SHOW LINKS

• The AntiBot
• Genetically Modified Skeptic
• Drag Me To Hell, Louisville KY
• Patron Sinner Nominations!
• From I traveled to Jerusalem to face my fear of hell, Genetically Modified Skeptic, 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGvcRnlId4k 
• From Heaven & Hell, Bart Ehrman, 2020: Some of my high school friends were committed Christian kids who believed it was necessary to make an active and specific commitment to god by asking Jesus into my heart. They convinced me, and as a 15-year-old I became a born again Christian. From that point on I had no doubt I was going to heaven. I was equally convinced that those who would not make this commitment were going to hell. Believing this made me a christian on a mission. It is not at all unlikely that I was more than a little obnoxious about it. After graduating from a fundamentalist College I chose to pursue the study of the New Testament and went to Princeton Theological Seminary. It was there I started having doubts about my faith. These doubts disturbed me not only because I wanted very much to know the truth but also because I was afraid of the possible eternal consequences of getting things wrong. Would my soul be in serious trouble? There was a particular moment when these worries hit me with special poignancy: It involved a late-night sauna. To pay for grad school I went to a part-time job at a tennis club. Most days of the week I was on the late shift. One of the benefits of the job was that I could take advantage of the facilities, including the sauna, when the place was shut up. The evening in question I’d been sweeping the courts and thinking about everything I’ve been hearing and resisting in my biblical studies and theology courses. I decided to have a sauna. I cranked up the heat as high as it could go and sat down to have a good after work sweat. As I sat on the wooden bench all alone late at night perspiring, I returned to my doubts about my faith. I then I started realizing, wow it sure is hot in here! Oh man is it hot in here! And then naturally the thought struck me: Did I want to be trapped in a massively overheated sauna for all eternity? Is it worth it? For me at that moment that meant: Did I want to change my beliefs and risk eternal torment? Suffice to say that I did eventually begin to change. As a friend of mine, a Methodist Minister, sometimes jokes, I went from being born again to being dead again. A recent Pew research poll showed that 72% of all Americans agree that there was a literal heaven where people go when they die. 58% believe that an actual literal hell. These numbers are of course down seriously from previous generations but are still impressive. One of the surprising things is that these do not go back to the earliest stages of Christianity. They cannot be found in the Old Testament, and they are not what Jesus himself taught. There was a time when literally no one thought that t their soul would go to heaven or hell. But eventually people came to think that this could not be right, largely because it was not fair. If there are gods with anything like a moral code then there must be Justice, in this life and the next. The ideas of the afterlife that so many billions of people have inherited emerged over a long struggle with how this world can be fair and how god can be just, which Jews and Christians came up with over a long period of time that they tried to explain the injustice of the world and the ultimate triumph of good. 

• From The Apocalypse of Peter, Anonymous, Second Century CE…ish: And I saw the place of punishment. There were certain there hanging by the tongue: and these were the blasphemers. There was a great lake, full of flaming mire, in which were certain men that pervert righteousness, and tormenting angels afflicted them. Women hanged by their hair over that mire that bubbled up, and these were they who adorned themselves for adultery. Men who mingled with them in the defilement of adultery were hanging by the feet and their heads in that mire. Murderers and those who conspired with them were cast into a place full of evil snakes, and the souls of the murdered looked upon the punishment of those murderers and said: O God, thy judgment is just. I saw another place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion. And other men and women were burning up to the middle and were cast into a dark place and were beaten by evil spirits, and their inwards were eaten: these were they who persecuted the righteous. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/apocalypsepeter-roberts.html

• From Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas, 1274: In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to god for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. Whoever pities another shares somewhat in his unhappiness. But the blessed cannot share in any unhappiness. Therefore they do not pity the afflictions of the damned. Charity is the principle of pity when it is possible for us out of charity to wish the cessation of a person’s unhappiness. But the saints cannot desire this for the damned, since it would be contrary to Divine justice. The saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.  Further, envy reigns supreme in the damned. Therefore they grieve for the happiness of the blessed, and desire their damnation. Even as in the blessed in heaven there will be most perfect charity, so in the damned there will be the most perfect hate. Wherefore as the saints will rejoice in all goods, so will the damned grieve for all good. Consequently the sight of the happiness of the saints will give them very great pain, and they will wish all the good were damned. 
• From the Catholic Catechism, Holy See, 1992: We cannot be united with god unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love god if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves:  Our lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting god’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with god and the blessed is called “Hell.” Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted. The chief punishment of Hell is eternal separation from god, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of Hell are an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from god is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In daily prayers, the Church implores the mercy of god, who does not want any to perish but all to come to repentance.
• From Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God, John Edward, 1741: The damned deserve to be cast into hell, so divine justice never stands in the way of this nad makes no objection against god’s using his power at any moment to destroy them. On the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, “Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over our heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and god’s mere will, that holds it back. And the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are, is not very angry with them, as he is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on Earth. The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment god shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of god, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of god’s enemies. The world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of god. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath would come upon you with omnipotent power. The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow, and it is nothing but tan angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. The god that holds you over the pit of hell abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent. You have offended him infinitely more. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to Hell last night but that god’s hand has held you up. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and you have  nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce god to spare you one moment.
• From The Devil: A New Biography, Phillip Almond, 2014: For Gregory the Great, the victory of Christ left Satan imprisoned in the bottomless pit, though he would be released again for the final battle at the end of history. However, the continued existence of evil in the world required explanation. So while Satan as “historically” imprisoned in Hell, he was “allegorically” still in the world. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus, demons were both the keepers and tormenters of the dead, although in an alternate text of Nicodeums Satan was not a prisoner in Hell to begin with but was cast into the fires after Christ conquers death. The idea that Satan was incarcerated along with his demons was a tradition that went back at least to the First Book of Enoch, yet remained present. It was a problem over which many puzzled intellectually. To some, the devil and his angels lived in the air beneath Heaven, in order that they should not excessively harass men, and for this reason Lucifer was called the Prince of the Air. On the last day they would be cast down to Hell. Bishop Peter Lombard ambiguously wrote that some demons are in the air and some are in Hell, and that devils come and go to Hell on a daily basis, so that there are always some of them to torture souls. This was hardly a persuasive compromise. The Franciscan writer Bonaventure, in writing on Lombard, ignored the issue of Lucifer being in Hell and located him in the air, since there was no redemption in Hell and if the fallen angels were there they would be unable to ascend to our world to tempt us. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest of Christian theologians, was unable to resolve the paradox of Satan being bound in Hell and being active among men, or at least we can conclude this from his not having taken up the issue.
• From Really Believing In Hell, Keith DeRose, Yale Department of Philosophy, 2008: Richard Dawkins’s comparison of sexual abuse to being taught doctrines of hell as a child were the subject of some great outrage. Never having been the victim of sexual abuse myself, knowing little about what that must be like, I don’t want to get into the comparative issue here. But some of the outraged seemed to be quite sure that being taught nasty doctrines of hell could not be seriously harmful at all, and that I do want to dispute. As someone who spent many sleepless, terrified nights as a child, I can certainly empathize with this When I was around 7, I got the message that Hell is a place I absolutely do not want to go to loud and clear. And it did terrorize me–and not just worries that I might end up there, but terror at the thought of anyone ending up in such a place. The combination of eternal duration with unspeakable torment really got to me. In a later post I hope to go into the effects – some of them lasting to this day – beyond nightmares. Why do some people who accept a traditional doctrine of hell experience debilitating terror while others don’t? My guess is that having the ability to understand and appreciate the doctrine without (yet) having developed the ability to “quarantine” threatening beliefs is to blame. As a child I really believed a traditional doctrine of hell. Some believers only kinda believe it–and kinda don’t. By the time I was 12, though I still accepted a traditional doctrine of hell, I only kinda believed, as opposed to my earlier, terrorized real belief. The “quarantining”of the doctrine wasn’t a simple matter of fully retaining the belief while blocking it from having some of its corrosive effects. Rather, it seems to me, it reduced the extent to which I could accurately be described as a believer at all. By that time, I didn’t really believe anymore. https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/really-believing-in-hell/ 
• From Religious Abuse Damned To Hell, Carolyn Gage, 2011: It strikes me as a serious political issue, as well as one of children’s rights and one that needs to be understood in the light of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that most Americans believe in Hell. What exactly does it mean that the majority of folks in my country actually believe that they face the possibility of a lake of burning hellfire at the end of their lives? What does it mean that the majority of folks in my country believe that the universe is governed by a tyrannical despot capable of devising this form of torture? Honestly, I can’t even imagine taking these propositions seriously. How do any of these believers ever have a nice day? I was able to outgrow and outlive my abusive human father; for believers in hell, there is no way out. That, in a nutshell, is the definition of trauma: the unacceptable that must be accepted. Black-and-white thinking with good-versus-evil moral codes may keep one out of hell in an afterlife, but they are set-ups for fascist propaganda that leads to the creation of hell on earth. The entire notion of sin stems from a kind of universal depersonalization. Might this take the form of patriarchal structures that replicate imagined scenarios of Judgment Day? Or waging wars to project an overwhelming fear of sinfulness onto some “other” who can then be appropriately punished, the more fiery the punishment the better? Are the infernal weapons of modern warfare some subconscious attempt to gain godlike control over the dreaded hellfire? As lesbian-feminists, we can educate people that religious freedom does not include the right to spiritually abuse. And in doing this work, we can also take the opportunity to look at our own beliefs about an afterlife. Is our end also contained in our beginning? Personally, I find purpose, peace and morality in an observation made by feminist sociologist and novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.” https://carolyngage.weebly.com/blog/religious-abuse-damned-to-hell 
• From The Christians, Daniel Walker, 2017: “The Christians,” now playing at San Francisco Playhouse, goes where seemingly few shows dare to tread: Into the spiritual beliefs of everyday Americans. Anthony Fusco plays the pastor of a multi-million dollar mega church, the kind you see on TV headed up by men who always seem a bit like they’re trying to sell a timeshare–in this case, an eternal one. Then one day he gets up at the pulpit and begins preaching a new, slightly radical, much more liberally-minded lesson: Hell, it seems, doesn’t actually exist; everyone gets into heaven after all. Yes, even Hitler, he admits. It’s okay if people don’t quite understand this new idea, our Pastor adds, because god, it seems, has given him this revelation personally–and you can’t very well argue with that. Except his younger and more ambitious protege (Lance Gardner, as the only character in the play who gets an actual name, “Joshua,” with all that that entails) decides that he’ll argue anyway–right there at the pulpit in front of everyone. Even though they’re arguing about ancient scripture, the dispute does not come off as academic: religion, after all, is always personal. When Gardner returns later in the play for a second confrontation, his monologue about damnation sends chills down the spine. More people spend time wrestling with religious questions like these than, say, questions about physics and consciousness that come up in Tom Stoppard plays. So why isn’t there more theater about it? Most of the flock sides at first with the Pastor, but cracks soon form in his new vision. Eventually even his long-silent wife played by Stephanie Prentice can’t keep her customary silence up anymore, and the tension of their conversation is wounding. Fusco is almost TOO good at communicating the frozen, half-confused panic of someone who has been caught in the act but only just realized it himself. Director Bill English gives “The Christians” an anxious quality, like a stress nightmare, with Michael Oesch’s lights casting an increasingly gloomy pall as church fortunes go down. 

The post Episode 219: Why the Hell Do People Believe In Hell? appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• From The Myth & Truth of Saint Patrick, Morgan Daimler, Irish Pagan School, 2024: Every March the pagan community, without fail, sees a surge in conversations and diatribes on Saint Patrick, usually rooted in the ideas that Patrick was a maniac who wiped out the druids (represented by snakes), destroyed Irish paganism, and converted the entire island. This is probably the thing that I hear the most often about Saint Patrick, leaning into Christian propaganda of the 7th and 12th centuries which positioned Patrick as the champion of Christianity in Ireland. In reality the druids survived well after Patrick’s lifetime. Druids, as a class, are included in the 7th and 8th century laws tracts and although their role had been diminished from their pre-Christian prominence they did still exist. There is even an 8th century hymn calling on god’s protection against “the magic of women, blacksmiths, and druids.” So we can say quite definitively that Patrick didn’t wipe out the druids. Many neopagans firmly believe that the snakes in Patrick’s story are actually a metaphor for druids. But this idea comes from one source, the 1911 book Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries where a man speculates that a certain lake is where Saint Patrick had a final confrontation with the Druids and drove them out, and he assumes the druids and snakes were the same because the lake is also where local folklore says the snakes were driven out. However, there are no earlier sources suggesting this, and it is quite clear that the snakes in the old stories were meant to be literal snakes.
  • Some claim Patrick committed genocide against the Druids, effectively destroying the pagan priesthood and Irish paganism and forcing conversion by the sword. Now, beyond the fact we’ve already addressed Patrick and the Druids above, it must be noted that converting to Christianity in Ireland wasn’t something that happened quickly, nor was any single person responsible for it. Christians have worked hard to make Patrick the face of conversion in Ireland in the 1500 years since his death, but Patrick himself in his book Confessions stated that he didn’t know if he’d had any significant impact in Ireland and faced a lot of pushback from the pagans for his work. Patrick was not the first Christian in Ireland, nor the most significant during his lifetime – that would probably be Palladius. Patrick seems to have little effect on Irish paganism during his life, and only took on the reputation as a converter hundreds of years after his death. Saint Patrick is a figure who has taken on a role as a kind of anti-pagan boogieman, a figure that can be pointed to as all that is terrible in Christian evangelism by those who prefer to consider themselves tragic victims of a cultural change that occurred more than a millennia ago. He is, in reality, someone who should be insignificant to history yet who, thanks to amazing church PR, looms large. Perhaps, as pagans, it’s time we let go of this mythological figure and see past it to the persistence and survival of Irish paganism and stop feeding into a Christian narrative about Patrick that is not only false but actively harmful. https://irishpagan.school/saint-patrick-myths-and-truths/ 
• From the Epic of Gilgamesh, 2000 BCE…ish: As the birds began to sing at the coming of the dawn, The Sun God, Utu, left his royal bedchamber. Inanna called to her brother Utu, saying: “O Utu, in the days when the fates were decreed, When abundance overflowed in the land, When the domains of the Great Gods were divided, And Enki did quest for the Underworld, Then did I pluck the Huluppu-tree from the Euphrates, Then did I plant it in my Holy Garden, and tend it, Waiting for my shining throne and luscious bed. But a serpent nested in the roots and could not be charmed, the Anzu-bird set his young in the branches, and the dark maid, Lilith, built her home in the trunk. How I wept! Yet they would not leave my tree.” Utu, the valiant warrior, would not help his sister, Inanna. As the birds began to sing at the coming of the second dawn, Inanna called to Gilgamesh, saying: “O Gilgamesh, in the days when the fates were decreed, When abundance overflowed in the land, When the domains of the Great Gods were divided, Then did I pluck the Huluppu-tree from the Euphrates, Then did I plant it in my Holy Garden, and tend it, Waiting for my shining throne and luscious bed. Then a serpent nested in the roots and could not be charmed, the Anzu-bird set his young in the branches, and the dark maid, Lilith, built her home in the trunk. How I wept! Yet they would not leave my tree.” Gilgamesh the valiant warrior, Gilgamesh, The hero of Uruk, stood by Inanna. Gilgamesh fastened his armor around his chest. He lifted his bronze ax to his shoulder. He entered Inanna’s holy garden. Gilgamesh struck the serpent who could not be charmed. The Anzu-bird flew with his young to the mountains; and Lilith smashed her home and fled to the wild, uninhabited places. Gilgamesh then loosened the roots of the huluppu-tree; And the sons of the city, who accompanied him, cut off the branches. From the trunk of the tree he carved a throne for Inanna. From the trunk of the tree Gilgamesh carved a bed for Inanna. From the roots of the tree she fashioned a pukku for him. From the crown of the tree Inanna fashioned a mikku for Gilgamesh, the hero of Uruk.
• From the Hymn To Apollo, Homer, 8th Century BCE…ish: But nearby was a sweet flowing spring, and there with his strong bow Apollo, the son of Zeus, killed the great Python, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, for she was a very bloody plague. She it was who once received from gold-throned Hera and brought up fell, cruel Typhon to be a plague to men. Once on a time Hera, because she was angry with father Zeus, spoke thus among the assembled gods: “Hear from me, all gods and goddesses, how cloud-gathering Zeus begins to dishonour me wantonly, when he has made me his true-hearted wife. See now, apart from me he has given birth to bright-eyed Athena who is foremost among all the blessed gods. O wicked one and crafty! What else will you now devise? How dared you by yourself give birth to bright-eyed Athena? Would not I have borne you a child — I, who was at least called your wife among the undying gods who hold wide heaven.” Then straightway queenly Hera prayed, striking the ground with her hand, and speaking thus: “Hear now, I pray, Earth and wide Heaven above, and you Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth, harken you now to me, one and all, and grant that I may bear a child apart from Zeus, no wit lesser than him in strength — nay, let him be as much stronger than Zeus, as all-seeing Zeus was stronger than Cronos.” And thus she birthed a creature neither like the gods nor mortal men, but fell, cruel Typhon, to be a plague to men. Straightway Hera took him and bringing one evil thing to another such, gave him to Python to raise, and she received him. And this Typhon used to work great mischief among the famous tribes of men. Whosoever met Python, the day of doom would sweep him away, until the lord Apollo, who deals death from afar, shot a strong arrow at her. Then she, rent with bitter pangs, lay drawing great gasps for breath and rolling about that place, breathing forth blood. Then Apollo boasted over her: “Now rot here upon the soil that feeds man! You shall live no more to be a fell bane to men who eat the fruit of the all-nourishing earth, and neither Typhon shall avail you, nor ill-famed Chimera,” and wherefore that place is now called Pytho, and men call the lord Apollo the Pythian, because on that spot the power of the piercing sun destroyed that monster.
• From Satanism Today, James R Lewis, 2001: The word Leviathan is originally Hebrew, and means “the coiled one” or “that which gathers itself together in folds.” It has come to mean any formidable, monstrous being or thing. The term is originally referring to a multiheaded sea monster defeated by Yahweh. Leviathan is associated with—and is sometimes used interchangeably with—Behemoth, another biblical monster. Because of the association between the Devil and serpents, Leviathan is often identified with Satan. Alternately, it is also sometimes used to designate one of Satan’s demons. Leviathan was sometimes portrayed as a kind of aquatic dragon; sometimes as a whale. Most biblical references are, however, tantalizingly brief. It is unclear how much of the content of Yahweh’s challenge to Job refers to an earlier tale and how much is being composed on the spot. In any event, the Hebrew tale appears to derive from a story in which Baal defeats a sea monster with the aid of Mot. This seems to be a variation of the well-known Babylonian myth of Marduk’s defeat of the sea monster Tiamat. In Hebrew scriptures, Yahweh is sometimes depicted as a storm god. The battle between Yahweh and the dragon is very popular in the visions of the later Hebrew prophets, although the dragon usually embodies a purely symbolic meaning as the enemy of Israel, that is to say the Assyrians, the Babylonians, or the Egyptians. The endtime significance of this creature is that Yahweh will release Leviathan to wreak havoc upon the earth shortly before the end of the world. Then god will finally destroy the beast.
• From The Old Enemy, Neil Forsyth, 1987: The serpent of Genesis was quite plainly just a serpent. True, he could speak, and he seemed to know god’s mind. But Genesis nowhere says he was anything other than a talking snake. But in the curious work we know as the Book of Revelation the church found “the great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan.” We have already noticed that these passages bring together most aspects of the apocalyptic combat myth, from the star-like angel to the accuser at the heavenly court and the agent provocateur who leads astray the whole world. Perhaps the author intended the phrase “that old serpent” to refer to the Genesis serpent? Certainly, in view of the Gnostic identity of the serpent, the church found it convenient to think he did. Justin, for example, is clearly alluding to this text in his First Apology: “Among us the chief of the evil demons is called the serpent and Satan and the devil. Christ has foretold that he will be cast into the fire with his host and those who follow him, to be punished for endless ages. ” Justin’s appeal is one of the earliest signs that the idea of a Christian canon was developing and shows that the need to identify the devil was a prime motive. But Revelation does not actually say that by Satan means also the Genesis serpent, and indeed the church would later go to considerable trouble to insist on the equation. Without the Book of Revelation as a sanctified text, the identification of Genesis serpent with the adversary would have stood on much shakier ground. The placing of the Apocalypse at the end of the Bible brought some advantages also for the shape of the canon: Revelation points forward to the end of time, just as Genesis talks of its beginning. The tree of life at the end of the book balances the tree of knowledge at the beginning. And the enemy, he who had started all the trouble in the beginning, could be seen to be finally defeated here at the end. This means of closure gives to the Bible the shape of a combat myth, and thus the identification of Satan/serpent as “he who leads astray the whole world” made the struggle with heresy seem to be an extension of the mythological combat.
• From Satanic Feminism, Per Faxneld, 2017: Feminist historian and mythographer Marina Warner has claimed that in spite of its primary function as the main Christian symbol of evil, the serpent also denotes something positive, ‘‘a kind of heterodox knowledge and sexuality that Christianity has spurned.’ This is true, but primarily in terms of counter-discourses protesting against the hegemonic significance of the serpent and its wider social implications. Serpents can have quite different meanings, as seen, for example, in the one entwining the Rod of Asclepius, which is used as a symbol of the medical profession. Nevertheless, in the Old Testament, snakes are fairly consistently negative symbols, with the exception of Moses’s serpent. Like the notion of the serpent as Satan, the later idea of Eve as a temptress luring Adam to his doom does not really appear in Genesis (she simply gives some of the fruit to Adam, who is with her, and he eats), but was a development that should, as the Bible scholar Jean M. Higgins underscores, be seen as an expression of imagination, drawn mainly from each commentator’s own presuppositions and cultural expectations. Pseudo-Tertullian wrote with horror about the Ophite Gnostics that prefer the Edenic tempter ‘even to Christ himself; for it was he, they say, who gave us the origin of knowledge.’ Subversive nineteenth-century readings of the serpent as a bringer of enlightenment, and Eve as a heroine by implication, occasionally drew on these condemnations for inspiration. 
  • A more straightforwardly female Satan can be seen in the actually very common depictions of the snake in the Garden of Eden with a woman’s head on its serpentine body and sometimes also breasts. This motif was widespread in both visual art and theatre for hundreds of years. JB Trapp even states that it was the most frequent way of representing the Edenic serpent from the late twelfth century until the late sixteenth century, when the human features of the creature disappear and it becomes, once more, only reptilian. Exactly when the notion of a female snake was established is difficult to say, but the earliest translation of the Bible into Latin rendered the word as “serpens”—with a feminine gender.  The first explicit statement of this is probably in the twelfth-century French History of Genesis which suggests that Satan chose this guise ‘since like approves of like.’ A female serpent later appears in well-known literary works like the allegorical poem Piers the Plowman. where it is described as ‘like a lizard with a lady’s visage.’ ’Worth mentioning here is also ‘The Book for the Education of Daughters’ by Geoffrey. Geoffrey attempts to instil in his daughters the lesson that women should defer to fathers and husbands in anything but domestic matters and makes his point by retelling how Eve broke this rule when she conversed with the serpent, ‘whiche as the Hystorye sayth hadde a face ryght fayre lyke the face of a woman.’ There are countless images of a female serpent-Satan in the Garden, and some occupy what must be counted among the most central positions in European culture imaginable. For example, Michelangelo’s Temptation and Expulsion in the Sistine Chapel.
• From The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, Helena Blavatsky, 1893: The Beings, or the Being, collectively called Elohim, who first (if ever) pronounced the cruel words, “ Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil” must have been indeed the Ilda-baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and envy against his own creature. In this case it is but natural—even from the dead letter standpoint—to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was the “ Harbinger of Light,” bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehova. He still remains in esoteric truth the ever-loving messenger angel, the Seraphim and Cherubim who both knew well, and loved still more, and who conferred on us spiritual, instead of physical immortality—the latter a kind of static immortality that would have transformed man into an undying “ Wandering Jew.” As narrated in King’s “ Gnostics,” “ Ilda-Baoth, whom several sects regarded as the God of Moses, was not a pure spirit, he was ambitious and proud, and he set himself to create a world of his own and fabricated man, but this proved a failure. Man was a monster, soulless, ignorant, and crawling on all fours on the ground like a material beast. And thus arose out of the abyss Satan, serpent, Ophiomorphos. This is the esoteric rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory seems true to life. It is the natural deduction from Genesis. Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who steals the divine fire so as to allow men to proceed on the path of spiritual evolution. Hence also, the curse pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus, and by Jehovah-Il-da-Baoth against his rebellious son, Satan.
• From Herbert Sloane, Catherine Yronwode, Satan’s Service, 2013: In 1948, Herbert Sloane was living in Cleveland. As a Spiritualist Reverend it seems likely that Sloane was engaged in seances. According to the 1972 interviews, this was the year that he founded Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas, which he also created. The name of Sloane’s group has puzzled many: “Our Lady of Endor” is a word-play on the use of the common Roman Catholic terms Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and so forth — however, in this case, “Our Lady” refers to the Witch of Endor, mentioned in the Bible in the First Book of Samuel. The word translated as “Witch” in the King James Bible is more properly rendered as “medium,” described as a manifesting spirit medium known for her ability to raise the ghosts of the dead and converse with them. Interestingly, in French books, “witch” is sometimes encountered as “Pythonisse” — a priestess of Apollo, known as a Pythia or Pythoness, named in honour of Pythian Apollo who killed the serpent Python. In French, the word “Pythonisse” refers generally to any female psychic who claims to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, and is also the specific name given to the medium of Endor. The group that Sloane called a “coven” was his circle of seance sitters, but he had left mainstream Spiritualism by this point and was experimenting with dark seance performances: Sloane’s local coven, Our Lady of Endor, was presented as being a branch of the larger Ophite Cultus Sathanas, a Gnostic religious organization. “Ophite Cultus Sathanas” translates roughly from Latin as the Snake-Worshiping Cult of Satan. He apparently chose the word “Ophite” for his cult in reference to a defunct historical group of Christian Gnostics, the Ophites or Ophians, described by Hippolytus. Thus Sloane connected the Witch of Endor to the Pythoness in his over-arching Satanic Snake cult. https://www.satanservice.org/wiki/Herbert_Arthur_Sloane 
• From Holiday displays – including the Satanic Temple’s – return to Illinois, Jerry Nowicki, Capitol News, 2022: The Satanic Temple of Illinois debuted a new display in the Illinois Capitol rotunda Tuesday, taking its place next to the annual Christmas and Hanukkah displays. “Minister Adam” of the Satanic Temple of Illinois was joined by about 15 Temple members to dedicate this year’s display. It consists of a crocheted snake sitting on a book and a pile of apples crocheted by Temple members. “Every year, we do a holiday display and a show of unity and religious pluralism within the state Capitol rotunda,” Adam said. “And this year, we wanted to focus on the book bans that people have been trying to do all over the country.” The book on which the serpent is perched is Polish mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus’ “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres,” a 1543 work which posited the then-revolutionary idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. The Nativity scene, meanwhile, has been on display for at least 14 years during Christmastime. Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the St. Thomas More Society, said the precedent for religious displays in public spaces in Illinois stems from a 1989 court decision regarding a Nativity scene at Daley Plaza in Chicago. That precedent was honored when it came to the state Capitol, he said, when advocates framed it under a free speech lens. While the Capitol Satanic display has received pushback from some religious groups in the past, Brejka said “free speech applies to everybody.” Henry Haupt, a spokesperson for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, said “Temporary displays of this nature, erected in a public space in the Capitol rotunda, are protected by the First Amendment.” https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/holiday-displays-including-the-satanic-temples-return-to-illinois-capitol/ 
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SHOW LINKS

• • From The Satanic Bible etc etc you know the rest:  Remain in the area of the altar unless imagery is more easily obtained in another spot, such as in the vicinity of the victim. Producing the image of the victim, proceed to inflict the destruction upon the effigy in the manner of your choice. This can be done in the following ways: the sticking of pins or nails into a doll representing your victim; the doll may be cloth, wax, wood, vegetable matter, etc. The creation of graphic imagery depicting the method of your victim’s destruction; drawings, paintings, etc.. The creation of a vivid literary description of your victim’s ultimate end. A detailed soliloquy directed at the intended victim, describing his torments and annihilation.mutilation, injury, infliction of pain or illness by proxy using any other means or devices desired. Intense, calculated hatred and disdain should accompany this step of the ceremony, and no attempt should be made to stop this step until the expended energy results in a state of relative exhaustion on the part of the magician. If requests are written, they are now read aloud by the priest and then burned in the flames of the appropriate candle. “Shemhamforash!” and “Hail Satan!” is said after each request. If requests are given verbally, participants (one at a time) now tell them to the priest. He then repeats in his own words (those which are most emotionally stimulating to him) the request. “Shemhamforash!” and “Hail Satan!” is said after each request. Appropriate Enochian Key is now read by the priest, as evidence of the participants’ allegiance to the Powers of Darkness. Then the words “SO IT IS DONE” are spoken by the priest. Black candles are used for power and success for the participants of the ritual, and are used to consume the parchments on which blessings requested by the ritual participants are written. The white candle is used for destruction of enemies. Parchments upon which curses are written are burned in the flame of the white candle.
  • • From Satanic Scriptures, Peter Gilmore, 2007: Our rituals are not “spells” which guarantee that some actual change will occur in the real world. Since we are skeptical atheists, we do not believe in anything supernatural. However, there are many aspects of the human experience. ESP suggests that there may be a gateway through the most primitive part of the brain by which thoughts and imagery might be broadcast to other minds when fueled by extreme emotional experiences. We see this as a possible means for magic to impact the world outside of the ritual chamber. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has documented phenomena of the “extended mind” such as people’s pets sensing from a distance the time their owners are deciding to return home, as well as the “feeling” that you are being stared at by someone else, even when you don’t see the person doing the staring. These could be supernatural abilities. Perhaps only a small percentage of our population has these intuitive capabilities. Thus we leave this as an open question that each must answer for himself—does ritual do more than simply give emotional relief? Only you can answer it, based on your personally chosen criteria for validity. The format for our traditional ritual was created as a guideline that may be amended by Satanists to suit their own needs. We’re often asked by interested parties if they must use black candles, or absolutely must have all of the devices for ritual described in The Satanic Bible. The answer is that you really don’t need any of the suggested implements, since the most important tool for ritual is your own imagination. The original prescribed practice was to use at least one black candle on the left and one white candle on the right of your altar. That was dropped fairly quickly; any color candles will do, so long as they “feel proper” to you. 
    • From The Problem With Rupert Sheldrake, Sam Woolfe, 2013: Rupert Sheldrake is an English author and parapsychologist credited with the hypothesis of “morphic resonance” who has argued that dogs have the power of telepathy. The problem with Sheldrake is that his ideas do not really survive critical investigation and remain within the realm of pseudoscience. Despite having a PhD in Biochemistry, Sheldrake has received a great deal of criticism from the scientific community for his work on telepathy. He views this attack as a refusal to look at the evidence he has collected; however, none of his experiments has ever been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, suggesting that there is no compelling evidence in the first place. In his book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, Sheldrake describes how he videotapes the behaviour of dogs and concluded that they knew when their owners set off to home; dogs would apparently wait by the doorway before they could hear the noise of their car approaching, for example. The psychologist Richard Wiseman attempted to duplicate Sheldrake’s experiment using the same ‘psychic’ pet that Sheldrake had used in his own experiments, a dog named Jaytee. Jaytee would wait on the porch for longer periods of time when the owner was closer to arriving home, a phenomenon consistent with Sheldrake’s own results. But Wiseman is not convinced. He argues that the observed patterns could easily be explained by natural waiting behaviour: A dog is more likely to wait on the porch for longer the longer their owner is away. So it should not be surprising that Jaytee is on the porch before the owner comes home. This is evidence of a dog anticipating the arrival of their owner, instead of knowing it through psychic abilities. Another idea that has characterised Sheldrake’s career has been ‘morphic resonance’ and the ‘morphogenetic field’, “the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species.” Through morphic resonance each member of a species draws on a collective memory. Morphogenetic fields are located invisibly in and around organisms, and may account for such hitherto unexplainable phenomena as the regeneration of severed limbs by worms and salamanders, phantom limbs, the holographic properties of memory, telepathy, and the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them. That the morphogenetic field is invisible leads sceptics to argue that the concept is magical and untestable. Supporters could reply by saying that the quantum world is invisible to us, yet that does not mean it is unreal. That’s true, however, evidence points to a quantum world; Sheldrake’s obsession with telepathy does not necessarily point to a world full of invisible fields. https://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/07/the-problem-with-rupert-sheldrake.html 
    • From Devil Worshiper Hell-Bent on Controversy, ABC News, 2014: In a small, darkened room, Adam Daniels, the self-proclaimed head of his own satanic church, spat and stomped on the symbolic body of Christ in a ritual devoted to Satan. The smells of incense and smoky dry ice vapors wafted over his small band of followers, who watched him and others perform the so-called “black mass” and destroy bread that was meant to symbolize the Eucharistic. Only about 40 or so people attended Daniels’ demonic service, which was held in the basement of an Oklahoma City civic center in September, but it was enough to draw nearly 2,000 Christians from all over the region, some of which drove in from out of state, for a massive protest against it. Daniels is the co-founder of Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, a dark religion that worships demons, He has written his own “bible” and calls himself  high priest. Daniels has a real day job — he works as a restaurant cook — but he insists he has supernatural powers that are so strong he claims he can give someone a death sentence. “For example, we had an opponent whose mother was dying of cancer and when the destruction ritual was done on him, it put his mother out,” Daniels said. He’s also a man with a dark past — Daniels is a registered sex offender, but he doesn’t believe that conviction interferes with performing his duties. Daniels has 14 believers who worship regularly at his church, which is a converted storage room in his house. They garnered almost no public notice at all until they threatened to desecrate the Holy Sacrament of the Catholic Church, the communion wafer, during a satanic ceremony. The archbishop of Oklahoma City was outraged. “There’s a real danger involved,” said Archbishop Paul Coakley. “Danger, because of the powers that they are invoking are real. This isn’t entertainment. This isn’t a horror movie. This is real. These people are serious. They are invoking satanic powers. The archbishop even went as far as to say the satanic mass was an assault on the soul of humanity. ’The Exorcist’ [the movie] is based upon a true story. Satanic influences are real.” The news of these devil-worshipers’ ceremony spread quickly online, and 100,000 people signed a petition to block it. 
    • From Satanic Bay Area’s Lupercalia Destruction Ritual, Tabitha Slander and Daniel Walker, 2025: If a man can show his hands and prove that they are clean, no wrath of ours shall lurk for him–unscathed he walks through this lifetime. But one like this man, with bloodstained and hidden hands, shall find us there beside him as witness of the truth, and we rise up against him to the last. Hear me, mother Night, who gave birth to us to avenge                                               the living and the dead: This man of false piety dishonours us: Let this song of ours fall upon our victim’s head, our sacrifice, our curse of madness to weigh always on his mind. Remorseless Fate gave us this work to carry on, a destiny spun out to attach ourselves to those haughty with corrupt and foolish power until they go beneath the ground. These rights are ours by birth, even gods may not divert us. We share no feasts with them, no fellowship: their pure white robes are no part of our destiny. We Sing now this enchantment, A song without music, a clamor of furies, A sword in the senses, A storm in the heart, a fire in the brain, a drought in the soul. This task we take, ministers of overthrow, brewing strife for the one who threatens what we hold dear. We are here now, eager to contest the charges and challenges of other god. . There will be no prayers— for their gods despise us, consider us unworthy, refuse to converse with us, and so instead we deal in blood. Those proud opinions people have, who raise themselves so high above us, will melt away when we, in our black robes, beat out our vengeful dance. Dark clouds of defilement hover all around this man. Murky shadows fall, enveloping his home and Rumour spreads a tale of all his sorrow. We have our powers to fulfill, keeping human evil in our minds, and we cannot be appeased by men like this. Dishonoured and despised, we see to our revenge split off from gods, with no light from the sun. We take the path more arduous, and seek always what is ours. What man is not in awe and stands there unafraid to hear me state my rights, those powers allowed by Fate and ratified by all my words, mine to hold forever? No god is enraged on my behalf: So wake, you powers of the underworld, and let my reproaches prick the heart of justice, a spur for those who act with righteousness. Blow your blood-filled breath all over him; let those fires in your bodies shrivel his, and drive him to a fresh pursuit. For happiness will never fall upon this man who cheats justice, this reckless man who goes too far, who piles up riches for himself in any way he can and disregards all justice—I tell you this— In time storming torments will break his ship. He screams for help, but no one listens. In the middle of the seas he fights—but all in vain. Hail Satan.
    • • From How To Perform a Destruction Ritual, Ali Kellogg, Medium, 2017: Rituals are repeated human actions to fulfill, reinforce and maintain a part of the human function and experience. The Destruction Ritual was born from a tradition I have done for many years with friends and loved ones on New Year’s Eve. We would gather around a fire with some scraps of paper, pens, and a few bottles of liquor. We would take turns writing things down, reading them aloud, throwing them into the fire and then taking a shot. As the night progressed, we found ourselves sobbing, hugging, and getting some really sticky shit off our chests. Then one year, we started bringing physical objects to destroy. Things that bore some kind of sentimental value we hung onto, but in reality just sat in a box in a closet somewhere and caused us negative emotions when we remembered they were there. By hanging onto these objects, we were holding onto the hope of a failed relationship or the improvement of someone’s character, or a good memory we would cling to like this object was a life raft. My friend had a box of these creepy ceramic dogs her abusive grandfather gave her every year for her birthday. Another friend had an engagement ring from his ex fiancée. I had an antique children’s tambourine my ex gave me that I couldn’t let go of for some reason. We took turns smashing our objects and throwing the pieces into the fire. Afterwards, I felt a sense of empowerment I had never felt before, and an epiphany. The relationship was done, but I had let it still continue to hurt me; I allowed the toxicity to seep into my every day. We all cried, hugged, and stood around the fire silently watching the shards of our bad memories burn in the fire. The Destruction Ritual serves this very purpose — destroying objects that we have given the power to hurt us. It’s a form of self love, as you are trusting that by destroying these stupid things, you will be stronger and lighter, so to speak, after doing it.
        • The Incantation: These were things that I held in my hands. These were things that belonged to me. These were things that I held in my heart. These were things that have meaning to me. These things are not dead, because they never carried life. But I gave these things life, because they have carried me. I gave these things my memories. My fear. My secrets My tears My blood My devotion My hate My forgiveness My pain My pleasure My love My disdain. I am the creator of life in these things, for without me, they would not be, and people would seek to profit off what I give with no mutual heart given back to me .We emancipate ourselves from this; we liberate ourselves from this endless cycle of voids filled with unnecessary greed. I fill my void with the beauty that surrounds me. Together we raise our arms and unshackle ourselves from the control these things have over us. Together we raise our hammers and daggers, and with them pierce the heart of that control, a power driven by addiction, attachment, consumption, and by a relentless hunger for excess. I do not belong to these things: These things belong to me. Hail Satan.  Have at it, and be well. https://medium.com/@allthebigtrees/how-to-perform-a-satanic-destruction-ritual-4c76baf0ea30 
      • From Satanic Bay Area’s Candlemas Ritual, Tabitha Slander & Daniel Walker, 2024: Some religions are obsessed with destruction. You know the type: “The end is near,” “Rapture incoming,” lots of talk about the Hidden Imam, that kind of thing. In 1988, NASA engineer and Bible kook Edgar Whisehant sold 4.5 million copies of his book, “88 Reasons why the Rapture will happen in 1988”; as you can imagine, sales dipped in 1989. But Edgar kept it up, he wrote another book, explaining that the end would actually come in 1989; then 1993; then again in 1994. Among his original 88 reasons was, and this is true–I mean, it’s not true, but it’s true that he wrote it–since the world was supposedly in the midst of “a population explosion,” Edgar projected that human consumption would render the earth uninhabitable in just a few years, and since “god wants his glory,” god would have to intervene and destroy the world before humans did. I remind you, this man worked at NASA. Edgar of course was not the only one, if you lived in the Bay Area for a long time you probably remember Oakland minister Harold Camping spent $5 million on billboards predicting global destruction in 2011; he died in 2013, so, in a certain sense, perhaps he was only a few years off. By comparison, our deployment of the virtues of destruction is on a decidedly more human scale. The late Christopher Hitchens–whom I will say I was not always the biggest fan of but whom I do have to concede articulated this particular point with sobering clarity–observed that “a large part of modern religion quite clearly wants us all to die, it wants this world to come to an end, you can tell the yearning for things to be over, whenever you read any of its text, or listen to its authentic spokesmen. The eschatological element that is inseparable from Christianity, if you don’t believe there will be a final separation of the sheep and the goats, then you’re not really a Believer. They cannot wait for death and destruction to overtake and overwhelm the World, a hateful idea very much opposed to our daily lives.” And he was right, that is a troubling norm. Instead, we are here tonight to embrace the beauty of flames that are not everlasting but which we mean to last only as long as they have to, and to witness not the destruction of all things but only of these things, and to hope not for End Times, but just for the end of a time in our lives–and that, we think, is a much healthier kind of eschatology. This ritual has also included some quotations from late Satanist poet Baron Jacque Fersen; when Fersen wrote about Satanism he was actually writing about the scandal around his own swinging sex-positive queer lifestyle; he did write because he seemingly wanted to get something off of their chests, but he did not want to confess in the conventional meaning of that word. Confession is bad for the soul; it appropriates the right you have to assess your own life and embezzles it into the account of some god–-we know not who. When we unburden ourselves, it should be with ourselves. Gods do not write the endings of our stories, our lives, or our worlds–that is the privilege that we resolve for our own persons. Hail Satan.
    • From Canyon River Pride Interfaith Service, Satanic Idaho, 2025: Destruction rituals. far from being acts of violence, are deeply symbolic practices that signify transformation, renewal, and the cyclical nature of existence. Destruction rituals are intentional acts of breaking down or dismantling objects, symbols, or even structures. They are not about chaos for its own sake but are deliberate expressions of letting go, clearing the old to make way for the new. These rituals are prevalent across various cultures and religions, each with its unique significance and purpose. It’s roots trace back to the dawn of civilization. Before human kind could farm, we knew we wanted to shed ourselves of trauma and grief. Honored guests, seekers of transformation, and guardians of the sacred flame, Today, we gather not to celebrate creation, but to honor the power inherent in endings, the force that clears the path for new beginnings. We stand on the threshold of a ritual as ancient as time itself, the Rite of Destruction. This is not an act of mindless violence, but a deliberate, sacred process of severance. It is the sacred act of severing ties with that which no longer serves us—be it a toxic relationship, a destructive habit, or an unhealed wound. Through this rite, we reclaim our agency, our sovereignty, and our future. In the ancient world, destruction rituals were performed to obliterate the influence of enemies and to purify the land. The Egyptians crafted execration texts, inscribed curses upon figurines or clay tablets which were then smashed and buried to symbolically annihilate their foes. Similarly, in parts of Asia, statues or objects were submerged in water along with deceased loved ones. They were profound statements of intent, of closure, and of transformation. Today, we invoke this tradition with reverence. We do not seek to harm others, but to liberate ourselves from the chains of the past. We gather our intentions, our will, and our focus, and we channel them into this sacred act. This ritual is consent based. If you do not feel comfortable in participating, there is no requirement or pressure to do anything you do not wish to participate in. What we faith leaders are asking you, to do is step forward and write a name, a phrase, a memory, or an experience that you wish to no longer to carry with you, on one of these pieces of paper. And release it into this bowl of water. This is a space for reflection and for honoring thyself. This moment is yours. Afterwards, myself and other faith leaders will be at the front of the stage and would love to hear your stories if you are in a place of sharing. The hugs are free and so is your future. A future you choose to create on your terms.
    • From A New Rage Room Is Ready For You, Leslie Bridgers, Portland Press Herald, 2025: There’s no question people are worked up about all sorts of things these days, and while some are channeling their anger by gathering in protest or on social media, a new business is offering another option: breaking stuff. The Wreck Room opened in January and every month since, demand has multiplied for its ax throwing, paint splatter, air-gun range and most of all, its rage rooms. Aside from breakups, the current political climate is the most common reason people come in, said owner Brent Gumbs. But despite his impeccable timing, that’s not why he started the business. Growing up in New Hampshire, Gumbs said he saw too many of his peers turn to drugs and “wanted to try to counteract that” by offering less self-destructive activities in the Midcoast, where he had noted a similar lack of things to do, especially in bad weather. The rage rooms are the main attraction, offering a private space for customers to unleash their anger by taking a bat or a hammer to various breakable objects including vases, Mason jars and, for an additional cost, appliances like TVs, toasters and crockpots. Although rage rooms have been around for more than a decade, there aren’t many in Maine, and none in the southern part of the state. Perhaps we had been too peaceable a lot until now. I’ll admit, I wasn’t feeling particularly ragey when I decided to head up to Topsham to give it a try but pretty quickly things got serious. First, there was the waiver, releasing The Wreck Room of any responsibility for whatever I did to myself in there. Then I was given a plastic face shield and what looked like gardening gloves to protect me from the objects I was about to break and those in the pile of previously smashed material on the floor. There was a plastic tub holding 10 items: a pint glass, some Mason jars and vases, a ceramic mug, a pail and a cooking pot lid. There was also an old water heater lying on its side that Gumbs said was for people to beat on or to prop up the items before hitting them into the wall, like some sort of very impractical softball tee. In the corner were several baseball bats, a hammer and a pickax. Truthfully, I didn’t give my inner rage much of a chance. Though I’m no physicist, it seemed that the harder I hit these things, the faster the shards flew back at me. So, rather than swinging for the fences, I went for more of a slap hit followed by a flinch and duck. Although I never fully unleashed my anger, you don’t have to be bitter to enjoy The Wreck Room. You can shoot at glass bottles from a much more comfortable distance in the air-gun range or put on a full-body suit and take spray guns to the walls of the paint splatter room. There’s also a bar serving f specialty cocktails, as well as snacks, with plans to add more food. Gumbs has other ambitions, too. He’s getting a glass pulverizer to turn the broken objects into sand that he wants to donate to help restore the coastline. The day after I was there, he held his first trivia night and later that week, an ax-throwing competition. Those sound like good activities to do any day, but I’ll wait to revisit the rage room. https://www.pressherald.com/2025/04/21/feeling-angry-a-new-rage-room-in-topsham-is-ready-for-you/ 

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SHOW LINKS

• “Experimental Doc Reveals The Ugly Truth About Satanism—It’s Corny,” Charles Barfield,” The Playlist, Feb 2024: “Realm of Satan” follows folks who are members of the Church of Satan, who, judging by this film, are more interested in chanting in dark rooms, performing outdoor rituals, and, uh, sleight of hand magic? Through a series of vignettes, we get a static camera shot focused on one (sometimes two or three) members of the Church as they showcase their lives. Scenes include a man putting on corpse paint (what Black Metal bands put on their faces to look like evil dead people), a woman doing a dance in a bar, and various people reciting Satanic prayers/invocations. There’s seemingly no rhyme or reason between what is shown. The film tries really hard to be edgy and shocking, but most of what follows is incredibly dull or laughable. The Church of Satan is not the boogeyman that your parents warned you about, it’s really corny, mostly middle-aged white people living comfortable middle-class existences who like to dress up in black gowns and makeup from time to time and have the random skull in their living room. Perhaps Cummings is here to show that everything is a joke? If that’s the case, then this film is in really bad taste and really is mean-spirited in a way that isn’t fun, and it doesn’t explain the try-hard moments. There is a wide swath of fascinating characters, but we’re only given the most shallow view of their lives. Ultimately, all we learn is that “Realm of Satan,” much like the Satanic Panic of decades past, is all uninteresting bluster with no real substance.

• • • Realm of Satan Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbkKWrkwjro 
  • “Did the satanic panic ever go away?” Amber Rawlings, Hunger Magazine, Feb 2024: Starring Nicholas Cage, Longlegs will mark Oz Perkins’ fourth time in the director’s chair. Someone at a recent test screening of Longlegs described it as “deeply steeped in the satanic panic”. The notion of the satanic panic was formally birthed with the publication of Michelle Remembers in 1980, which launched the notion of devil worship into the zeitgeist and led to over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of cult sexual abuse over a fourteen year period. But that was the “olden days” and things have changed… Right? On the one hand, yes. If the eventual release of the West Memphis Three is anything to go by, it’s that the idea of people killing in the name of Satan lost its potency at some point in the 2000s. Sociologist Jean La Fontaine’s study published in 1994 is widely regarded as being what “dealt the death blow” to satanic panic: it found that there was absolutely no evidence to substantiate the high profile claims about systematic abuse–“no bodies, no bones, no bloodstains, nothing”. However, last year it was the music industry that became the target of Satan discourse: Sam Smith’s GRAMMYs performance of his song “Unholy” earned a slew of criticisms from right-wing commentators, with one positioning it as symptomatic of how Hollywood is “infiltrated by Satanic radicals].”  Doja Cat met a similar fate with the music video for her song “Demons.” From the viral video of the woman who believes Monster energy drinks promote Satan to the pervading sense of hysteria that spread after Jimmy Saville’s historic crimes, Satanic Panic never really left. By taking it to the online sphere the claims can be amplified at an alarming rate. Satanic sex abuse was even weaponised as a political play during the 2022 Utah County attorney race. Essentially, it’s a messy web of not only outlandish claims pertaining to devil worship (which is just, let’s face it, religious fundamentalism in a funky new outfit) but everything that falls under the umbrella of extreme right wing politics. If there has been a moment of respite in a satanic panic that refuses to up and leave, it’s those times that our cultural output has managed to take a stand against the whole thing, like the 1996 documentary “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.” Lately there’s been comedy takes in films like We Summon The Darkness and fiction books like My Best Friend’s Exorcism have shown that written critiques of the phenomenon don’t have to be relegated to the world of true crime. https://hungermag.com/film/the-release-of-longlegs-raises-an-important-question-did-the-satanic-panic-ever-go-away 

• “A closer look at Russia’s modern-day Satanists,” Alexandra Makhacheva, Insider, March 2024: Shortly before launching invasion of Ukraine, Putin claimed that “the hegemony of the West is Satanism. Such a subversion of faith and traditional values and the suppression of freedom takes on the characteristics of religion in reverse – outright Satanism.” Aping Putin, Kremlin propagandists picked up the term: the often-cited talk show host Vladimir Solovyov asserted that the authorities in Ukraine, the U.S., and Western Europe serve the “prince of darkness” and equated negotiating with Ukraine to “bargaining with Satan.” ro-Kremlin media as heroes, with some “patriotic” mouthpieces going so far as to call them “saints,” “heavenly,” and “God’s army.” However, after the late Wagner leader led an abortive armed rebellion against the Russian military command, the Russian Orthodox clergy suddenly discovered that several of the mercenaries had gravitated towards paganism and Satanism. Meanwhile, plagued with personnel shortages, the Russian military command is releasing murderers, cannibals, and rapists from prisons, promising them pardons in exchange for taking up arms. Meanwhile, actual Satanism is a fairly popular subculture in Russia, with thousands of followers and a century-long history: The first Satanist communities emerged in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century in Saint Petersburg. As researchers Konstantin Kislyuk and Oleg Kucher write in “Religious Studies,” the Russian Satanist George Gurdjieff, who was nicknamed the Prophet of Beelzebub, enjoyed the personal patronage of Nicholas II. In the Soviet Union, the earliest Satanist groups appeared in the early 1970s in Moscow, Leningrad, and Odesa. It is difficult to determine the share of Satanists in the count, because many of them hide. It is even harder considering that Satanism is not a single religion but rather an eclectic collection of beliefs. Even the perception of Satan differs from cult to cult: for some, he is a personal deity and guide in the world, while others do not see him as a person but rather a philosophy and style of thinking. Some separate Satan from the devil, while others worship demons and dark pagan gods rather than Lucifer himself. Satanists from all over Russia visit each other, discuss ways to communicate with dark matters, or just go to the bar. For the followers of Thelema, a religious movement developed by Aleister Crowley their main principles are “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and “Love is the law, love under will.” Who are Satanists for the Russian media? Where did the image of Satanists as “enemies of the motherland” come from? Religious scholar Krylov recalls that in the late Soviet Union, the press would also label its domestic opponents “Satanists” in an attempt to stop the spread of Western phenomena — especially when it came to religious movements. Kremlin authorities, along with the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, are actively working to maintain their authority despite having brought the current hard times on the country through their own actions. That is precisely why they are in need of an abstract but very provocative and threatening image of the enemy. If Russia’s Satanists did not exist, the Kremlin’s spin doctors may have had to invent them. https://theins.ru/en/society/269506 

• “Satanists’ prayer at Ottawa County Board meeting may cause stir,” John Tunison, MLive, April 2024: When a member of The Satanic Temple of West Michigan says prayer at an Ottawa County board meeting Tuesday, it’s likely to cause a stir. Opponents are calling for a large turnout and asking the public to “be ready to sing praise and worship at any time.” They hope to pack the board room, the foyer and the public space outside the county building. The door was opened for The Satanic Temple of West Michigan to give the Ottawa County board invocation — a staple for many years — when the commission in January adopted a new policy on who can speak. Commissioners changed the policy after a Grand Haven pastor who supports LGBTQ rights filed a lawsuit. He alleged he asked twice to speak in the mid-part of 2023, but wasn’t selected because of his cultural stance. Ottawa County Board Chair Joe Moss denied the allegation and said it was a simple oversight. The new policy allows pastors to speak on a first-come, first-served basis, so long as they contact their district commissioner to get on a list of speakers. When it was announced in March that The Satanic Temple would be a speaker, Moss made a point to say the group had not specifically been invited. TST West Michigan’s spokesperson said his group wanted the chance to speak “because we are people who are active in the community, so this is just kind of just a way that makes sense for us to do our satanic work and contribute to the community as well.” They advised their supporters to not engage with protesters and “respect the freedoms of others who petition or assemble against us.” Moss, in an email to MLive, said he expects the public will be well-mannered at Tuesday’s meeting. “I expect there will be more people than usual, and that people will be respectful. As always, I look forward to hearing from constituents during public comment,” he said. https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2024/04/satanists-prayer-at-ottawa-county-board-meeting-may-cause-stir-but-should-it.html 

• “Video Wrongly Links Cern to Satanism,” Reuters, April 2024: Old footage of an opening ceremony is being wrongly attributed to CERN to push a groundless conspiracy theory about the European nuclear research centre. Social media posts, shared the video and claimed it demonstrated the particle-physics research centre was linked to Satanism. Longstanding, baseless conspiracy theories have alleged that CERN scientists are trying to “open up a portal to another dimension,” like hell.  But the shared footage is unrelated to CERN, which is situated near Geneva on the French-Swiss border. Instead, it shows the elaborate opening ceremony of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world’s longest railway tunnel when it was inaugurated, on June 1, 2016. The tunnel is around 123 miles from CERN. Footage of the Gotthard ceremony is available on YouTube. CERN is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. It aims to better understand two holy grails of physics – dark matter and dark energy. The video footage is unrelated to CERN. https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/old-video-wrongly-linked-cern-push-satanic-conspiracy-theory-2024-04-10/ 

• Gotthard Tunnel Ceremony:  https://youtu.be/bKQaqml6k?si=ESuWMFPm1HIdhS87&t=155 

• “Sacre del Gottardo” is the title; The French word “sacre” can be translated as “rite” or “consecration.”. The ceremony for the project of the century – the Gotthard Base Tunnel – calls for grand gestures, fulfilling pathos, holy earnestness. The word “sacre” also has other associations, such as “sacrifice” or “sacred”. Tunnels are impressive witnesses of human ingenuity and collective performance, but also of curses and ordeals. The tunnels constructed in the Alps in the 19th century were linked to destruction and human drudgery. Many workers paid with their lives. Today’s tunnels continue to show how dangerous it is for humans to battle with the enormous masses of stone. The tunnel builders know about the unpredictability of nature, and the recklessness of their activity. The artistic staging is based on the two meanings of the world “sacre”. Beside the huge, modern machines that eat away at the rock, the little lamp continues to burn at the feet of the statue of Saint Barbara, patron saint of miners. Among people who live and work in the mountains, tales are told of evil mountain goblins, demons and spooky beings. In the third part, the very first trains are approaching their destinations and the spirits are fading away or becoming comical creatures. https://www.alptransit-portal.ch/Storages/User/Meilensteine/Pin_051/Dokumente_051/Gottardo_2016_Booklet_RZ_GzD_0505_ENG_WEB.pdf 

• Simple reasons, not Satanism, behind the King’s portrait, Colby Cosh, National Post, May 2024:  I must say I enjoyed last week’s social media dialogue over Jonathan Yeo’s chaotic new portrait of our King, which the 53-year-old star painter began before his subject came to the throne in September 2022. What I enjoyed especially about it is that it wasn’t easy to predict anyone’s individual reaction based on their politics. My own feed is naturally full of fellow monarchist weirdos, and many of them seem to have liked that the picture itself — made for the hall of London’s Worshipful Company of Drapers — is impressively weird. Others were suspicious, perhaps half-expecting to hear that the overwhelming stormy redness of the portrait was a coded critique of royalty, or perhaps even that there might be mixed-media shenanigans involving literal blood. Yeo  is not really that sort of artist. He is happy to be a well-paid and, frankly, flattering painter of celebrity faces. Whatever you make of the idea of using a monarch butterfly as a visual symbol in a royal portrait, it’s certainly square on the nose, isn’t it? If we cannot escape thoughts of blood, let it be blood as a token of vitalism and heritage rather than violence. Yeo doesn’t care either way. In talking to The Sunday Times he pours friendly scorn on the teeming millions searching for Satanist codes in his work, and explains that the painting got redder as he went along mostly because the King’s Welsh Guards uniform and his glittering medals were bound to dominate the canvas if he didn’t find a practical solution. Also, he likes red. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-simple-reasons-not-satanism-behind-the-kings-new-all-red-portrait 

• “MSCS to pay Satanic Temple in After School Satan Club suit,” Lydian Coombs, News 5, July 2024: The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has reached a settlement on behalf of The Satanic Temple in a federal lawsuit against Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) over “serious” First Amendment violations. The school board has agreed to pay over $15,000. The board will also pay one dollar for nominal damages. The Satanic Temple claims that the school district issued “discriminatory rental and security fees” for hosting an After School Satan Club at Chimneyrock Elementary School. FFRF alleges that MSCS attempted to thwart The Satanic Temple’s efforts to begin the club rather than allowing it to rent school facilities on the same terms as other nonprofit organizations like the Christian Good News Club. FFRF also claims that the district “refused” to adequately communicate with the Temple, canceled the club’s reservations, and treated members of the club as second-class citizens. MSCS agreed the Temple is subject to the same rules and requirements as other nonprofit organizations seeking to rent or use the school’s facilities and vowed not to hold any more press conferences about the club. FFRF, a national state/church watchdog with 40,000 members, sent three complaint letters to the district in response to the “deeply concerning and discriminatory remarks,” urging the district to abide by the First Amendment and allow the Temple to rent facilities in accordance with the district’s own written policies. In response, FFRF claims the district assessed a “special security fee” of over $2,000 against the group, fees that other organizations meeting regularly at the school were never charged. On January 10, the first After School Satan Club was held at Chimneyrock Elementary. Various district administrators, school board members and members of the clergy stood at the entrance of the building, protesting the club’s launch. “We’re glad the district has mutually resolved this case,” says Patrick Elliott, FFRF’s legal director. “This settlement should send a message to public schools that the First Amendment applies to all, including minority groups.” https://www.actionnews5.com/2024/07/18/mscs-pay-satanic-temple-15k-following-settlement-after-school-satan-club-discrimination-suit/ 

• “Idaho sheriff’s office post about sex offender irks Satanists,” Carolyn Komatsoulis, Idaho Statesman, July 2024: The Valley County Sheriff’s Office included an intriguing detail recently when it announced that a suspect pleaded guilty to possessing or accessing sexually exploitative material of a child; The 22-year-old man was “a member of the Idaho chapter of The Satanic Temple.” Groups such as the Idaho Liberty Dogs and other far-right websites jumped on the tidbit, posting photos of Idaho Satanists on social media. Others questioned whether the mention was necessary or even accurate. The Satanic Temple of Idaho declined to comment other than to say that the man had not requested congregation membership and that many people claim to be members but haven’t taken any steps to do so. Satanic Idaho [a separate organization] co-facilitator Rowan Astra was disappointed with authorities’ decision to post the information. “What is the relevance?” Astra said. “Every major Satanic practice has something in regards to not hurting children.” So why did Valley County include this detail? The McCall man could receive 12 years in prison, according to a plea agreement. Steve Gorski, the detective on the case, said the man had a membership card with his name on it. The membership cards are available for purchase on the Satanic Temple’s website for $35, and the check-out process does not appear to ask the purchaser whether they are actually a member. Gorski said he had not tried to see what it took to get such a card. “I’m kind of taking him at his word.” There is no investigation into the Satanic Temple or that religion, the detective said. Regarding the Sheriff’s Office social media post, Gorski said, “I think it’s a way for groups to internally police themselves. They’re in a unique position to come across troubled individuals before they reach the level where law enforcement gets involved. That goes for just about any group, any religion.” A review of the Valley County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page shows that authorities have not included anyone else’s religion in incident press releases this year. “ https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article289748209.html

• “The LDS Satan just ain’t what he used to be,” Jana Riess, Salt Lake Tribune, July 2024: Mormon Satan used to command worlds and control a third of the host of heaven. Latter-day Saint theology, both official and unofficial, credited him with having power over the water, possessing people’s souls and bodies and marshaling demons and other foul spirits to carry out his will. Now he’s become that voice of chronic self-doubt in your head, telling you that you’re not good enough, and, hey, you really ought to eat that second brownie. Recent emphases from leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints show Satan as the great and terrible spoiler of … self-improvement projects. The adversary now exists to bring individual adversity. In fact, he will tailor-make such adversity for each person. To be fair, there’s always been a partial focus on Satan as an individual tempter. It’s in the foundations of the Mormon story, since a young Joseph Smith reported being attacked by Satan in the “First Vision.” The difference is that in the past, Satan was depicted as both an individual tempter AND a cosmic force that could control nature and bring down nations. Today, not so much. What’s particularly fascinating about this domestication is that it comes from some people who would be the first to insist Satan is real, and who would view denying that reality as a dangerous path. When he does venture into wider social issues, those issues are — surprise, surprise — the same ones church leaders are also concerned about in this particular cultural moment, especially gender identity and the weakening of social commitments to marriage and childbearing. What a sad and sorry downfall Satan has had. Let’s all take a moment to extend the guy some sympathy. He’s the one sitting over there at the French café wrestling with the kind of ennui that it’s now his sole raison d’être to inflict upon you. He could have been a contender. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/07/24/lds-leaders-have-changed-how-they/  t

• “Court rejects Satanic challenge to Boston,” reuters, August 2024: A federal appeals court has rejected a challenge by the Satanic Temple to Boston’s custom of inviting religious leaders to start of city council meetings, a practice it challenged after it was refused an opportunity to participate. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday held that councilors based invites on speakers’ contributions to the local community. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch said councilors had invited speakers of various religious faiths, not just Christianity, based on their work in their districts. She cautioned, though, that since invitations to deliver invocations were designed to politically benefit incumbent city councilors, it could in the future be deemed unconstitutional if councilors begin favoring only speakers representing religious electoral majorities. The Satanic Temple’s attorney said the ruling was “a gift to every would-be theocrat throughout the United States.” At issue in its lawsuit is a long-standing custom dating back to the 1800s in which city councilors in Boston invite a member of the public, often clergy, to speak before the start of its weekly meetings. Before the Satanic Temple first sought in 2016 to deliver an invocation, the speakers over a one-year period had been 94% Christian and 6% Jewish. The Satanic Temple said councilors had refused since 2016 to extend an invitation to one of its members. The Satanic Temple sued in 2021, arguing the practice violated the Establishment Clause. A judge dismissed the case, prompting the appeal. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/couttrt-rejects-satanic-temples-challenge-boston-council-prayer-custom-2024-08-07/ 

• “St. Petersburg Court Finds Anti-Russian Conspiracy in Satanic Bible” MASSIMO INTROVIGNE, Bitter Winter Magazine, September 2024: It is a pity that Russians no longer study Marx. He would have taught them that history often repeats itself as farce. The state-owned domestic news agency RIA informs us that on September 3 “The Satanic Bible” of Anton Szandor LaVey, the deceased leader of the Church of Satan, was added to the list of banned books by the St. Petersburg City Court. The court accepted a Deputy Prosecutor’s claim that “According to the experts’ conclusions, the text of the book is based on the ideas of destruction, hatred and violence and the rejection of values ​​traditional for Russian society, as well as propaganda aimed at forming a negative attitude towards confessions traditional for Russia.” The judge also believes that one of the aims of the book is the “propaganda of the LGBT movement.” When LaVey published “The Satanic Bible” in 1969, his aim was certainly not to produce anti-Russian propaganda; and while in the “Satanic Sex” explained that Satanism approves of all forms of sexual relations between consenting adults, “propaganda for the LGBT movement” was not a main theme of the book either. Strictly speaking, the main theme of “The Satanic Bible” was not even Satan-worship. It seems that the “experts” consulted by the St. Petersburg Court are related to the Russian anti-cultists who have insisted for years on the ridiculous theory that LaVey’s Church of Satan and the CIA cooperate in anti-Russian ventures. In 2022, even an Assistant Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation proposed the preposterous claim that LaVey’s Church of Satan was working with the Ukrainian government and that Ukraine  was in need of “desatanization.” https://bitterwinter.org/st-petersburg-court-finds-an-anti-russian-conspiracy-in-laveys-the-satanic-bible/ 

• “Making sense of the Church of Satan’s founder,” Regina Munch, Commonweal Magazine, October 2024: In the Year of Our Lord 2004, in the Borders bookstore at the local mall, I picked up Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible. I was thirteen, and I bet the pentagram on the cover would upset my mom. I put The Satanic Bible back on the shelf after a couple chapters. In Born with a Tail: The Devilish Life and Wicked Times of Anton Szandor LaVey, journalist Doug Brod catalogs how LaVey became the public face of a movement that rejected Christianity and asserted a combination of epicureanism, Nietzschean nihilism, and social Darwinism, occasionally bordering on fascism. It wasn’t always clear if he ever crossed the line into believing his own bullshit, but once in a while, as he pronounced on the hypocrisies of Christians, he could make a halfway decent point. It is unlikely that he was born with a tail as he claimed throughout his life; he loved to read horror classics like Dracula and Frankenstein as well as pulp magazines. The picture that emerges is of a kid who was bored with life from an early age. He dropped out of high school during his junior year, playing the organ at tent revivals and eventually joining the circus. He set up a loose collection of local churches throughout the country, what he called “grottoes.” He would lead the church members, mostly white professionals, in over-the-top rituals and sacrilegious sex acts. One gets the sense that he was making it up as he went—doing and saying whatever he thought would be most titillating and outrageous. Once, when a reporter pushed him on the nature of evil, LaVey replied, “Look, I’m just trying to make the rent.” For all the raucous blasphemy, the group was still beholden to Christian imagery. It’s offensive in the way that a teenager might try to offend. LaVey alchemized the attention into a slot on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He was profiled by magazines and invited onto other talk shows. LaVey was thrilled at the release of Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, a film that he praised for “presenting Satanism as something that existed among ordinary people.” He claimed to have been the actor behind the devil’s mask—one more item on his résumé that didn’t add up. Brod’s narrative illustrates that, more than anything, LaVey seemed to love talking with people about whatever he was reading that week. He frequently gave talks and hosted conversations about all kinds of kooky things—ghosts and hauntings, funereal practices, human sacrifice, love potions, cryptozoology, sadomasochism, what shapes were the most accursed (the trapezoid, obviously). It was this genuine curiosity and openness—even when it was mixed with opportunism—that comes out in the interviews Brod conducted, Years later—the era of zines, grunge, and the skinhead culture that sometimes came with them—LaVey found a new crowd of admirers: He kept a swastika and a Confederate flag in the Black House for their symbolic “power and aggression” and couldn’t resist “wandering into you-gotta-hand-it-to-Hitler territory.” LaVey died suddenly on October 29, 1997; his estranged daughter, who founded a rival church, claimed to have put a curse on him. With no charismatic leader to shepherd the flock, church activity soon stalled. Today, the Church of Satan mostly exists online, but it has inspired offshoots. LaVey was a man who at bottom wanted his friends to come over so they could fire up the organ and talk about weird shit. That’s the LaVey—totally ridiculous, totally confident—that keeps the rubes coming back. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/born-tail tt

• “Satanic Verses ban lifted,” Reuters, Nov 2024: India’s three-decade ban on Salman Rushdie’s controversial book “The Satanic Verses” has effectively been lifted after a court said the government was unable to produce the notification that imposed the ban. The India-born British author’s novel was banned in 1988 after some Muslims viewed it as blasphemous. India’s government told the Delhi High Court that the import ban order “was now untraceable and, therefore could not be produced.” As a result, the court said it had “no other option except to presume that no such notification exists.” “The ban has been lifted as of Nov. 5,” said a lawyer for the petitioner Sandipan Khan. Khan’s plea said he approached the court after being told at bookstores that the novel could not be sold or imported in India and then when he searched, he could not find the official import ban order on government websites. “In fact the purported author of the notification has also shown his helplessness in producing a copy,” the Nov. 5 order noted, referring to the customs department official who drafted the order. Rushdie’s novel ran into a global controversy shortly after its publication, as some Muslims saw passages about Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous. It set off violent demonstrations and book burnings. In 1989, Iran’s then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a  religious edict calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie, sending the Booker Prize-winning author into hiding for six years. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses-ban-lifted-india-rcna179264 

• “Satanic Temple’s holiday display investigated as hate crime,” CATHERINE McLAUGHLIN, wmur, Dec 2024: A volunteer dressed as an elf rebuilt the statue of Baphomet outside the State House Wednesday after it was vandalized for the second time in as many weeks. The Concord Police Department is preparing to bring criminal mischief charges against a suspect. Police also contacted the Attorney General’s office about the vandalism potentially being a hate crime, Deputy Chief of Police John Thomas said Wednesday. The suspect was detained on Main Street Tuesday evening after a witness reported to police that someone was taking apart the display. The suspect has not been publicly identified. In New Hampshire, a criminal mischief conviction can carry additional penalties if a person is found to have been “substantially motivated to commit the crime because of hostility towards the victim’s religion, race, creed, sexual orientation… national origin, sex, or gender identity.” “The Baphomet displays will keep being made by our artist coalition. If the haters want to continue to play Whac-A-Mole with a public display, we are ready,” said a statement from the Concord Area Artist Coalition for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion on Wednesday. Members of the coalition have declined interviews because they wish to remain anonymous, citing safety concerns. The statue holds a bouquet of lilacs, the state flower, and an apple in the other. The statue’s presence and approval by the city have made national news. In a statement last week, the city noted that it granted the permit under the legal determination that it had to “ban all holiday displays installed by other groups, or otherwise, to allow it.” Rep. Ellen Read, who contacted The Temple about putting up a display, said she had received death threats because of her involvement. In addition, she said she had been called a “Satan worshipper” and told she would “burn for an eternity in hell.” https://www.wmur.com/article/suspect-vandalism-satanic-temple-display-nh-121824/63227956 

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The post Episode 172: Unbaptisms appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.