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Episode 203: Scapegoats

Black Mass Appeal — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 00:36:46 +0000

Sharpen your horns and get ready for a fleecing, because we’re getting scapegoated.

SHOW LINKS

- - From Azazel, Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906: On Atonement Day, the high priest presented two young goats for a sin-offering, one for Yahweh and one for Azazel. The goat that fell to Yhwh was slain, but the goat of Azazel (now usually known as the “scapegoat”) was made the subject of a more striking ceremony: The high priest laid his hands upon its head and confessed over it the sins of the people. Then it was “led forth to an isolated region and let go into the wilderness. The sending of the goat was a symbolic expression of the idea that the people’s sins and their evil consequences were to be sent back to the spirit of desolation and ruin (Azazel), the source of all impurity and personification of wickedness. Evidently the figure of Azazel was an object of general fear and awe; as a demon of the desert, it seems to have been closely interwoven with the mountainous region of Jerusalem and of ancient pre-Israelitish origin. The realm of Azazel is the lonely wilderness; and Israel is represented as a nomadic people in the wilderness, though preparing to leave it. Necessarily their environment subjected them to superstitions associated with the local deities, and of these Azazel was the chief. The point of the whole ceremony seems to have been that as the scapegoat was set free in the desert, so Israel was to be set free from the offenses contracted in its desert life within the domain of the god of the desert.There has been much controversy over the function of Azazel as well as over his essential character. Azazel would appear to be the head of the supernatural beings of the desert. The symbolical act was really a renunciation of Azazel’s authority: such is the significance of the separation of the scapegoat from the people of Israel, and thus could be fulfilled only in the wilderness. In this way the complete separation was effected. https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2203-azazel#6890
  - From The Outsiders, Howard Becker, 1963: The outsider-the deviant from group rules-has been the subject of much speculation, theorizing, and scientific study. What laymen want to know about deviants is: why do they do it? How can we account for their rule-breaking? What is there about them that leads them to do forbidden things? Scientific research has accepted the common-sense premise that there is something inherently deviant about acts that break social rules. It has also accepted the common-sense assumption that the deviant act occurs because some characteristic of the person who commits it makes it necessary or inevitable that he should. Scientists do not question the label “deviant.” The sociological view I have just discussed defines deviance as the infraction of some agreed-upon rule. It then goes on to ask who breaks rules, and to search for the factors in their personalities. This assumes that those who have broken a rule constitute a’ homogeneous category because they have committed the same deviant act. Such an assumption seems to me to ignore the central fact about deviance: It is created by society by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance and then labeling the rulebreakers outsiders them as outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender. The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label. The unmarried mother furnishes a clear example. Illicit sexual relations seldom result in severe punishment or social censure for the offenders. If, however, a girl becomes pregnant as a result, the reaction of others is likely to be severe. The illicit pregnancy is also an interesting example of the differential enforcement of rules on different categories of people, as unmarried fathers escape the most severe censure visited on the mother. Deviance is never a quality that lies in behavior itself, but in the interaction between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it.
  - From Evil Incarnate, David Frankfurter, 2006: Classical and late antique materials showed themes of ritual otherness across geographical boundaries. On the periphery of Roman culture lay cultures supposedly prone to cannibalism and Human Sacrifice, either in ecstatic or deliberately systematic rights. Monstrous rituals implied an ambiguous humanity, and association with beasts in one sense, but human Devotion to sacrificial Precision in another sense. One allegedly found monstrous rituals especially among nomadic peoples or those people perceived as Interlopers in society, such as Jews. Roman culture became increasingly fearful of such monstrous rituals, but even in cases of outright panic it is important to note a feature of voyeurism. Underlying all of these representations of monstrous ritual is a horrified fascination with ceremonial abuse. This geographical fantasy soon gave way to a missionary Zeal. From the missionary perspective, the distant image of cannibalism, incest, and ritual sacrifice proved less comprehensible than the more Sinister idea that Indians now we’re considered devil worshipers, with priesthood, rituals, and formal ordoers, all brought into the service of Satan. And yet the view of devil worship that organized all the perversities of heathen culture clearly drew upon fantasies of the Domestic culture. It also elaborated the more basic belief, found in smaller societies, that the people “over there” are devil worshipers or dangerous sorcerers. As anyone familiar with American movies will recognize, these themes took root in modern American culture: foreignness preoccupied a nation perpetually encountering “savages” around its borders. Popular Cinema in books for the 1920s through the 1980s repeatedly highlight some savage ritual performed by drum maddened natives. Haiti in particular was made the subject of such depictions, because its multiply ambiguous status as a black Republic within reach of the United States assigned to both African and Catholic cultures were both deeply suspect to Protestant American eyes. When such rituals are imagined to take place on the periphery of civilization, it has horror and allure. As they creep inside, carried perhaps by immigrants from the edges of the earth, they pose a threat–or even a conspiracy.
  - From The Demonology of Satanism, Joel Best, The Satanism Scare, 1992: The term demonology most commonly refers to an institutionalized set of beliefs in evil spirits, or demons; I use it here to mean an ideology of evil, an elaborate body of belief about an evil force that is inexorably undermining society’s most cherished values and institutions. Historical and anthropological studies have shown that such beliefs invariably develop in times of intense, prolonged social anxiety, times when a significant proportion of people who share cultural values have come to feel that they are being let down or ignored by institutions in which they have placed their trust. Demonology provides an explanation for this state of affairs. The demonology usually labels its referents as horribly, unspeakably evil. When it refers to a specific group of people it often dehumanizes them, describing their bestial habits, or declaring their association with certain animals; or by reference to a new interpretation of some old myth, it may declare that these people were execrated by the gods or culture founders themselves. When it refers to supernatural or other-worldly evil it may acknowledge that the human agents have been seduced by the evil and are not entirely to blame, but it explicitly states that their rights as human beings, even their lives, must be forfeit to the necessity of expunging the evil from society. The principal actors in demonologies frequently focus their evil ambitions on children. Children are kidnapped, abused, subjected to obscene torments, sold into slavery, or killed, their blood and parts saved for ritual consumption or sold. Worries about the welfare of children have been central to our social concerns for decades. In the 1960s it was ‘flower children’ and Vietnam war protests that led to campus protests and a generation of disenchanted kids in the 1970s who were vulnerable to alternative religious philosophies and “cults.” In the 1980s concerns focused on missing or kidnapped or runaway (or ‘‘thrown-away’’) children. This has been the breeding ground for the demonology of satanism, and it is revealing to note that it has coalesced around concerns for children.
  - From Witchcraft Myths and Misconceptions, Professor Diane Purkiss, English Heritage Histories, 2019: Witchcraft is an area of history that most people feel familiar with. The problem is that most of what we think we know is wrong. Myth: Nine million witches died in the years of the witch persecutions. Actually about 30,000–60,000 people were executed in the whole of the main era of witchcraft persecutions. These figures include estimates for cases where no records exist. The total number of people tried for witchcraft in England was no more than 2,000. Myth: Once accused, a witch had no chance of proving her innocence. In reality, only 25 percent of those tried across the period in England were found guilty. Many judges and jurymen were highly sceptical about the existence of magical powers, seeing the whole thing as a con. Myth: The Spanish Inquisition and the Catholic Church instigated the witch trials. The Spanish Inquisition persecuted heretics by the Catholic Church, but witchcraft was largely regarded as a superstition. All four of the major western Christian denominations (the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican churches) persecuted witches to some degree. The Inquisition executed only two witches in total. Myth: Witches were really goddess-worshipping herbalist midwives. No, nobody was goddess-worshipping during the period of the witch-hunts, or if they were, they have left no trace in the historical records. The idea that those accused of witchcraft were midwives or herbalists, and especially that they were midwives possessed of feminine expertise that threatened male authority, is a myth. Midwives were rarely accused and often worked side by side with the courts to help them to identify witch marks. Most accusers of witches were women, and across the continent about 10 to 15 percent of convicted witches were men.
  - From Vampire Burials and Social Order in Postmedieval Poland Tracy K. Betsinger and Amy B. Scott, Cambridge Archaelogical Journal, 2014: Sinners, witches, murderers, suicides, those who were not baptized, those conceived during a holy period, and those who were born out of wedlock were considered at risk for becoming vampires. Outsiders or newcomers to a community or those seen as ‘others’ were also at risk of having discontented souls upon their deaths. Moreover, those who behaved suspiciously or who did not follow proper religious rules were at increased risk. Slavic folklore also suggests that vampires or potential vampires could be identified based on physical appearance, such as a baby having teeth at birth or an individual having a physical disability as well as physical deformity. The belief in a close association between an unclean existence and an unclean soul became the foundation of the belief that vampirism. Vampire burials, or more specifically burials of those who are at risk of becoming a vampire, are identified in the archaeological record based on specific features, including grave goods and mutilations of the corpse, which are considered preventative measures to keep a corpse from becoming reanimated. One of the primary ways in which the vampires of post-medieval Poland were an agential force is providing an impetus or motivation for maintaining social order: The Catholic Church in Poland and throughout Europe was vested in attracting adherents. Far from denying beliefs in vampirism, the Church seemed to make no assertion either way, neither confirming nor denying the existence of vampires when it was the subject of much scholarly research and debate, which reached its climax in the eighteenth century. The Church, it has been argued, may have had a hidden agenda, which required vampires to remain a plausible entity within their communities; it was to the Church’s benefit to contrast the evilness of vampires with the goodness of the Church. It created an effective method by which to encourage people to follow the rules. The vampire became the scapegoat of all things evil and in league with the devil. People did not wish to become such an evil creature; therefore, they were less likely to deviate from the norm or even be accused of suspect behaviours. The Church may have used the general fear of becoming a vampire to dissuade individuals from committing sin.
  - From I Accuse, Emile Zola, The Aurora, 1898: I am stating simply that Major de Clam, as the officer charged with the preliminary investigation of the Dreyfus case, is the first and the most grievous offender in the ghastly miscarriage of justice that has been committed. He was the one who “invented” Dreyfus the traitor, the one who orchestrated the whole affair and made it his own. No one would ever believe the experiments to which he subjected the unfortunate Dreyfus, the traps he set for him, the wild investigations, the monstrous fantasies, the whole demented torture. Ah, that first trial! What a nightmare it is for all who know it in its true details as the unfortunate Dreyfus was proclaiming his innocence. And this is how the case proceeded, like some fifteenth century chronicle, shrouded in mystery, swamped in all manner of nasty twists and turns, all stemming from one trumped-up charge. This was not only a bit of cheap trickery but also the most outrageous fraud imaginable, for almost all of these notorious secrets turned out in fact to be worthless. I dwell on this, because this is the germ of it all, whence the true crime would emerge, that horrifying miscarriage of justice that has blighted France. Rumors flew of the most horrible acts, the most monstrous deceptions, lies that were an affront to our history. The people clamored for the traitor to be publicly stripped of his rank over nothing but demented fabrications. The fact that someone could have been convicted on this charge is the ultimate iniquity. I defy decent men to read it without a stir of indignation in their hearts and a cry of revulsion, at the thought of the undeserved punishment being meted out there on Devil’s Island. The evidence of Dreyfus’s character, his affluence, the lack of motive and his continued affirmation of innocence combine to show that he is the victim of lurid imaginations and the “dirty Jew” obsession that is the scourge of our time, this human sacrifice of an unfortunate man, that “dirty Jew.” It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and the humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance by appealing to that odious antisemitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom-loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to lie to the public, to twist public opinion to insane lengths in the service of the vilest death-dealing machinations. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern god, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice.
  - From The Prince of This World, Adam Kotsko, 2017: In his testimony before the grand jury, police officer Darren Wilson claims to be terrified of Michael Brown, the unarmed black man he shot and killed. One particular image from his testimony stands out: “It looks like a demon,” a very literal demonization of his own victim. Again and again we hear that the victims of such shootings were “No Angels.” Now that might be said of all of us, insofar as we are merely human. Yet the context shows us that being No Angels effectively is euphemism for being a demon, a being hardwired for evil. The victim’s records are invariably scoured for any hint of criminal activity, as though a single misdemeanor singles them out for summary execution. What this line of inquiry aims to establish is not simply that the victims have committed a crime but that they ARE criminals. What they do is take it as a symptom of what they are. Black victims are always presumptively criminals in this discourse. Paradoxically, however, this ostensibly inherent inclination towards crime does not free them from moral culpability. As in the case of demons, destined for Eternal damnation despite being unable to do anything except evil, it instead exposes them to a particularly intense form of moral accountability in which they face arbitrary punishments for their actions. The contrast with white Mass Shooters is striking: The sympathetic qualities of the shooter are often highlighted, so as to reassure the public that this Outburst of violence was truly random and unpredictable. The diagnosis is quick and absolutely uniform: the killer was mentally ill, which in sharp contrast to supposedly intrinsic criminality of the black police shooting victim serves to absolve him. The actions of the most privileged demographic must never be allowed to raise the possibility that there is a problem with American society as a whole. This victim blaming logic points back to a long theological Heritage with which modernity has never fully grappled with. Theology has always been a victim blaming discourse. The example here are the infamous and long-suffering Job, who is told that since he is suffering, he must have sinned somehow. That narrative is the distressing one, consequences that are no less destructive for being unintended.

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Episode 201: Lord Byron Still Fucks

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 23:08:32 +0000

When it comes to lording over other Satanist writers, Lord Byron has the pedigree to prove it.

SHOW LINKS

- Biography of Lord Byron, The Poetry Foundation, 2017: The most flamboyant and notorious of the major English Romantic poets, Byron created the immensely popular namesake Byronic hero—defiant, melancholy, haunted by guilt—for which, to many, he seemed the model. Born with a lame leg, he was the son of an impoverished Scots heiress and “Mad Jack” Byron, a fortune-hunting widower. The captain squandered his wife’s inheritance, was absent for the birth of his only son, and eventually decamped for France as an exile from English creditors. Catherine Byron raised her son in an atmosphere colored by her excessive tenderness, fierce temper, insensitivity, and pride. With the death in 1798 of his great-uncle, the “Wicked” Lord Byron Fifth, George became the Sixth Baron Byron. He excelled in oratory, verse, and sports. He also formed passionate attachments with other boy, and; there can be little doubt that he had strong bisexual tendencies. Living extravagantly, he began to amass the debts that would bedevil him for years. In March 1809, he took his seat in the House of Lords. Though in debt, he gathered resources to allow a tour of the eastern Mediterranean, which reinforced for him the contrast between the glory of ancient Greece and its contemporary disgrace. Between June 1813 and February 1816, Byron completed and had published six extremely popular verse tales, five of them influenced by his travels. His “Byronic Heroes” descended from Prometheus, Satan, and the sentimental heroes of Rousseau and Goethe. Among their traits are romantic melancholy, guilt for secret sin, pride, defiance, restlessness, alienation, revenge, remorse, moodiness, honor, altruism, and pure love. The drawing rooms and salons of Whig society vied for Byron’s presence and lionized him. In 1813 Byron began an affair with his 29-year-old half sister, Augusta. While no legal proof exists, the circumstantial evidence in Byron’s letters strongly suggests an incestuous connection. Throughout his life Byron was a fervent reader of the Bible and a lover of traditional songs and legends. As a champion of freedom, he may have responded instinctively to the oppression suffered by the Jewish people. He married an heiress in 1815 but by 1816 his wife considered him insane and separated, taking their daughter with her. Heavy drinking drove Byron into rages and fits of irrational behavior.
- In 1816, Byron sailed for Geneva, where waiting for him were Claire Clairmont (pregnant with his child), Percy Shelley, and Mary Godwin. They passed the time agreeably by boating on Lake Leman and conversing at the Villa; in this environmen,t Mary wrote Frankenstein. In 1819, Byron’s publisher, after some hesitation, cautiously published his “Don Juan.” Typical was the review in Blackwood’s Magazine, which branded Byron as “a cool unconcerned fiend” who derided love, honor, patriotism, and religion in his “filthy and impious poem.” Not all the reviews were negative: Goethe praised Don Juan as “a work of boundless energy.” In October, Byron presented the manuscript of his memoirs, not to be published during his lifetime, containing, among other things, “a detailed account of his marriage and its consequences.” His publisher had the memoirs burned to protect Byron’s reputation. Byron began work on his play “Cain” and challenged accepted religious beliefs in good, evil, death, and immortality, and Robert Southey virulently attacked Byron as the leader of the “Satanic school” of contemporary writers whose works exhibited “a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety.” Shelley proclaimed Cain “apocalyptic— a revelation not before communicated to man.” His was a minority opinion. Resolving that “he who is only a poet has done little for mankind” Byron devoted himself to the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and agreed to loan 4,000 pounds to the Greek fleet. In 1824 he joined the moderate revolutionary leaders on the mainland and was enthusiastically welcomed by shouts, salutes, and salvos, hailed as a “Messiah.” But his constitution deteriorated under the strain and the cold winter rains as well as the frustration of his unrequited love for his handsome 15-year-old page boy. By April he was seriously ill and on the evening of Easter Monday, April 19, 1824, Byron died. In memorial services throughout the country, he was proclaimed a national hero of Greece and his death proved effective in uniting the many Greek factions and eliciting support for their struggle. Byron’s body arrived in England on June 29, and for two days he lay in state in a house in Great George Street.
- From The Byronic Hero, Princess Weekes, PBS, 2020: Edward Cullen; Han Solo; Lestat–what do all of these characters have in common besides being heartthrobs? They share a common ancestor: the Byronic Hero. Brooding, sensual, violent, a little too single-minded, the Byronic Hero has been a staple in literature dating back to the 19th century. I see you, Cloud Strife, all sad and angsty with your giant sword. According to Professor Peter L. Thorslev, the characteristic Byronic Hero has borrowed characteristics from the gothic villain in his looks, his mysterious past, and his secret sins, and from the Man Of Feelings archetype in his tender sensibilities and in his undying fidelity. He is a romantic rebel. He chooses his values in open defiance of the codes of society. That’s right, you defy the codes of society by being sad and hot and with your slightly stalker-like tendencies. The Byronic archetype allowed for more complicated male characters to form, and without him we miss out on the development of the anti-hero. Gothic and romantic fiction writers and readers of the 19th and 20th centuries ate this up: Victor Frankenstein, Captain Ahab, The Phantom of the Opera, The Count of Monte Cristo, Mr. Rochester, Megamind–even James Bond is pretty Byronic. Debate me in the comments. They have a mixture of monstrous yet alluring personalities. Frollo from Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starts off as a good man but is gripped by a lust for a woman he cannot have and tips into madness; Heathcliff is such a compelling romantic lead because the text makes it clear that he was forced into becoming a bitter, hateful man by society, but his deep, toxic love for Catherine draws the reader to him. Rochester has a kindly nature and a deep love for Jane but is still capable of locking his wife in the attic. Byron himself had a huge capacity for love, intelligence, and an appreciation for beauty but was chaotic and emotionally aloof. More recently we see more female characters who possess some Byronic qualities, like Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Regina from Once Upon a Time, and Catra from She-Ra. But those characters are punished more by both the audience and the writers. Sometimes, the alluring aspect of female and non-white Byronic characters is seeing them have the freedom to be more complex as Byronic heroines take on the characteristics of the rebellious, ambitious, narcissistic, individualistic, and ultimately self-destructive Byronic male. All of the tortured romantic bad boys of literature, film, and television have a little bit of Byron in them. So the next time you get deep in your feels for Kylo Ren, cheer for Prince Zuko, or secretly pop on Twilight for the 200th time, maybe pour one out to Lord Byron, to whom we owe all of this angsty goodness to. Or James Dean, either one will do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4wNZDIH8d8
- - Portraits Of Lord Byron In Order Of Lord Byron-ness, Daniel Lavery, The Toast, 2015:
- Lord Byron & His Manservant, 1810: At first glance, you might be tempted to think, “Not very Byron,” because there are other people in the picture, and his alabaster brow isn’t the focal point. This is an error. “You there, boy, fetch into this dinghy and sail into yon exhilarating storm while I stand here and clench my fist over this rock. If you drown in the background it will make for a very exciting painting.” He’s wearing like eighteen ascots and they’re all flowing in a tempest, plenty of Byron here.
- Portrait of Lord Byron, 1813: SOLID POUTY BYRON. He’s got some secret freaky brocade vest on under his cloak, which is probably full of dildos, his brow situation is ferociously organized, his out-of-frame hand is probably jerking off the devil.
- Byron’s Dream, 1874: Eight out of ten Byrons. Look at his SEXUAL SNEERING. “What is this woman doing in my portrait? is her hair more luxurious than mine? I hope she falls down this hill and dies so I can be alone with my dog. what is she LOOKING at even? why isn’t it me.”
- Coloured Print of Lord Byron, Date Unknown: Medium Byron, which is perhaps the least amount of Byron you can get. It’s better to be almost no Byron than just regular Byron, so this is actually zero Byrons. He’s almost smiling?? And like, reading letters, like someone with a job would do? Why don’t you just paint KEATS and DIE.
- Lord Byron in Albanian Dress, 1813: ONE BILLION PERCENT would Byron grow a mustache and demand that everyone notice it. He would never come out and say “What do you think of my mustache?” but he would make it clear in a thousand small ways that you were expected to notice and compliment it, and if you withheld that pleasure from him, you would never be invited to dinner again.
- The reception of Lord Byron, 1861: “Hello, are you Greece, I am here to run your army? Don’t worry, I’m a poet.”
- Lord Byron on His Deathbed, 1826: Obviously the lute and the laurel wreath and the funereal sheet draped like a Roman toga are sick touches, but you can’t even see his death erection, which I feel like would have been really important to him, that even in death people were thinking about his dick.
- From The Vampyre, John Polidori, 1819: Hitherto, Aubrey had had no opportunity of studying Lord Ruthven’s character, and now he found that his companion was profuse in his liberality;—the idle, the vagabond, and the beggar, received from his hand more than enough to relieve their immediate wants. But Aubrey could not avoid remarking that it was not upon the virtuous that he bestowed his alms;—these were sent from the door with hardly suppressed sneers; but when an addict came to ask something to allow him to wallow in his lust, or to sink him still deeper in his iniquity, he was sent away with rich charity. All those upon whom it was bestowed, inevitably found that there was a curse upon it, for they were all either led to the scaffold, or sunk to the lowest and the most abject misery. Aubrey was surprised at the apparent eagerness with which his companion sought for the centres of all fashionable vice; he always gambled with success, except where the known sharper was his antagonist, and then he lost even more than he gained; when he encountered the rash youthful novice, or the luckless father of a numerous family, his eyes sparkled with more fire than that of the cat whilst dallying with the half-dead mouse. In every town, he left the formerly affluent youth in the solitude of a dungeon, whilst many a father sat frantic, amidst the speaking looks of mute hungry children, without a single farthing of his late immense wealth. Yet he took no money from the gambling table but immediately lost, to the ruiner of many, the last gilder he had just snatched from the convulsive grasp of the innocent. Aubrey’s guardians insisted upon his immediately leaving his friend, and urged, that his character was dreadfully vicious, for that the possession of irresistible powers of seduction, rendered his licentious habits more dangerous to society, and all those females whom he had sought out apparently on account of their virtue, had, since his affair, thrown the mask aside and had not scrupled to expose the whole deformity of their vices to the public gaze. Aubrey determined upon leaving one, whose character had not yet shown a single bright point on which to rest the eye. He resolved to invent some plausible pretext for abandoning him altogether, purposing, in the mean while, to watch him more closely, and to let no slight circumstances pass by unnoticed. Aubrey determined upon leaving and immediately writing a note, to say, that from that moment he must decline accompanying his Lordship in the remainder of their proposed tour. Ruthven next day merely sent his servant to notify his complete assent to a separation.
- From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lord Byron, 1818: Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more; though fallen, still great! Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, And long accustomed bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae’s sepulchral strait— Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas’ banks, and call thee from the tomb? Spirit of Freedom! Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, But every carle can lord it o’er thy land; Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed, unmanned. In all save form alone, how changed! and who That marks the fire still sparkling in each eye, Who would but deem their bosom burned anew With thy unquenched beam, lost Liberty! And many dream withal the hour is nigh That gives them back their fathers’ heritage: For foreign arms and aid they fondly sigh, Nor solely dare encounter hostile rage, Or tear their name defiled from Slavery’s mournful page. Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not Who would be free must strike the blow? By their right arms the conquest must be wrought? Will Gaul or Muscovite redress ye? No! True, they may lay your proud despoilers low, But not for you will Freedom’s altars flame. Shades of the Helots! triumph o’er your foe: Greece! change thy lords, thy state is still the same; Thy glorious day is o’er, but not thy years of shame. But ne’er will Freedom seek this fated soil, But slave succeed to slave through years of endless toil. Though turbans now pollute Sophia’s shrine And Greece her very altars eyes in vain: Gay were her minstrels once, for free her throng, All felt the common joy they now must feign; Nor oft I’ve seen such sight, nor heard such song, As wooed the eye, and thrilled the Bosphorus along. And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, Land of lost gods and godlike men. Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, Proclaim thee Nature’s varied favourite now; Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow, Commingling slowly with heroic earth, Broke by the share of every rustic plough: So perish monuments of mortal birth, So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth.
- - From Cain: A Mystery, Lord Byron, 1821: I have a Victor––true; but no superior. Homage he has from all––but none from me: I battle it against him, as I battled In highest Heaven––through all Eternity, And the unfathomable gulfs of Hades, And the interminable realms of space, And the infinity of endless ages–All, all, will I dispute! And world by world, And star by star, and universe by universe, Shall tremble in the balance, till the great Conflict shall cease, if ever it shall cease, Which it ne’er shall, till he or I be quenched! And what can quench our immortality, Or mutual and irrevocable hate? He as a conqueror will call the conquered [one] Evil; but what will be the Good he gives? Were I the victor, his works would be deemed The only evil ones. And you, ye new And scarce–born mortals, what have been his gifts To you already, in your little world? But few; and some of those but bitter. Dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in His everlasting face, and tell him that His evil is not good! He is great–– But, in his greatness, is no happier than We in our conflict! Let him Sit on his vast and solitary throne–– Creating worlds, to make eternity Less burdensome to his immense existence; Let him crowd orb on orb: he is alone, Indefinite, Indissoluble Tyrant; Could he but crush himself, ’twere the best boon He ever granted: but let him reign on! Spirits and Men, at least we sympathise–– And, suffering in concert, make our pangs Innumerable, more endurable. The Maker––Call him Which name thou wilt: he makes but to destroy. He, so wretched in his height, So restless in his wretchedness, must still Create, and re–create––perhaps he’ll make One day a Son unto himself––as he Gave you a father––and if he so doth, Mark me! that Son will be a sacrifice! I have nothing in common with him; I dwell apart, but I am great. I tempt none, Save with the truth: was not the Tree a Tree Of Knowledge? and was not the Tree of Life Still fruitful? Did I bid her pluck them not? Did I plant things prohibited within The reach of beings innocent, and curious By their innocence? I would have made ye Gods; and He who thrust ye forth because “ye should not eat the fruits of life, And become gods”–were those his words? Then who was the Demon–He Who would not let ye live, or he who would Have made ye live forever, in the joy And power of Knowledge?
- From The Devil’s Drive, Lord Byron, 1813: “And what shall I ride in,” quoth Lucifer then? “If I followed my taste indeed, I should mount in a wagon of wounded men, and smile to see them bleed. But these will be furnished again and again, and at present my purpose is speed; To see of My manor as much as I may, And watch that no souls shall be poached away. I have a state-coach at Carlton House, A chariot in Seymour place; But they’re lent to two friends. Then up to the earth sprung he, And making a jump from Moscow to France, He stepped across the Sea, And rested his hoof on a Turnpike road– No very great way from a Bishop’s abode. The Devil has reached our cliffs so white, And what did he see there, I pray? If his eyes were good, he but saw by night What we see every day. Satan hired a horse and gig With promises of pay; And he pawned his horns for a spruce new wig, To redeem as he came away: And he whistled some tune, a waltz or a jig, And drove off at the close of day. The first place he stopped he heard the Psalm that rung from a Methodist Chapel: “‘Tis the best sound I’ve heard,” quoth he, “since my palm Presented Eve with her apple! When Faith is all, tis an excellent sign, That the Works and Workmen both are mine.” The Devil got next to Westminster, And he turned to the room of the Commons; But he heard as he purposed to enter in there, That “the Lords” had received a summons; And he thought, as a fallen aristocrat, He might peep at the Peers, though to hear of them were flat; And he walked up the House so like one of his own, That they say that he stood pretty near the throne. He saw the Lord Liverpool seemingly wise, and Jockey of Norfolk—a man of some size—And he saw the tears in Lord Eldon’s eyes, Because the Catholics would not rise, In spite of his prayers and his prophecies; And he heard—which set Satan himself a staring— A certain Chief Justice say something a-swearing. And the Devil was shocked—and quoth he, “I must go, For I find we have much better manners below. If thus he harangues when he passes my border, I shall hint to friend Moloch to call him to order.”
- - From Romantic Satanism, Peter Schock, 2003: By 1820 Byron’s satanic Aura had lost its glamor and was now almost exclusively the channel through which conservative voices expressed criticism. In 1820, Reginald Heber added a new dimension to the attacks on Byron, writing “By a strange predilection for the worser half of Manichianism, one of the mightiest spirits of the age has apparently devoted himself in his genius to the adornment and extension of evil.” This was saying in Elegant terms that Byron was a Satanist, and that was precisely how he interpreted it. Thus prominent writers for the journals and the Tory Ministry applied to Byron the brand of satanic, grouping him with infidels. It should come as no surprise then that a blaspheming Satanic figure looms so large in “Cain.” Unleashing such a character in a religious drama must have seemed especially opportune as a Counter-Strike, the Fulfillment of Byron’s great threat. Shelley probably encouraged Byron to do this when he visited him in August of 1827, leading Byron to heighten the Satanism of the work by shaping Lucifer into the adverse ideal of Christian mythology. Through his drama Byron struck at the tyrants attempting to trample upon free thought, and his target extended Beyond his assailants in the Quarterly Review to all who contributed to the assault on free thought at his time, from Tory ministers who authored repressive legislation to Crown lawyers who prosecuted infidels. The Eclectic Review speculated that Byron wrote Cain to test for himself the limits of the freedom of the press.A peer of the realm, living in England or Italy, had little reason to fear prosecution. Publishers, not writers, were most at stake.He therefore must have assumed that his play would become part of this controversy and that he would be perceived as an aristocratic provocateur in the struggle over the authority of the Bible. Before writing Cain, Byron had worried frequently about the consequences of publishing irreligion. In 1817; Shelley lost the custody of his children over the anti-christian diatribes he wrote in Queen Mab. This chronic anxiety about court judgments meant Byron probably took some care in writing his play, especially in the construction of its superhuman Infidel. Because biblical myth was contested in the blasphemy controversy, because the brand of satanic had been fixed to all transgressive writers, and because publishing blasphemy carried consequences, to write a biblical drama involving satanic myth was to enter into an ideological conflict.
- From Little Lucifers of the Satanic School, The Satanic Scholar, 2016: Romantic Satanism was not about Devil worship, but rather identification with Satan the magnificent rebel angel out of Milton and adoption of his mythic/poetic revolt against the absolute authority personified in the Almighty as a sociopolitical countermyth. Romantic Satanists were essentially little Lucifers—Miltonic Satans in miniature. When English clergyman Reginald Heber identified in Byron “a strange predilection for the worser half of manicheism,” this, “being interpreted,” reflected Byron himself, “means that I worship the devil…” Heber would go on to explain that “Lord Byron misunderstood us. He supposed that we accused him of ‘worshipping the Devil.’ We certainly had, at the time, no particular reason for apprehending that he worshipped anything.” Byron’s failure—or refusal, rather—to bend the knee in worship of anything, however, was what made Byron so Satanic, and the same goes for Shelley, the militant atheist who imagined himself very much like the heroically unbowed Satan: “Did I now see god seated in gorgeous & tyrannic majesty as described, upon the throne of infinitude – if I bowed before him, what would virtue say?” Just as “narcissists” are simply individuals who bear the likeness of the mythical Narcissus, Byron and Shelley were “Satanists” not because they worshipped the Devil, but because of their likeness to the arch-rebel—an image they often deliberately donned. Satanism was certainly at the heart of Byronism, the cultural phenomenon that saw Byron hurled haphazardly into the limelight. Byron’s dogged sense of sin was mostly the product of the perverted form of Calvinism literally beat into him as a young boy. Being “Majestic though in ruin” was part and parcel of the Byronic persona, however, and so Byron seized for himself the starring role of fallen angel. Like Satan, Byron wished to experience the feeling of being struck with full force by the vengeance of Heaven.

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Episode 138 – Deadly Sins: Satanic Lust

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 08:08:27 +0000

When it comes to Deadly Sins, there’s one option you can always count on for putting skin in the game. So why do conventional religions have so many intimate inhibitions about Lust, and what can we do with the baggage we’ve inherited from them?

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Episode 120 – Our Non-Satanist Satanic Role Models

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 08:05:23 +0000

When we see Satanists and Satanism in media, it’s always the same story: Black cloaks, human sacrifices, and not a lot of authenticity. Today, we’ve singled out some of our favorite fictional works and characters that portray our real Satanic values -– even though none of these are actually supposed to be Satanists.

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Episode 109 – La-Bas

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 08:01:03 +0000

In 1891, French popular author JK Huysmans scandalized the public with his novel La-Bas, a sultry and sleazy story surveying sex, shame, and Satanism. What inspired him to delve into such outrageous material — and why did so many people take him seriously?

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Episode 104 – Bloody Hell: Devil Myths & Menstruation

Black Mass Appeal — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 02:43:46 +0000

We have a bloody mess on our hands explaining people’s sacrilegious beliefs about a particular period in history with I Support the Girls CEO Dana Marlowe. Also, Satanic Bay Area says happy birthday, and in the news, San Francisco briefly remembers a Satanic revel best left forgotten.

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SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Simone 0:04
Welcome to Black Mass Appeal, a podcast that brings modern Satanism to the masses. Today I’m Black Mass Appeal, we have a bloody mess on our hands explaining people’s sacrilegious beliefs about a particular period in history. Also, Satanic Bay Area says happy birthday, and in the news, San Francisco briefly remembers a Satanic rebel, best left forgotten. Joining me today, I’ve got Daniel.

Daniel 0:30
Hey, my name is Daniel. I’m an organizer for Satanic Bay Area and I’m a member of the Satanic Temple, and my blood type is B+, in spite of my disposition. That’s not a joke, by the way, that’s actually true.

Simone 0:41
And, also joining me is Tabitha.

Tabitha 0:43
Hey, this is Tabitha. I’m an administrator for a Satanic Bay Area and I have a lot of blood. That’s my blood type. A lot. *giggling*

Simone 0:54
I’m glad to hear it; I hope you have enough.

Tabitha 0:56
*giggling* As far as I know. *more giggling*

Simone 0:59
Joining us later in the show will be Dana Marlowe, the CEO and founder of I Support the Girls, and until then, you’ve got me; my name is Simone. I’m an administrator for Satanic Bay Area, and I feel like I have an adequate amount of blood, but I don’t know the blood type. I know some people, like, find that out in high school; they learn how to type their blood. I literally have no idea what mine is, so, umm, better not need any anytime soon, I guess. *giggling* Well, Black Mass Appeal is a product of Satanic Bay Area and it is not associated with any other Satanic groups. This is a podcast for Satanists to discuss modern Satanism, its history, left-leaning political activism, and how Satanism relates to current events and pop culture, or for people who want to learn more about modern Satanism, whether you’re a newbie or already involved in Satanic groups. And speaking of Satanic groups, what blood rituals have we been doing lately, guys?

Daniel 1:56
Well, you know what, we’re gonna have to do a quick Satanic rewind on this one because it occurred to me that leading up to- prior to our most recent public event, Pazuzu’s Blessing, we actually did a couple of birthday rituals right in a row that we never really had the opportunity to talk about on the show. So, I’m just going to cast my mind backwards into the abyss of time and remember that, first of all, we had a little birthday get-together ritual for Tabitha not that long ago.

Tabitha 2:25
Mmhmm.

Daniel 2:25
And then, prior to that, also, our friend Rebecca had a great party up at her place in Vallejo, and as a gift, we were able to hold a little ritual occasion there, as well. And, Tabitha, how do you think it went?

Tabitha 2:39
I thought it was a lot of fun, especially since it was kind of on the fly and I’ve never actually done that before. I mean, luckily, with, like, Rebecca’s place, putting it all together was, like, real easy, but, like, we just kind of, like, did it. It was awesome. *chuckles*

Simone 2:55
I’m still so sad to have missed it. I had a cold. I was scared it was Covid. I figured either way I shouldn’t go and potentially infect people. [I was there with my crazy toddler who couldn’t be vaxxed yet, thank you Simone for staying home <3] By the way. Covid test came back negative, *sad, whiny voice* but I still missed the party! And I was very sad!

Tabitha 3:13
We appreciate you, your sacrifice, though. [for real, thanks Simone]

Daniel 3:16
Well, the good news is, is my understanding, is she will have another birthday next year.

Simone 3:21
Satan willing.

Daniel 3:23
And, then, of course, you were there for Tabitha’s birthday just a couple of weeks later. Of course, it wasn’t technically her birthday; that was a different day, but this was the day when we were ceremonially observing it with our peers and this was a particularly challenging ritual occasion for Tabitha because it meant standing still while people said nice things about her *Tabitha starts laughing* which is *always* a hurdle.

Tabitha 3:46
*laughing* It’s so hard!

Simone 3:49
If anyone watched the Fox show, the New Girl, it’s the same thing as Winston’s ‘honey roast.’ It’s like a roast except you say nice things.

Tabitha 3:59
I really appreciated it. It’s, you know, a lot of people told me that I was very warm and, like, that I’m very inviting and I make people feel comfortable which is, like, not something that I didn’t know but it was definitely something that I didn’t know came across so well. So, I did it! *laughs* I could pack it up; no more birthdays for me! *Simone chuckles*

Daniel 4:20
On the subject of a roast, I did for our- one of the ideas that we debated for the 100th episode of BMA was a celebrity roast of Satan, which I still think is a funny enough idea that I might try to resurrect it in some form of media down the line. I just wanted to bring these up to point out that you know, these occasions they’re very much like our larger, more formal ritual gatherings only they are a little bit smaller, they need to be invitation-only, and sometimes they are a little bit more experimental, and, also, it just reminds people that, you know, ritual can be- does not necessarily have to be something that is a big to-do. Ritual can be something that is part of our more everyday lives and is something that we can engage in more casually, but, at the same time, it can still be gratifying for us and still give us an opportunity to express and exercise that side of ourselves that, maybe, ordinarily, we don’t get to let out as often as we would like.

Simone 5:16
Yeah, I mean, a ritual can be as simple as literally lighting a candle. Like, you have a candle that you, maybe, light while you’re getting ready in the morning, and you pick the candle, like, fragrance and look with intention and you, kind of, have that small observation that this is part of my getting ready for taking on the day, and that’s it. That’s, that’s a ritual. That counts. Not that you need to care about ‘counting’ to anybody else, but just so you know, something that’s small, that, that’s a ritual.

Daniel 5:48
I also want to point out on the subject of birthdays, I think I have the same attitude about my birthday that Tabitha does, which is, on the one hand, I don’t really like to make a thing about it; I don’t like to be the center of that attention, but I do like some kind of acknowledgment on the date. It’s a very tricky medium to try to navigate. So, because my birthday is right before Walpurgisnacht, for several years running, I conspired to have all of our Walpurgisnacht rituals fall on my birthday so that I could draw attention to myself, but, by default, it would not be about me. *Simone chuckles* It was not my birthday party; it was just a party that we happen to be having on my birthday *chuckling* that we would have had anyway, but, nevertheless, unfortunately, the- because of the way the calendar works, that doesn’t work every year, but for about two or three years *Simone chuckles* there in a row, I managed to nail it.

Simone 6:11
Your birthday is, what, nine days after mine? Something like that?

Daniel 6:41
Right there; yeah.

Simone 6:42
Yeah. I’m an Aries; you’re a Taurus. I think no one will be surprised by that. Yeah, I have the same kind of attitude where it’s, like, I don’t- I am not an ‘it’s my birthday month’ kind of gal. [I am heyyyy] I am a ‘hey, you want to get some dinner? It’s my birthday,’ kind of gal. Just, kind of, low key but also say nice things to me and give me a present.

Simone 6:45
I’m, uh, ‘oh, my birthday totally doesn’t matter and I don’t care anything about it until about, I don’t know, like, four hours before my birthday is over, and then I realize I haven’t done anything and I cry.’ *laughs* Because I mad-

Simone 7:24
Awww.

Tabitha 7:24
-because I didn’t do anything for it. So, which is why I’m glad that, that- Daniel knows that I have this, sort of, proclivity and helps me by planning things for my birthday. *chuckles*

Daniel 7:35
For example, this year, we spent Tabitha’s birthday at the DEVIL-ish Little Things Museum in Vancouver, Washington. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, stop by there; we had a great time and- [it does look really cute]

Tabitha 7:43
*groaning* It was so much fun!

Daniel 7:44
-I am drinking tea out of the satyr cup that I bought at the gift shop, at the gift shop right now.

Simone 7:49
Yeah, the DEVIL-ish Little Things Museum is an account that I found on Instagram- we’ll post the link in the show notes- but it is a museum dedicated to, like, tchotchkes with the Devil on it. I don’t believe the person who runs it is of any sort of particular religious affiliation, so they just have, like, postcards from, you know, the 19th century with the Devil on it and, like, matchbooks and little, you know, ceramics, and, I mean, what did you guys see when you were there?

Tabitha 8:26
Lots of ceramics, lots of ashtrays, and matchstick holders, and that sort of thing. Like, what’s cool about that Devil imagery, especially the stuff that she collects, is that it’s very much that, like, ‘oh, the Devil made me do it’ kind of stuff so it’s a lot of, like, vise, but in a gentle kind of a way, not treating it as something that you should be super ashamed of, but, like, you know, it’s there, so like smoking, drinking, gambling, that sort of thing.

Daniel 8:55
Well, I’ll tell you what, we did ask the Patreon backers whether they wanted us to do a birthday show which would be on-brand for our program. Unfortunately, that one didn’t do great in the voting; people wanted episodes like the one you’re about to hear instead, but I still suspect we’ll revisit this topic again in the future and so we will have more occasions to plumb the significance of our particular days.

Simone 9:20
Yeah, I mean, as Anton LaVey said, the most important holidays are Walpurgisnacht, Halloween, and one’s own birthday, and while we don’t do everything that LaVey says that we should do, this one seems like it fits. This one is still fun. So, we’re just really into celebrating ourselves. I mean, we’ve talked about Pazuzu’s Blessings enough, which is sort of, like, a group celebration of everyone, but it is nice to have a special day to yourself. All right. And, so, perhaps if you neglected to send us a birthday card this year, you can make up for it by leaving a podcast review. Kind of, kind of the same. So, we’ve got a couple new reviews to read. Our first one comes from Geordi93, who says: “My favorite podcast! I’m late to the game and still catching up on old episodes, but I absolutely love this podcast. It’s the perfect mix of informative and funny and always pleasant to listen to.” Well, thank you, Geordi93.

Tabitha 10:21
Yay!

Simone 10:22
You’re not late to the game; you show up exactly on time.

Tabitha 10:26
Yep, you’re just on time.

Simone 10:27
What’s it, what do they say in Lord of the Rings? ‘A wizard is never late. A wizard always arrives exactly when he means to.’

Tabitha 10:32
Yes.

Simone 10:33
It’s that kind of thing.

Tabitha 10:34
Yeah.

Daniel 10:35
So Geordi is a wizard, is my takeaway from this?

Simone 10:39
Could be.

Daniel 10:40
This would be a really weird way to get your Hogwarts letter.

Simone 10:43
Yeah, through Apple iTunes podcast reviews. You find it, like, fuckin’ six years too late. You can’t go to- well, does anyone want to go to Hogwarts anymore? I feel like we are, kind of, collectively, over it. [look, JKR is a fuckin’ TERF and I hate her, but…I’m still a Gryffindor!]

Tabitha 10:57
Yeah. *groaning noise* No.

Simone 10:58
So.

Tabitha 10:58
Uh uh.

Daniel 10:58
I mean, I didn’t really want to go there in the first place just because, like- I don’t know, that place needs- what’s, what’s the equivalent of OSHA for students? It needs, it needs a firmer regulatory hand, *chuckles* you know?

Simone 11:12
Yeah; I’m also a little concerned about, like- did they learn math? [I’ll charm a calculator; fuck off!] *Daniel laughs* Like- you know, math is not my favorite subject-

Tabitha 11:21
Wizard’s math.

Simone 11:22
-but I feel like it’s pretty useful.

Tabitha 11:23
They have Wizard Math.

Simone 11:24
Yeah, they always have wizard shit; like, their wizard science is potions. Well- do you still need to learn, like, physics?

Tabitha 11:29
Fractions?!

Simone 11:30
Normal chemistry? Yeah, I don’t know.

Tabitha 11:33
I’ll go if I don’t have to do fractions. *giggles*

Simone 11:36
I feel like Hogwarts is not an accredited place of learning. Also, students die a lot. [*sob screaming* leave hogwarts alone!]

Tabitha 11:42
Oh, it’s like a charter school! *laughter*

Daniel 11:46
See, there is a, like, Harry Potter knockoff series about where it, what- it’s, like, for college-aged kids; that makes a little more sense. That’s when you’re, like, like, that’s, that’s more of, like, the specialty career training phase of your life where it feels like magic.

Simone 12:04
Vocational.

Daniel 12:04
Yeah, it makes more sense. *chuckles*

Simone 12:07
Is that The Magicians on Sci-Fi Channel?

Daniel 12:09
I haven’t watched the show; I read one of the books. But, yeah, that’s what I had in mind.

Simone 12:12
Okay, I watched one of the episodes. It was all right.

Tabitha 12:15
My mom watched that whole series. I don’t know much about it other than the fact that there’s this weird squeaky noise in it that is supposed to be a significant- like, signifier of something, and it drove me crazy *giggling* because I would hear the TV and hear the noise and be, like, *groaning* ‘fucking magicians is on!’

Daniel 12:18
Is this, sort of, like, when I watched the Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time and during the scenes set outdoors at the school, there’s always cicadas chirping, which, I guess, is a very common thing to hear at that time of year in Japan, but up- you’re, like, ‘the fuck is wrong with my speakers? Why?’ *Simone chuckles* It took me, it took me an episode or two to figure out that it was always during those scenes and then later to place what was there, but yeah, it’s, it was just this, this weird, mysterious bed spring noise that was driving me nuts! *Tabitha laughs* Anyway, that- we went far afield with that one; *chuckling* thank you very much Shorty93. *Tabitha laughs again*

Simone 13:10
All right, our next one comes from Michael Clew; how’s it goin’? He says, “I only listened to three podcasts, but BMA is my favorite. The hosts are fun, funny, smart, and make even the smallest of conversations fun. Even when talking about the Bible, or history, or Greece, *Tabitha giggles* this show is fun and the first thing I look for on Spotify every other week. I’ve been a loner all my life, a Satanist for just a few years. I got into Satanism through being an atheist, a metalhead, and studying everything I can. I’ve been a listener of BMA for about a year now and I’m always waiting for the next episode.”

Tabitha 13:46
Aww, thanks, Michael.

Simone 13:48
I’m kinda interested to know what the other two are, that you listen to- the other two podcasts.

Tabitha 13:52
I bet they’re about Greece.

Simone 13:53
And, also, Greece! *Tabitha giggles*

Tabitha 13:59
*giggling* That will never stop being funny.

Daniel 14:01
Why are you doing this to me? *chuckles*

Tabitha 14:03
You deserve it. *giggles*

Simone 14:04
Yeah. You’ll never live this one down, Daniel. *Tabitha cackles*

Daniel 14:07
You know, the people, people listen to the show out of order; a lot of them have no idea what we’re on about.

Simone 14:13
I don’t remember what episode it was.

Tabitha 14:15
I feel like we can have one joke. Can we have one, like, inside joke? *giggles*

Simone 14:20
We have, we have plenty of inside jokes because we have: ‘I have two points.’

Tabitha 14:25
Oh, I guess there’s Stinky Tony, too.

Simone 14:27
Stinky Tony. I’m sure our listeners can let us know about the other ones. Like, if there was a BMA drinking game, what would the rules be? Like, don’t- I saw someone say, like, we- that we say ‘cathartic’ too much, so maybe *don’t* put that one in there because you’ll probably get alcohol poisoning.

Tabitha 14:47
I stopped saying it as much because of that. *chuckles*

Daniel 14:51
I don’t remember hearing that criticism. It might be true, but I don’t really remember that one coming up very often. Certainly, if it has, it’s been a while.

Simone 15:00
Mostly in context of talking about ritual, and it wasn’t necessarily a criticism; it was just more of an observation. Anywho, thank you to Michael and Geordi for leaving those reviews. We really appreciate the time that anyone takes to, to leave us some feedback like that. And, something else that we appreciate are the folks who are contributing to our Patreon! Our Patreon is the sole means by which we, you know, finance this show and also some of the works of Satanic Bay Area, so we have some new contributors to thank. First, we have Lyra Spellman, then Nina Hellwitch, FreeThinker215, Kisa, and PA2.

Tabitha 15:40
Thank youuu!

Daniel 15:42
And, when you back the Patreon, you don’t just get a ‘thank you,’ you also get certain bonuses like being able to decide what future episodes are going to be about. The reason why you’re listening to this show right now is because the Patreon backers voted for it. Now, I was a little less specific when putting the poll together. I talked- I said this was an episode going to be about religious superstitions, about blood, and about menstruation, specifically. I was hedging there because I wasn’t really sure whether I’d find enough good menstrual-specific material to fill out an entire episode, but you know what? We did. And, here we are. All because, you, the Patreon backers- I don’t want to say demanded it, but you definitely supported it.

Simone 16:22
I just feel, like, I want to do like a PBS, like, *imitating that PBS advert voice, i call it a secretary voice* ‘thanks to listeners like you, we’re bringing you exclusive programming like…*starts laughing* how menstruation is tied to the Devil!’

Tabitha 16:32
*chuckling* I was gonna be, like, *metal roaring that divulges into laughing*

Simone 16:34
I just imagine, like, one of those, like, nice, kind of, like, older women in, kind of, like, a flowy purple kaftan, on your local PBS affiliate with her, sort of, slightly out of date but made an attempt [with] their hairstyle, some chunky jewelry, maybe some glasses, maybe not, but then they’re just, like, *secretary voice* ‘and now we bring you *metal scary voice* Satannn!’

Daniel 17:02
I’m laughing- like, like, like, you’re joking, but that would make a great PBS special. I also find it very interesting that that’s the image you have of PBS. Whereas, I think, like, PBS has a great YouTube channel; they have a very, very savvy presentation there. Emily Zarka has an excellent folklore show, and I would love to have her on our show one of these days. Maybe we should try to find a pitch for that, but I guess for most people, the PBS image is, perhaps, a few decades in arrears *laughing* of what I’m talking about now.

Simone 17:32
Well, when I think about PBS programming, like, I think about what I could watch on, like, my various apps these days and skip the televised, you know, broadcast version of PBS, but when I was a kid, you’d maybe turn on PBS to see, like, the end of a Fleetwood Mac Live in Concert thing, and then it would slide into some Ken Burns documentary, and in between would be the be-kaftaned older woman who would make the plea for you to call now with your donation so you can get the six CD set of Tower of Power, or whatever the fuck.

Daniel 18:09
*chuckling* Now I’m picturing, like, a Ken Burns war documentary, except it’s about the War in Heaven and you get these *Simone gasps* very dramatic black and white-

Simone 18:17
Ohhhhh!

Daniel 18:18
-black and white photos. These fallen angels-

Simone 18:21
Ohhhh!

Daniel 18:21
-have very dramatic and grave expressions as you pan over the stills.

Simone 18:24
Ohhhhh, I love that idea so much! You know, so, the show Community had its heyday. I didn’t finish watching the show because it, like, went to Yahoo for some reason, [it did get kind of weird; the earlier seasons are better] but one of the things I liked about that show was they would do these parody episodes that were absolutely, perfectly observed. There was an episode where they ate a Law and Order episode, and I used to just be obsessed with that show, and they got it down to the camera movements. Like, it was perfect, and they did one episode that was, like, a take on Ken Burns’s Civil War, but it was the students having a pillow fight with each other, [honestly one of the best episodes] and it was so good and now, now, now I have ideas for more projects that I just don’t have time for, but someone out there does.

Tabitha 18:25
Story my life.

Simone 18:30
You know, I only ever watch, I only ever watched one episode of Community and that was because somebody specifically recommended the D&D episode to me-

Simone 19:22
Oh yeah, mmhmm.

Daniel 19:23
-been a lot of sitcoms previously that had done, like, jokes about D&D, but it was, it was very obvious they were by people who’d never played the game.

Simone 19:29
Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel 19:29
Somebody told me this one is pretty spot on and I sat down and watched it. I’m, like, ‘yes. This is pretty much exactly what playing D&D is like,’ *Simone laughs* except Chevy Chase is not usually being a dick at your game, although if he was, you know, that would, at least, be a story for later, so that was great television. Speaking of which, it has been a very long time since we did a D&D episode of this show and I am always trying to come up with a topic, a- more specific topics so that we can revisit that because that was a very early episode for us, so something to think about.

Simone 19:57
You know, didn’t they recently change some of the structures to release some of the fantasy race stereotypes? You know what I’m saying?

Daniel 20:08
Yeah, there has been some chatter, but I haven’t followed it very closely. I, I- but, but, yeah, there was a lot of talk from the current developers about toning down the, the traditional D&D conventions of certain monsters always behaving in certain ways and, like, stigmatizing certain kinds of creatures and societies. There is some baggage that that game inherited from say, like, the, the 20th-century fantasy sources it was based on that is not necessarily great.

Simone 20:42
Well, you know, because we talk about, you know, old, like, old D&D, you know, Satanic Panic era and before D&D, but what is the modern Satanist playing on their tabletops these days? What’s the modern D&D like?

Daniel 21:00
That’s not a bad idea. It also occurs to me that just, like, the specific topic of demons and devils in D&D, which are separate things in the, in the game, it’s, like, that’s, that was a roller coaster over the, over the 50, almost 50-year history of this game. Like, there have been a lot of ins, and, outs and, controversies over how those creatures are depicted and what they mean, so maybe that is something worth examining one of these days. Anyway, food for thought.

Simone 21:27
Okay, well, we’re going to take a break, find our dice, roll for initiative, and then we’re gonna come back with the news.

Black Mass Appeal 21:38
*interlude music plays*

NEWS

Tabitha 21:48
*old-timey breaking news doots*

Simone 21:50
And, those doots mean it’s time for the news! Today, we are reading from SFGate, “A Little-known Satanic Rally, held in [80s] San Francisco, Foretold 2021’s Obsession with Conspiracy.” “The Church of Satan’s last gasp in the mainstream arrived in San Francisco on August 8, 1988-” Woo, just went right for it! *chuckles* I appreciate it. “Signs plastered outside of the Strand Theater in San Francisco…branded the sold-out, tightly packed show as ‘A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief,’ ‘A Nightmare of TERROR!,’ and ‘An Evening of Apocalyptic Delight!’…The most explicit goal of the rally- an experimental music concert-slash-Satanists congregation-slash-promotional event- was to commemorate, nay, celebrate the murders of actress Sharon Tate, LA power couple Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, and three others nineteen years prior by the [Charles] Manson family. [sweet Satan, what assholes] In conjunction with the rally was the premiere of a film about Manson. To the collective, the killing was a symbolic end of the Summer of Love- the end of free love and hippie culture and a return to order, stratification and the emergence of their power. It was an extension of not just Manson’s will, but of the Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey’s legacy. Held in the throes of the Satanic Panic, amid fears of secret Satanists embedding themselves in schools and day cares abusing and sacrificing children in the name of the [Devil], the rally seemingly exploited these worries…’For us, the [60s] were a decade of corruption, a final culmination of Judeo-Christian rottenness,’ says [musician Boyd] Rice, who at the time was based out of San Francisco. ‘The [60s] were murdered, but its vestiges remained. We must annihilate its traces, branch and root, we must purge them from our life, and purge them from life itself. This is our sacred duty.’…This rally was repetitive, ritualized, the culmination of years of ‘youth rallies’ staged throughout California by [Church of Satan’s Nick] Schreck and Radio Werewolf, the collective named after the propaganda outlet made by Joseph Goebbels towards the end of World War II. Texas State religious studies professor Joseph Laycock-” Friend of the show. “-told SFGate that this ‘flirtation’ with Nazism was engineered to rile up as many people as possible regardless of political ideology or religious beliefs. ‘This experiment with adopting fascist tropes and iconography to make Satanism seem scary and provocative again,’ he told SFGate. The Nazi dog whistles are there: the Wolfsangel symbol, an ancient German insignia appropriated by the Nazis and then American neo-Nazi groups, printed on the flags; the rally was held on [8-8-88], an overt deployment of 88- or ‘Heil Hitler’ among neo-Nazis. These exaltations of Nazism and Masonite ideologies, Laycock explained, was likely an attempt to elevate the Church of Satan to the pantheon of these two hate movements in the public hive mind…When asked by an interviewer about the rally’s evocations of Nazi Germany, Rice replied, ‘What appeals to us about the SS or the Nazis and what we feel we have in common with its order, bringing things back to order.’ He went so far as to liken Hitler to an ‘occultist trying to bring about a pagan revival.'” [holy shit, fuck COS, just another reason to hate them!] Uhhh, fuck these guys. That’s what I got to say about that.

Tabitha 25:35
What the fuck?! Ser- like, fucking seriously? Like, I didn’t think it could get worse.

Simone 25:43
Now, of course, this is a, you know, truncated version; the article is much longer and pretty interesting. So, we’ll be linking to that in the show notes and you should check it out.

Daniel 25:53
Now, the reason why this SFGate writer is bringing this topic up now is because the piece goes on to suggest that the sort of reaction that the Church of Satan was trying to procure for themselves at the time was actually not that dissimilar to the conspiracy panic that we’re actually seeing now. It was kind of an attempt to touch those nerves, to provoke that response intentionally, and then, I guess, almost, as pointed out here, almost, you could call it, a satire of the Satanic Panic in those days. One thing that I should mention here, is Nick Schreck, who is the husband of Zeena LaVey Schreck, and was, was the frontman for Radio Werewolf there was in a weird position because I do not believe he was ever technically a member of the Church of Satan, but because he was the husband of Zeena as she served as spokesperson, and he would often make media appearances with her, he was a, kind of, a de facto spokesperson for them as well, even though he was never actually, I believe, appointed to that, to that job. Which is not helpful because he would often say dumbass things that made the situation worse. Case in point: footage from this rally appeared on the infamous Geraldo special in what was that? 88? So, *chuckles* just always making things worse was Nick at the time it seemed, so really, really odd spot that he found himself in.

Tabitha 27:21
Can I just say one thing?

Daniel 27:23
Yes.

Tabitha 27:23
*Shrek voice* Donkay!

Daniel 27:24
*laughing* What?

Tabitha 27:26
*laughing* His last name’s Shrek!

Daniel 27:28
Oh!

Simone 27:28
Oh, my god! Oh!

Tabitha 27:30
*laughing so hard she snorts*

Simone 27:32
Well, I mean, I guess that’s about the level of seriousness that he deserves.

Tabitha 27:36
*Shreck voice* Donkay.

Daniel 27:37
You know, if you’ve ever seen a picture of this dude, especially in the 80s, he looks like if you took Herman Munster and Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins and you put them in that teleporter pod from The Fly-

Simone 27:50
*laughing* What the fuck?

Daniel 27:51
-he’s what would, he’s what would come out the other end. *laughs* Sorry, just, you know, the Shrek thing, you know, put my mind on it. *Simone laughs* Anyway, sorry. Where were we? Oh, yeah, this weird Nazi rally that the Church of Satan held in San Francisco in 1988 for seemingly no reason. The fuck is up with that? It’s strange; they are *very* defensive about decrying any sort of association with that vibe today, but all you have to do is look at- it’s, like, so they were just put, they were putting it right out there trying to make it as unambiguous as possible just a generation ago.

Simone 28:27
I mean, we see this again later, like, thinking about Marilyn Manson had some Nazi imagery in his *fake fancy art voice, definitely is doing finger quotes* performance art and it’s so fucking tired and juvenile to me to try and be, like, an edgelord, like, ‘Oh, I’m, I’m just pretending to be a Nazi. I’m just trying to shock people with Nazi associations.’ And it’s, like, so what else you got? You got the shock. Great. What the fuck else you got? What are you doing here? What’s your message? Like, and the fact that they, generally, don’t have one, it just leaves it empty and leaves it open to being interpreted as, ‘well then, then you are supporting the Nazi message; you got, you got nothing else for me,’ and it’s so fucking stupid, and I hate it, and I don’t- I’m not trying to be, like, humorless here, but I don’t think this shit’s funny. So, I’m just, I’m not here for this.

Tabitha 29:31
It’s not even shocking anymore. Like, I don’t know-

Simone 29:35
It’s tired.

Tabitha 29:35
-like, yeah, it’s very tired, and I feel like it was tired back then. Maybe it wasn’t; I mean, I guess people were really into that kind of stuff. [historian here: Nazism, at least in San Francisco, in the 80s was definitely still something that people talked about and were concerned about resurfacing as a repeat of WWII. Just look at leather daddies and people were all over those guys about whether or not they were Nazis]

Simone 29:47
I mean, ’88, I was five, so I don’t really know.

Tabitha 29:48
I’m sorry. I was thinking of, like, Marilyn Manson. Like-

Simone 29:49
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Tabitha 29:46
-people were really into that sort of thing at the time. But, yeah, I just- *sighs* it’s never served me any. I don’t, I don’t feel like we need to dip into such horrifying ideologies to get a rise out of people. [true dat]

Daniel 30:03
He kind of suggests that your Satanism aesthetic is perhaps failing you if you feel that you have to find something more horrifying to provoke people with, so there’s that. Two things come to mind. One, is, over the last year and a half, I have *frequently* alluded to Ruben van Luijk’s book Children of Lucifer- great read- and he proposed a very interesting hypothesis about old Anton LaVey during the 80s. He said that LaVey liked to appeal to this, sort of, angry, dissident, white supremacist, youth subculture, not necessarily because he was a Nazi, but because he perceived those young men as, sort of, spiritually impoverished and hungry and looking for identity, and he thought, perhaps, he could lure them away from the perceived relative shallowness of that subculture into, what he would characterize, as the more, as the deeper profundity of his culture instead. [that’s some cult shit right there, I tell ya what.] At the same time, van Luijk points out that it is not a coincidence that he was appealing to groups that shared the same sorts of far and extreme right politics that he himself had been preaching for many decades, and as we know from his later books, like Satan Speaks and The Devil’s Notebook, [in] which he became even more aggressively ingrained in as he aged and as he, sort of, left that 60s mindset behind, during which he was, actually, comparably a little bit more mellow. So, that is a, surprisingly, nuanced and insightful probing of his motivations of at the time and that of the institution to which he was, although no longer the outgoing public face, is still the head of. Which brings me to an interesting question of: I find it very fascinating that the Church of Satan would *never* do this today. They would *never* in a million- they would come down on this so hard, it will leave a crater where the Strand Theater is. By the way, the Strand Theater, these days, is a playhouse; very beautiful building. And, I wonder why that is because, you’ll remember, a big part of their ethos is they are supposed to be completely invincible to public disapproval and the opinions of the little people, so why is it that they’re- what changes their culture? Maybe, *chuckling* it’s just that all of the Nazis left; for example, you know, people like Zeena and Boyd Rice are no longer part of the Church of Satan. Zeena, also, by the way, as she, as she got older, said, ‘Yeah, this was a mistake.’ She’s- it’s not a period of her life she’s proud of-

Simone 32:26
Yeah, no shit.

Daniel 32:26
-for a variety of reasons, so better late than never, I guess. That’s one possibility. However, I strongly suspect that no matter what the doctrine is, that the influences of political correctness, as they would call it, are working just as steadily on this institution, for whatever degree we can call it an institution in this day and age, as on anybody else, regardless of how vociferously they would deny that, and I think we can see the evidence of that right here. Because, again, not only would they never do this today, they like- this is not a reference that usually- they bury this pretty deep. Which is not to say that I do not think there are probably still some latent white supremacists and latent white supremacy within, you know, that particular culture. In fact, it’s- probably don’t have to dig very hard to find it. Again, it’s just, it’s kind of right there in The Satanic Bible; the sources for it, anyway. But, nevertheless, again, I still feel like, at the very least, the PR approach is radically different than once it was. Really not all that long ago, so that is intriguing.

Simone 33:26
Yeah, just- even if they try and distance themselves from it later and say it was just for shock value, or it’s just, like, an aesthetic, or whatever, and they don’t actually support Nazi thought, but you put Nazi shit out there and you’re gonna attract Nazis! So, I hope no one was shocked when, you know, you go to your next- well, I don’t fucking know – your next grotto *definitely doing finger quotes* shindig, or whatever, and there’s a bunch of fucking Nazis there, and you’re, like, *in dumb fancy voice* ‘Oh, well, how did we get all these Nazis? Maybe it’s a Nazi rally, we put on? Hmm.’

Daniel 34:00
You know, I can’t remember what the name of their annual event is slash was, but that is an interesting point of the argument that it’s all for shock value. It’s, like, well, it’s definitely not any less shocking today. In fact, it would be even more so if you did it now, so again, it is telling that nobody’s doing it now. Not that I’m complaining that they’re not, but, again, when trying to suss out why *chuckles* these approaches changed and are different, you know, I don’t know. Again, it’s, it’s telling. I guess this does explain one thing, which is, I never really understood, there are certain older Satanists who had this weird preoccupation with Charles Manson, and I just did not get it. I mean, a lot of people have [a] preoccupation with Charles Manson. You know, it’s, it’s not necessary- you know, it’s a big touchstone in Boomer, Baby Boomer history, and then, of course, like, people dig true crime, but there was always something else going on there. Here, I guess, this idea of Manson as the antithesis of the 60s flower child movement; that sort of makes sense. Also, there was an interesting conversation was going on in a Satanic Temple religious- what’s the word I’m looking for? Service! Service, the other day we’re talking about how some people apparently, like, championed Manson as, like, a weird- they felt that the way that he had been vilified as this, sort of, supernatural super villain who had this evil mind control power over people was exaggerated and stupid, and so they would end up into, kind of, became partisans of his, but for the purposes of downplaying that imagery, and I thought to myself, I’ve actually never heard anybody talk about that before. The person, by the way, talking about this felt that that was foolish approach, but, nevertheless, it was, at least, one that had never been brought up before and, at least, explained, again, some people’s preoccupation with that, so that at least was a little bit of insight. Still, I don’t know. Ooof, this one. What, what can you even say about it?

Tabitha 35:51
Stinky! PU!

Simone 35:53
Yeah, throw it out! LaVey may not have been there, I’m assuming, but it still stinks!

Daniel 35:59
Of Tony.

Simone 36:00
And in general.

Tabitha 36:01
And of, like, Nazi cheese-

Simone 36:04
Ugh.

Tabitha 36:04
-which I’m sure is a thing.

Simone 36:06
Well, I’m just gonna be like Jay Sherman from The Critic and say, ‘It stinks!’

Daniel 36:10
Nazism stinks; you heard it here first, people. *laughter*

Simone 36:14
Okay, well, for other profundities, please stick around for our main topic. Until then, we’re gonna go ahead and we’re going to take a break.

Black Mass Appeal 36:36
*interlude music plays*

MAIN TOPIC

Simone 36:53
Ever since we were old enough to learn about the birds and the…Beelzebubs, most people have accepted monthly menstruation as a fact of life, but when it comes to religion, superstition, and folklore, a lot of folks throughout history have been seeing red about these bodily basics. To help us examine the turgid taboos and devilish dynamics that malign menstruation, we’re joined by Dana Marlowe, CEO and founder of I Support the Girls. Dana, thanks for joining us on Black Mass Appeal.

Dana 37:24
Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here today.

Simone 37:27
Well, just for our listeners who may not be familiar with the organization, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and I Support the Girls?

Dana 37:34
Sure. So, my name is Dana Marlowe and my pronouns are she/her. I’m based in the Washington DC area. And, six years ago, after exercising and changing some of my eating habits, I wound up losing 35 pounds, and I know that that’s not where you thought this story was necessarily going, but after that kind of weight loss, my body changed shape and I needed some new clothing, as well as new bras, and I went shopping at a store for some new bras and while I was there, I asked this perfectly lovely sales associate- stranger to me- what I could do with my perfectly good, but no longer fitting me, bras. And, what she said, basically changed the course of my life and led me here today to chat with Black Mass Appeal, and what she said was four words. She said, “homeless women need bras.”

Simone 38:39
Yep, mmhmm.

Dana 38:40
And, I’m gonna bring us over to periods in just a second, *chuckles* I promise, but with the ‘homeless women need bras,’ and I- it made me realize I’d never thought about that and I’m somebody who donates a fair amount of products, and upcycles, and shares items all the time, but I had never opened up my bra drawer- and I am a person who chooses to wear bras, sometimes- and I never donated them, and so, she kind of opened my eyes that day. I got home and looked online for a homeless shelter near me and the first one I called in Washington DC, when I offered them, you know, 16 perfectly good sports bras and regular bras, they said, ‘How soon can you bring them here? We never have bras and we need them desperately.’

Simone 39:28
Wow.

Dana 39:29
Yeah. And, I said, ‘Well, I don’t know what I don’t know, so what else do you all need? Because if I can bring you some bras, I’m happy to contribute in another way.’ And, the guy on the other end of the line said, ‘Well, if you’re willing, maxi pads and tampons,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely.’ He said, ‘They’re not covered by food stamps; they’re not even a line item on our budget. We can’t afford them. Nobody donates them. And, we have a massive population of our clients who menstruate, so if you’re willing, that would be great.’ So, I put it out on my Facebook page and just, kind of, informed folks that I was going to be doing this collection drive of new and gently used bras, and sealed menstrual hygiene products, and would donate them two weeks later. So, this was July of 2015. So, basically, that means you should never trust me on projects and deadlines. *laugher* Because, here we are, right, six years later, and, originally- again, when I decided that- people were calling it ‘Dana’s Bra Project,’ but I decided it needed a little bit of a- I needed to move it off of my Facebook page; it wasn’t about me, and all these folks were generously donating products and it needed another, catchier name, so I went with the double entendre with support, ‘I Support the Girls.’ And, just for folks to know, we also support an enormous amount of trans and non-binary communities, as well, [yesss, women aren’t the only people who menstrate!] but when this was originally starting, this is just, kind of, the historical elements of six years ago. So, I created the Facebook page for I Support the Girls because we were supporting women and girls, and a lot of bras, as well as menstrual products, and the first donation was over 1000 bras and over 7100 menstrual products; pads, tampons, liners, and menstrual cups. [snaps for dana!]

Daniel 41:30
Now, when people heard about this project, what is their response to it? [Did] they have the same reaction as you of- was, which was, ‘I don’t know what I don’t know,’ which is a great way to put it, because you mentioned prior to this starting recording that you had worked with some Satanist groups who do administration drives across the country and one of the big points that they often raise is: why menstruation? Because this is a thing that is overlooked; it is, you know, millions of people need these basic necessities but we don’t treat them as basic necessities. Do you find that when the topic comes up, people have that same response? They say, ‘Oh, I never thought about that?’

Dana 42:04
Completely.

Daniel 42:05
Mmhmm.

Dana 42:05
Completely. Yeah, so it still surprises me, after six years, how frequently people are genuinely and earnestly shocked when we talk about how in-demand period products are and how hard they are to come by for various populations of folks. And, yeah, it just kind of snowballed; so, my, my 16 bras then ultimately became- I started a nonprofit and my inbox had exploded, the media was very kind and has been very kind to us and our topic, and we’ve just worked on really, like, advocacy and raising awareness. But, my 16 bras, is now- we’ve donated over 15.1 million products. [snapsssss]

Tabitha 42:59
Woahhhh.

Dana 43:00
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, whoahhh! I mean-

Tabitha 43:03
Woahhhh! *laughs* That’s amazing!

Dana 43:05
Yeah, 15 million products. And, it was, like- you know, if I could describe what my basement and my house look like for months and months of- my dining room was filled with, like, maxi pad mountains and my kids- they were much younger than- were, like, stacking the square packaging of tampon boxes like towers, like Lego sets. Like, as high as they could. And, bras were, just, everywhere in my house. We’ve grown a lot and became an official nonprofit, and have a board of directors, and what we realized is the problem around period poverty is everywhere. It’s not just in my area here, or in the Bay Area, or in any select cities; it truly is everywhere. And, we now have 59 affiliates, which are like chapters, if you will, from, like, I Support the Girls Dallas to I Support the Girls Chicago to I Support the Girls, you know, Orlando, and we’re International and we have I Support the Girls in the Philippines, Pakistan, Australia, Germany, and Canada, as well as all over the US, so we’ve grown and we do an enormous amount when it comes to just talking about periods to break taboos to, like, try and crush the stigma around menstruation since half the population will have, does have, or has had a period.

Daniel 44:37
Taboos and stigma. Well, that is definitely something we’re going to be talking about today. *chuckles*

Simone 44:43
Yes, and so-

Dana 44:44
I’m here for it.

Simone 44:46
Well, before we dive in, just a quick disclaimer, a content warning for our listeners. You know, some of the resources that we use do have gendered language, as has already been recognized. We know that more than women menstruate. There are, you know, trans folk, non-binary folk, just generally, people who menstruate. And, then, also, some of our sources will- well, you’ll, you’ll see- have a smack of misogyny and, also, anti-Semitism, so, you know, please just be aware that that might be coming down the pipe with some of our resources, here.

Daniel 45:25
Weird how that last one keeps sneaking in whenever we’re talking about-

Simone 45:27
I know.

Daniel 45:27
-historical beliefs about the Devil. Also, I guess I should mention upfront- so, this particular episode was my idea, although it was voted for by our backers on Patreon- thank you very much to all those Patreon unfaithful listeners out there- and the reason why I proposed this in the first place is because, you know, I think longtime listeners know *laughs* my favorite episodes are the ones where I just get to talk about the weird shit that otherwise I can only work into conversations with Tabitha, who’s very patient with me. But, if you go back to say, Episode 82, where we talked about the history of witchcraft or you go back to the Highgate episode, those are good examples of episodes with lots of weird stuff. Over the years of doing this program, I’ve noticed that there is a certain theme that sometimes emerges with the weird stuff. It’s not the most common theme, but you definitely notice it, and you definitely remember it, and after a while, I realized we could do an entire show about this. Which, from there, it was almost inevitable that I would say, ‘we should do an entire show about this,’ and enough other people that agreed with me, that here we are. So, on a scale of one to ten, what’s the- Simone, Tabitha, what do you think’s the weirdest show we’ve previously done? What would be the ten? Anything come to mind?

Tabitha 45:28
Hmmm.

Simone 46:46
That is a good question. I don’t know. I feel like our show takes topics that seem kind of mundane and dives in more deeply- because I’m thinking about our goats episode. Like, we did a whole episode on, on cute little goats *chuckles* and why people associate them with the Devil. So, again, I think this is, kind of, like, actually, it’s, it’s a mundane thing, menstruation. I mean, a lot of people do it literally every day, and yet, if you go further into history, there’s, like, a weird history to it, so I kind of think that any one of our topics could have gone this way. So, I wasn’t really surprised when this topic was, was brought up as a possibility.

Daniel 47:35
So-

Simone 47:35
I’m, like, ‘yeah, all that tracks.’

Daniel 47:37
I guess- so in that sense, if goats were, like, a five or a six on how weird the topic is and our human sacrifice episode *chuckles* was, like, a nine, this is gonna be at least a nine. Just, just gonna put that out there. *chuckles*

Tabitha 47:50
Oh, goodie!

Simone 47:50
That sounds fair. Alright, well, let’s get into the weird. So, we have a bunch of resources to get through. Why don’t we go ahead and let’s have Tabitha read our first one here.

Tabitha 48:03
*in a dramatic voice* And, here we have, from “The Taboo of Menstruation” by Janie Hampton from Aeon: “The ancient Greeks believed that if a girl’s menarche [Tab pronounces it ‘man-arch’]-“, [Men-arch]? *giggles*

Simone 48:15
[prounounces it menarsh; it’s spelled menarche] [continues but I can’t make out what she’s saying]

Tabitha 48:18
Oh, I really like that. I’ve never heard that before and I’m a big fan of it.

Simone 48:21
It’s the first onset of somebody’s menstruating.

Tabitha 48:26
Ohhhhh, okay. And, yeah.”The ancient Greeks believed that if a girl’s menarche was late, blood would accumulate around her heart, and her uterus would wander around her body.” Fair enough. *laughs*

Simone 48:40
Ok.

Tabitha 48:40
*laughing* Fair enough. “This could produce erratic behavior, from violent swearing to suicidal depression. Right into the 20th century, any inappropriate behavior or mental health in women was termed hysteria, after the Greek word for ‘uterus.’ Pliny the Elder, who died in 79CE, warned: ‘If a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks around a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin, will fall from the ears of corn…bees will forsake their hives if touched by a menstruous woman…linen boiling in the cauldron will turn black, the edge of the razor will become blunted.’ [metal] But then he also believed that drinking the blood of a gladiator would cure epilepsy…In medieval times, it was believed that if a man’s penis touched menstrual blood, it would burn up, [sounds like a you problem, fellas] and any child conceived during menstruation would be possessed by the Devil, deformed or red-haired.” [also metal]

Simone and Tabitha together 49:39
Hey! *laughter*

Simone 49:42
Rude!

Tabitha 49:44
*scoffs* “A woman with a heavy menstrual flow was advised to bind the hair from an animal’s head [onto] a young tree. If this failed, she could drink comfrey or nettle tea, while reciting numerical formulae; or she could find a toad, burn it dry, and put its ashes in a pouch around her waist.” *sighs*

Simone 50:03
That is, there’s a lot going on, a lot going on here.

Daniel 50:07
What, what did I just say? *laughter* About the weirdness? *more laughter and giggling*

Simone 50:12
On the one hand, Pliny the Elder- I’m trying to figure out if Pliny was saying that people who are menstruating are a good pest control? I’m trying to figure if that was a positive spin because, well, then, apparently, bees don’t like it very much. *Tabitha is still giggling* And, also, I- you know, *sighs* if only I had been conceived during menstruation then I wouldn’t have to spend this money on maintaining red hair. That would have been great. Thank you, Mom and Dad. *giggling*

Dana 50:43
I don’t know. I’m, I’m a little bit stuck on the wandering uterus concept. *laughter*

Tabitha 50:50
*laughing* I fucking love it. It’s, like, oh, oh, I think I filled up with blood. *laughter*

Simone 50:55
I’m just more, like, ‘I was at the store, and then my uterus came out, and then wandered into the candy aisle by itself, and I had to go get it. *giggling* There’s a whole thing you know, but- I mean, if my uterus wandered, that’s probably where it would go.

Daniel 51:10
That’s what the tubes are for; they’re like a leash. *Tabitha laughs* I- okay, so we’ll be here all night if we delve into every weird detail, but I’ve got- so, this thing about the wandering uterus; I will say, if I had an organ of any significance wandering around my body like that, I think that would produce some erratic behavior. Yes, that is a reasonable conclusion. The premise is questionable, but the conclusion, I think, is pretty sound. There’s this bit here, ‘if a woman who is menstruating, strips naked, and wanders around a field of wheat;’ go check on her. Like, just, just check-in. That feels like, that feels, like, maybe a little attention- like, maybe, maybe the wheat is not, should not be your first concern in that circumstance; I’m just gonna put that out there.

Dana 51:59
So, is this, is this a bad time to say that that sounded pretty normal to me? *Daniel bursts out laughing* Like, swap out wheat for. like, you know, like a cornfield.

Daniel 52:07
*chuckling* Uh, well-

Simone 52:09
Well, I was, I was just gonna say it sounds like a very fancy, you know, perfume ad with someone’s hands, like, gently grazing the wheat and the naked form just kind of popping in and out of view with some, you know, really cool music over it, so I’m actually, like, into it.

Tabitha 52:25
*in like a new york accent* And bleeding fucking everywhere! *laughter*

Simone 52:28
Yeah! *laughing*

Daniel 52:29
This bit about how a man’s penis would burn up at the touch of menstrual blood; that one would have been easy to test and I guarantee a lot of people did, so I question how widely this myth actually traveled. And, finally, this bit about ‘possessed by the Devil, *chuckles* deformed, or red-haired.’ One of these things is not like the other- what is going on? I, I- we have the same-

Simone 52:50
Well, I’m thinking- I’m pretty much two for three on that one. *Daniel laughs*

Daniel 52:54
I’m saying, like, like, we have the same formula here at the end of the graph, where it’s, like, ‘bind the hair from an animal onto a tree, or drink tea, or burn a toad.’ *Tabitha starts giggling* It’,s like, I- it’s good to have options, I guess.

Tabitha 53:08
Poor toad. That toad didn’t do nothin’ to nobody.

Simone 53:12
Well, so, the point is, is that there are so many bananas myths around menstruation that just seem completely out of left field when, you know, what actually happens is a very, very mundane, biological thing. So, just, just lucky, I guess, to be a menstruator, here.

Tabitha 53:37
Continuing: “In 1878, letters to the British Medical Journal claimed that menstruating women would cause bacon to putrefy…”

Simone 53:46
I would never!

Tabitha 53:48
What do you- I mean, where are you putting the bacon?

Simone 53:51
Good point.

Tabitha 53:52
Also, why did I say that out loud? *fake vomits* Okay. *laughs* “…and in 1916 the medical registrar Sir Raymond Crawford wrote that farmers still believed that menstruating women would prevent milk from turning to butter, or hams to cure. The pediatrician Bela Schick [1977-1967] believed that menstruating woman released plant-destroying substances called ‘menotoxins’ through their skin.” [again, this is all *so metal*] Isn’t that from Star Wars? That- no that’s Medichlorians. *laughs*

Simone 54:24
Midi-chlorians.

Tabitha 54:22
*laughing* “In 1919, he ‘proved’ it by asking women to arrange cut flowers. Sure enough, the flowers arranged by menstruating women died sooner. This claim was repeated in The Lancet in 1974, with the addition [that] a permanent wave would not ‘take’ to a woman’s hair during menstruation. As recently as 1980, I was told by a farmer’s wife in Shropshire that if a menstruating woman touched meat it would go rancid.” [honestly, i *wish* i could do shit like this while menstruating!]

Simone 54:54
Okay, now, *sighs* I am, sadly, reminded of some of the things I’ve seen on social media lately in regards to people who are afraid that vaccinated people will somehow shed disease onto them and then get them sick with the Coronavirus through their…shedded vaccine…germies? Anyway-

Tabitha 55:22
Mmhmm.

Simone 55:22
-about as rational as, as any one of these. Yeah, take any kind of fear of the unknown, any kind of out-group that one other group may want to ostracize, to make these absolutely bizarre, unprovable claims seems to be a common thread.

Daniel 55:43
So, of course, it is interesting that we start with ancient superstitions and move up through well into the 80s. Dana, do you ever run into any oddball menstruation myths in your work today? Because, I’m guessing, unfortunately, they have probably not gone away.

Dana 55:59
Um, you know, people, people chat with me all the time about periods, but as far as them sharing- I mean, these are pretty wackadoodle, guys. Like, this is, like, I mean, *Simone laughs* there’s a scientific study that the flowers died quickly be, from the, their group of women who were menstruating? I, I don’t, I haven’t had, actually, in the six years that everyone and anybody will talk to me about periods, I haven’t had anybody sharing some of *these* myths. I have had lots of other, other ways to say ‘periods,’ so that you don’t have to say the word, or even the word period, actually, so that you don’t have to stay menstruation, and some of those have come out of left field that I haven’t heard of. But, I haven’t heard any, like, meat purification, *Simone laughs* dead flowers, or, like, vermin and beetles falling off ears of corn, so these are, these are all new for me.

Daniel 57:10
Well, that’s a relief. So, I have coveted the opportunity to share this next anecdote on the show for so many years, and, by the way, if you knew me socially around 2017 or 2018, I definitely brought this up if the occasion presented itself. So, here is from a site, here’s from a blog called “Mythological Girls: Jahi” by Devon Allen at Museum of Girls. Museum of Girls [is] the site; “Mythological Girls” is the blog. [the site is actually Girl Museum, COME ON DANIEL GAWD] Devon Allen is the author; there, we’ve diagrammed that citation for you. “Zoroastrianism originated in Iran approximately 3500 years ago, with Ahura Mazda as its central deity…Jahi was believed to be the demonic personification of lasciviousness and debauchery…Both Iranian and Persian texts refer to her as a variation of the words courtesan and libertine, making her out to be a sexual deviant. She was said to encourage men to do evil deeds, whilst also being influential in the defilement of women which was believed to result in their monthly menstruation cycles…Jahi is shown as raising Angra Mainyu-” Longtime listeners know we’ve talked about Angra Mainyu, or Arman, as the sort of Zoroastrian Persian Devil and *possibly* a common root for the later apocalyptic Jewish and Christian Satan character, although academics will argue about that. Nevertheless, [Daniel does quite a bit of paraphrasing here, so I sort of corrected it a bit to actually match the text he’s quoting] “…Jahi is shown [as] raising Angra Mainyu from his slumber…[His] prior battles with Ahura Mazda…[had] sent him [to this slumber]…Angra Mainyu had resisted all prior attempts [to wake him], but he was roused from impotence by [Jahi]…On waking he defiled her with a kiss…[that was] believed to have afflicted Jahi with a monthly menstruation cycle, starting the pattern for women around the world. Together…they set to work on making an evil presence throughout the [world.]” I was *so* fascinated and enamored by this myth when I came on it, I think, by accident, lo those many years ago, and I absolutely loved Jahi and I’m kind of disappointed that there’s not more imagery and myth of her to refer to in terms of what her name means. It’s been translated a lot of different ways. Oftentimes, she is compared to a sex worker, but I’ve come to find out that really, it can also mean, say, an older woman, a witch, really any- a rude or glib woman- really, any woman who is, like, *chuckling* ill-behaved and is disrupting the situation is essentially what Jahi’s name boils down to, and I love it. I love that so much. I am, I am, I am so, so taken with this story, and, of course, naturally, they’re going to try, they’re going to pin this basic bodily function on her and, really, in a way, it seems, like, that is, maybe, the root of this myth is that, that is, is that she is, sort of, the, the personification of the menstrual process. Has anybody else ever heard this story, *chuckling* except when I bring it up because I brought it, brought it up? *laughter*

Simone 59:58
Uh, can’t say that I have. But, this brought to mind the euphemism for menstruation; you know, *definitely doing air quotes* ‘the curse.’ Because, in this story, it seems that it’s a curse upon her as some sort of, you know, punishment for waking him up, and it is always fascinating to hear the mythological, kind of retro, backstories that people would make up to explain biological functions that also position them as curses. Stuff like this, stuff like pain during childbirth in, you know, the Christian tradition. And, don’t get me wrong, menstruating has its downsides. It can suck. A lot. [understatment of the century] But, a curse? That’s not the first thing that, that my mind would go to. [idk, sometimes it feels like a curse…]

Daniel 1:00:51
Well, I guess I should hasten to point out that my understanding is that the- this is actually supposed to be a reward to Jahi because being demons that get, like, inverse, Cenobite [I think this is what Daniel’s saying? the like monsters from Hellraiser?]logic about what is positive or negative, but it’s supposed to be-

Daniel 1:00:51
Ok, becuase it, it said he defiled her, which I just took to mean the negative.

Daniel 1:00:55
Right, but she would like defilement is kind of the point. *chuckles*

Simone 1:01:05
Ok, well, I, I dig that.

Daniel 1:01:06
But, it’s supposed to be, it’s supposed to be a curse for everyone else, and so, really, the takeaway from this myth is this idea of menstruation as a disease or as a pollutant- which we’re going to see in another source coming up, unfortunately- so, that is, that’s the theme that, I think, emerges from this.

Simone 1:01:29
Dana, what do you think?

Dana 1:01:30
I would say, I mean, just to go off on the- instead of it being, right, such a neg- like, in such a negative light- although, I can wax poetic about the all of the things that make menstruation really, really tricky, and hard, and unpleasant, and challenging-

Simone 1:01:51
Yeah, yep.

Dana 1:01:51
Right; there’s also a lot of positives, [there are? news to me lolz] but one of the things that I think, like, legislators in the US have- in 27 US states that still have, is, is a luxury tax, right? Or, a tampon tax. But, I haven’t found anyone to say that tampons or periods are luxurious. [for realz] *Simone chuckles* So, I kind of feel like that goes a little bit along with your, you know, like, if this was supposed to be something good, like, you know, and luxurious, you know, that, that’s, that’s an element we chat about pretty regularly because I don’t have, I’ve never had one tampon that I’ve used that I have said, ‘Oh my god, this is a luxury. *Simone laughs* I feel like this is, this is a Cartier. *Tabitha starts giggling* This is, get me the black card. This is, this is like a private jet tampon.’ *laughter* Because they’re not. It’s a piece of cotton. But, yeah, so, so that’s my only add-on there; I had never heard this particular myth before, so thanks for sharing that one.

Tabitha 1:02:55
Maybe if they start coming with, you know, glasses of champagne or something, we can start thinking they’re luxuries.

Simone 1:03:00
Oh, I could get behind that one.

Tabitha 1:03:03
Yeahhh.

Dana 1:03:03
Somebody called PNG [i don’t know what this is referencing] and Kotex and tell them about your marketing plan. *Tabitha giggles*

Daniel 1:03:08
I feel I should hasten to add- even though listeners probably already know- I don’t love this story because- this horrifyingly misogynistic myth at face value. Rather, I like this because, of course, this is an attempt to, literally, demonize this bodily function, and yet, when I read about this, I feel like this is, like, the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. I’d like to think that if I were a person who menstruated, when I heard about this, I would think of Jahi as an empowering figure, as often on this show, we think about, usually, unruly women characters, like Lilith, or the Whore of Babylon, or the proverbial figure of the Witch. Anytime they try to create this ultimate personification of feminine villainy, I’m always just sittin’ here, like, ‘Okay, tell me moreeee.’ Which, you know, I guess that’s why I’m on the path of life that I am. *chuckles*

Tabitha 1:03:55
Daniel’s gotta type! *giggles*

Dana 1:03:59
So, here’s one that’s really cool. From Witches, Whores, and Sorcerers,” from SK Mendoza Forrest, stated that, “Women were the targets of considerable attention as potential evildoers because of natural functions. Menstruation is a major pollution in many cultures, but the Avesta saw it as a state of temporary demon possession, and indeed a woman had to undergo a shortened exorcistic ritual following…” men-struation- but um, bump. “…Perhaps because women were excluded from Zorastrian ritual for the most part, some of them might have engaged in practices that came to be known as witchcraft…As was the case in most premodern societies, seeing to women’s health was a job other women performed for their sisters. The severe sanctions against menstruating and other bloody women…[I couldn’t find the following portions of the book, so we’re taking what Dana is reading as a direct quote!] seem to preclude the existence of males in women’s health areas. The woman dealing with the polluting afflictions of the female body might be suspected of being in league with the demons who were supposed to be the cause of them in the first place.” It goes on to say, “Female agents of evil were all somehow connected to feminine blood. The Whore, The Witch, the menstruating woman, and the old woman who performed abortions, were all polluted by blood, accused of stealing, or trying to steal. They were believed to consort with demons and perform sorcery. Women in general were seen as having potential tendencies toward the demonic because of the idea that bleeding, connected with female procreative functions, invited demonic possession.” Ooh! What do you guys think about that? [yesssss so metallllll \\\\\m////// ]

Tabitha 1:05:40
Can I just lean into that a little bit? I just- I’m gonna start telling people if I’m on my menses, that I’m possessed. *Simone laughs*

Daniel 1:05:49
Or inviting demonic possession, at the very least. *chuckles*

Tabitha 1:05:52
Oh, I can’t this week, I’m inviting demonic possession! *laughter*

Daniel 1:05:58
For the record, this passage, I originally singled out for Episode 57, our episode about Evil, but I think it got bumped from that for time, so I was definitely including it here. *laughs*

Dana 1:06:07
I mean, how could you not? This, this seems like a perfect tie-in here.

Tabitha 1:06:12
I hate how much sense it makes. Or, not sense, but, like, you know, this, like, patriarchal sense of, like, ‘Well, I don’t understand it. That’s a weird blood thing. Uh, you’re probably evil.’ Like- and I, like, I get where they got this, and I think it’s very sad, but it’s, I don’t know, par for the course.

Daniel 1:06:32
It has verisimilitude, for lack of a better word. *chuckles* [jesus, Daniel, way to make a girl feel dumb lol]

Simone 1:06:35
Now, I’m gonna go ahead and just preface this by saying that I *hate* this *definitely doing air quotes* saying, but, you know, you’ve seen jokes in movies or whatever, where some big, tough man-type says something, like, *grunts* ‘I don’t trust anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn’t die.’ [that’s because you’re scared and you should beeeee] First of all, fuck you, buddy. But, I do think that that’s an encapsulation of this suspicion, this, this weird, masculine take on what the blood is. The idea that it’s, you know, blood is only tied to violence, and death, and butchery. Whereas, you know, for people who do menstruate, it has a *chuckles* completely different meaning. I’m reminded of a part of a Game of Thrones where Jon Snow is up in the North with the wild people, and someone was making fun of him for, you know, being weak or whatever, and he was saying, ‘Well, you know-‘ I’m, I’m gonna probably get this wrong, but he was saying something, like, ‘Oh, I know how to deal with blood,’ and his female companion just sort of looks at him and goes, ‘Yeah, women know how to deal with blood, too.’ So.

Daniel 1:07:52
One thing I should also hasten to add is, you know, we’re, we’re started- we’re leaning on these ancient Persian sources and there is, often, when we’re studying these things, there is this priggish academic habit of, like, looking down our nose at these primitive people, but, as we’ve already seen with the previous citation, and also we’re definitely going to see with the ones coming up, this is not tied to any one particular time, place, or culture. This is an almost universal taboo, which is upsetting, but interesting, and predictable. *chuckles*

Dana 1:08:22
I think, I think the concept, by the way, that it is so universal really has been one of these special elements for us to be able to talk to so many people in different cultures, in different countries, because everybody gets it. When it comes to those who menstruate. They, they, there’s so much similarity, even in the basic elements of menstruation, that there’s this like unspoken common bond when menstruaters get together from other, from other cultures, countries, groupings, and get to connect, and talk about it, and hear how- I mean, when I chat with our folks in, outside of Islamabad, it- there’s so much commonality, that you forget, and there’s also an enormous amount of difference, obviously, so.

Simone 1:09:20
it is one of those things where it’s truly universal, but then, also, we have to consider the people who don’t menstruate for one reason or another. I, personally, have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I didn’t have my first period until I was nearly 17 years old, and after that, it was pretty hit or miss about whether it would be showing up that month. So, it’s something that, you know, I do have, obviously, familiarity with since it’s been a couple of decades since I was 17 years old, but the idea that it is a constant and happens to all menstruating people every single month- you know, there actually are more dimensions to that, and then, plus, the people who have not yet begun or who have, you know, exited that life phase. It is something, though, that whether you’re doing it or not, it is something that happens to most people all over the globe. Okay, moving on. Our next source here is from “Impure Blood: The Menstrual Taboo in the Christian Church [During the Thirteenth Century” by Madeleine Ott from 2018. [this is from a paper from a ‘young historians’ conference and as a former history master’s student i am here for itttt] “During the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the standardization of the Church’s values were written into law: all clerics associated with the Catholic Church were prohibited from contacting any other blood besides that of the Eucharist…This discussion regarding the material and purpose of menstrual blood was heightened during the fifteenth century…with translations of Aristotle’s ‘The Philosopher’ which circulated along [with] increased copies of the Bible…[the] stigma surrounding the inferiority of women and the impurity of female menstruation was continually perpetrated.”

Daniel 1:11:08
Dammit, Aristotle, why are you always the reason we can’t have nice things?! *Simone laughs*

Tabitha 1:11:12
Can you, can you hear my eyes rolling? I’ll mute, okay? *laughter*

Simone 1:11:18
“An example of Biblical reasoning that justified the belief that Eve and Adam had never been equal was that Eve represented the flesh, while Adam represented the spirit- this was *definitely doing air quotes* proven in the Garden of Eden when Eve committed the Original Sin, and she and all her descendants began to menstruate as penance. Thus [a] stereotype was created… at the forefront of medieval sexuality stigmas surrounding women, some of which lasted until the early twentieth century. ‘Menstrual blood was not believed to concoct blood of the same degree of cohesion as men did, so that it would regularly seep out.’

Menstruating women were also believed to be responsible for any deformities or malformations associated with a child; including if the child was female.” Lovely, lovely deformity, there. *Tabitha fails to try and hold in a laugh*

Tabitha 1:11:18
Oof.

Simone 1:11:18
Thanks.

Tabitha 1:11:19
Oof.

Simone 1:11:19
Okay, back to impure blood. “Both women and men went to extensive lengths to find a cure for menstruation, thus suggesting that menses was both dreaded and feared in medieval society…[In] a medieval medical treatise, the treatment of menstruation elaborates on how to cure the ‘disease’ through humoral adjustments such as bloodletting.” Wait, that makes no kind of sense.

Tabitha 1:12:37
I mean, isn’t that what we’re- l- like, isn’t that what a menstruating person is technically doing? *laughs*

Simone 1:12:42
Yeah. Well, that’s medieval science for ya. “…menstrual blood was a topic of mystery and speculation, associated with the dark and unknown aspects of the [humoral] system. Likewise, menstruation and blood were associated with rapidly changing emotion.” Okay, that one I’ll give them. [seriously] “This belief is found to be the most clearly established in Albertus Magnus’s ‘De Secretis Mulierum,’ [Simone uses what sounds like its English translation, ‘The Secrets of Women’] which was revered by theologians [of] the time…This stigma was perpetuated in the writing and publishing of the ‘Malleus Maleficarum,’…a widely read manual [on] witch hunting.” *Tabitha groans*

Daniel 1:13:20
So, here’s the thing: going back and looking at that, we have sources that often associate menstruation with things like demons, and demonic possession, and witchcraft, and then also with shitty, misogynist ideas about mental illness. You would think there would be a lot of attempts to tie it directly to Satan, and sometimes there are. More commonly, though, we see that it’s an indirect relationship between the Devil, and menstruation, and the idea that it’s actually all a product of Original Sin and Eve, and Eve is sort of acting as a stand-in or proxy for the Devil or sin, generally. And, unfortunately, the, the sources that we have here don’t stress it a lot, but there was an awful lot of debate, there was an awful lot of debate that continues, by the way, into contemporary churches. I was reading on their blog and their social media, [Daniel doesn’t actually specify which person or church’s blog/social media he’s referencing] people debating whether the Curse of Eve, which is usually reckoned to be childbirth, also included menstruation and whether, whether or not that was what God intended in that particular Genesis passage, which I think you could probably resolve just by reading it, but, apparently, it’s not good enough for a lot of people because they’re still arguing about it. *chuckles*

Simone 1:14:25
The thing that caught my attention in this passage was the idea that the Catholic clerics were prohibited from contacting any other blood besides that of the Eucharist. First of all, guys, that’s not blood; that’s wine, but that’s a conversation for another time. It does seem to slot right in, though, with the idea that, you know, the church leaders had to be masculine. I guess, if someone who menstruates is a cleric, then, by default, they’re going to be touching blood on a fairly regular basis, so that’s a no-go for them.

Tabitha 1:14:59
*flatly* Oh, gatekeeping the church? What a fuckin’ surprise!

Simone 1:15:03
I know! *laughs* Dana, what are your thoughts on this passage?

Dana 1:15:07
Oh, you know, so much of this is just so, so much of it is so crazy to me of how folks thought, what the common belief of the time was, and, you know, 700, 800 years ago, but I don’t know what they were, they were- what they were dealing with at the time. I can’t put myself in that, in that headspace, but there’s just- it, it’s just nuts, here. I don’t, I don’t have a lot of support for this. is what I would say.

Daniel 1:15:42
Well, just talking about getting into these people’s headspace: imagine the vacuum you must live in- look, menstruation is happening in your household. You have people who live with you who are doing this every month, and it was happening in the house that you grew up in every single month. In order to try to understand this process, who do we talk to? Do we talk to the women in our lives? No, let’s talk to Albertus Magnus, *chuckling* a man who sounds like he was named by committee about what a medieval doctor’s name should be! *Tabitha giggles*

Dana 1:16:08
Well, and, and I don’t, I haven’t read this book in so long, so I hate to bring up, I hate to bring up a resource that I haven’t looked up in, in a long time, but Anita Diamant wrote the book, The Red Tent, which really talked about when girls and women had their periods, how they went to their own unique space, special tent, where they could be together, which then, again, there’s a lot of cultures nowadays, you know- they’re definitely in Nepal, where they have, like, menstruation huts where they, kind of, banished folks to go to when they are menstruating. So, I think it was just handled so differently- I can’t even say poorly because I don’t, I couldn’t put my mindset into what folks, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago had to contend with in life, but, I don’t know, some of the, some of the articles that I read in modern-day, like, modern-day, contemporary menstrual huts- when they would send, specifically, like, women and girls, out to these huts for days on end and some of them have died there because of snakebites, malnutrition, hypothermia, what, whatnot. It seems so archaic, and yet, it’s still happening in places around the world today, so, like, I can reference this, this fictional book, called The Red Tent, but also, it’s happening in a lot of different cultures today. So, I don’t know, I have a hard time putting my, wrapping my brain around what drove folks to make these decisions back then.

Simone 1:17:50
Well, I also have to wonder; moving, kind of, away from the “science” or “pseudoscience” of it: considering the idea that a person’s first period in, especially, in more ancient cultures- I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Black Plague lately because it’s a hobby of mine and it comes up in, like, 1300s Europe- [that’s still the middle ages, not ancient, but i’ll let it slide this one time] but, you know, the idea that a person’s first period is the mark of them no longer being a child and, therefore, being eligible for marriage, being someone who could produce children- theoretically, anyway- and that transition for, you know, patriarchal societies of becoming a certain kind of property, where the father is the owner, to the different kind of property where the husband is the owner. And, thinking about the stereotypes of women, as, you know, that we’ve talked about before, as being temptresses and leading to sex and other very naughty things, was just something that sprung to my mind as we’ve been talking about this: the, the, kind of, bewilderment at the idea of menstruation, but I, kind of, wonder if it’s more of a signification of what it marks in a person’s life status going from, you know, like I said, a certain kind of property to being a temptress and, you know, also a different person’s property. [probably totally yes]

Tabitha 1:19:20
Hey, guess what?! From “The Secrets of Women” [it looks like this is coming by way of an article, “Women’s Secrets: A Translation of Psuedo- Albertus Magnus’s De Secretis Mulierum with Commentaries” by Helen Rodnite Lemay if it matters] by Albertus Magnus, 13th century. [I didn’t have the spoons to make an account for a library and all that so we’re going with this as a direct, unedited quote, thanksss] “Note that old women ought not to be permitted to play with children and kiss them because they poison them to such a degree that sometimes they die. The reason for this is that in these women, menses cannot be expelled. Since these menses are venomous-” Mmm, no. Okay. “-they are continually born to the eyes.” Are you saying that they bleed out of their eyes? Or that venom comes out-

Simone 1:20:01
I think you could, you could just catch it from getting looked at.

Tabitha 1:20:05
Ohhhh, I got it. Got it. “Because of-“

Simone 1:20:07
Yeah, it makes total sense.

Tabitha 1:20:09
Yeah. I mean, yeah, totally. I mean, thanks, Magnus. You are a genius. *sighs* “Because of the porosity of the eyes, they infect the air, which reaches the child for he is easily infected because of his tenderness. This infection is caused especially by old women, and poor women, because old women do not work and poor women consume gross foods-” *chuckles, in a childish voice* Eww, you’re- ew, that’s gross! “-and therefore their humors are more venomous. Someone might ask, why do they kill infants more than adults? The answer is that the bodies of infants are more porous.” *laughter*

Simone 1:20:54
What, what kind of experiments did they have to do to come to that conclusion?

Tabitha 1:20:59
Why do I feel like this guy literally just wrote down everything he thought and was just, like, ‘Well, everyone’s gonna believe me, anyway, I can say whatever I want!’ *laughs*

Daniel 1:21:06
This is, this is like the Drunk History version *laughter* of medicine. *laughs* It’s, like, ‘Didn’t you realize old women fire poisonous menstrual rays out of their eyes *Tabitha laughs* that infect the sponge-like flesh of children? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Tabitha 1:21:20
I think he needs, he needs to get out of the Eucharist, is what needs to happen. “Why do menses kill children and not the women themselves? The answer is that women of a certain age are accustomed to them and so they’re not harmed by menses, for illness is not caused by what you’re used to-” Of course! “[This] is possible, naturally appears from poisonous animals, such as spiders and snakes.” *laughter, Tabitha is like laughing and fake crying*

Daniel 1:21:49
*laughing* I can’t. I feel so bad- Tabitha can testify, when I was putting this sheet together, I was just cackling over this shit, which I feel bad about, because, of course, it’s, like, it’s not funny; it’s horrifying. But, at the same time, like, it’s, it’s so absurd, what else, how else am I supposed to- what am I supposed to do this? *laughing* What are we supposed to do with this?

Daniel 1:21:50
It’s really upsetting, though. Like, it is funny, but, like, people listened to this asshole. Like, people thought this was real. Shit, people probably still do think this is real! *laughs*

Simone 1:22:11
I was just about to say, you know, the people who like to say, *in a stupid, ‘they took er jerbs!’ voice* ‘Oh, do your own research about COVID and the vaccine.’ And, really, their *definitely doing air quotes* research is just watching somebody rant on YouTube or some, you know, blah, blah, blah, dot-R-U-dot-blogspot-dot-com. *laughing* I kind of wonder if someone came across this, and they’d be, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, you know, this, this Albertus Magnus, I think, I think he’s, like, part of QAnon and I really dig what he’s saying. He, he does his own research, I can tell.’

Daniel 1:22:54
You’re joking about that, but, like, QAnon conspiracists *love* The Book of Watchers, for example. They really dig a lot of that strange, Apocrypha stuff, so definitely don’t, don’t show them these-

Simone 1:23:06
*laughs* Yeah.

Daniel 1:23:07
-don’t show them this book!

Simone 1:23:08
I joke so I don’t cry.

Tabitha 1:23:10
And, continuing: “Take the hair of a menstruating woman and place them in the fertile Earth under the manure during the winter. Then, in the spring or summer, when they are heated by the sun long, a stout serpent will be generated. The same thing is true of a mouse.” …Wha? “Many other explanations can be given, however, what has been said suffices because it would not be too long to tell about all that is relevant to this subject.” What the fuck?! *Daniel laughs* What is- what just happened?!

Simone 1:23:45
Well, this is the-

Dana 1:23:46
You guys should come, you guys should come check out, check out what my backyard looks like in the summertime. *cackling*

Daniel 1:23:54
I just love this bit- it’s, like, ‘I could go on explaining about how menstrual blood creates snakes, but we all know that one. There’s- let’s not belabor that point.’

Tabitha 1:24:03
Well, also, like, big pivot with the mouse. *Daniel chuckles* Also, that’s- also, a mouse will happen. Like what?! *laughs*

Simone 1:24:10
Well, before people realized how things work, a lot of people had this concept of spontaneous generation, where an unliving thing could turn into a living thing, and it actually- I can’t remember the, the scientist who did these experiments, but some people believe that maggots just spontaneously generated on rotting meat, for example. And, so, it took someone to take a piece of meat and leave it out as, as, you know, one experiment; take a piece of meat and seal it, entirely, in a jar, as the other, the other one, and then the in-between one was just put it in a jar and then just cover it with a piece of cloth, and see which one has the maggots appear and, obviously, because flies could not land on the meat inside of the jar, and could not lay their eggs which would then hatch into maggots, they actually figured out, like, ‘Oh, well, the maggots aren’t coming from the meat.’ They’re coming because the flies come and lay their eggs on it, and so, here, *laughs* it’s, like, ‘Oh, you leave a menstruating woman’s hair in some dirt, you’re just going to spontaneously generate maybe a serpent, maybe a mouse? Who knows?’ So. *chuckles*

Dana 1:25:28
I’d like to share that last sentence that says: “Serpents cannot be generated from the hairs of males because the humors in men are well-digested so their hair is not poisonous, nor does it rot as fast as a woman’s does.”

Simone 1:25:44
Yeah, that- science. That is just science, right there. *Tabitha laughs*

Dana 1:25:47
Hardcore.

Tabitha 1:25:48
Science! Yeah!

Daniel 1:25:50
And, of course, keeping our common theme of our show ever in mind, of course, it is not a coincidence that is the snake, specifically, that is supposedly being born out of this process. So, again, the association is not necessarily always made explicit, but it’s never very subtle either. Next up, we’ve got The Devil and the Jews [: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism] from Joshua Trachtenberg, 1943; I told you this book was gonna keep coming up on the show, unfortunately. This one is, look, I’m just, I’m just a reporter here, okay? That’s all I’ve got to say about this passage. I am just communicating to you the history of other people’s beliefs and I cannot be responsible for what ensues. [again, I don’t have the actual book in front of me so we’re just going with it] “In still another way did the Middle Ages proclaim its belief that the Jew was not quite human. All men are subject [to] disease, but Jews supposedly suffered from secret afflictions which did not trouble Christians. It was this belief that accounted for the alleged need for Christian blood, the sole effective therapy. *groans* Most often mentioned among these ailments was that of menstruation, which the men as well as the women were supposed to experience. Close second, were constant hemmorages. The accepted explanation of these ailments was that they were connected to the murder of Jesus. What more natural than that the supposed Devil’s brood should bear the signs of their iniquity.” And this chapter actually goes on at length for about, well, almost an entire page, describing all of the secret illnesses that supposedly were suffered by this one population. Again, this is a medieval belief, on account of their heritage and their close association with evil powers, but it’s the masculine menstruation, particularly, that stood out for fairly obvious reasons. I’m at a loss. I’m actually, I actually do not know what to say about this one, except that I felt like it kind of had to be shared, tragically. *laughs*

Simone 1:27:51
Well, you know, we’ve talked before on the show about how certain populations will malign the outgroups that they are trying, on purpose, to make seem less than human or make seem other, you know, in order to more easily demonize them and, you know, do what they ultimately want to do with this outgroup population. And, so, we talked about how, you know, these ancient misconceptions, these, these very harmful ancient misconceptions, of, you know, the rumors that Jewish people ate babies, or Jewish people killed Christian babies, or, you know, outgroups would, would take part in the most taboo of taboos, so cannibalism, you know, deviant sexuality, incest, you know, that kind of thing, and so, what I’m picking up here in this passage, is, is more of that, so taking the idea that, ‘well, menstruation is unclean, and we really, you know, I really would like to seize their land and their gold, so we gotta make the Jewish people seem unclean, too. Men menstruate! There you go; that’s, that’s what I’ve come up with. That’s what I’m going with.’

Daniel 1:29:09
Should also mention again, it is, potentially, quite upsetting that we’re treating this idea of masculine menstruation as incredibly outlandish. Of course, lots of trans men menstruate-

Simone 1:29:17
Yes.

Daniel 1:29:17
-but that is not what they’re talking about, here, clearly-

Simone 1:29:19
Right.

Daniel 1:29:19
-and, so, in the minds of the people perpetuating these ideas, this was the most bizarre, grotesque thing they could conceive of. Or, maybe not the most bizarre, but definitely on the list.

Dana 1:29:29
So, here’s a neat one from a paper by Catherine Rider, entitled “Women, Men, and Love Magic in Late Medieval English Pastoral Manuals,” from 2015. She shared: “The idea that women might use love magic on their own husbands went back to the early Middle Ages, when penitentials suggested penances for women who fed various prohibited substances to their husbands so they would love them more…In particular, the graphic descriptions of wives’ love magic that originated in an eleventh-century canon law collection…[suggested] a penance ‘if some woman has given…bread which was made on her buttocks with blood, or menstrual blood to her husband to eat or drink so that his love will be more inflamed’…A Treatise on penance written after the year 1234…likewise condemned women who fed menstrual blood to their husbands so the husbands would love them more. These detailed descriptions of wives’ love magic are highly gender specific, associated with female practitioners and with women’s bodies or bodily substances. We do not find equivalent descriptions of husbands’ love magic.” Well, that’s it. I’m out of here. *laughter* No husbands’ love magic?! [DANIEL. you should have left in the part about giving the husband a fish that HAD DIED IN THEIR VAGINA. like omg WUT.]

Tabitha 1:29:33
Well, I mean-

Simone 1:29:42
I would like to see some reciprocation and some effort, here. Come on, guys.

Dana 1:30:09
What are they gonna put in it? *chuckles*

Dana 1:30:52
If you’re making a sourdough on your ass?! I mean, like, come on! *laughter*

Tabitha 1:31:00
You’d better film it. You can make some good money doing that these days.

Dana 1:31:04
That’s true. *giggling*

Tabitha 1:31:07
I just want- like, the thing that I love about this is, like, do you think that whatever they’re making tastes really good? And, that’s why their, their husbands are, like, ‘Yeah, I married the right one. This sourdough bread is fucking fantastic.’

Dana 1:31:19
*laughing* It’s not jam. *laughter*

Simone 1:31:22
Oh!

Tabitha 1:31:24
*laughing* Ehh-ohhh!

Simone 1:31:24
Worst episode of Great British Bake-Off ever. *cackling*

Daniel 1:31:31
So, I’ve got a call back to two previous episodes of Black Mass Appeal. If you go all the way back to Episode 17, where we talked to- about- to Anna Biller, about her movie The Love Witch, there’s a great scene in that movie where our main character is casting a spell using, I believe, it is actually a tampon as one of her reagents, and in her narration, she mentions most men have never even seen a tampon. Later, there’s a really funny scene where the police detectives dig up her witch jar and they see the tampon and they’re, like, ‘What the hell is this thing?!’ Hysterical. *chuckles* Also, this came up when we did Episode 41, the Satanic Witch- sorry, Tabitha- *Tabbie groans* in which old Anton LaVey suggests wearing and keeping menstrual blood as a supposed charm to attract a man’s attention. Now, what was weird about that was that he tried to justify that recommendation with pseudoscience, which you’ll be surprised to learn, did not actually turn out to be substantive, but he never bothered to bring up that, yes, this is actually one of the oldest European love charms; various bodily fluids, unfortunately, and this one being the most common. Seems very odd that he failed- he neglected to mention that because shouldn’t he know? I feel like if he was writing that book, he should have known that. It continues to baffle me to this day. It’s, like, what are you even good for, man? Why are we doing this? *laughs*

Simone 1:32:52
I mean, do we really expect Anton LaVey to be citing his sources?

Daniel 1:32:58
Well, *sighs* I don’t know. Did he not cite that source or did he just not know, is my question. It feels like it’d be a huge oversight if he didn’t, but look what we’re talking about here, so I don’t know. Con- it’s, it’s *laughs* never stopped bothering me on some level. *Simone laughs*

Simone 1:33:13
A lot of things about Anton LaVey never stopped bothering me on some level.

Tabitha 1:33:16
I don’t want to talk about it. *laughter*

Dana 1:33:19
I guess when, with mention of, you know, wearing, wearing menstrual blood, but just wearing blood in general, it just- the first thing that popped up into my mind was Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. I don’t know, or think, it was menstrual blood, but I- they did not share that information with me. But, yeah, that was- that, that’s one that I feel like made some headlines.

Simone 1:33:46
Yeah, I remember that, and I remember the general media revulsion over it, which I- even then- I think I was probably still high school, college at the time- and even then, I thought that was so strange, because, yeah, it’s kind of gross, but it’s, like, stopped up in a bottle, and it’s in like a nice pendant, and it was consensually, you know, acquired. So, I just kind of didn’t get the big deal over it, but I guess to some people, it just- any bodily fluid is, is super gross.

Daniel 1:34:19
Yeah, weird that people who are in romantic relationships would have anything to do with each other’s bodily fluids. That’s-

Simone 1:34:23
Yeah, yeah.

Daniel 1:34:24
-that’s, that’s a totally foreign notion. *Tabitha cackles* I guess I should mention that, for as much as we’re making light about this, I do know that, like, there are a lot of people who practice contemporary Neo-pagan witchcraft, who use blood, or even specifically menstrual blood, for a variety of things, and if that’s your thing, cool, no problem. My only objections are don’t try to use pseudoscience to argue in favor of it and, also, please don’t do it nonconsensually. Definitely, *chuckles* definitely get consent on that one above- really always get consent, but, like, if there were a hierarchy, this will be really high up there. *laughs*

Simone 1:34:55
Yeah, don’t be putting bodily anything’s into anybody’s food or- mmm- because, because that’s how you lose your job at Burger King. *Tabitha giggles*

Daniel 1:35:09
*laughing* Oh man, okay.

Simone 1:35:10
Okay, let’s go ahead and move on to our next source, here. “Engendering Puritan Religious Culture in Old and New England” by Marilyn Westerkamp in 1997. Oh boy, Puritans! Here we go. “This Puritan mandate to subordinate wife to husband and, more generally, women to man, was justified by their conviction of natural female inferiority.” Ew. “…women were thought to be subject to the overwhelming influence and vagaries of bodily fluids. The specter of menstrual blood certainly influenced such analysis, with menstruation seen as a [means] through which women expelled turgid, fermented humors, necessary because her body overflowed with polluting fluids. Unfortunately, the very nature and behavior of women showed that menses itself was less than adequate…The humors coursing through women’s bodies weakened not only their constitutions but also their moral characters, for within the damp swampy atmosphere of their bodies,-” Rude. “-reason, the mind, and the soul were often unable to exert control over feelings and urges. Why humors were more trapped in women than men was not explained, merely observed as the determinative difference between the genders…Women were not qualitatively different from men; they were perhaps, simply soggy men.” *laughter and a lot of half-formed ‘oh, my god’s,’ etc*

Tabitha 1:36:44
I need a T-shirt! Soggy man!

Dana 1:36:48
*laughing* I’m a soggy man!

Tabitha 1:36:49
It’s gonna say ‘soggy man’ on it. *Dana laughs* [I mean, I do have a cricut…another one for the christmas gift list!]

Simone 1:37:00
*laughing* So, so, you think it’s, like, you go swimming and you wear your bathing suit, and then you’re, like, hanging out in your living room in a wet bathing suit, that it makes you a soggy man? It just-

Tabitha 1:37:01
Yes. *Simone laughs*

Simone 1:37:01
*laughing* Okay, sorry. *clears throat* Back to, back to the paper. *sighs* “Yet in the damp swirl of humors, women were understood as essentially, [physically] inferior…Woman’s general weakness of body and mind translated into weakness in her dealings with God and devil. All humanity may have been deeply depraved, but woman far outdistanced man in her wickedness…Evil flowed deeply in woman’s body amidst the excess fluids overbalancing her emotional stability and corrupting her reason. In a peculiar linguistic symbiosis, menstrual fluid became one symbol of evil and pollution, as in Peter Bulkeley’s comment that the damned “are to [God] as the filthiness of a menstruous woman.'” Then- so, we have here, talking about, you know, spontaneous generation, a few minutes ago, we have here another classic pseudoscience, you know, ancient ‘science’ of the idea of the four humors and that they needed to be balanced, and, I believe- I’m sure Daniel will check me- I think the four humors are blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm?

Daniel 1:38:19
Yep, tragically, that is right. *laughter*

Simone 1:38:22
And so, I guess, the idea here is that women just had *so* much of one that it just started leaking out of orifices and that’s why they were soggy men?

Tabitha 1:38:34
And, the thing that drives me crazy about this whole thing is that it’s not as if, like, menstruation hasn’t been happening since humanity started. Like, and I get, like, okay, religions, and etcetera, like to try and explain things that are going on around them, but it’s like, oh! Well, you know, why is it, why, why is it that it’s not just something that happens? But, like, or, you know, come up with something, was, like, ‘Oh, this is just how women or, you know, how menstruating people are.’ But, no, it has to be something about how evil it makes them. Like, come on!

Daniel 1:39:15
I mean, not only that, but did this passage sound rather familiar? It is very interesting that here we are about 400 years post-Albertus Magnus and we have, essentially, the exact same opinion being expressed, which is also not fundamentally that different from the opinions of the Zoroastrian priests several millennia ago, so you have to get very close to the modern age before, not only does the myth get, hopefully, dispelled, but even before it significantly changes in any remarkable way. These are almost interchangeable sentiments, here.

Simone 1:39:48
I feel like we had long- you’ll excuse me, long periods- where science, you know, was, sort of, stuck in a rut, you know, in terms of understanding, and it’s only in the last century or so that we truly accelerated our understanding of what exactly the fuck is going on inside of the human body. I mean, I don’t think- I’m trying to remember- I don’t think that an actual human egg leaving a follicle was photographed from, you know, a human body until just several years ago. That it was still, kind of, mostly, you know, pretty, pretty well understood, but still, essentially, theoretical. And, you know, we think about other technologies that have come along recently. I don’t- I think that tampons didn’t come into use until after World War II? So, we’ve had a lonnggggg stretch of time where bullshit like this could just flourish.

Dana 1:40:52
And, there’s, there’s actually been very few menstrual product innovations in, in the last 70 years.

Simone 1:41:01
Yeah, I think- the cup is only, maybe, a couple of decades old?

Dana 1:41:05
Yeah, the cup, I think, started getting popular in the 60s, and then lost favor for quite a while, and has picked up again, but, I mean, they were, like, every now and then people donate menstrual belts to us. I remember, the first one-

Simone 1:41:20
Woww.

Dana 1:41:20
-I’m, like, what is this? [i literally have never even heard of these things]

Tabitha 1:41:22
Woah- *starts chuckling*

Dana 1:41:23
Yeah, yeah. So-

Tabitha 1:41:24
Did they have those sittin’ in the closet for the last 60 years? *laughs*

Dana 1:41:27
Probably under, like, their great aunt’s bathroom cabinet, kind of thing, and we get all sorts of donations. We could probably start a museum. But, I just want to say, I think ‘the soggy men’ is a great name for, like, a sea shanty group. *Daniel bursts out laughing*

Simone 1:41:43
*gasps* I love it!

Dana 1:41:45
Right? Can’t you see, like, hats and shirts called ‘The Soggy Men?’

Tabitha 1:41:49
*laughing* Yes.

Dana 1:41:50
Yeah.

Simone 1:41:51
I, I actually know someone who is in a band who does sea shanties and I’m gonna just run and tell him right away!

Dana 1:41:57
The Soggy Men! Oh, my god. Like, I, I- this is a missed marketing opportunity.

Simone 1:42:02
Totally, totally.

Dana 1:42:03
Friends, hit me up on Patreon that I don’t have *Simone starts laughing* and we’ll, we’ll get Soggy Men shirts.

Simone 1:42:09
*laughing* Exactly.

Dana 1:42:09
No, no, no, but really- hit, hit up the Black Mass Appeal folks on Patreon and help with their podcast.

Tabitha 1:42:15
Get, get your Soggy Man shirt.

Simone 1:42:16
There we go.

Dana 1:42:17
Yeah, and then they’re gonna- yeah, they’ll get me the Soggy Man shirt.

Tabitha 1:42:20
I feel, like, someone should write a song called Soggy Men, and have it be really opaque, and so there’ll be a bunch of, like, men who are, like, ‘Aw, this song’s so good; it’s totally about me. You know, this is, this song represents my passion and stuff.’ And then- only to have it turned out that it’s actually about menstruating people.

Dana 1:42:39
Yeah, it’s fabulous.

Simone 1:42:41
Well, you know, Tabitha- Tabitha, I know that our band is a cover band, but I think we might have an original in us somewhere.

Tabitha 1:42:47
*laughs* Yes.

Daniel 1:42:49
I just want to say ‘Soggy Men’ is very, very close to the name of the band in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou, so I feel, like, maybe we can glom on to some of that energy-

Simone 1:42:58
Oh, yeah, the- was it Foggy Bottom Boys?

Daniel 1:43:00
Soggy Bottom Boys.

Simone 1:43:01
Soggy Bottom Boys? Even better!

Tabitha 1:43:04
Ah, see.

Daniel 1:43:04
Because they had just been baptized, *laughs* if you’ll remember. Also, Tabitha, when we revamp the, the BMA shop, can we get a T-shirt that’s just, like, a woodcut of witches and then the phrase, ‘Soggy Men,’ in some Gothic type below that? I feel like that would be an easy best seller.

Tabitha 1:43:20
Your wish is my command. *laughter*

Dana 1:43:22
Let me know when that comes out; I’d like that for my office.

Simone 1:43:26
Okay, as we wrap up this conversation and start making plans for new merch, let’s go to our last resource. Tab, I think this one is you.

Tabitha 1:43:35
All, right. This is from “The Vulnerability of Women to Witchcraft Accusations” by Christian Day. Wow, Christian Day, huh? *laughs* From 1992. “The sexuality of women was probably the most significant issue involved during the witch persecutions….in an era [when] sex was viewed as sinful, women could not hide their [obviously] sexual [natures]: they became pregnant; they gave birth; they menstruated. Negative attitudes about sex were translated into negative attitudes about women, and reflected themselves strongly in witch trial procedures…in [the] times of [the] Witch Persecutions, the church often mentioned sexual temptation as being inherent in women…A major sexual function of women that made them a target was menstruation…Menstruation was a sign of a woman’s maturity…but rituals that helped women to understand their monthly cycles were intimidating [and suppressed.]…Ultimately, the issue of female sexuality was one of control. Women could have sex but only if it was according to the strict rules of both her husband and the male establishment in general. Women could give birth but only to establish the [continuity] of a husband’s name…Women could menstruate, but only in secret, where no one could witness the [supposedly] *dramatic act* abominable act.” It’s pretty par for the course. I mean, sigh. *laughs*

Simone 1:45:07
Yeah, like I was saying before, you know, the idea of menstruation as an outward symbol of one’s, you know, quote-unquote ‘sexual readiness,’ readiness to be a wife, readiness to be a mother, ready to be part of the patriarchal system. We have that right here.

Daniel 1:45:28
I mean, even more than that, this passage reminded me- I know a lot of our unfaithful listeners have read the book Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, in which she proposes that the entire witchcraft myth and persecution complex existed as a way of regulating and controlling women’s reproductive power. It was the question of, you know, women will only exercise this kind of agency within these very narrow institutional confines and if you step out of that, in even the smallest way, the Witch stigma is the thing that is going to remove those troublesome women from the equation. And, as much as that’s a, kind of, grim prospect, I wonder if we’re not still laboring under a lot of versions of that today, which is why, maybe, data things, like, I Support the Girls, are necessary because we are, on some level, just, sort of, almost, not literally, afraid to talk about these issues, but we have inherited the idea that is not something that we do and, therefore, if a problem never gets talked about, why would it ever get resolved?

Dana 1:46:27
Exactly, exactly. It still persists. I mean, you know, we, we just heard a little bit about rituals that help women to understand their monthly cycles, but even going back to that, kind of, first period, we hear all the time of all different kinds of ritualistic, first period stories from people all over the world and some of them are supportive and light-hearted, and some of them are- take ya back and, like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Like, how does that become a ritual in the first place? And, so, I think that, from that element of how traditions around menstruation, or your first menstrual cycle, continue, or even just rituals around menstruation in general, how they persist, I think that, yeah, that’s, that’s why we do what we do, and we get out there and we talk about it and in whatever is the most, kind of, comfortable way for folks to hear, to normalize periods, to normalize menstruation for folks. But, yeah, that’s, it- menstruation definitely has a long and sordid history.

Tabitha 1:47:42
It’s funny to me to be on the fence between, like, no, periods are supernatural and it’s nothing- not super- not supernatural, dammit. Periods are extremely natural. *Simone laughs* And they, you know, they’re not going to hurt you and, you know, it’s something that, you know, you should respect or, you know, care about, and then, like, I will literally flip a coin and be, like, ‘I’m gonna get my blood on you. Get away from me.’ *laughs*

Dana 1:48:07
But, on a piece of bread? Or, just, you feelin’ that in general? *Simone bursts out laughing*

Tabitha 1:48:12
We’ll just, we’ll cross that bridge when come to it. *laughter*

Dana 1:48:17
Yeah. Have you guys heard of any, like, any interesting traditions around menstruation, either in your communities, or growing up, or from, from other friends that you’ve experienced?

Daniel 1:48:30
Well, it is funny you mentioned that- I debated whether to bring this up on the show because I’m always loath to reference the Church of Ahriman on this program, even though I admit I do find them kind of intriguing- this is a small ‘Devil worship-‘ that’s their term for it- ‘sect’ out of Oklahoma City. I don’t like to bring them up because their founder and head priest is a registered sex offender, and so, I do not like to be perceived as giving them-

Daniel 1:48:53
Yeah, not good.

Daniel 1:48:53
-that he was, he was working as a prison guard and had an affair, which, aficionados of Orange is the New Black, know is a no-go, and so that has, actually, that has haunted him throughout the rest of his life, as indeed it should, so I don’t, necessarily, liked to be perceived as giving them undue attention. But, being as they are dedicated to, what they think of, as the Ahriman, the Zoroastrian Devil, they do, indeed, employ an awful lot of menstrual blood in a lot of their rituals, and being the person who furnishes that material is a position of particular distinction within that congregation, and so I do find their consistency on that point to be interesting.

Dana 1:49:32
Wow. No, I- that’s- I hadn’t heard that. That’s new for me.

Daniel 1:49:36
There’s no reason why you should have heard of it. *laughter*

Simone 1:49:38
Yeah. You know, I grew up in what I, unfortunately, think is probably a typical American experience, where my family, being very waspy, and didn’t like to talk about things that might be uncomfortable; one day, my mom was, like, ‘Hey! There’s a show on PBS that’s on right now that I want you to watch.’ I’m, like, *in a fake ignorant voice* ‘Okay,’ and then I watch it and I go- my head’s just sort of explodes because I got, I got a lot of learning in just a couple of minutes, there, and that was, that was it. That was, like, assumed to be, you know, mission accomplished. Now, Simone knows everything that she needs to know about her period. Until, then, I didn’t have one for a very long time, and then, that situation just turned out to be, my mom’s, like, ‘I have a doctor’s appointment that I’d like you to go to,’ and I’m, like, ‘Okay,’ not even knowing what it’s about until we get there. So, just this American, you know, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, stiff upper lip-y thing, where we just don’t talk about these things, and I’m just, sort of, being shuttled *laughs* from video to doctor’s office without really understanding what’s going on. And, you know, I have since gone back and done some learning, but I have to wonder how typical that kind of experience is where, you know, it’s just, sort of, assumed that maybe the parents assume that the school is going to tell them and the school’s, you know, assuming that the parent is going to tell them, and, I mean, back when I was younger, the internet was just, sort of, starting so I didn’t really have any resources. I have to wonder what it must be like for, for people today. Not having children myself, I have to, you know, I’m curious what the, the, you know, the birds and the bees talk is like these days.

Tabitha 1:51:39
I had, I mean, I had pretty rigorous school, schooling on period care. I- the only, sort of, like, ritual I would say is that when I did get mine for the first time, my mom took me out, got me a donut, so period donut! *laughter*

Dana 1:51:59
That’s- so, period, period, like, cakes, like, you know, like,’ congratulations’ kind of cake, are definitely a very common, popular thing. I mean, a doughnut or, or a treat, or something like that, but there are some really, really, really interesting, like, first period stories from around, you know, around the globe. I think there’s- in Croatia, I think they pour you a glass of red wine when you let your, your parents know you have your first period. In a lot of cultures, if you told your mom, or your grandmother, or an auntie, they might hit you on the cheek pretty hard.

Simone 1:52:39
Whoa!

Dana 1:52:39
They slap you on the cheek. And, that’s been in French, a different- French, French cultures, Greek, Afghani, Ashkenazic Jews; there’s a whole bunch of cultures that have this, like, wild slapping tradition of, like, getting, like, hit once on your cheek.

Tabitha 1:53:01
Look, haven’t we gone through enough? *laughter*

Dana 1:53:06
And, then there’s one about, like, there’s, there’s a whole bunch I think that, like, have some type of egg component; eating an egg, biting an egg, swallowing an egg, eating a raw egg, eating egg yolk, that kind of thing. Like, with, like, an egg element in a bunch of different cultures that, that observe that particular ritual when a girl announces that she gets her period. So, there’s just crazy- there’s all just different- there’s so many different rituals. I’m a fan of the donut, the period donut. I think, I think that should be more commonplace.

Tabitha 1:53:39
Right? Ubiquitous. Everybody should get a period donut when they start their period; maybe even every time. *laughs*

Dana 1:53:46
Every day! Every day of your period, you get a free donut.

Tabitha 1:53:49
Yeah! Free donut.

Daniel 1:53:50
The reason why, I don’t think, we run into a lot of Satanic rituals or specific practices about the first period in its own right is, even though I think most modern Satanists are people who would definitely like to see better and more compassionate education about things like bodies, and sex, and sex education, is simply because, I think, we often don’t want to be perceived as indoctrinating kids. And, so, very, very rarely do we have any sort of religious conventions that are aimed at communities that are- the communities of minors, and for Satanists who are parents, oftentimes, they can be very uncertain to what degree they want to include their kids in their religious life because so many of them are people who were indoctrinated to religions that they did- that were ultimately unhealthy for them when they were that same age, and that is actually a big part of why *chuckles* many of them later became Satanists. So, oftentimes, for them, it is, kind of, a big question mark; maybe, something like a religious convention would, would help in those families, but, unfortunately, I don’t really know what resources we could recommend for that. I guess, more generally, I can say that, unfortunately, we all inherit the prejudices of our societies, including the prejudices about our own bodies, and about each other’s bodies, and hopefully, a way that we can mitigate that is through our common acceptance and idea of the Satan myth because Satan represents an awful lot of things. Satan, we think of as representing nature, thinker- with Satan, we think of as representing people who are downtrodden, outcast, ill-served, and people who are ultimately the victim of injustice, and as we have seen in this conversation, it doesn’t take much, it does not take much, at all, to end up in that position, and, perhaps, when we take recourse to our common ideas about Satan and Satanism, that can help us provide a little bit of mitigation for those unhealthy attitudes that are foisted on us, unconsciously all the time.

Simone 1:55:47
Well, as this conversation comes to a close, Dana, I wanted to ask, is there anything in your experience, you know, running, I Support the Girls that we haven’t touched on here? Any sort of menstruation myths or realities, especially, that you think might be beneficial for our listeners to hear?

Dana 1:56:12
Thanks. I think that the more folks who can talk about menstruation regularly, openly, and comfortably, I think the more we move the needle and if that also means maybe considering the next time when uses the euphemism for, you know, for menstruation, whether it’s Aunt Flo, or ‘on the rag,’ or, I don’t know, ‘that time of the month,’ ‘Moon Time’- I know, there’s, there’s some wild ones out there, carry-

Tabitha 1:56:49
Soggy, soggy man. *laughs*

Dana 1:56:51
*laughing* Soggy man, ‘riding the cotton pony,’ right? ‘Shark Week’ or ‘Soggy Man Blues,’ I think that- consider using the term ‘menstruation’ instead, is what I would share.

Simone 1:57:07
Yeah, it does seem to, sort of, pluck it out of all these bananas cultural contexts and just present it for what it is; you know, it’s a biological thing that half of us go through, *claps her hands together* so there you have it. Well, Dana, thank you, again, so much for joining us on Black Mass Appeal. If folks want to get in touch with you, find out more about your organization, where online can they do that?

Dana 1:57:32
So, if folks want to get in touch with us, they can check us out, I guess, first and foremost, our website will hopefully have considerable amount of information and that’s at [ISupportTheGirls.org], and we’re also on all the social media platforms, from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok, and folks can- we have slightly different handles, so it might be easiest just to look us up on, on our website. And, if you’d like to donate products, feel free to email us at [info@ISupportTheGirls.org], but, also, most importantly, if you need, are in need of menstrual products, please use that same email address, and let us know what’s going on, and we’ll try and point you in the right direction at [info@ISupportTheGirls.org]. So, thank you all at Black Mass Appeal for having me and I, you know, and I Support the Girls on, on this episode; this has been really a fun time chatting with you.

Simone 1:58:53
Well, thank you again for joining us. And, if you have any questions for us here at the show, our email address is [BlackMassAppealPod@gmail.com]; our website, which will include all of our past episodes, including all of the number of episodes that Daniel can somehow mention off the top of his head, that can be found at [BlackMassAppeal.com], and we are on social media, which includes Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as, well, [@BlackMassAppeal].

Daniel 1:59:23
To find out more about Satanic Bay Area, check us out at [SatanicBayArea.com], find us on Instagram or on Facebook is Satanic Bay Area, or follow us on Twitter, the handle there is [@SatanicSF]. You can also find Tabitha on Tik Tok, the handle there is [@DailyBaphirmation]. Or, if you want to come down and- oh, actually, wait. What can I, possibly, recommend people do at Wicked Grounds that is within the proper thematic confines of this episode? *chuckles* I didn’t think this one through at all.

Tabitha 1:59:54
Sog, soggy, get soggy. *laughter* Go get, get your Soggy Man!

Daniel 1:59:59
Come, come sing the Soggy Man Blues with us, in person, *Tabitha giggles* at Satanic Coffee Hour at Wicked Grounds coffee shop in San Francisco the third Tuesday of every month, and Tabitha, next time we’re at Wicked Grounds, what are we having?

Tabitha 2:00:00
Uhhh, I want a waffle?

Simone 2:00:15
Ooh.

Tabitha 2:00:17
Can we have waffles?

Daniel 2:00:19
I don’t see why not.

Tabitha 2:00:21
Let’s have waffles, then.

Daniel 2:00:23
Are they soggy waffles?

Tabitha 2:00:24
No- well, not when you get ’em; you can make them soggy. *Simone laughs* It- that is your, you know, your prerogative, but they should come crispy.

Daniel 2:00:33
And, then they get an overbalance of humors.

Simone 2:00:36
Ew.

Tabitha 2:00:37
Ew, come on! I really want to eat the waffle! *laughs*

Daniel 2:00:40
Well, I’ll tell you what, why don’t we get a ‘Hail Satan’ to go out on, and then, Tabitha can have all the waffle she wants?

Tabitha 2:00:48
Yay!

Daniel 2:00:50
3, 2, 1-

Black Mass Appeal 2:00:52
Hail Satan! *Tears for Fear’s Watch Me Bleed plays*

The post Episode 104 – Bloody Hell: Devil Myths & Menstruation appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Episode 82 – History of Witchcraft

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 10:00:29 +0000

The Witching Hour runs ‘round the clock this time of year, but although we have discussed witchcraft on Black Mass Appeal before we’ve never examined the true history of witchery and how it became associated with Satan. Also, Satanic Bay Area is treating itself safely for the holiday season, and in the news, a priest is in a tight spot over his unholy trinity…

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The post Episode 82 – History of Witchcraft appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Episode 81 – Satan Speaks!

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 07:01:00 +0000

Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey died in 1997, but that would not quite be the last we heard from him! The following year saw the publication of Satan Speaks!, a collection of LaVeyssays that had not previously appeared in book form, now comprising his final word on things! It’s been a long time since we revived any of old Anton’s perspectives on this show, but we’re ready to listen as Satan Speaks!… regardless of what comes out of his mouth!

(Okay, we’re not THAT excited about this book, but we wanted to fit LaVey’s punctuation style…!)

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The post Episode 81 – Satan Speaks! appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Episode 77 – Paradise Lost

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 08:20:17 +0000

It’s another day in Paradise, as we finally tackle the most influential Satanic literary classic of them all. Four hundred years ago, English poet John Milton redefined our ideas about who Satan is and what his struggle means with “Paradise Lost”…although he probably didn’t mean to. Helping us look at Milton’s Satanic epic up close, with a close reading of the most influential Satanic rhetoric in Paradise Lost, we are joined by Bella from the Satanic Bookroom.

Praise, condemnation, questions, and cherubs making frowny faces can be sent to blackmassappealpod@gmail.com.

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SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Simone 0:04
Welcome to Black Mass Appeal, a podcast that brings modern Satanism to the masses. Today on Black Mass Appeal, it’s another day in paradise as we finally tackled the most influential satanic literary classic of them all. And in the news, we’re honestly not sure what this doctor ordered and, at home, Satanic Bay Area is considering going far afield. Joining me today I’ve got Daniel.

Daniel 0:29
Hi, my name is Daniel. I’m an organizer for Satanic Bay Area and I’m a member of the Satanic Temple, and I for one am amazed to discover that this episode is in fact not about Simone pining for the tiki bars to reopen.

Simone 0:42
*sighs* Well, my favorite tiki bar is doing takeout cocktails, so, I’m doing okay on that front but yeah, I miss it. *sighs again* Hopefully joining me at a tiki bar sometime in the future is Tabitha.

Tabitha 0:59
Hey, this is Tabitha. I’m an administrator for a Satanic Bay Area and I actually lost my paradise on the bus. Do-where can I call to see if somebody found it and turned it in? *Simone laughs*

Simone 1:10
Joining us later in the show will be Bella from the Satanic Bookroom. And until then, you’ve got me. My name is Simone. I’m an organizer for Satanic Bay Area. And, you know, if you go to the Paradise Lost and Found, there’s lots of, like, chargers there for your phone. A couple of knickknacks, so-

Tabitha 1:29
Left socks.

Simone 1:30
Yeah. Black Mass Appeal is a product of Satanic Bay Area and it is not associated with any other satanic groups. This is a podcast for Satanists is to discuss modern Satanism, its history, left-leaning political activism, and how Satanism relates to current events in pop culture. Or for people who want to learn more about modern Satanism, whether you’re a newbie or already involved in satanic groups. And speaking of satanic groups, what has Satanic Bay Area been planning, I guess?

Daniel 1:59
Well, we do have a couple of things to go down the slate here. One thing that I want to mention, ordinarily, this is the time of the year when we would be planning our satanic summer field trip, for, obvious reasons, that has run into some problems this year. We- some of us have been considering, however, a trip to the San Francisco Zoo, which has recently reopened. That seems like a good trip because we love animals, it’s a Satan thing. Also, because some of the animals down there are having some- there, their welfare is in danger because the zoo was having trouble covering its cost, the costs of taking care of them, so a little bit of business their way couldn’t possibly hurt. At the same time, you can well imagine we are a little bit anxious about the idea of doing any kind of gathering right now, even though the plan that we have follows all of the city’s guidelines, and all the zoo guidelines as well. I think that we’re going to try to organize this, we’ll see how it goes. I only bring this up for our listeners now to point out that, you know, there are rules, and we’re sticking to them, and we’re doing everything we’re supposed to do to take care of everybody, but at the same time, we still have some anxiety and I think that’s not only normal right now, but healthy right now. And if you yourself are grappling with that, to those contradictions, too, you are not alone, so we’re all in this together, slash, safely far apart.

Tabitha 3:18
We originally wanted to go to the Oakland Zoo, but they, they’re not allowing groups more than- I think you can only go with your household. And, which is a shame because they have, like, giant fruit bats there and they’re very cute. But at the same token, like, I definitely respect what they’re trying to do. I can’t wait for this to be over. *sighs*

Daniel 3:40
I mean, we can go see the giant fruit bats on our own about- I think we’ll definitely do that.

Tabitha 3:45
Yeah.

Daniel 3:45
But we can’t do it and, like, a formal group expedition. Indi-we’ll have to do individual bat pilgrimages.

Simone 3:52
Yeah, having you know, like 20 Satanists all show up at the same time, all of us looking like Satanists dressed in all black, I think they’re gonna quickly figure out that we all just didn’t happen to randomly show up on the same day.

Tabitha 4:07
Right.

Daniel 4:08
To when we all go to the goat enclosure first is probably going to give the game away. *laughter*

Simone 4:13
Well, two other things that we have coming up. First, we are working on a project, an audio project. We are looking for Spanish speakers. Must be fluent in Spanish and capable of discussing Satan-y things in Spanish. So if you’re so inclined, please get in contact with us, you know the email address, so there’s one. Then, we’re also looking for viewer participants. We have our anniversary show coming up and we’re going to make a little game out of it, so if you want to join us for [an] audio or zoom, little situation, that we can explain in more detail later, get in contact with us. So, we do have some fun stuff coming up.

Daniel 5:01
Man, can you believe we’ve been doing this for three years now?

Simone 5:03
No, no, I don’t. It can’t. I don’t-

Daniel 5:06
Just like last year, it seems like both way less time and way more time than that.

Tabitha 5:11
*laughs* Yes, yes. And yes.

Simone 5:14
Now, for the old school way of having a little listener participation, we have our apple podcast reviews! So, our first review comes from SpiderMike89, who says “absolutely amazing! I started with Episode One, as I’m new to Satanism, and the title intrigued me. In just a few short weeks, I’m up to Episode 40. Yes, I have a lot of time in my hands as a security patrol officer. I sent you an email with a short story that I hope you can share if it’s not too long because Episode 39 had some stories that I can relate to. I’ll have to keep listening to, one day, hear this review on the podcast, keep up your unholy work!” Well, we always have the possibility of repeating, you know, topics, revisiting topics, especially the ones that were really viewer-driven. People who sent in their letters about their experiences. It’s always good to hear from new perspectives. And, you know, we have so many topics to talk about, but we never quite finished talking about any one of them, so definitely could be in the cards.

Daniel 6:18
I just want to offer an extra personal message to SpiderMike right now, so this is it. The day is here. You’re hearing it. Was it everything you dreamed up? Let us know.

Tabitha 6:28
Yeah. How long did it take for you to get to it? Was it like, a couple more weeks? Or, you know, write us another review! That’s it, no, I’m just kidding. *laughter*

Daniel 6:39
But thank you very much; we love having you.

Simone 6:41
Okay, our next one is KrishaVak [?], who says, “I’m essential, and so is this podcast. In these difficult and confusing times, it only makes sense to have something that is not only a great distraction, but an insightful and entertaining commentary as well. The crew at BMA are not only funny, but educational. Thank you for all that you are doing, hail yourselves, and Hail Satan!” Well, hail you! I mean, you don’t say what your profession is, but essential workers are exactly that, essential, and they do not get thanked enough or recognized enough. So, please accept this, you know, attempt at saying thank you.

Tabitha 7:22
*sad voice* I’ve never been essential before. *laughs*

Simone 7:27
I think Daniel would disagree.

Tabitha 7:30
*squeaks*

Simone 7:31
And he says nothing. *Tabitha laughs*

Daniel 7:34
Well, what else is there to say? *laughter*

Tabitha 7:36
Thank you.

Daniel 7:38
Sometimes I’m not essential, so I keep to myself in those cases.

Tabitha 7:42
No, mmm, that’s a lie.

Simone 7:44
I’m just a bunch of essential oils in human form. *laughter*

Tabitha 7:50
Thank you.

Simone 7:50
I’m very squishy, very squishy inside and when I sit, I leave a sheen, like Soul Glow, in Coming to America.

Tabitha 7:52
Eww…

Simone 7:58
Anyway, moving on, our last review here is from Dude.50 who says, “Just what I was missing-“

Daniel 8:05
Actually, I want to point out this is Dude-point-50. I think, I think that’s a measurement.

Simone 8:10
Some-maybe caliber? 50 caliber dude? *laughter*

Tabitha 8:15
Yes.

Simone 8:16
So Dude says, “I’m an atheist, and I practice Secular Buddhism, but I enjoy exploring other’s views and I’ve always felt that there was a part missing from my beliefs slash lack thereof. I’m glad that in my exploration, I found your podcast. While I’d heard of TST with the Decalogue case in Arkansas, before this I had not had the courage to explore Satanism further. Now I’m a card-carrying member of TST. As an ICU nurse, I have only told one person because in these Midwest communities gossip spreads like a virus.-“

Tabitha 8:47
Yikes.

Simone 8:48
“-Thank you for being here and producing the podcast. Hail Satan.” Again, hail you for being an ICU nurse on the frontlines!

Tabitha 8:56
Thank you.

Simone 8:57
I mean, again, hail yourself.

Daniel 9:00
Also, great use of the word decalogue.

Simone 9:03
Yeah, that’s, that is a good one.

Tabitha 9:05
Yeah. Ten dollar word.

Simone 9:07
For the Ten Commandments. *Tabitha laughs* Okay, well, the other helpful thing that folks can do to support the show is to contribute to the Patreon. The Patreon is the means by which we, you know, run this whole shindig. It also helps us to donate money to causes that, you know, we feel align with our values. Whether or not they’re Satanic, if they’re doing good works that, you know, work with our values, then we want to help out, we want to support. So for the month of July, we were able to donate to OCCUR, which is a foundation here in Oakland, and they say they “serve as a facilitator and catalyst bringing together neighborhood residents, merchants, and government to strengthen and stimulate the economic development potential of emerging communities.” They have a lot of different initiatives under their umbrella. One of them is the small black-owned business fund, which is helping folks out during this time that’s very hard on small businesses. And if you’re interested in learning more about OCCUR’s work or want to donate yourself, their website is occurnow.org, and so, we are honored to be able to offer, you know, a little bit of monetary support and we have you guys to thank for it. So, to thank our contributors, we’ve got Krista, then in the Mark of the Mini Beast Club, which is $3.33 per month, we’ve got MountainMurders.

Tabitha 10:42
Mmm…

Daniel 10:43
That sounds like a good podcast, too.

Simone 10:44
Yeah. *Tabitha laughs* And then in the Mark of the Beast Club, we’ve got a Crystal Palladino, Jimmy Nails, Richard Proctor, and Thomas Jacob. And then one more to thank is Mason Woods who is an upgrade!

Daniel 11:01
Yes, he has upgraded far beyond the Mark of the Beast Club member level now. He’s on to multiple beasts. I also want to point out that he has, in the past, upgraded to contribute more and then sometimes dial that back a little bit less, but then bumped it up again, so we mentioned him on the show a lot so if you ever, like, want multiple shout outs, he’s got the formula down. He’s figured it out.

Tabitha 11:26
Is he in the super secret, like, Illuminati tier of the Patreon? *laughs*

Daniel 11:33
*stage whispers* Don’t talk about super secret Illuminati tier!

Tabitha 11:36
Oh shit, sorry! *fake coughs* I mean, Ba-luminati. *laughter*

Simone 11:43
it’s just, it’s the Illuminati but with, like, a little mustache on it. *laugher* Would it be, like for Wario, like, Wa-luminati? *laugher*

Tabitha 11:52
*laughing* Wa-luminati!

Daniel 11:55
Oh, good that covered our tracks expertly! *laughter*

Simone 11:59
Okay, *Luigi voice* it’sa me, Wa-luminati! *Tabitha laughs*

Daniel 12:07
*chuckling* I hope [unitelligible] after that.

Simone 12:09
Okay, let’s go ahead, take a break and we’ll come back with the news!

Black Mass Appeal 12:30
*Interlude music*

NEWS

Tabitha 12:30
*old-timey breaking news doots*

Simone 12:30
Those doots mean time for the news! It’s right on schedule! So, today we are reading from the Daily Beast: “The President is pushing the Coronavirus theories of a Houston doctor who also says sexual visitations by demons and alien DNA are at the root of Americans common health concerns.” *pauses* It’s quite the title. “A Houston Doctor who praises hydroxychloroquine and says that face masks aren’t necessary to stop transmission of the highly contagious Coronavirus has become a star on the right-wing internet, garnering 10’s of millions of views on Facebook on Monday alone. Donald Trump Jr. declared the video of Stella Immanuel, a must-watch.” Ugh, there’s a recommendation. “Before Trump and his supporters embrace Immanuel’s medical expertise, though, they should consider other medical claims Immanuel has made, including those about alien DNA and the physical effects of having sex with witches and demons in your dreams. Immanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister-” Mmm.. “-has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She’s often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious.” If only. “And despite appearing in Washington DC to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part, not by humans, but by reptilians and other aliens. Immanuel gave her viral speech on the steps of the Supreme Court at the White Coat Summit, a gathering of a handful of doctors who call themselves America’s frontline doctors and dispute the medical consensus on the novel Coronavirus. Toward the end of Immanuel’s speech, the event’s organizer and other participants can be seen trying to get her away from the microphone. *laughs* But footage of the speech captured by Breitbart was a hit online, becoming a top video on Facebook. Both Facebook and Twitter eventually deleted videos of Immanuel’s speech from their sites citing rules against COVID-19 disinformation. The deletion set off yet another round of complaints by conservatives of bias at the social media platforms. Immanuel responded in her own way, declaring that Jesus Christ would destroy Facebook servers if her videos weren’t restored on the platform. In her sermons, Immanuel offers a sort of demonology of Nephilim, the biblical characters she claims exist as demonic spirits and lust after dream sex with humans causing all manner of real health problems and financial ruin. Immanuel claims real-life ailments such as fibroid tumors and cysts stem from the demonic sperm after demon dream sex, an activity she claims affects many women. ‘They turn into a woman and then they sleep with a man and collect his sperm,’ Immanuel said in her sermon, ‘then they turn into the man and they sleep with a man and deposit the sperm and reproduce more of themselves.’ *sighs* According to Immanuel, people can tell if they have taken a demonic spirit husband or spirit wife if they have a sex dream about someone they know or a celebrity, wake up aroused, and stop getting along with their real-world spouse, lose money or generally experience any hardship. In a 2015 sermon that laid out a supposed Illuminati plan hatched by a witch to destroy the world using abortion, gay marriage in children’s toys, among other things. Immanuel claimed that DNA from space aliens is currently being used in medicine. Immanuel argues that a wide variety of toys, books, and TV shows from Pokemon, which she declares Eastern demons, to Harry Potter and the Disney Channel shows Wizards of Waverly Place and That’s So Raven were all a part of a scheme to introduce children to spirits and witches. Immanuel warned that the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana was a gateway to evil because its character had an alter ego. She has claimed that schools teach children to meditate so that they can meet with demons. In the sermon, Immanuel preserves special vitriol for the magic eight ball, *Daniel laughs* a toy that can be shaken up to reveal any answer. Immanuel claims that the otherwise innocuous magic eight ball was in fact a scheme to get children used to witchcraft. ‘The eight ball was a psychic,’ she said. She didn’t bring up this allegation publicly in Washington, but she has claimed that the American government is run in part by non-human reptilians. ‘There are people that are ruling this nation that are not even human,’ Immanuel said in her 2015 Illuminati sermon, before launching into a conversation she had with a reptilian spirit she described as half-human, half ET.” *pauses* Wow, that’s a lot.

Tabitha 13:22
So what did she gettin’ her show? *Simone laughs* When is she going on, what, Fox News?

Simone 17:46
Fuck a show, she’s gettin’, she’s getting a cabinet position.

Tabitha 17:49
*laughs* Yeah.

Simone 17:51
Meet your new Surgeon General!

Tabitha 17:53
Uhh, no, Simoneee! *laughs*

Simone 17:57
Hey, like, that’s a fucked up joke, but you know it’s been considered.

Tabitha 18:02
*groaning* It’s true! *Simone laughs* That was a lot. I hate it here. *groans again*

Daniel 18:11
Oh, where to start? First of all, this is actually- those are just selections from a very long piece by Will Sommer, who’s a great writer and really funny to follow on Twitter. Well, that stinks. If you’re curious, Immanuel herself tweeted Will’s story, saying that it very accurately conveyed the substance of her sermons, so-

Simone 18:21
Yikes!

Daniel 18:28
-there’s that. If you’re wondering where she got that weird bit about how the demons turn into women to sleep with men to get sperm to then turn into men to impregnate women with, I-this is a very old belief. I actually believe that straight out of the Malleus Maleficarum, the 16th-century German inquisitors manual and it was to answer the question of how it is possible for demons to- demons don’t have bodies, so therefore how could they possibly impregnate women? That is, of course, theology of the time, insisted that they could and of course, the answer was, well, they must get it from, from a man instead because naturally. So, I don’t know what her source was, but that is *a* source for that belief. Uh, geez, where else, where, where do you even go with this one. You know what? This perfectly encapsulates a problem that I brought up on the show so many times, and that I brought up recently when we were talking to Steven Bradford Long on sacred tension is, you know, people have these religious beliefs that to us seem bizarre and even irrational. But at the same time, there’s a weird sort of separation of powers, where, despite believing things that I think are crazy, these people still managed to be rational and reasonable about most other things. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re bus drivers. They do these jobs in a way that I don’t have to worry about them. Somehow they keep these things separate. I don’t know how, it doesn’t make sense to me, but that seems to be the way the world works. And that separation is one of the things that allows a person like me to respect their beliefs, even if I think they’re weird or nuts. Here’s where that line has been crossed! This is an example of why it is so critical for people to continue to maintain that separation because once you start stepping over that, it’s like, I can’t. I can’t. This is, this is where, like, you know, I try to be nice and try to be respectful, even when I have mixed feelings about that expectation, but it’s, like, here’s the-this is it, this is it. If this is not too far, what is, you know? Don’t go to this doctor, okay? *laughter* She’s a pediatrician? Don’t take your kids. Okay?

Simone 20:49
What- yeah, what is she prescribing for these children?

Daniel 20:52
That’s what I’m saying! I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s- *groans*

Tabitha 20:58
I’m just sad. I’m sad that these people are getting platformed. I’m sad that, that this is where we are right now.

Simone 21:07
How did I get here?

Tabitha 21:09
Yeah.

Simone 21:09
I keep thinking about that Talking Heads line more and more.

Daniel 21:13
But here’s what I’m trying to get at in the, the enormity of, the enormity of this situation crushed my spirit for a second there, but I’m fine now. These beliefs are not necessarily that unusual in the circles that somebody like her travels in. The only difference is, do people let them affect their politics and their work? A lot of people do not. And when they do, that’s what, like, that, that’s the red, that’s the red line. That’s the hard red line. How people stay on one side of the line, I don’t know, but most people seem to be able to do it. So, it’s, it’s very strange to consider that there are a lot of people who kind of live in two worlds, where on the one hand they believe these things, but on the other hand, they let a different set of standards influence their behavior in the most important things. I’m glad they’re able to do that. I don’t quite get hows so *groans* there we have it. *laughter* Actually, one more thing. Tabitha pointed out on Twitter recently that we’ve got the right to fuck demons in our sleep if we want to. *Simone laughs*

Tabitha 22:13
Yes. Look, I am a, an adult. and if I want to fuck a demon? Who’s gonna fucking stop me? You can’t stop me. That’s what I do in my bedroom. I can do whatever the fuck I want. I can do it at the Walmart-

Simone 22:26
As long as it’s, you know, consenting Tabitha and consenting demon, I don’t see anything wrong with it.

Tabitha 22:31
Yeah, I mean, it’s funny when I wrote that Twitter thing, you know, I was trying to kind of evoke the, like, anti-maskers. But really, like, I was just, like, immediately into it, so I don’t know if that- *laughter* -if maybe I failed in, in what I was trying to accomplish, but I don’t know.

Simone 22:46
You convinced yourself.

Tabitha 22:47
Yeah.

Daniel 22:47
That was the thing, like, when you read that part where she says ‘this is a problem that affects many women,’ I can imagine a lot of women read that say, ‘tell me more…’

Simone 22:54
*laughs* All right, well, let’s go ahead. We’ll take a break. And we’ll come back with our main topic.

Black Mass Appeal 23:07
*interlude music*

MAIN TOPIC

Simone 23:24
400 years ago, English poet John Milton redefined our ideas about who Satan is and what his struggle means, even if that’s probably really not what he meant to do. Helping us look at Milton’s Satanic epic up close, with a close reading of the most influential Satanic rhetoric in Paradise Lost, we have Bella from the Satanic Bookroom. Thanks for joining us, Bella!

Bella 23:49
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Simone 23:52
Well, we’re excited to have you. So, for the folks who aren’t familiar, I want you to tell us a little bit more about yourself, your relation to Satanism, and the Satanic Bookroom, and Paradise Lost.

Bella 24:04
All right, well, I first came across Satanism, probably in the 90s and that was through the Satanic Bible and Anton LaVey. I didn’t really start in a serious manner until about 2012, where I was questioning a lot of the things going on around me with Christianity, and my conflict with it with being an atheist, and I decided to look into Satanism. In 2016, I came across the Satanic Temple, which also fostered more thought into it as an organized religion, and therefore decided to call myself a Satanist, which I’ve been ever since. It feels like a spot to be in that will probably be lifelong for me and continue to expand. So I’m a supporter of TST and also spend a lot of independent time exploring and looking at my religion now. I also have a group on Facebook called the Satanic Bookroom that assists with the- discovering the Satanic literature that is the basis of a lot of philosophies for our religion, and includes almost 5000 members from all walks of life- some of them identify as Satanists, and others are just curious in learning about, about Satanism.

Simone 25:26
Now, obviously, since you’re, you know, literature-oriented, when was the first time that you read Paradise Lost?

Bella 25:34
I first was introduced to it in college, which was probably in the 90s. I was trying to remember back as we were having this episode, if we had actually read through the whole thing; it’s quite a long epic. *laughs* So-

Simone 25:48
*laughs* No kidding!

Bella 25:49
Yeah, that’s where I was first introduced to it.

Daniel 25:52
Just to get a plugin, by the way, I believe the current group read for the Satanic Bookroom right now is still Lord Byron’s Kane, which we talked about just two episodes prior, so anybody who thought that sounded intriguing, there’s a good opportunity to get in on the group if it strikes your fancy. I guess anybody who didn’t think that Kane sounded interesting, I really appreciate you coming back for this episode. It shows you’re very open-minded.

Simone 26:17
Yeah, it is. You know, as we discussed on the episode, two episodes ago, about the Romantics, John Milton was not a Romantic, but he really influenced them, so it’s still kind of in that literary vein. So if it’s not your thing, well, you can re-listen to the goat episode. That was a fun episode.

Tabitha 26:35
I do believe that that episode was 75? *laughs* For once, I know which one it is, haha!

Daniel 26:46
Also, on the topic of how long this poem is, I kind of feel like I owe Simone an apology, even though I’m sure she probably does not remember this, because, of course, we’ve talked about doing an episode about this before and I think there was one time when it came up that I said, ‘I don’t know, do you want to do all the reading?’ And later, I realized, that was a really dick question! Like as if, you know, like, like, it sounded like, it seems like a very pompous thing to say. And I’m sure nobody else remembers this conversation, but it’s been bothering me, so sorry about that. That was, that was not a tactful way to feel out a prospect for the program. *chuckles*

Simone 27:20
I don’t remember that. I- thank you for the apology. But, it is, it is quite long. I mean, we’ll, we’ll kind of get into this more, but I mean, it’s ten books, I guess in some versions, it’s 12. It’s a, you know, they use the word epic for ‘epic poem’ for a reason.

Daniel 27:41
Well, I did get a tip- our unfaithful listener HollowHeathen told us- I think it was HollowHeathen- told us that, when she read it, she listened to the audiobook simultaneously and followed along with it, which to me sounded a little weird, but if that helps, great, that’s awesome. And actually, the useful thing about the audiobook is that you will know exactly how long it will take you to read this because *laughter* you can look at the timer, so that’s probably a good mental tool for some people who might feel a little bit intimidated tackling the text. Anybody out there, if anybody else out there has done that, let us know how it worked out for you.

Simone 28:16
Yeah, I was about to say, she’s not the only person I’ve heard who has done that. I know a couple of people who have listened to it on audio, you know, the audiobook. You know, it’s, it’s, if you’re not into that kind of like, sort of, Shakespearean language in terms of reading with the kind of, you know, the older style spellings just to listen to it, and absorb it that way is, also, I mean, it’s a wonderful way to do it.

Bella 28:46
Also, I would point out that the more recent reading I did of Paradise Lost was- it [was] with plain English. *laughs* It’s obviously written in English, so it’s kind of funny that there’s an English version that makes it more plain and my copy has it right next to each other, so you can read some of the more flowery and winding language and then just get it straight in a couple sentences right next to it, and that really helped.

Tabitha 29:14
*laughing* He sat down! Okay? *laughter*

Bella 29:16
Exactly.

Simone 29:17
That’s the kind, that’s the one that I had. That’s the one that I read most recently, and, I do have to admit, though, that the Kindle version that I got, I don’t, I can’t remember, like, who edited it or whatever. But it’s so funny because it’ll actually do, like, a line from the poem in the original text, and then just below it is the ‘quote-unquote translation,’ or the simplification, but it’s real funny to me because, they’ll be like three, like, very dense, you know, sentences and then, like, just one -way- over a simplified English sentence underneath it. It will be this long passage about, you know, ‘Satan and his wings and flying,’ and then the English is, ‘he flew.’ *laughter* Okay. That was helpful. Okay. Anyway, before we get too deep into this, let’s offer some contextualization about John Milton and the circumstances of him writing this thing. Daniel, do you want to take this first one?

Daniel 30:20
For the record, this is the same very brief, one-paragraph bio culled from the Academy of American Poets that we included back on Episode 58, so a little bit of review, but you know, not everybody has heard every episode also, you probably haven’t heard Episode 58 recently, it was a while back. So, “John Milton was born in London in 1607, into a middle-class family. He was educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge.” I always really love that phrase, by the way, because it sounds, It sounds very exasperated. ‘Christtt’s Collegeee.’ *Simone laughs* “-and prepared to enter the clergy after university, however, he abandoned his plans to join the priesthood, and spent the next six years at his father’s country home following a rigorous course of independent study to prepare for a career as a poet.” I don’t know if this is a proper characterization of this, but this kind of makes me think about, you know, when you drop out of school to tour with your band.

Simone 31:12
I’m just thinking about, you know, if you want to have a career as a poet, like, do ya get your LinkedIn set up, you know? The, the career of a poet, when approached in that manner seems, a little- *laughs* I don’t know.

Tabitha 31:28
You bench press books, is what you do.

Simone 31:29
Yeah.

Daniel 31:31
I mean, you’re joking, but actually, yeah, it kind of was a who you know sort of thing in those times. Although bench pressing books, I kind of like that image, too. *laughter* It continues, “during the English Civil War-” This is, there’s a lot of English civil wars. This was the 17th-century one when Parliament cut the king’s head off. “Milton championed the cause of the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell, and wrote a series of pamphlets advocating radical political topics, including the morality of divorce, the freedom of the press, populism, and sanctioned regicide. After the restoration of Charles the Second to the throne in 1660, Milton was arrested as a defender of the Commonwealth, but soon released. He lived the rest of his life in seclusion of the country, completing the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost in 1667.” And when I say it’s who you know, I seem to remember from our study of this in college, it really was kind of his friends in high places who admired his poetical work. We got a spring from prison after this because he was pretty deep into the movement there. It also helped at that time, he was an old man and blind and so, kind of feeble, so he had a good, he had a good pity vote for clemency there, as well. It continues, “Paradise Lost chronicles Satan’s temptations of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Eden. Since its publication, the work has continually elicited debate regarding its theological themes, political commentary, and its depiction of Satan, who is often viewed as the protagonist of the work.” Often? Is there anybody who does not? I, I-

Simone 32:56
Well, I was actually reading an essay to this effect about how the definitions of protagonists stand, does Satan meet all of them? I wish, I should have just pulled that up, but there are some who argue that God is the protagonist of this work. So-

Daniel 33:12
That’s interesting.

Simone 33:13
-there you have it.

Daniel 33:14
I guess that does make sense in a way although he is a rather remote personage, but then, you know, he’s got-

Simone 33:19
Isn’t he always?

Daniel 33:20
Yeah, he doesn’t have to get out of the house very much. I used to joke of, like, you know, in the old days, like, God was very sociable, he would go hang out with Abraham and with Moses and the prophets and what have you. These days, like, he just stays at home all the time, nobody ever hears from him, his son died a while ago and he seems like he just never really got over it. Very sad story.

Simone 33:41
Well, you know, maybe he tried to appear as a burning bush again, and it got out of hand because it was here in California. *Daniel laughs* Sorry, that’s terrible.

Daniel 33:50
Somebody just hit him with the fire extinguisher like in Dogma, that was the end of it. *laughter*

Simone 33:55
Okay, so now that’s kind of the overview of Milton and the circumstances of his life leading up to this. He, in my reading, one of the things that I thought was interesting is that he was very determined to write an epic poem, and he, I guess, like, kind of toyed with the idea of doing something about King Arthur and, but it was, yeah, towards the later part of his life that he actually kind of went through with it, so. It’s that thing of where you work on your first album for a really, really long time and, and then it’s a hit, and then, you know, do you have anything to follow it up with? But. Anyway, focusing on Paradise Lost, as we mentioned before, this has 10 to 12 books depending on the edition. We’re going to talk about 12, the 12 version. And, so, just to give people context for the more in-depth discussion, we’re gonna whip through these 12 books real fast.

Tabitha 34:59
Okay, so previously on Paradise Lost in Book One, Satan and the rebel angels, cast out of Heaven, awake to find themselves in Hell. Satan and his Lieutenant Beelzebub vowed to continue defying God, and they fashion a plan to spoil Eden for the newly created humanity. Book number two, the fallen angels hold a great council to debate their next course and Satan tells them that he will travel to Earth to execute their plan. Flying to the gates of Hell, he finds him guarded by his daughter, Sin, who sprang from his head at the moment he conceived of disobedience in Heaven, and their incestuous son, Death. Sin unlocks the gates and Satan flies out into the realm of Chaos, where all of the strange things that God neglected to use to create the universe still reign. And he persuades the Lord of Chaos to direct him towards the world. Book number three, back in Heaven, God in his son, who is not yet called Jesus, having not yet been born as a man on Earth, discuss what’s happening. Book Three is honestly pretty boring. And if you skip it, you’re not missing much. But it does include one intriguing bit. God knows Satan’s plan, and is going to let it happen, in part because if he never gives humans the opportunity to disobey, then they will, in effect, be slaves.

Simone 36:21
Bella, do you want to take the next three?

Bella 36:23
Yeah, I’ll take the next three. All right, so let’s continue with Book Four. Satan, finding himself in Eden, is charmed by the beauty of the world, but also tortured by regret, doubt, and uncertainty. Despite this emotional turmoil, he vows to press on with his plan and spies Eve and Adam at work. That night, he creeps into their sleeping place, and whispers promises into Eve’s ear, but some of God’s angels discover him and drive him away. Book Five, the angel Raphael visits Eve and Adam and warns them that an enemy is near. Well, he actually just warns Adam because Eve shouldn’t worry about big stuff like that with her womanly mind. Raphael describes how war broke out in Heaven after some of the angels refused to bow God’s new son, and Satan rallied them to his side. Book number six, the rebel angels and the loyalists meet in battle, which is pretty futile since angels can’t die. Satan even invents cannons to overwhelm his foes, but cannot turn the tide. Finally, on the third day of war, God’s son leads the charge, and the rebels are cast down.

Simone 37:47
All right, well, I’ll take this next bit here. So, previously on Books Seven and Eight, Raphael relates the creation of the world, the creation of Adam, and all the other living creatures, and, last of all, Eve. Moving on to Book Nine, despite the warnings, Eve and Adam work in separate parts of the garden the next day. Satan inhabits the body of the serpent and approaches Eve, and, amazed to see an animal speak, Eve listens to his story about how he ate the fruit of a particular tree and gained knowledge. Though she protests that she’s forbidden to eat fruit from that same tree, Satan persuades her to taste and after eating, she resolves to convince Adam, too. Daniel, want the, want to bring us home?

Daniel 38:37
You got it. In Book Ten, Satan returns to Hell loosing Sin and Death on the world and erecting a road between Hell and Earth. As punishment, all of the Fallen Angels are transformed into snakes, Satan becoming the dragon- so hey, good, we’re wrapping it up there from Genesis to Revelation, that’s smart story-telling- and they pour forth into the world. In Book 11, God’s son arrives on Earth to pass judgment on Eve and Adam. Here’s a case where Milton breaks from Scripture a little bit here by sending Jesus to do God’s job, interesting choice there. To comfort his punishment, Adam is granted visions of the history of the world to come. Eve is not because *laughs* for fuck’s sake.

Simone 39:17
Womanly reasons?

Daniel 39:18
Uh, yes. In Book 12, the angels continue to relate the history of the world become and then finally, in a bittersweet conclusion, Eve and Adam comfort each other as they leave Paradise forever, and I actually find the closing lines of this poem very, very touching from- for, for my purposes. So yeah, so this is- I used the Dartmouth version here, because it’s online and it’s much easier to be able to copy and paste these. *Simone laughs* Copy and paste the verses into the show sheet rather than transcribing them by hand because they’re long. And so yeah, this is the 12 book version. The 10 book version condenses some of these together like Books Seven and Eight become the same one because they’re eventually- because they’re, you know, two halves of the same story. There is a lot of debate about the proper way to divide up the story. There’s a lot of debate about the proper way to punctuate the poem. For example, people will fall into rat holes that never come out of on that. I don’t think we have to worry about that sort of thing here, but, you know, be prepared that if you wade into the discourse, these are the sorts of things that are going to come up.

Simone 39:34
So there you have it, the very, very brief movie trailer version of Paradise Lost, and all of its books. Now-

Tabitha 40:30
Paradise Lost for Dummies. *chuckles*

Simone 40:33
Yes, Paradise Lost Cliffnotes. Do they have those still? Like the, the paper, the yellow paperback copies? They-

Tabitha 40:40
I dunno.

Simone 40:41
Yeah-

Daniel 40:42
I see them in college bookstores all the time, so yeah, they must.

Tabitha 40:46
Are you going to college bookstores a lot? Daniel? *chuckles*

Daniel 40:49
No, but I go to Alexander’s Books over on Second Street, which is very close to the Downtown Campus of City College and they carry a lot of materials for the students there.

Tabitha 40:57
All right. All right, I’ll allow it.

Simone 40:59
*laughs* Okay. So, now we’re going to take our deeper dive here and we’re going to go through the books and- kind of focus on a particular quote and pull it apart a little bit for you. So, let’s just keep the order that we had. So Tab, why don’t you read this quote here from Book One?

Tabitha 41:20
Okay. So this is Satan and Beelzebub plan for the future. “Is this the region, the soil, the clime,’ said then the last archangel, this the seat, that we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom for that celestial light? Be it so, since he who now is sovereign can dispote and bid what shall be right: farthest from him is best, whom reason has equaled, force has made supreme above his equals. Farewell, happy fields where joy forever dwells: Hail horrors, hail infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell receive thy new possessor. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven; Here at least we shall be free: in my choice, to rain is worth ambition, though in Hell: better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

Simone 42:30
I know so many of you guys have that tattooed on you out there.

Tabitha 42:34
Yeah. *chuckles*

Simone 42:35
That last line. ‘Cuz it’s a great fucking line!

Tabitha 42:38
It is.

Simone 42:39
‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’

Bella 42:42
If there was one mantra for Satanism, that would probably be it.

Tabitha 42:47
Yeah, I’m gonna definitely agree with that. [unintelligible chatter] I’m like, are you gonna finish that? *laughter*

Daniel 42:55
You know, this is a great book for people who don’t have the fortitude for long reads because if you only end up reading the first one or two sections, you’re still getting a lot of the really good stuff, a lot of the really good stuff is these first two chapters in Hell, and, you know, you’ll still have a lot of the reference points under your belt by the time you get to the end of those. Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t read the rest, but I’m saying, for folks who drop out early, they, they have still been enriched, so lucky that. I get chills every time I read this bit, I- particularly, I- It’s just. Ooh, stirring.

Tabitha 43:31
Yeah, it is.

Daniel 43:33
Okay, so we’ve got, like, some good book club discussion questions here. One of them- I particularly like this, there’s this weird phrase that sneaks in here talking about God, ‘whom reason has equaled, force has made supreme above his equals.’ So Satan here is kind of saying, ‘logic would say that God is our equal. Force made him better than his equals.’ What the hell do you think that means? Because that is some tricksy little wordplay that he’s got going on there.

Bella 44:03
For me, what I saw was the beginning of the breakdown of the system of hierarchy that God had put into Heaven, so this is the beginning of Satan being able to see that, hey, that God is no better than everyone else. He’s kind of seeing God for what he is, and this view is the crumbling of this structure right now to be removed. So, he’s seeing that only force has made him better than his equals, but is, is really starting to relate that his authoritarian-authoritarianism is just assigned and therefore begin to dissipate inSatan’s mind

Tabitha 44:45
Yeah, I get that same kind of impression that, like, you know, what, like, really it’s more of a question. Like, what, what is it that makes him better, other than he’s in charge is you know, he decided. *chuckles*

Simone 44:59
I’m your heavenly father and I said, so.

Tabitha 45:02
Yeah. *laughs*

Bella 45:04
I feel like the levels of hierarchy is a very, very base thing in Christianity and the opposite being a very consistent thing with Satanism, where we often eschew the system of hierarchies. And that’s the idea, like, as a Satanist, I become responsible for myself and [am] my own God, and a lot of those things- ideas have been broken down as Satanism often uses the value of authenticity, which goes against comparison, therefore, breaks down systems of hierarchy. And so, that’s kind of the difference between Christian ideology and Satanist ideologies. So I kind of see this as the beginning of Satan becoming Satanic.

Daniel 45:53
This-

Simone 45:54
If the, the kind of kernel at the heart of the, the whole questioning of the system.

Bella 45:59
Exactly.

Daniel 46:01
Well, you remember last episode when we were talking about the Goya paintings, and that particular critic whose name I can’t recall said, ‘really, there’s two basic schools of thought about these. You can read it straight, or you can read it ironically.’ I guess the ironic, subversive reading of this is the one that we’ve just given it, where this idea of it’s really just kind of trying to de-legitimize God and de-legitimize the fact that the war turned out one way to say, ‘well, God is not any better than us. He just happened to have won.’ He won through, like, you know, force- is like, the most basic, least, the most basic means of achieving something in the way that’s least afforded respect. Um, that’s probably not what Milton had in mind, though- I mean, I don’t know John Milton, people have been arguing about that for about 400 goddamn years now- Um, but, keeping in mind who he was, I think what’s interesting is that we’ll see in the later chapters, that Satan made this argument before the war, where he said, ‘is God’s superior to us? That’s news to me.’ So here, it’s possible he’s trying to preserve that philosophical and ideological structure, again, even in the face of the fact that they failed, which, like I said, it’s kind of tricksy. It’s, it’s, it’s- Satan’s rhetoric, the way that he changes values around and makes things very relativistic, Heaven for Hell, Hell for Heaven. This is the same way- he’s doing the same thing here, he’s saying, ‘winning, losing, forced worthiness, what do these things even mean?’ Let’s just, let’s just clear away these distinctions at all time, which again- is *probably* not supposed to be a good thing, but, for obvious reasons, we’re much more sympathetic to that perspective than probably the ideal reader at the time was.

Bella 47:45
I could see what you mean, because the term, ‘it’s better to roll in hell’, or ‘it’s better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,’ could also be looked at as sour grapes. *laughs* Because he just lost and was banned to hell, instead of-

Tabitha 48:03
For sure.

Bella 48:03
-this profound thing that a Satanist take of like, ‘yes, that is the basis of who we are.’ So, and of course, what he had said to that- this is not what Milton was trying to do, like, make the template for modern-day Satanists *laughs* to read over it and get some good material for our own basis of philosophy. His ideology for making this epic was to-I guess justify to Man that God was really pulling the strings and had planned this all along or, like, has, what is it? Eternal Providence was a term that was used as, as a goal for this Paradise Lost epic. So yeah, it does go back and forth, I see, where there’s a theme that seems to be going my way of things that I like and then, and then I turn around I’m like, ‘ah,’ he just seems kind of like he’s being an asshole and jealous of the way that things turned out. So you’re right it can definitely go both ways.

Tabitha 49:08
He’s like, I didn’t want to be on Twitter, anyway. You can ban me. I don’t care! *laughter* I got, uh? Friendster? *laughs*

Simone 49:18
It’s-

Tabitha 49:19
Friendster is Hell is what I’m trying to say. *giggle*

Simone 49:23
I was just thinking of the, the Alt-right assholes who declared that they’re leaving Twitter for what’s it? Parler, or Gab, or whatever? *in dumb voice* We’re gonna build our own Twitter with Nazis and terrible people. It’ll be great! But-

Tabitha 49:40
Man, it’s gonna be the echoiest chamber that ever was. Hurray!

Simone 49:44
Okay, let’s move on to Book Two. Bella, why don’t you read the passage?

Bella 49:49
Alrighty, well, in this passage, Satan is telling the fallen angels that he’ll conduct the expedition to Eden himself. All right. “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads to the light: Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire, immures us round ninefold, and gates of burning adamant barred prohibit all egress. These past, the void of Night receives him next, wide gaping, and with utter loss of being threatens him, plunged in that abortive gulf. But I should Ill become this throne, oh peers, and this imperial sovereignty, adorned with splendor, armed with power, if difficulty or danger could deter me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume these royalties and not refuse to reign if refusing to accept as great a share of hazard as of honor? Go mighty powers, terror of Heaven, though fallen, while I abroad through all coasts of dark destruction seek deliverance for us all: This enterprise none shall partake with me.”

Daniel 51:05
So I singled this bit out mainly because of that last line there where he talks about deliverance, which, of course, has a very distinct meeting in religious terms, especially with somebody with a religious outlook of Milton, that it does sort of in everyday English. Uh, Satanists-

Tabitha 51:24
Hey, I just really quickly, like Dinga-a ling, Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, like that? *laughter* I had to; I’m sorry!

Daniel 51:32
Satan is kind of setting himself up here as, as a Christ figure, as somebody who is going to lead them to salvation, quite literally out of their sins. They are, you know, you’ll hear preachers use that phrase, ‘you’re in your sins.’ Here, they are. They’re, like, sitting in them. It’s everywhere. It’s all around them. He’s going to, quite literally, deliver them from that. I find that fascinating and weird. I don’t know about anybody else.

Simone 51:59
I kind of took it as that thing where someone- I mean, this is, this is quite literally, what it does- but it’s a leader who is saying, ‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t be a very fit leader. Now, if I wasn’t, you know, willing to do the things that I’m going to ask you to do. So here, let me, let me do this, let me possibly sacrifice myself’ in order to build that sympathy and loyalty. However, when I was reading this, I couldn’t help but think, he just wanted to leave. He just, he was just like, ‘I gotta get out of here. I’m gonna, I’m gonna make this plan or I can get the fuck out of here.’ Because he specifically says, like, you know, none, none of you are gonna go with me. And I’m like, yeah he just wanted to get the fuck out.

Daniel 52:45
I mean I think the text literally says that at one point. Just after this, Milton butts in with his opinion, pointing out saying it’s like, there would actually be no benefit for him to let anybody else go, so he’s cleverly framing this as self-sacrifice, when, really, it’s just if you’re smart, right, it’s the smart thing to do.

Bella 53:06
Yeah, I would agree that it’s, that it’s a smart tactic to take because they’re the rebels, they’re the adversity and you want to, you want to imply that you’re getting down and dirty with them, unlike God who’s sitting on his throne and has everyone else like angels and the Son doing all the battling and dirty work. Even if Satan is looking for glory, or wants to go his own way, and do his own battling or deviousness up on Earth, I do think that he is using this as kind of a way to connect, or maybe an excuse as well, *laughs* to be like, ‘I’m down with the troops!’

Daniel 53:51
Also apropos of what we were talking about just a second ago, again, a big theme in this is this idea about what makes authority good and right and just and justified. And of course, you know, over the centuries, it has not escaped people’s notice that John Milton is a failed revolutionary, you know, he tried to overthrow this divine monarchy, he failed, he ended up in exile, and he was, in many people’s eyes, vilified for his actions in that. So this question of how was he relating to Satan has created this tension over this poem for, for centuries now. And I, you know, I’m not going to be able to pretend to answer that, but I do know that some critics have offered this idea that he was actually trying to use Satan as a foil for himself. He was saying, you know, you may think that I am this villainous devilish figure, but let me show you what, you know, real evil and real treachery and disloyalty is.’ So, Satan here is kind of trying to offer, he’s trying to give himself legitimacy. He’s undermined this idea that God is a true king, you know, by saying, you know, only through force, only through these simplistic means, you know, has he achieved authority over us- what am I going to do for authority? What am I going to do? Justify sovereignty, I am going to act, you know, I’m going to be self-sacrificing, I’m going to be heroic, I’m going to put myself in the danger that, you know, I would not want you to ask. And so he is offering up an alternative model, which, again, is a fascinating idea. And then, Milton of course, undercuts that completely by saying, *whispers* ‘it’s not really what he’s doing. Be very, very careful when politicians talk like this.’ So again, there’s a lot going on there, you can be very inspired by this idea, but then also acknowledge, you know, that the text is doing different things with it than maybe we would like to.

Bella 55:38
Yeah, I also want to mention on that, that in the text, aside from this, quote, Satan tells his, the rebels, you know, the demons and followers, that he has been chosen as the leader in the situation by the laws of heaven, which is kind of ironic that he is going, he is forming all of this to be against heaven and its hierarchy and structure, but yet, he’s trying to say that, if you, like, because of its structure, he is inadvertently chosen for this role.

Daniel 56:10
That’s true, but you’ll notice, and again, when we get into the later books, you know, Satan has a very different idea of what the Hierarchy of Heaven, and now Hell, is than maybe it was intended. Like here, he still refers to them as his peers, and later on, when he’s rallying everybody [he] talks about, ‘yes, we’re all equal, we’re not necessarily all the same, some of us have higher station than others, but that doesn’t make us better than one another., And so, maybe, he’s- the ideas that he’s trying to translate that now into this new context, saying, ‘you know, I’m not really any different from you. I’m kind of different from you, but not in the ways that matter,’ you know?

Bella 56:45
I feel like, maybe it’s the residual of the beliefs of them. Like, I feel like it’s a way of manipulation, kind of, to sweep up the changing views of like, the troops of Hell, because- I think that making changes from where they came from, just in general, like, in life is, is a long journey, and so people don’t recover from ideologies all at once, you know, or even these, the characters in these stories, like they, they grow and they change. So, to me, I took it as maybe like a residual of if there were any doubters, or people that, you know, maybe held on to that structure of hierarchy, that he would say like, ‘oh, by the way, like, even on those terms, I’m supposed to be in this position.’ Like, almost the, the flip side of God. And I see throughout the, this poem, like, it plays upon that, where he, to where, yeah, like, on one hand, he, he says that there shouldn’t be hierarchy, but then he turns, like in Hell, but then he turns right around and uses him as the designated leader, and on his throne in a way. So, anyways, it seems to flip back and forth, like it never seems to be consistent on how Satan presents his position, because he’s against authority, but yet he’s also at the throne of Hell and at its helm.

Simone 58:25
We’re gonna go ahead and move on to Book Four. Book Three is just a lot of God and Jesus talking, so we don’t care about that. Moving on to Book Four! So, this is Satan has newly arrived in the world and he’s kind of wrestling with his own feelings. “Had this powerful destiny ordained me some inferior angel, I had stood then happy: no unbounded hope had raised ambition. Yet, why not? Some other power as great, might have aspired, and me, though mean, drawn to his part. But other powers as great fell now- whom has I then to accuse but Heaven’s free love- dealt equally to all? Be then that love accursed, since love or hate alike to me deals eternal woe. Which way shall I fly: infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I flee is Hell; myself am hell, and in the lowest deep a lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide, to which the Hell I suffer now would seem a heaven. Is there no place for pardon left? None but by submission, and that word disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame among the spirits beneath whom I seduced with other promises: While they adore me on the Throne of Hell, With Diadem and Scepter high advanced, the lower still I fall. So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, farewell remorse: all good to me is lost. Evil, be thou my good: by thee at least divided empire with Heaven’s king I hold, and more than half perhaps will reign.”

Daniel 1:00:12
Yeah, actually, I’m just going to- apologies to everyone, I’m going to take point on this because this is my favorite bit in the entire poem. Most people find Satan’s- the, the inspiring thing about Satan in this poem, most people find these very stirring speeches that he gives to his troops. This is the part, weirdly enough, that inspires me- it’s this very private moment, where he’s wrestling with doubt and regret and uncertainty in this very human and pained and relatable way, and I think it’s honestly really beautiful. And this is actually what I find inspiring about the character, is this vulnerability. And this is really, very much the model for, if you go back to the Romantic Satanism episode where we talked about the idea of the Romantic Hero, and especially the Byronic Hero, a character’s a hero, not necessarily because he’s admirable in a conventional way, but because what you admire about him is the depth of those feelings, and everything that he’s going through, and just the, the, the sheer weight of the burden of being this guy, but he keeps going through it anyway, and that is what you find so endearing and so admirable about him in that weird, ironic way. That’s this right here. Also, I realized not the most inspiring image, but I kind of think about, I kind of think of Satan as Jack Skellington in this scene, where he’s talking about the burdens- *laughter* expectations. Which again, like I said, is a, is a, not a conventionally heroic posture., but I don’t know, that, that’s very relatable to me. And so, I’ve written about this an awful lot over on the SBA blog, especially a blog that I really like called “Satan the Loser” where, again, as strange as it seems, the thing that I like about Satan is not that he is a mighty, powerful, intimidating figure, but that he is like us- that he is human, and that he is fallible, and that he has to deal with these same things. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that this passage in Book Four, this is actually where he is in a godlike position, because if you think about it, he would be the first person, in the universe, to deal with these feelings. He’s the first person to fail like this, and to have self-doubt like this, he’s the first person to ever deal with Imposter Syndrome, and he is creating this emotional universe that is layered and complex and nuanced, and inspiring, and really beautiful. And I find that quite touching. And so, more than anything, I always come back to this. And I also particularly- sorry, I’ll stop in a second- to a degree in Book One, when we find Satan kind of lying in the Lake of Fire. But again, more importantly, on this moment when he’s reflecting on it with a little more perspective- When there are times in my life when things are really bad, when things are really, really bad, I think about this- I think about that feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach, where all you can think about is, what do I do now? What in the world do I do now? And this story, and this poem in particular, are things that I think about in those moments. So, that’s why I love this and that is what inspires me, so I want the little Reading Rainbow sting to play me out. *chuckles*

Simone 1:03:15
Aw, that was beautiful! Just like your- I can’t recommend the Satanic Bay Area blog, “Satan the Loser” enough. It was really, really well written.

Daniel 1:03:26
Oh, well thank you, that was sweet of you. Anyway-

Simone 1:03:27
I’m biased, but-

Daniel 1:03:28
I’ve monopolized the discussion, how does everybody else feel when they read this?

Simone 1:03:32
Well, so harkening back to something that you said, Daniel, is the kind of relatability, because we’ve seen Satan portrayed as very, very human in other works. I don’t feel that way here, but the, you know, the grappling with this, self-doubt is, like, a very human thing in this kind of un-human being, to my mind. And it’s very sympathetic, because who hasn’t been there, you know? Kind of like, what Daniel said, we’ve all had those moments of, like, you know, you, talking heads and you go, how did I get here? You know, it’s, again, it’s an, it’s a contrast to God who is sitting up and far away and just watching, so, you know, a really good passage.

Tabitha 1:04:20
Yeah, I am. I want to be like, same. Same Satan. There’s something about how much this feels like Depression. And I know we’ve all kind of touched on this, but like, the way he speaks about what’s going on, and what he’s doing sounds to me a lot like Depression. And it feels, it’s messed up to say it, like, it feels good, but, like, it feels nice to be recognized like that in such a big, imposing figure.

Simone 1:04:53
Well, I mean, that’s kind of the thing about most art, you know. Y’all know that I love my Nine Inch Nails- the lyrics are depressing and angry, but when you’re in a concert situation- in the before times anyway- you really feel that you’re not alone, that other- someone has put to words your feelings, and all these other people here with you, singing along, are feeling those feelings too, so to explore that depression is, is really helpful, I think.

Bella 1:05:27
Um, for me, I really feel that accepting the whole spectrum, you know, the whole spectrum of human emotion, both the good and the bad, is part of being a Satanist. Whereas opposed to in this story, there is a part where Uriel, who is in the sun, like, sees him and- Satan is actually sitting on a mountain disguised as a cherub while he’s going over this in his head with this internal dialogue, and Uriel realizes that it’s not an angel or cherub, because he sees the, or Uriel sees the emotion on Satan’s face, and posits that angels don’t have emotion and are always at peace. So, to me, this insinuates, like, the Christian goal for piousness and purity is to be absent of emotion, and that’s what equals peace, but in the Satanic realm, as well as Satan, showing emotion and turmoil is all part of the spectrum once you’ve left Heaven. You know, and it also shows that with, with the story of Adam and Eve that comes along in the paradise loss, and that, they’re kind of naive and shallow in this way and then after getting the Tree of Knowledge, like then they too can experience the full range of human emotion. I know I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but that’s what I see in Satan exposing some of his emotion and internal dialogue and the part where, where they know he’s no longer an angel- or not an angel because angels supposedly don’t have emotion, but so yeah.

Simone 1:07:15
Yeah, I thought that part was, was pretty funny, actually because it’s like, ‘oh, here’s a beautiful cherub, why is he frowning? Wait, that’s not a cherub after all!” *laughter*

Tabitha 1:07:24
*laughing* That’s no cherub!

Simone 1:07:28
That’s no moon; it’s a cherub-

Daniel 1:07:30
That’s creepy, it’s like that scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers where they figure out who’s not one of them.

Simone 1:07:34
Yeahhh!

Daniel 1:07:36
You know, that, that’s- I particularly I- thank you so much for bringing that up. That’s such a wonderful, beautiful point. And point- going back to what Simone said a second ago about how God is perfect but boring. Actually, in this poem more than anything, Jesus is annoyingly perfect, because, of course, that’s the theology there, right? Like, Jesus is so great you’ll never be as good as him., that’s the whole idea. Whereas-

Simone 1:07:58
It would drive me crazy, too.

Daniel 1:07:59
Yeah. Whereas Satan is already just like us. That is why we find him relatable. And, to the point that, you know, when they put together this story, when they put together the Satan myth, what did they do? They copied and pasted the story of Eve and Adam. This, you know, you, that you’re the preferred- you’re the favorite creation, and then you disobey, and now you live in sin. It’s the exact same story, so I guess it’s not surprising that they ended up sticking Satan in there too because they, they, they do this. It’s, it’s a repeat, it’s a rerun. You know, this really is? This is not Satan. This is the genius of evil when, you know, you look at, when we look at that statue, and, like, when we’re not just checking out his abs, *laughter* but when we look at the emotion of that statue that people find moving, it’s this moment, it’s this feeling that he’s dealing with. What Tabitha said about Depression fascinates me because, I was just the other day watching- if anybody knows the YouTube channel, PhilosophyTube, which, by the way, [Abigail] would love to have you on the show sometime- [She] has a video on there, which is actually about Jordan Peterson of all things, but in that video, he is cosplaying Satan, and he talks about how, yes, being in Depression is very much like being in Hell, and he quotes, not from Paradise Lost, but from Marlowe’s Faustus, but the line there is almost identical where he talks about, you know, “think you Not that I, who saw the face of God/ and tormented by ten thousand hells” by being awake, by being out- no longer there. That idea that everywhere you go was Hell because Hell is that feeling of just not being able to escape these feel- just not being able to escape this thing, that is, that is part of you. Ooh, chills, I get chills again.

Simone 1:09:35
To piggyback off of that, you know, I like the part where he’s talking about I, I’m in Hell, but there’s, you know, if that Hell doesn’t work, there’s another one below that and there’s another one below that, and it’s just Hells all the way down. And one of my favorite quotes describing Depression *sighs* is actually from a fanfic writer, but she put it in a very eloquent way, is that ‘Depression is not the absence of hope, it’s the belief that there never will be hope.’ So, you know, if it’s Hells all the way down, like, *sighs* I mean, why don’t you just lay back down in the Lake of Fire?

Daniel 1:10:17
So here we’re going to go ahead to Book Five. Book Five, as we mentioned in the outline, is a flashback. Now, Raphael is relating the history of the War in Heaven. I’m not 100% sure how he knows this since he wasn’t here for a lot of this stuff, but I guess God sees all. Nevertheless, here is the scene where Satan is rallying the angels to revolution. This is really where he persuades everybody to come over to his side in this conflict, and we mentioned in passing, the thing that incenses them is this creation of God’s Son, and this idea that, now there is not only this new thing that’s been set above them and this idea of, like, ‘Well, why should we be less than him?’ And, you know- so here is what he’s saying, quote, “Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers- If these titles [yet remain not] merely titular, since by decree another now to himself has all power, and us eclipsed under the name of king anointed. But what if better councils might erect our minds and teach us to cast off this yoke? Will you submit your next and choose to bend the supple knee? You will not, if I trust to know you right, [of] you know yourselves natives and sons of Heaven, possessed before by none, and if all equal, yet free, equally free. Who can in reason then or right assume monarchy over such as live by right is equals? Or can introduce the low and edict on us, who without law err not, and much less for this to be our lord, and look for adoration to the abuse of those imperial titles which assert our being ordained to govern not to serve?” And so, again, this sounds an awful lot like the rhetoric that young John Milton used to argue for and during that English Civil War, It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of spooky, honestly. Going back to the-

Simone 1:12:11
Well, write what you know, right?

Daniel 1:12:12
Yeah. Going back to the Romantic Satanism episode, you know, we talked about how William Godwin, looking at Satanists or this revolutionary icon, this was the heart of his argument. He said, Satan just does not see this conflict in the same terms that God does. God sees a hierarchy. Satan does not really recognize that authority as natural or even logical. What do we think, based on what he says here? Do we think that this seems like an authentic and reasonable motivation? Do you think that is his ideals hold water?

Bella 1:12:48
Oh, yeah, I don’t have so much to say, because I was thinking that, I was thinking that it would insinuate that legitimacy was the only problem as if Satan still wanted to exist in the structure of hierarchy, but that there’s a paradox and that he acknowledges the hierarchy in some ways, but ultimately, I think he wants to destroy the structure of hierarchy and not be a servitude, in servitude of it. He wants freedom from it. So, I think it goes much further than just the legitimacy of God in his position. But when you were talking, I was thinking, well, maybe he means the legitimacy of the whole structure, which I think is the point I was trying to make. Did any of that make sense? *laughs* I’m starting to feel the fatigue!

Simone 1:13:35
You know, it’s, it’s, well, I mean, it’s heady stuff.

Bella 1:13:39
I think the ultimate idea is that the entire structure must be destroyed, not just the question of if God is legitimate or not and his authority.

Daniel 1:13:50
Well, it’s interesting to hear you say that, because really, if we look at this, what Satan’s argument? He says, you know, things have always been one way and that way was just. Now we’re being asked to take on this extra burden for, as far as we can see it, no reason. And so, in a certain sense, he’s making sort of a reflexive or even regressive argument. He’s saying, you know, this change is wrong for our society, we need to go back to the way things were, but in doing that, he’s actually proposing an even more radical idea. But to him, it doesn’t seem radical, to him it seems natural, you know, to, to challenge God because again, if he does not think of himself as subservient in the first place, he just thought it was, like, we’re all in the natural place, that we, that we’re all in the place that suits us best, and, you know, it’s the lack of merit of this intrusion is what is provoking him. So, I guess there’s a reading by this in which this is only inadvertently revolutionary. And at the same time, [he] now proposes [an] even more radical idea than the one he’s objecting to, which is intriguing.

Simone 1:14:55
Now, we are going to skip a couple of books to get to some of the really good stuff. So, Tab, you’re ready for Book Nine?

Tabitha 1:15:03
I am so ready for book nine. This is Satan disguised as a serpent, beguiling Eve, “Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve, easy to me it is to tell thee all. I was at first as other beasts that graze the trodden herb. of abject thoughts and low, til on a day roving the field I chanced a goodly tree [loaded] with fruit of the fairest colors mixed, ready and gold. Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung tempting so nigh to pluck and eat my fill, I spared not, for such pleasure till the hour at feed or fountain never have I found. Ere long I perceived strange alteration in me, to degree of reason in my inward powers and speech, though to this shape retained. Thenceforth my speculations high or deep I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind considered all things in Heaven, or Earth, or Middle, all things fair and good. But all that fair and good in thy divine semblance and in thy beauties I beheld, which compelled me thus to come and gaze, to worship thee, sovereign of creatures. Universal Dame.” Wow.

Simone 1:16:38
Why did this remind me of, like, a really positive Yelp review of a restaurant?

Tabitha 1:16:46
*laughs* So true.

Simone 1:16:47
‘Amazing tree with the best fruit, four stars!’

Tabitha 1:16:50
Yeah.

Simone 1:16:50
‘I got all this knowledge of heaven and earth and the middle, and, you know, big thumbs up.’

Tabitha 1:16:57
I know that this is, like, way not the point, but how does a snake eat an apple? *giggles*

Simone 1:17:04
Swallows it whole?

Tabitha 1:17:05
I guess? You bite it? *laughs*

Simone 1:17:08
It’s just gonna get stuck on its fangs if it’s one of those snakes that [have] them.

Tabitha 1:17:12
Right.

Daniel 1:17:13
So here, I’m gonna lay like, like, for people who, who skipped the college-level literature courses. Here, we’re gonna lay, like, the serious classroom shit on you now because the question that I’ve got is- of course, we know Satan is lying, he’s not really a snake. He did not really eat the fruit of the tree. The fruit of the tree did not make him smarter enough to talk and reason. Except, maybe it has. Because of course, we know that the fruit is a symbol; it’s sin, it’s disobedience, it is, you know, your self-interest. And, in that sense, well, didn’t Satan eat from the tree? Didn’t he do that first? Has he actually gained more knowledge and more perspective from his experience and the things that have happened to him and everything that led him here?

Tabitha 1:18:00
Well, he got depressed. *giggles*

Daniel 1:18:02
Yeah, I mean- which, which, so does Eve, very shortly, so, I don’t know. What do we think? It’s, it’s again, on the superficial level, this is not true, but this might be more honest than he really thinks he’s being, in this moment.

Simone 1:18:18
I like that point that, that he’s being more honest than he himself thinks he is. He, you know, the thing about lying is that if you lie, and you keep the lie as close to the truth as possible, it’s so much more believable, and I kind of feel that here.

Bella 1:18:37
I might be the odd person out in that I can see what you, what is- I can see what the question that you asked is trying to say, that there’s, that there is an accurate, accuracy in it in that eating from the tree of knowledge will change you and give you something deeper than what you had before. But, of course, I feel like it’s still really deceptive because he’s putting forth this idea that ‘Oh, everything is good about it.’ And in reality, and as a Satanist, I know that it’s absolutely not, it’s neither good nor bad, knowledge is a tool and they’re both to be embraced. And once you have knowledge, you have to embrace both sides, all the benefits and the consequences, so I really feel that he is giving Eve the runaround, and that defies really any accuracy or goodness that can be brought from it. I feel like he’s really deceiving her. Although, you know, I, of course, do think that knowledge is a good thing to be had. So, I can see what you’re saying there, in that he has gained some benefit from it.

Simone 1:19:54
Well so, not only is he lying, but he’s also compounding that by lying through omission. Like, he’s not mentioning the pitfalls, so the whole thing is a lie, plus he’s leaving out the downsides.

Tabitha 1:20:08
I also feel like- if we’re, if I am continuing on this train of him being depressed, that he is, you know, misery loves company, right? So, he’s like, ‘Yeah, do it. It’s good. It’s really good.’ And he just wants someone else to be just as miserable as he is. *chuckles*

Simone 1:20:26
Peer pressure.

Tabitha 1:20:27
Yeah. Thanks, Satan. Now I’m smart. Fucker.

Bella 1:20:32
I learned it from you, Satan. *laughter*

Daniel 1:20:36
Well, here’s my point. Here’s why I’m trying to, sort of validate the Satanist reading of this poem in a way that I undermined earlier, where it’s, like, you know, in the same way that John Milton did not set out to write the foundational cornerstone texts of Satanism, but that is still what he did, and I think we would argue that was probably a better result than whatever he actually intended. In sort of the same way, again, Satan is not meaning to be confessional in this moment. He’s not meaning to convey an actual gift onto people. But is he? Is he doing that? Do we, you know, again, we think that it’s better to have knowledge than to dwell in ignorance, even though knowledge is difficult and unpleasant. And so, weirdly enough, I do think that the poem has structured itself in such a way that it reinforces that. I don’t think it meant to, but I definitely think that’s what happened.

Bella 1:21:25
It’s kind of like an ends justifies the means sort of thing?

Daniel 1:21:29
Oh, maybe? That’s not really what I had in mind; what do you mean?

Bella 1:21:33
Like, he’s, he’s deceiving Eve of, with the idea that, of course, it’s good to receive knowledge and go forward- although I guess that’s not his itinerary. Like, he’s out to destroy mankind to take revenge on God and Heaven. But, I was thinking of it as maybe an ends to justify the means that, you know- the way he’s going about it is not right, but in the end, she would receive knowledge, which, as a modern Satanist, I think is the best course of action to take. But, Eve is naive, like, she literally has no skills or experience in making any decisions. She has very poor decision-making skills because she’s never had any experience at all. That’s why he’s hitting her in all these different ways with flattery, and calling her, like, what is it? ‘The queen of the universe’ and stuff like that, like, she’s really no match for Satan, but she’s really no match for anyone. She’s completely inexperienced, which is the downfall of not giving anyone any knowledge or experience in life is that they don’t have any tools to use. Like, it could be anyone, that you can fall for anything you can fall for. *trails off*

Tabitha 1:22:55
She is really good at standing right behind leaves. *laughter* That’s her one skill; being able to stand behind a leaf, so her crotch is covered. *laughs*

Daniel 1:23:08
Really, really high camouflage skill. *laughter* Yeah, here’s, here’s what I’m saying is, like, if we follow this idea that, like, Milton is- how ’bout this? Milton is offering us, with this book, something that is really kind of destructive, he’s offering us these sort of regressive, toxic ideas. This poem is, is sexist, and it’s patronizing, and it’s trying to reinforce theology that is oppressive to us. And even though many of Milton’s political ideas were forward-thinking for their time, to us, they are, you know, baseline at most, you know. So, his intent that he had in writing this was a kind of a net loss, from our perspective, but that was- what his intent, was not his results. He’s given us this poisoned apple, and we ate it and we discovered, ‘oh, this is actually good anyway,’ in a way that he did not intend at all. And so, I would argue that- this is the same way- Satan is trying to do something destructive here, but we have the better perspective to see, no, actually, this was ultimately beneficial in a way that he never intended. So in a very weird way, I interpret the poem, as its- as the subject, in, in a really strange grad school postmodernist way that, again, is definitely going far afield from the text now, but I don’t know. That’s where- that’s how my brain works.

Bella 1:24:28
I agree with you in that, that it has to be compared to the context of the time and the intent of Milton. Like, I thought one of the, kind of, revolutionary or radical ideas that he did in it, is that he made Adam- the reason that Adam was able to, or was tempted to eat the fruit and partook of it, after Eve tried to get him to was because he loved her and wanted to be with her and that’s a different version that is often not put forth in a lot of, in a lot of versions of- Christian versions of the story, and I thought that was interesting because a lot of Christian stories in the Bible kind of denounced the woman, which this story does, too, but it doesn’t really make her an object of love, or an equal. And that’s what Milton does in this story.

Simone 1:25:25
Yeah, in my reading, one of the perspectives was that Eve, being fully, you know, naive and ignorant, she eats of the apple and she sins, but it’s Adam who, like, knows what she’s done and does it willingly, and so that’s worse. A lot of the times, you know, I feel that Eve gets the shit end of the stick because she’s the one to do it and she’s kind of, it’s sort of skewed as she made Adam do it, but here, it feels more, or, you know, the perspective can be taken as Adam, you know, did it willingly and, you know, so, therefore, it was a worse transgression.

Daniel 1:26:11
Yes, going back to what you were saying a second ago about Adam kind of ducking out on responsibility here, that reminds me, if you actually look at Genesis Three, here’s out of the, the ‘Ye Old King James Version,’ let’s see was it- “And the man said, [The] woman whom thou gavest to be…she gave me of the tree and I did eat.” *laughing* So that’s- I crack up every time I read that because you don’t always picture, like, the little kid finger-pointing, ‘Hey, that woman you made for me did all this!’ Like-

Bella 1:26:39
As a woman that kind of makes me feel proud. *laughter*

Tabitha 1:26:43
Yeah, a little bit.

Bella 1:26:45
She was able to rope them into the Tree of Knowledge.

Tabitha 1:26:48
Oopsies! *laughter*

Daniel 1:26:52
I just find it funny that he’s blaming Eve and also indirectly God her,e by saying- it’s like ‘You, you gave me the woman, okay? Let’s, let’s talk about your hand in this!”

Tabitha 1:27:03
I was happy with the rib, okay? I could have just been there with the rib and not be having this problem. *laughter*

Bella 1:27:10
I think blame is a cornerstone, a cornerstone in Christianity as it is.

Simone 1:27:15
Yeah.

Bella 1:27:16
Like, you’re born flawed, God made you do it, Satan made you do it, on and on. There’s always someone to blame other than self in Christianity. *laughs*

Simone 1:27:27
Daniel, wanna do the last passage?

Daniel 1:27:29
So the serpent gives her this story and she objects when she sees the tree’ ‘Oh, this is the one tree that I can’t eat from.’ Of course. And this is what Satan says- this is the clincher argument here. He says, “Oh sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving plant, mother of science, now I feel thy power within me, not only to discern things but to trace the ways of highest agents. Queen of this universe, do not believe those threats of death: you shall not die. How would you? By the fruit? It gives you life to knowledge. By the threatener? Look at me, who have touched and tasted, yet both live? Shall that be shut to man which to beast is open? Or will God incense his ire for such a petty trespass, and not praise your dauntless virtue, whom pain of death denounced- whatever thing death be? Deterred not from achieving what might lead to a happier life: knowledge of good and evil. Of good, how just? Of evil, if what is evil be real, why not [known], since easier shunned? God therefore cannot hurt you and be just. Why [then] was this forbid? Why but to awe, to keep you low and ignorant, his worshippers. He knows that in the day you read thereof, your eyes, that seems so clear yet are dim, shall be perfectly then opened and cleared, and you shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil. These and many more causes import your need of this fair fruit?” So just to be clear, because the phrasing is not completely transparent here, where he’s saying, “Of good, how just,” meaning that if God punished you for knowing what is good, how would that be right? And then “of evil,” you know, “why not?” Since then you would know what is, if not, “why not known since easier shunnned,” so why would God punish you for knowing what is evil? How can you really be obedient if you don’t know what’s wrong? Then Eve, of course, is lying there, saying ‘what is evil anyway,’ which she’s asking rhetorically, but is actually a legitimate question on the part of Eve. Eve really has no idea what the stakes here is. She doesn’t know what knowledge is. She doesn’t know what good and evil mean. Is this really a fair test to put in front of her or for God to have placed in her path and then for Satan to be playing on here? It’s, it’s a contradiction in terms, isn’t it?

Simone 1:29:41
Well, earlier in the book, you know, doesn’t- God acknowledges that he knows what’s going to happen. He knows that, you know, as we previously said, if they aren’t given the chance to fail, you know, through free will, they are as slaves and so God is still allowing this to happen. So it could be argued that it doesn’t matter if it’s fair or not, because God already knows the outcome, and, I guess, it’s an outcome that he was cool with.

Tabitha 1:30:14
It’s like God got tired of his toys, and so he manufactured this whole thing to get rid of Adam and Eve. It’s like, ‘I’ll get this angel, he’s kind of a pain in the ass, so let’s just make sure that he doesn’t want to stay here, and then eventually he’ll go fuck around my kids.’ *laughter*

Simone 1:30:33
And, and, I, you know, just to continue a little bit. You know, we, we talk about how naive and fragile, if you will, Eve is. She’s like a lamb. You know, we talked on our goat show about how delicate sheep, you know, baby sheep are, and so, she is, you know, if God has foreknowledge of what’s going to happen, and he knows that she’s gonna do it, and he’s gonna punish her, he is again, sacrificing another innocent, essentially,

Bella 1:31:04
There are plenty [of] instances in the Bible where God is toying and torturing humans.

Simone 1:31:11
Totally.

Bella 1:31:12
What I saw in this is that the story is trying to note the transformation of Eve, eventually, through eating the Tree of Knowledge, but I don’t see that happening yet because I think the transformation is from the experiences and the consequences that you get from receiving knowledge and, and the things that happen to you in, in action. So I feel like here she is just doing the same thing; like, first she believes God and what he says, like, wholeheartedly without question and doesn’t seem to have the ability to discern the veracity of information that she hears and now she’s receiving it from Satan and she’s doing it- the same thing, like anyone that has experience is going to assess the information and be able to, to portion it out and make some investigation, but once again, she doesn’t; that’s part of her naivety. So she in, if she was to have her own story, I think it would come upon as well. And in the story, in this story, it kind of seems to center around Satan and his journey instead, which is also a progressive one. So.

Daniel 1:32:27
Well, I’m glad that Simone brought that up, because that- to the surprise of no one- I’ve got a bone to pick with god’s rationale for this whole thing to begin with. Where he says, you know, ‘I have to give them a choice or they’re not really free.’ Okay, that sounds good on paper, but if the choice you’re giving people is, here’s two binary options, if you picked the wrong one, I’ll kill you. Well, then there’s, that’s not really freedom, now is? *laughs* That’s, that’s, even on paper, that’s not really freedom. What’s actually happening here is we have this 1000’s year-old folk myth that no longer fits the theology, you know, the story was written- you don’t know what the assumptions of the people who created it were, but now it has to exist in this frame of reference in which God is assumed to know everything, and so, just like back in Book Three, which we skipped because Satan’s not in it, where Jesus asks, ‘Why would you allow this in the first place?’ Well, he’s got to come up with an answer for that, and I guess this is the best answer he could come up with. But really, the answer is, the answer does not suit the story at all because it’s a post hoc rationalization from 1000s of years later, from a radically different context. So here, again, is where I kind of attempt to, for lack of a better word, redeem the Satanist reading of this book, saying that, if Milton and conventional theology of his time can take this old story and interpret it in a radically different way that it was never intended to, fine. So can we. And if his reading is just- that is valid, then so is ours. You know, we’re doing the exact same thing that he did, and really, what could possibly suit the spirit of the work better than that, right?

Simone 1:34:01
Yeah, yeah.

Tabitha 1:34:02
*in a silly voice* Yeahhh, that’s real nice. I like that.

Bella 1:34:05
Well, well, Milton’s goal was kind of to justify and inform that God is actually pulling all the strings. Do you think that he succeeded in this epic?

Daniel 1:34:16
If he wanted to make God look good, then no. *Simone laughs* He just- it is a coherent story, but it probably does not fulfill his rhetorical aims, but, you know, that’s my opinion.

Bella 1:34:30
I feel that he failed in that respect, too because, like you said, it doesn’t really make sense that- Oh- It almost seems like an excuse, where they’re, like, ‘oh, God knew that was gonna happen,’ or ‘oh, yeah, he meant him to do that.’ You know? *laughs* Like, throughout, and it just doesn’t jive in the end for me.

Daniel 1:34:49
Yeah, I mean, that, that’s exactly what Shelley said, right? Again, going back to the previous episode, Percy said, ‘You can’t read this and think that God is in the right and once you accept the idea that God is wrong, Satan actually looks like a lot better by comparison, because at least he’s got integrity. At least he’s consistent. At least, you know, it all adds up on Satan’s end, right?’

Tabitha 1:35:08
Well, he gets a story arc and that’s awesome. You know, how many actual Bible stories or anything actually have a real arc and isn’t just, like, here’s a cautionary tale, here’s when we killed some people, I don’t know why? *laughter*

Simone 1:35:22
You get some more character development.

Daniel 1:35:25
That’s, that’s actually, that’s actually a great survey of the Bible. *laughter*

Bella 1:35:32
You know what, giving voice to the adversarial part and making him more human is actually a really powerful tool to make people question the premise before of the person in power. and that’s what this, this story ultimately does, because modern Satanists in the 2000s are now using it as a basis *laughs* and it goes to Satanic literature, so there you go.

Tabitha 1:35:32
He’d hate that, and I am all the way for that. *laughter*

Bella 1:36:03
I find that to be delightful. *more laughter*

Bella 1:36:07
Success!

Simone 1:36:10
Let’s go ahead- let’s, you know, bring this discussion home. You know, in terms of overall impressions of the book. I know some of y’all have read it many times, and some of us are a little newer, so let’s start with Tabitha. Tabitha, what were your overall impressions of the epic poem Paradise Lost?

Tabitha 1:36:33
Uh, Satan is a sad boy-

Simone 1:36:34
Aw.

Tabitha 1:36:34
-and I love him very, very much. *giggles* I think that it, it goes- I like the journey that we go on with Satan and I think that, even though I’m not really a big fan of liars, I think that because- going back to this whole thing that I’ve been, this through-line of Depression is that it feels very real and that it’s definitely something that a trod-upon depressed person would do.

Simone 1:37:08
To piggyback off of what Tab said, I like that Satan here is complicated. You know, is he lying? Is he, you know, lying, but telling the truth? Is he, you know, prideful? Is he doing the whole sour grapes thing? There’s a lot going on here and a lot of religious stories, you get these one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, you know, someone’s all good, someone’s all bad, and, you know, in many portrayals of Satan, it’s the, the complexity that I think is interesting, and this is, you know, one of the first examples of the character being given that complexity. Bella, how about you?

Bella 1:37:52
Well, I’m actually the same as you in that the biggest thing I got from it is that it exposes a lot of the complexities of Satan. I think that the largest power in this epic is showing his vulnerabilities. I think that- I actually feel a bit conflicted about the version of Satan in that he, he’s a paradox in a lot of ways, but yet, I think that harks on to, you know, being a complex being, and actually, it’s part of being very human, like he was cast from Heaven, and, you know, embraced, engaging in Earth, and in a way, became what we now know to be human, which is very vulnerable and is across the large spectrum of not only emotion, but good and evil. So, that kind of goes with what a lot of modern Satanists believe is that we accept and kind of embrace all those versions and sides of us, and then also take responsibility for it, so that’s what I kind of saw in this epic.

Simone 1:39:06
Daniel, how about you?

Daniel 1:39:07
Well, you know, I’m actually going to close, not with my statement, because anybody who’s listened to the show for any length of time knows that I really, really love this poem, and so I think I’ve gone on the record quite enough about that already. Instead, I’ve got a question for people, and my question is- you know, again, I love this poem, and I want more people to read it, especially more Satanists. And in fact, I want them to read it in the, sort of, unhindered way. I actually really don’t like those additions that have the, the quote-unquote translation because I feel like that encourages- go ahead.

Simone 1:39:44
I was just gonna say, it actually was kind of distracting. I would force myself just to read Milton’s lines for, like, a page, and then go back and just, like, confirm with the translation.

Daniel 1:39:57
I, I don’t like those things because I feel like they encourage reading the work in a way that treats the language, the text, like an obstacle that you have to overcome, but it’s not. The text is the whole reason you should be reading it. The text is the poem, quite literally, and it’s part of the appeal of it. I understand the idea, the frustration that some people feel, where they say, why can’t this just be more clear? Why can’t it get to the point? But, in [these] terms, like, the language that’s being used is the point, is the fact that the writer felt this is the only appropriate way to tell this story. When you read the beginning, the first lines of Paradise Lost, which actually are very unhelpfully opaque if you’re being dropped into them without any preparation or advanced warning, it is him asking, he says, like, ‘please give me the words that are suitable to tell this story the way that it deserves to be,’ so the text is, is, not only the story, but it’s a tool that is being used in the story in this very critical way. At the same time, I’ve talked about this on the show before, I don’t really know how to do that. I know that you can’t nag people into doing something like this, and also just telling them, they should- like, of course, everybody knows, they should probably read more classic literature, it’s probably not a lack of ambition on the part of most people that they’re not doing that. It’s probably that they’ve got fucking lives, and they’ve got all the things going on, and they’ve also got, like, some people, you know- some people actually can’t deal with texts, sometimes. They actually, you know, for, for neurological or learning reasons, really struggle with this in a way that the rest of us don’t have to worry about, and so, I find myself uncertain how to persuade people to approach a poem like this in the way that I really, genuinely think would be most rewarding for everybody. So I don’t know how to do that, and so that is my question for all of the listeners. What do you think? What do you think is the best way beyond just telling people they should do something? But what is the best way to, like, holistically motivate people- because of course, if only people are really reading it out of a sense of obligation, obviously, that’s not going to do anybody any good, you’re not going to enjoy it, and you’re probably not going to get everything out of it that somebody like me hopes that you would, so how do we make people want to do these things in a way that really, really persuade- that, that really solves these problems? I don’t know the answer to that; I wish I did. I will continue to labor to find that out.

Simone 1:42:21
Well, I’m going to compare it to Game of Thrones in that, you know, those are quite thick books, can be a little bit intimidating, but when the show came out, you know, I watched the first season of the show and was, you know, it’s- I used it as a, as a primer for actually- as soon as the first season of the show was over, I went and read, like, the next three books, and if you give folks, like, a taste or a simplified version, you kind of show them that world, I think they might be more inclined, or less scared, to tackle the source material. And it’s funny, back when I was working in LA as a talent agent’s assistant, there was a guy on our floor, who was a producer, whose name totally escapes me, but he had been trying to get Paradise Lost the movie made, for years. It actually-

Daniel 1:43:15
Oh, you knew that guy?

Simone 1:43:17
I think there’s been a couple, to be honest.

Daniel 1:43:19
Oh, okay.

Simone 1:43:20
It’s, you know, public domain, so, you know, lots of people can, can try and take a bite at the apple, if you will, but the producer who was just in the building with us, it was like this, he- it was like Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill, like, he was not getting anywhere and it was kind of a, kind of a joke amongst the assistants.

Daniel 1:43:45
So, so he was, so it was in development Hell?

Simone 1:43:48
He very much was. *Daniel laughs* But I think about it, and I’m just, like, man, if he had like gone through and actually made it- first of all, there’s so many different ways you could portray this, you know? It’s such a long epic with all these different characters and, as we’ve already talked about, Satan is very complex, and so, you could paint him sympathetically. You could paint him, you know, as the evil liar. So actually, you know, I think Scott Derrickson, the director of Dr. Strange, had been working on a Paradise Lost because I saw some creature renderings of Lucifer versus Satan. But, yeah, the producer who, you know, happened to work on Wilshire Boulevard versus Scott Derrickson. I would have loved to have seen all of them and compared them, and then yes. I think for most people, that would be a good introduction to take, taking that further step of listening to it on audiotape or actually reading it. Bella, do you have any suggestions?

Bella 1:44:56
No, that’s a hard one because it is notoriously difficult to get people to read, especially something like an extremely long epic from the 1600s, *laughs* especially when there are things available, like the simple version of, ‘then he flew.’ I personally think it’s a tool, and it’s a good tool for me, it kind of wipes out, you know, some of the clogs that I get sometimes if I’m reading- if I’m reading a lot of this poem, like, my, my head starts to bunch up, and so, I like having that tool, that as a tool. But, of course, I recommend to read the actual poem because, you know, it would be kind of weird and stupid to read, ‘then he flew.’ *laughter* It’s so simple, it wouldn’t be anything- it wouldn’t even be worth reading, but I think it’s a good tool, but me being, me having and running the Satanic Book Room, you know, I’ve looked at a lot of other book clubs, and a lot of them fail. A lot of them don’t stick around for very long because it’s really difficult to keep motivating people to participate and pick up books. Like, the reality is, is that a lot of people would rather see the movie version, or, you know, or whatever, or watch something else on TV instead of picking up a book, especially a really long, old classic poem, so that’s the question that remains to be answered. I know that the Satanic Book Room continued, continues to persist because we occupy a niche, which is Satanic literature and, you know, when you’re thinking of a group of Satanists, a lot of them are devoted to continuing to learn about it and, you know, that’s also kind of a cornerstone of being a Satanist, is continuing to embrace knowledge and move forward. You know, we like to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, but getting people en mass to agree to read this poem in the raw, I think is- might be an uphill battle. *laughs* It’s hard to do; it’s hard to motivate people in that way.

Daniel 1:47:10
Well, you know, I realized-

Bella 1:47:11
But I still encourage it. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Daniel 1:47:14
It’s okay. I will add one thing. I don’t want to shame people, by the way, who, like, read that addition with the quote, unquote, translation, but, even though I really hate that. If you read that? Great, wonderful. I think that i think that’s fantastic relative to say, not reading it at all. If you only made it a little way into the book, and maybe you feel bad about that, I think that’s still wonderful that you cared. I think, even if you’re somebody who just, like, wants to read it, and you have not gotten to do it yet, even that is really an accomplishment relative to the people who don’t give a shit, the people who couldn’t be bothered to care, so I definitely don’t want to, you know, shame or stigmatize anybody who tries to approach a work like this in any way that works for them. Even though again, I have my opinions about what way is best, so, but I think that’s really important.

Simone 1:48:00
And Tabitha, what about you?

Tabitha 1:48:02
I’ve got three words. Hip Hop. Broadway. Musical! *laughs*

Simone 1:48:12
Wow. Wow.

Tabitha 1:48:16
Paradise Lost by Lin Manuel Miranda. *cackles*

Simone 1:48:21
I mean, shit-

Bella 1:48:22
The never-ending joke. *laughter* That was it. *laughs*

Tabitha 1:48:26
*laughing* That was my joke! *Bella laughs* It’s a zinger!

Simone 1:48:30
To be honest, like, there are only two ways you could ever get me in a theater to see a musical- no offense to my friends who love musicals, I’m happy that you have this love, but it’s not shared by me- first- Oh! Trent Reznor was nominated for an Emmy, so he’s gonna get that ‘E’ for the EGOT, that just leaves a Tony, and I *will* go see that show, but Lin Manuel Miranda doing a Hamilton take on Paradise Lost? Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna have to be there. *laughter*

Daniel 1:48:59
You know what, Tabitha is joking, but honestly? Look at that example- look at like, like, to make people in the 21st century, in America, care so much about Alexander Hamilton, the nerdiest, most obscure fucking American history niche that you could possibly have fallen into, and now? Like, that’s the, that’s- but people’s love for that is now entirely sincere, so you know what? The line between erudition and popular appeal is thin and weird.

Bella 1:49:30
So that was Tabitha’s joke, but it actually turned out to be the best answer.

Simone 1:49:35
True.

Tabitha 1:49:35
Like, how do you motivate people to be involved in Paradise Lost and want to also read it? If-

Tabitha 1:49:41
This is why they put me on the show. *laughter*

Bella 1:49:45
It was brilliant.! *more laughter*

Simone 1:49:47
Okay. Well, Bella, thank you again so much for joining us today. If folks are interested in learning more about the Satanic Book Room, maybe even joining and picking up the next selection, where can they find you?

Bella 1:49:59
All right, well, we’re on Facebook under groups and it’s just the Satanic Book Room. Come on down. I run it, as well as the help of three wonderful admins. We’re constantly adding new material and discussing Satanic literature.

Simone 1:50:17
Okay.

Bella 1:50:17
We also have a lot of files of books that you can read from our- oh, what is it? From our archive or files area- our files area includes a lot of free press books of Satanic literature and background that you can read.

Simone 1:50:37
And of course, if you want to get in touch with us here at the podcast, our email address is blackmassappealpod@gmail.com. The website is blackmassappeal.com and you can find us as Black Mass Appeal on most social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Daniel 1:50:55
If you want to find out more about Satanic Bay Area, check us out at satanicbayarea.com. You can find us on Facebook and on Instagram as Satanic Bay Area or follow us on Twitter- the handle there is @SatanicSF. Under normal circumstances, you could also come down to satanic coffee hour at Wicked Grounds coffee shop in San Francisco on the third Thursday of every month, but of course, I don’t need to tell you that has been indefinitely postponed for painfully obvious reasons. Instead, pay attention to our Google Calendar and our social media to find out when we’re having our next online chat and, Tabitha, next time we do what are we going to be having?

Tabitha 1:51:30
Leftover Thai food!

Daniel 1:51:31
Ooh, oh! Fuck, I forgot about the leftover Thai food.

Tabitha 1:51:34
Yeah, we got leftover Thai food, including crab fried rice and I’m gonna munch it.

Daniel 1:51:39
Oh, we gotta Hail Satan and get on that then. All right, in that case, Hail Satan, everybody.

Tabitha 1:51:45
Yay!

Simone 1:51:45
Yeah.

Daniel 1:51:46
3, 2, 1-

Black Mass Appeal 1:51:48
Hail Satan! *Eddie Money’s Two Tickets to Paradise plays*

The post Episode 77 – Paradise Lost appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Episode 66 – Patron Sinners

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 08:27:47 +0000

Sometimes you’ve just got to love the sinner and the sin, so we’re dedicating this show to the memories of Satanic Bay Area’s beloved Patron Sinners, those iconic iconoclasts who, in our opinion, represented the greatest Satanic values of their time — for all time.

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The post Episode 66 – Patron Sinners appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.