1:47:29
Mmm.

Simone 1:47:30
-than I did on my first read.

Tabitha 1:47:31
Hmm.

Simone 1:47:31
-but I think that is informed by my increased knowledge and familiarity with basic Satanic beliefs and information. I was recognizing a lot of stuff that was familiar, to me.

Tabitha 1:47:43
Right.

Simone 1:47:44
There’s still, definitely, stuff in here that is not something that I believe in, but, I’ve said before, the Satanic Bible is part of Satanic history, whether you fully agree with it or not. I think it’s important to read it; it’s a good starting point if you’re interested in learning more about Satanism. No matter which way you end up branching off into, you could do worse than to start here.

Tabitha 1:48:08
That’s true. I think that Anton LaVey was very obsessed with his penis. Which is fine. Like, it doesn’t, it doesn’t bother me, really, but that seems to be, kind of, where a lot of this seems to come from- there is some- it’s not all of that, and most of the parts that aren’t about magic, or his penis, are, are very interesting. But, I think that we spend a lot more time talking about…penises, and things, than I think are really necessary. *laughter* I am glad that I read it, though. I know, it’s been forever, and I- it’s not that I never wanted to-

Simone 1:48:43
Mmhmm.

Tabitha 1:48:43
-I just never got around to it.

Simone 1:48:45
Yeah.

Tabitha 1:48:46
I’m glad that I have now, so now I know what all the fuss is about, but I think there’s a lot- I think that there’s other literature that I’m more interested in.

Simone 1:48:57
For sure.

Daniel 1:48:59
Well. Okay, I’ll tell you what I like about the book. I actually very much enjoy Anton’s unapologetic attitude about materialism and worldly things. If there’s anything that I agree with old Anton about, it’s that idea that, yes, the pursuit of the tangible material, worldly pleasures of this world is not something that we should be ashamed about and is something that we are entirely justified in making a priority in our lives, especially over these very dreary, sterile ideas about abstinence and spiritual mumbo-jumbo, instead. All of that said, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna pull my punches on this; this is a silly book. It’s poorly written. It lacks an assertive, editorial hand that it really needed. It has always struck me as the work of somebody who was, frankly, just not a very good writer; was probably working under some kind of deadline… *laughter*

Simone 1:49:57
That, that- I can see that.

Daniel 1:49:57
Did not, did not have the oversight in collaboration that he needed, and, frankly, I think it’s kind of a shame that it takes up so much cultural space and that we always have to talk about and acknowledge it. There are just better books out there, and, look, those people who- like I said, as Simone said, yeah. This is part of Satanic history and it is appropriate to be familiar with it and to reference it, when we can, and there’s nothing wrong with knowing this work, and- my copy is very well worn; it’s sitting on the table right in front of us. That said, those people who are just *really* into this; like, this is just your fucking bag. This is what you’re all about. Guys, you need higher standards. *laughter* You do; you just do. I don’t know how to- short of pleading with you, I don’t know how else to communicate that. You need to- *straining* you can do better. You really can. *Tabitha chuckles*

Simone 1:50:08
Alright, well. Thanks for a really good discussion, guys, and for the opportunity to refresh ourselves on this work. If you have any feedback or any opinions on the works of Anton LaVey- I feel like we’ll eventually get to some of his other books?

Daniel 1:51:10
Like I said, I really like Satanic Rituals; I don’t know if it would make as good of a show? Ironically, *chuckling* the fact that it’s a better book *Simone makes, like, a surprised sound* and better put together makes it harder to talk about, in this format, but if listeners want that, well do it-

Simone 1:51:24
Maybe we can roll into something else.

Daniel 1:51:25
Yeah. And then, if we ever do an episode on The Satanic Witch, I think the fucking sky will fall because if nothing- that is a *howler.* *laughter*

Simone 1:51:34
All right, come back for our comedy episode. And, if you want to email us, you can reach us at blackmassappealpod@gmail.com. The website is blackmassappeal.com, and you can find us on most social media platforms as Black Mass Appeal.

Daniel 1:51:51
If you want to find out more about what Satanic San Francisco is up to, you can find us at satanicsf.com, read our blog, Feel the Burn, updates every Sunday. You can follow us on Facebook at Satanic San Francisco *or* you can now follow us on Twitter at @satanicSF. And, if you- anybody who’s feeling particularly inspired, or wants to come down and give us a few notes on their own copy of the Satanic Bible-

Tabitha 1:52:15
Hmm.

Daniel 1:52:15
-you can meet us, once a month, at Satanic Coffee Hour at Wicked Grounds coffee shop on the second Thursday of the month in San Francisco, and Tabitha, what are we having next time we’re there?

Tabitha 1:52:15
Let’s, it- I have to admit, we’re starting to run out of menu items. They do have specials and stuff every day, but we are, kind of, getting to the end of things. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the soup, so, every day, they have a new type of soup that they’ll make for you. You can get it as a side, instead of a salad, with your sandwiches and etcetera, so why don’t- next time we’re there why don’t we take a-

Simone 1:52:49
They do do a good grilled cheese-

Tabitha 1:52:50
Yeah.

Simone 1:52:50
– and if they have a tomato soup? Get that grilled cheese and that tomato soup, man!

Tabitha 1:52:54
Yeah. I think I had a minestrone there, one time, that was *very* excellent, so I highly suggest the soups-

Daniel 1:53:00
Course, course we remember what Anton LaVey thinks about people who order the soup…

Tabitha 1:53:04
Oh?

Simone 1:53:04
*fake whispering* That’s a different book.

Daniel 1:53:06
Ah, right! Sorry, sorry.

Tabitha 1:53:07
*laughing, straining* I don’t know about it! *gasps* Oh! Oh! I think I do know about it! *Simone laughs*

Simone 1:53:12
It, it’s- it goes along with the salad dressing conversation.

Tabitha 1:53:15
Right, right.

Simone 1:53:16
Yeahhhhh…

Tabitha 1:53:16
It means you have some sort of proclivity. *laughs*

Daniel 1:53:19
But that’s another episode; let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Simone 1:53:21
All right, and if you have any general interest in the Satanic Temple, visit their website at thesatanictemple.com.

Daniel 1:53:26
‘Hail Satan’ to go out on?

Simone 1:53:29
Yeah.

Daniel 1:53:31
3,2,1…

Black Mass Appeal 1:53:32
Hail Satan!

Tabitha 1:53:34
I always wonder if people do that with us.

Simone 1:53:37
*fake whispering* Let us know!

Tabitha 1:53:38
Yeah, tell us if you do with us. *chuckles*

Black Mass Appeal 1:54:11
*outro music plays* [omg idk what song this is and everything that comes up in google is from crazy christians talking about the illuminati and shit…]