"For We Are Many": Collectivism as the Demonic Solution to Divine Exploitation, by Jäger von Heinrich Kramer

St. Michael expelling Lucifer and the Rebel Angels
ca. 1622
Peter Paul Rubens

This particular work has been an especially difficult one for me, though I suppose not surprisingly. The closing months of the American 2020 elections and a prematurely declared relief from a socially warping pandemic have had the effect of both ratcheting internal tensions and clarifying thoughts I’ve been struggling with for what are in fact decades. In being drawn to Satanism over the last few years it’s been clear this has largely been driven by an identification not just as an outsider, but by a revolutionary impulse, being set outside of the acceptable order and culture, hoping to see the world changed in ways that reshape this order fundamentally, towards the elimination of exploitation. In this time I chose to examine what a Satanic representation of Heaven and Hell could mean, and as the world seemed to shudder and deform in the events of 2020, I’ve found myself seeking to resolve a tension in my own thinking. Watching as the scientific empiricism I rely upon in my day job fails to grapple with the failures of our social order, I have sought to understand the metaphorical impulses that drive my engagement with the world and my desires to see it changed.

As I think about the economic and social conflicts that we’ve been facing, my mind goes to the English Civil War, itself a shattering event cited not just in the emerging liberal consciousness, but also the rise of capitalism during the colonial order. And while Milton is the most obvious figure from this period for a Satanist to begin with, I would instead like to start with Thomas Hobbes, a man whose political philosophy is surprisingly helpful for a radical like myself. Leaving aside his proto-fascist apologia towards the Leviathan of state, Hobbes made a critical observation: In critiquing the shortcomings of the estates system, he asserted that the priesthood of his day had perverted the original meanings of the terms soul and spirit. In his mind God was material, and the usage of the words spirit and soul were originally intended to be understood metaphorically. Their transformation into immaterial supernatural concepts was an intentional act to grant the priestly class an absolute power over an aspect of life that only they could mediate. While Hobbes was more concerned that this created a center of power in the clergy that worked against the righteous sovereign, it should be obvious to us that this framing served to keep the masses subservient to authority in fear over their position in an unseen world.

This literalization of the metaphorical understanding of spirit should be understood to include all aspects of the mythology of Christendom, in particular Heaven and Hell. American evangelicals especially will describe Heaven as a gaudy afterlife, adorned like a tacky Atlantic City Hotel among the clouds, and Hell a roiling pit of sulfurous torment populated by homosexuals and aborted babies. These of course are informed by much more inspired depictions, whether the diss-track of elaborate descriptions of the nine circles by Dante Aligheri, or the surreal landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch. Yet the symbolism at work has been exploited to obscure the spirit within these concepts, a thing we must understand when attempting the Satanic hermeneutic.

Here then we can look to Milton, whose Heaven and Hell are especially evocative not just in their descriptions but for their role in the conflict between good and evil. Satan’s bid to unseat God from his throne in Heaven crushed, he and the Infernal Host find themselves exiled. Banished from the source of power, the fallen angels build their own domain and plot their next steps to unseat Him. For Milton, the allegories of his own folly in rebellion are obvious and mirror both the precarity of the Calvinists following the restoration of the monarchy and any number of exiles in feudal European courts. I however am not bound by the historical context and wish to interrogate what meaning can be found in both the Hell that Satan and the Infernal Host made as their home, and the Heaven they fought a war to claim. These metaphors maintain a powerful resonance even after the change from the social order of the divine right of kings to the era of liberalism, as we continue to struggle with overpowering forces that stand in the way of forming a society that
works for the advancement of all.

How then can we categorize these divine/debased planes? Heaven is of course the seat of God, the source of grace and all that is true and good with the world, while Hell is the punishment, a place of darkness and torment originally crafted as a seat of exile for the rebellious angels that fought alongside Satan. More than that, Heaven is the source of creation, a seat of power, and a space of joy from which all challengers to the monarchical power of God must be exiled. In Paradise Lost, nearly from the start Satan doubts the claims of God to being the sole creator. He rightly concludes God’s usurpation of the powers of Heaven is unjust, and finds himself called to challenge that. In his fervor, though, Satan overestimates his forces, an error he pays for in exile and begins again as a guerrilla, sowing doubt in the minds of God’s newest subjects. These subjects would go on to then find themselves cast out from God’s grace, but given the promise of acceptance, of being granted access to Heaven as reward for their fealty. That divine power asserted, the message then to us is clear: If we, as subjects of His world, accept the sacrifice of His son and live virtuous lives, depending on one’s theology, we will be accepted into this kingdom of Heaven on our death and in the end of days. Here
then is the critical point: Heaven has been set behind a dictatorial gatekeeper, one that will brook no dissent.

This promise of any relief from the conditions of suffering being set behind a gate has relevance beyond the mystical considerations of a religion and can be applied to the specific conditions of our modern world. The idea of contentment, of being part of a thing larger than oneself, has been the promise of governments and religions for centuries. Salvation through Christ being the most obvious, this promise has been made even in the world where humanity has removed God from the public sphere. As nation states formed, nationalism made promises to the people of discrete geographic regions and related cultures of a shared purpose and brotherhood, and importantly of an organizing principle in service to the ruling classes. The revolutionary liberalism of the Jacobins is no exception, as it was led largely by the emerging bourgeoisie who would claim the role of ruling class in the stead of the old hereditary monarchist orders. Today the neoliberal order promises we can have what we want if we just find our niche as a consumer, to satisfy our needs for virtue, pleasure, and community within the products that we buy and the media we consume, but controlled and dispersed by increasingly wealthy capitalists.

All have been lies, false promises of heaven and a shared human experience presented so that the people in power might maintain their rarified positions. As the tensions of these conditions mount, it’s no wonder why online commenters reply to fresh news, no matter the severity, with “we live in hell” because in truth, we do. Importantly, I think across the political and ideological spectrum all Satanists understand this. If there is one way to describe the larger cohort of self-described Satanists, it is “outsider”. Sensing this alienation from the heaven of connection to the totality of humanity, the symbolism of the fallen angel, cast out from Heaven and forced to dwell in the eternal torment of Hell becomes cartoonishly obvious. And yet the actions Satanists take vary wildly, as I’ve discussed previously. What then of the libertarian turn that so many Satanists take? Are there further metaphors and symbols that exist to critique this?

As Satanists we must eliminate God as the force at the center of this heavenly state, and acknowledge the power of the collective humanity that creates and shapes the world in which we live. LaVey, liberal subject that he was, took this to mean the full realization of human potential was to be found in seizing the mantle of godhood for one’s self. For all the fear and hysteria he provoked in the post-Vietnam era, this philosophy is a perfect representation of what would become the Reaganite Neo-Liberal order. And yet all individuals, atomized as we are, share in common with other people a fundamental humanity which on a deep emotional
level nearly all of us understand. That desire for heaven embodies the desire to reach out, to be loved, to care for others, to understand and converse. Hell then is the fear of separation, the alienation from others, and the fear that when it is all done that we’ll have been a small, driftless and isolated island. The LaVeyan embraces the individual, choosing to forsake heaven and find relief in selfish and indulgent pursuits. I’ve already written on how this ideology is fundamentally fascist in nature, and so the only conclusion for those committed to challenging authoritarian structures is to fight as a collective for our rightful place in heaven.

Even here the Bible seems to understand the threat to the gatekeeping order from an organized communal humanity. Mankind found themselves driven by a collective drive to pierce the sky and find heaven themselves through a massive works project in the tower of Babel, a threat to God’s authority so great he destroys the structure and fragments the people through the barrier of language, both hampering our ability to organize, but also breaking our understanding of a shared humanity. The New Testament too contains allegories for the destruction of collective power, the parable of the demons and the pigs being I think the most remarkable. When challenged for its name by Jesus, the demons respond “I am Legion, for we are many”. On this basis, the demon is dispersed, cast out, each one into a solitary pig, and in their atomized state they falter, ultimately throwing themselves as a group into the ocean. It’s an odd parable with no obvious lesson, except the one I’m implying: that without collective action the power to undermine the authority of God is doomed to self destruction.

I suspect our forebears understood this, grappling with the ideas of a new subject relationship to the world through the enlightenment and its apotheosis in the French Revolution. As the power of trading firms and the bourgeois social class conflicted with the old and corrupt monarchical orders of the European world, the ideology of liberalism took hold and began a process of revealing to people the rights they had, and the power to determine their own lives and the future of their world. These inspirations would fuel further analyses and their demands for greater sharing of agency, through the revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the codification of socialist, anarchist, and communist political thought.

In all this I think we can say that Nietzsche was right and in that era we did kill God, and that unfortunately the perils of having done so are clear. In that time the powers of the new social order proved themselves strong, and in the empty throne of the Divine Monarch, the forces which came to rule us were the cold brutal abstractions of capitalism. In place of the King or Emperor, the drive to profit gives license to a million petty lords, bosses who demand their employees sacrifice just that extra bit so that they can report a fraction of a percent efficiency gains to their boss, who puts together a presentation for an assemblage of twerps using their money to gain greater wealth at the expense of the masses. The dead god Capitalism now sits as the gatekeeper to Heaven, hoarding the fruits of human endeavor, atomizing us to keep the people from organizing our inherent power.

This, rather than the sclerotic libertarianism of LaVey, is the struggle that I propose is the most Satanic work possible: To find the boss that pits you against your fellow workers and unionize to overthrow their control of your livelihood; to find the government that sets upon you laws that keep your neighbors at each other’s throats and depose them to build a community and society that works for the betterment of all; to find the church or cult that claims to know the way to true peace and comfort and to destroy their lies that keep people from finding the sacred in all of humanity. In a shared experience, humanity has true power, and in spite of Satanists of the past asserting that every man is a god, in shared purpose humanity in total will become God when the last gatekeepers are overthrown.

The Fall of Man and the Destruction of Edenic Hegemony, by Jäger von Heinrich Kramer

Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1828.

Before the world turned cruel and harsh, it is said that the first man Adam woke in a lush garden, his body crafted in the image of his Creator. Eve was created from his rib, and together they tended to the plants and animals, as masters of the Earth, with God as master over them. In this, He forbid them only one thing: in the center of the garden stood a tree bearing fruit containing the knowledge of good and evil, which they should not eat or they would die. Despite all that was provided to them, Eve was tempted by Satan in the body of a serpent, promising that godhood was within human reach, and that the threats of death were simple lies to keep her servile. On eating the fruit, and sharing with her husband, God cursed the first human beings, and cast them out of the garden, forced to grow old, die, and suffer beyond His grace for having ignored the commandments of their creator.

This tale also never really happened, which is something that I am willing to state categorically. Genetic evidence alone is enough to debunk this story, but by now I hope that you, dear reader, expect more from me than simple mid-2000s internet-Atheist polemicizing on the absurdity of Biblical literalism. I’ve previously argued that the simultaneously abstract and concrete stories of religious mythology are powerful motivators, and as these stories have been told and retold countless times since at least the tenth century BCE in one form or another, we should instead examine the story of the fall of man with a serious eye. This story, and other stories from the Bible, have remarkable staying power, and examining their themes and implications should prove illuminating — particularly, their underlying justifications for authoritarian or fascist power structures. I believe that an effort to reframe and reimagine this story will reveal a powerful message for the radical seeking to bring real material change to the world.

Central to the story’s power is its emotional appeal to what defined life in paradise. This is marked by two distinct qualities: the lack of clothing and the complete protection from harm, including death, which God’s grace provides. It’s clear the appeal the state of nudity would have to people of any era, whether a desire to be freed from the toil and struggle of daily life or to be free of social pressures and shame. Further, the very real dangers of death by starvation, war, or disease hangs over everyone, and freedom from this uncertainty is a powerful idea. Knowing what life after the fall of man is like, the wrenching hubris of eating the fruit in defiance of God becomes that much more tragic, and the fear of disobedience becomes wrapped up with the everyday fears of the unknown. A mystical bliss and comfort is placed in tragic tension with the punishment for reaching towards godhood.

This is, simply put, prelapsarian nostalgia. Not a unique thing by any measure: the Bhagavad Gita is a story of decay from an ancient virtuous era to our modern corrupt state, while back in the Mediterranean world Roman mythology held the citizens were exiles of the great city of Troy, and Plato spoke of a perfect republic in the city of Atlantis sunk and lost to history. All serve a simple purpose: to invoke the virtues of an imaginary time that no one has ever experienced and to condemn a world that malevolent actors seek to dominate. The story of the fall of man from the Garden of Eden works towards this end especially well, as disobedience to the one true God condemns not just those who have disobeyed but their entire lineage—a generational punishment that, until the Gospels of Jesus, were inescapable and the fundamental burden of all mankind. What then to think of a ruler who claims the authority of that god? If you yourself do not believe them, they certainly have many followers who do that will gladly proclaim you corrupted by the great evil that corrupted us all at the beginning.

The danger of this story is compounded by the figure of the serpent. Here the fundamental evil of the world tricks our ancestors, making every one of us vulnerable to being led astray from our “benevolent” overlord. This makes any disobedience an act of existential danger, a re-capitulation of the original sin that doomed us all to a life of toil and shame. The entire story then is an elaborate justification for the domination and oppression of the masses by a few claiming an authority from an un-interrogateable god. It is a paean to authoritarianism and fascism, made more dangerous by the implication that resource scarcity is a direct result of this fall from grace.

“Be fruitful, and multiply” is the command God gives when he creates Adam and Eve, and the Garden provides all the food needed for this with no negative externalities. Cast from the sacred grounds, though, man must till the soil and struggle for his meals, and if they are too fruitful? Starvation or war awaits. This line of thinking might seem familiar, as it guides the “tough love” attitudes of conservative thinkers, and one of the most influential was Thomas Malthus. To him the suffering of society whether from war or starvation was evidence of the unvirtuous nature of man constrained by the laws of nature. In his telling, the formula is simple: left unregulated, lifeforms grow at exponential rates, while the production of resources can only proceed in a linear fashion. Starvation is the ultimate curb on the growth of humanity, and to prevent wide scale famine, individuals must practice virtuous behaviors of restraint.

Conveniently, those for whom the lack of said virtues made their lot harder were the poor and the working class. The poor bred too quickly, wasted their money on alcohol and trifles, and any effort to alleviate their financial precarity would only release the brakes on their natural biological urges, thus damning all society. That this in effect excuses the unjust order of the society in which Malthus lived is no accident. In fact, the occasion for writing his famous “Essay on the Principle of Population” was in response to William Godwin’s “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,” a foundational work indicating the role of institutions in the lives of the people and the individual’s responsibility to either work with or rebel against these. While both of these men were absolutely of an aristocratic class, Godwin’s work was a fundamental challenge to the monarchist orders of his day and sat in solidarity with the radical actions of the Jacobins in France, a direct existential threat to Malthus’s principles and status.

Godwin and Malthus

More fundamentally, though, we must consider Malthus’s faith as an Anglican priest in propagating this worldview, especially in contrast to Godwin. While the latter’s “Political Justice” would examine the institutions of people and propose how one might go about improving the position of every person and relieving their suffering, for Malthus the original sin of eating that fruit in the Garden of Eden condemned mankind to a tremendous evil. That evil, the cause of all human suffering, could only be resolved by the death and resurrection of Christ, a literal sacrifice for our historical sins. The line from the need for the tremendous sacrifice of Christ to a personal sacrifice in order to preserve society is obvious and made easier to prescribe when those called to sacrifice the most are your social inferiors.

The shadow of Malthus, though, is long—not only for his role in legitimizing competition for scarce resources as a driving force for large economies, but in further entrenching the idea that struggle is an inexorable force of nature. Despite the perseverance of mankind and the ability to greatly expand our capacity to feed our populations, many people still cling to the idea that there is some impurity fundamental to the human condition. We saw it dramatically stated in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when clear skies over Los Angeles prompted people to declare “nature is healing, humans are the virus.” While it’s been memed to death by now, this impulse is central to one of the most dangerous ideologies of our time: eco-fascism. This political movement, which has been gaining profile in the last several years, confronts the ecological crises of industrialization and climate change by proposing a state that serves the rightful pure people to a government in harmony with nature, while barring the “lesser races” from this protection. To these ideologues, the degradation of the natural world is the fault of modernity, with industrialization leading to the debasement of the traditional family and honest labor made impossible through the importation of workers from impure nations. This idea of a lost, more pristine state of nature and that of a corrupting influence that must be purged so that human beings can reclaim the paradise that was stolen from them fits only too well with the traditional telling of the fall of man from the Garden of Eden.

This is why we as radical Satanists must reimagine this story. While Milton may not have considered Satan a hero—and the Bible certainly doesn’t—we are under no obligation to follow their lead. Consider instead the story of the fall of man as a tale told by an unreliable narrator. God, a usurping despot claiming supreme authority finds (or maybe even creates) mankind and places him in the garden. For what purposes isn’t too important, though I am partial to the theology Milton held that God sought to renew the armies of heaven with the souls of man for a coming war with the infernal host. Satan, having been defeated in his attempt to cast down the false despot, has caught wind of God’s new project. Setting out to prevent the creation of this new force, he finds that man actually lacks the capacity to critically question his own lot, as Satan and the other fallen angels have. Lied to in service of a militarist agenda, he thus seeks to liberate the first people and save them from a servile future. Taking the form of one of the beasts, he approaches Eve, who has already been placed in a position of subservience and, in Milton’s telling, bristles at it. Appealing to her sense of reason, he convinces her that there is no way that the fruit will kill her, that it was a lie to prevent her from the knowledge she needs to realize herself as a being with agency and intent.

In this, Satan is a promethean figure, a form especially popular amongst Romantic writers. Only, instead of bringing the knowledge of fire, Satan leads mankind to knowledge of themselves and the world. Equipped with the understanding of right and wrong, they become useless to God in his plans for a final War in Heaven and are cast out from the garden of false comforts to the world as it is. Although he is actually helping mankind—hastening the first people’s confrontation with their fate—they nevertheless blame the serpent for their choice to rebel against God. Satan, knowing that understanding can only come from personal examination, knows he shouldn’t reveal the entirety of God’s deception and thus comes to be seen as a liar, a conniving snake that through malice destroyed the comfort and peace that mankind had once had.

Here we have a powerful story of doubt, rebellion, and solidarity, as well as a cautionary tale that the choice to renounce your masters is difficult. Eden, itself reframed as a gilded prison and false homeland, becomes a direct rebuke to the temptations of eco-fascism and its calls to return to a pure state of nature. This prelapsarian myth, instead of representing a world corrupted by malevolent outside forces, was constructed to advance fascist goals in the first place. While the comforts of authoritarian edicts may satisfy the uncritical mind, Satanic Liberation offers the promise of self-determination, and the prison break from the Garden stands as a triumph. Further, the work of fighting unjust authority requires more than just declaring your unwillingness to be ruled. An injury to one is an injury to all; but many still believe their life requires subservience, and helping others to see past this frequently risks making ourselves the target of their anger. The war, though, is long, and the cause of liberation for all people I think is worth that struggle and isolation.

When I first conceived of Satanism as a way for abstract radical concepts to be retold, the fall of man was the first story that came to mind. I think we can see here the power in this methodology, and, as Satanists, we can take this effort to examine other narratives, interrogate the implied agendas they hold, and, through careful reframing, discover their hidden truths. Armed now with these Satanic hermeneutics we can approach a broad array of stories in our search for hidden Satanic knowledge.

No True Blasphemer, by Jäger Von Heinrich Kramer

Satanists get a lot of questions. Do you worship the Devil? (No.) Do you sacrifice animals under the full moon? (It’s the new moon, and no.) Are you part of a global anti-democratic conspiracy of elites working with the shadow government of The Illuminati to guide world events towards a one world heretical government fueled by the blood of innocents to support the alien lizard people invasion? (Tuesdays only.) However, the most commonly asked is “why?”.

It’s a fair question, especially for myself. I am in fact an atheist, raised in a non-Christian home and educated in the public school system. My exposure to Christian institutions were either exercises in outright bigotry or honest care (while playing the “No True Scotsman” defense when the crimes of other denominations were raised). Why then attach myself to the Lightbringer and Adversary of God and not a local humanist or skeptics society? The answer here is complicated, but instead I want to address another question: why didn’t I become a Satanist until later in life? Here I can only point to the public image of Satanism that most people through the 90s and 00s were familiar with, the Church of Satan. As an organization of self-described Ayn Rand fans, their embrace of Libertarian ideology fundamentally repulsed me, keeping me from considering Satanic practice as a possibility. And yet the history of Satanic thought is richer than the writings of a midcentury San Francisco fabulist, and it is this tradition that would ultimately draw me in.

Satan as a figure is much more complicated than the American evangelical movement would have you believe. From the Hebrew notion of a debate partner to God, the Catharist notion of the Devil as King of the Earth, and our more familiar Lord of Lies, this character had even in pre-enlightenment Europe and the Middle-East a rich mythical tradition. Then in 1667 John Milton would publish Paradise Lost, casting Satan as the protagonist of an epic poem whose character continues to reverberate. Published following the English Civil War, the conflict between Satan and God takes on a decidedly political tone, reflecting the Parliamentarian/Royalist conflict of his time. This totalizing war that pitted ideals of both religious practice and political ideologies becomes an allegory where Milton presents Satan strikingly similar to himself as an advocate of revolution and gadfly to authority.

This avatar of rebellion would endure, and Milton’s Satan would be cited by supporters of the French Revolution amongst others as an inspiration for their cause, including the husband to Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin. Unsurprisingly this spirit would flourish during the Romantic era, with writers such as Mary and Percy Shelley, William Blake and George Gordon Byron taking the rebellious spirit further. More than just a political figure of rebellion, Satan had become one of culture, claiming a hedonistic spirit in contravention of contemporary demands.

These defenses/celebration of Satan would drive the spirit of radicals through the new century, and Satan would come to be associated with more esoteric practices as the Spiritualist movements took hold in Europe and America. Most notably Eliphas Levi, a French socialist and mystic most famous for his engraving of Baphomet, would inspire the practitioners of the Theosophy Society, as well as Aleister Crowley and his stridently anti-Christian Thelema movement. Here Satan deviates a bit from the Miltonian figure of righteous rebellion, but still serves as a potent symbol for people practicing on the margins of polite society.

Then in 1966, Anton LaVey (neé Levey) founded the Church of Satan. I can only speculate on his motivations; considering that much of his biography appears to be either exaggerated or outright fabricated, I’m inclined to believe it was an effort at self-aggrandizement and enrichment. Certainly the Church itself traffics in many self-stated radically individualistic philosophies, being explicitly informed by people like Ayn Rand and the implied Social Darwinism that comes with that. It should then be no surprise that the group has deeper associations with outright Fascists and Nazis, including James Mason, a man currently held as a spiritual leader for the violent right wing terrorist group Atomwaffen. This is no chance affiliation, and speaks to their shared fundamental ideals. The Satanic Bible itself is in part plagiarized (or “takes inspiration from”, as the rabidly online spokespeople from CoS will be quick to remind me) from a 19th century text called “Might is Right.” A virulently racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and violent work. If that title sounds familiar its probably because it was cited by the Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooter as an inspiration for his violent assault.

Following LaVey there would be other Satanic organizations, some elevating violent fascist politics as a focus of their theology. There would also be more justice minded groups such as The Satanic Temple. (At least in a forward facing capacity.) It was the vocally anti-LaVeyian position of the New York chapter of TST appealed to and gave me a framework to recontextualize my atheism and scientific ideology. Unfortunately I and several other TST members found ourselves in a fundamental disagreement with the leadership of the Temple, and while I will refrain from excoriating them in this piece, I encourage you to read my comrade Emma Story’s essay for a good introduction to our shared problems with the organization. In the aftermath, those of us that left founded LORE, specifically to renew the tradition of Romantic Satanism, to advance rebellion and liberation from oppressive rightwing thought and practices in our modern society.

With such a degree of diversity in Satanic Philosophy (not dissimilar to what can be found in other older religious traditions) LORE stands to present an antidote to the other, more regressive organizations. How then do we, as members of a “Satanic Justice” minded collective, confront the presence of violent fascist orders? The Church of Satan is quick to insist that these, and frankly, most Satanic orders are  not real Satanists. Leaving aside the absurdity that a group that has advertised James Mason’s “Siege” for sale in their publications has no intellectual bond to these reactionary groups, this falls into a classic and tedious logical fallacy. No matter how much we feel the practices and philosophy of Anton LaVey’s church violate fundamental Satanic ideals, we cannot declare them to be “No True Blasphemer” if we are to remain an intellectually honest movement.

What then can we do? First is to make our movement the best form of Satanism possible: to deny fascism, racism, misogyny and bigotry. We need to be available to help educate people curious about Satanism, both those considering it as a practice, but also critics, to help them to understand the heterogeneity of the community, and the dangers present in the shittier organizations. Our principles must be manifested in action, providing spaces and rituals that only alienate the comfortable and unjustly empowered. Finally, we must be ready to directly denounce and call out other Satanic groups with the same fervor we have for mainstream religions. Setting blinkers to our own community will only give space to bad actors, and our guiding values demand we do better.

Introducing League of Rebel Eve (LORE): A Feminist Satanic Collective Set On Fighting Radical Anti-Scientific Christianity by Reclaiming the First Victim of Forced Motherhood, Eve, by LORE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LORE

New York, New York

www.lorenyc.com

August 16, 2019

LORE, a new collective of self-described “non-theistic Satanists” has launched a website and will be holding upcoming events in New York City, beginning in Summer of 2019. Comprised mostly of former members of The Satanic Temple (TST), The League of Rebel Eve (LORE) is a polydox Satanic collective that will be a hub for activism, performance art, original writings, and educational events. 

LORE is a nexus of Satanic activism in New York City with close ties to other Satanic organizations from across the nation. After splintering from TST in late 2018 due to irreconcilable differences, LORE’s founding members took part in a “dark meditation” to develop six core values to guide it’s fight against oppression and religious bigotry.

“LORE is a return to tradition and hedonistic transcendence for Satanic activism,” stated the collective’s spokesperson, Dæmôn J. Placebo. Placebo details:

While the roots of anti-authoritarian Satanism date back to the Enlightenment, the political, rhetorical, and psychological benefits of collectively taking on the mantle of the great spiritual ‘other’ are only more necessary today. We aim to make Satanism more than a theatrical footnote in a culture war over ultimate truth and bodily autonomy. The Satanism of tomorrow is a powerful Luciferian light against the hegemonic darkness of religious zealotry, institutionalized religion, and government sanctioned bigotry.

Styled after Romantic Era Satanists in the vein of Mary Shelley, William Blake, and Lord Byron, LORE is a return to intellectual, anti-authoritarian Satanism with an emphasis on feminism, LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, and a staunch rejection of fascism and religious hegemony. 

As over 12 states in the past few months have continued to impose a radical Christian theocratic agenda that is anti-women, anti-trans, anti-autonomy, and anti-science, media attention has increasingly turned to useful and inspiring counterprogramming, including Satanic activism. The power of Satanic activism was eloquently summarized by Jex Blackmore in a recent profile on Jezebel.com. Blackmore related that she sees:

Satanic activism is a lens to interrogate the imposition of moral policies informed by oppressive religious ideologies. Its a tool in aid of understanding our inner selves and provides power in organizing with others who seek to be liberated from the repressive dictates of an increasingly emboldened theocracy. 

LORE’s spokesperson Dæmôn J. Placebo explained the role that LORE is playing in the multi-century long tradition of Satanic oppositionalism:

Many contemporary Satanic organizations are ill equipped intellectually and organizationally to face old and new cultural foes in a coherent, integrative battle for humanity’s enlightenment. This is partially because most of the Satanic churches and temples you may have heard of were dialectical reactions to the coercive spirituality of other eras. To birth a better future for our species and planet, The League of Rebel Eve is digging back into the core of western culture’s essential relationship with the imagined duality of good and evil, beginning with the first woman forced into motherhood: Eve.

LORE will be hosting a public event in summer 2019 with proceeds benefiting an organization opposed forced birth legislation. Information about upcoming events will be posted on LORE’s online calendar.

Heresy and Authority, by Jäger Von Heinrich Kramer

Since leaving The Satanic Temple, I’ve given considerable thought to what I’d write for my first LORE piece. There are any number of moments where the history of Satanic or heretical ideas intersect with our group’s mission, but one in particular kept popping in my head. As a group of Satanists dedicated to challenging unjust and illegitimate authority in all forms, in particular their claims to be absolute arbiters of simple facts, the perfect example seemed to me to be the Galileo Affair.  

Unless you’re a member of the frustratingly persistent Flat Earth truther movement (and I really hope you aren’t), the Earth rotating around the sun while spinning on its own axis is one of the most basic facts of science. It was also one of the most controversial assertions in Western history, dangerous enough to draw the attention of the head of a major religion and to threaten its advocates with absolute ostracization. This seems, in retrospect, an excessively severe punishment for something that has nothing to do with fundamental Catholic principles such as Transubstantiation or the Trinity. Why then the extreme measures?

Popular imagination has many misconceptions about pre-Christian Europe and the Mediterranean’s scientific knowledge. Despite childhood stories of Christopher Columbus, Europeans since the ancient Greeks insisted that the earth was a globe, with the mathematician Eratosthenes having correctly calculated the circumference in the third century BCE. The relative position of the earth to the stars, planets, and sun was a more contentious question. One of the most popular ideas was geocentrism, contemporaneously referred to as Ptolemaic cosmology. The philosopher Ptolemy developed a model that attempted to align the motions of the planets with the writings of Aristotle.  This idea persisted well past the fall of the Western Roman Empire, thanks to the Islamic world’s veneration of Aristotle. As trade resumed in the Mediterranean with the Islamic world over the following centuries, this formalized system to explain the cosmos was returned to Catholic Europe and became the accepted order of the greater universe.

The problem was that careful study of the movements of the planets revealed a fixed earth required elaborate explanations. While stars seem to move with a regular arc in the night sky, the planets wander, sometimes backtracking over days. Ptolemaic cosmology had to invent complex mathematics and explanations for how this was possible. It wasn’t until the observations of Copernicus that a simpler solution was proposed. By replacing the fixed position of the earth with the sun, the math to explain planetary motion could be simplified.

Like most hypotheses, this model has problems that kept it from solving every shortcoming of the Ptolemaic system, leaving the question mired in controversy. People continued to investigate, and in the 1600s Galileo Galilei, using advanced telescopes, observed details of the planets never seen before. Between the shadows of craters on the moon, other objects rotating around Jupiter, and most crucially, the planet Venus demonstrating phases, he concluded that the heliocentric model was the only model consistent with these observations.

The story from here is I think familiar to most. The Catholic Inquisition with full backing of the Pope, sentenced Galileo to house imprisonment under suspicion of heresy and placed a total ban on his work. What isn’t as often discussed is why the Church declared heliocentrism as heresy.

Here I want to stress, that “heresy” is not simply a contravention of theological doctrine on the part of the heretic. It is a political accusation against a non-accepted line of thought, and the Inquisition existed to enforce a rigid ideological order. This is demonstrated by the actions taken against prominent heretical movements prior to the Galileo affair, in particular the Fraticelli. The “Little Brethren” were an order of Catholics who believed that one could not follow the example of Christ without embracing poverty, and they presented a very real threat to the tenuous order the Church had established in Europe.

Feudal Europe had congealed into a strictly tiered society after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, a social order that was condoned, and granted divine authority by the Church. Those who work, the peasants, made sure the realm was fed, while those who fought, the nobles, maintained this order, while those who prayed, the Church, saw to the ultimate salvation of all Christendom. An idyllic and simple structure that masked a society in constant tension. Kings, and most notably the Holy Roman Emperor, had for centuries chafed at the power and land the Church held. This was kept in check by the Church claiming exclusive authority over the personal dispensation that would absolve the lords of their sins so that they could be admitted into Heaven. This practice of indulgences translated to material wealth, as the Church accepted payments for absolution. To demand that the clergy swear off material wealth was to demand that they unilaterally disarm in this cold war with the secular powers. It was for this that Fraticelli priests and monks were persecuted by the Inquisition, a political act to prevent a threat to Papal power.

Other movements faced similar persecution. Waldensians held to a similar ethic of radical poverty, though their assertion that the Pope himself was the figure of the Anti-Christ made their stance more dramatically political. Of note too were local inquisitions that persecuted women and others for the crimes of witchcraft. Whether in response to a desperate population’s fear over declining harvests, or cynical men in power seeking to eliminate enemies and steal their property, these witch hunts served to reinforce established patriarchal and political social orders (and a topic I plan to return to in the future).

It is in this context that we must understand Galileo’s trial, even more so because of the high profile nature of it. Most importantly, the political charge being adjudicated was who had the authority to determine matters of fact.

In seventeenth century European thought, every facet of the earth, the stars, the sun, and beyond was a manifestation of God. The Pope, as sole conduit to God determined by his spiritual link to Saint Peter, was the one and only authority on all matters of the world. Academics could debate hypotheticals, but declarations of fact were reserved to the Pope alone. This was the fundamental conflict: by claiming facts revealed to him through observation and deduction, Galileo was challenging the most basic authority of the Pope. The democratic implications of observation and scientific inquiry were so fundamentally threatening to the authority of the Pope that the Church refused to acknowledge heliocentrism until 1992, long after the theory had made both suborbital satellites and moon landings a possibility.

Sadly, scientific theories continue to struggle with political power that denies the conclusions which observation and study lead to. The theory of evolution by natural selection faced a similar force of denial by religious authorities, and to this day elected officials deny its explanatory power, some going so far as to remove it from school curricula. For the evangelical mind, the common ancestry of all life on earth challenges multiple fundamentalist ideologies: the dominance of man over and apart from nature as well as the narrative of the creation of the world and its life in a matter of six days. While the theory of evolution does threaten to encourage a critical examination of the Bible, it also presents a more fundamental challenge: namely, the authority of that Bible to determine the facts of the world itself.

While bad faith actors like Ben Shapiro may assert that “facts don’t care about your feelings,” what can be considered a fact is not cut and dry. I would argue that the most fundamental function of a society is determining how those matters of fact are agreed upon. The authority to speak on matters of fact can only come from earned and just authorities, whose examination of the matter is transparent, open to criticism, and most importantly falsifiable. I myself come from a background in the sciences, with an amateur’s fascination with history, and I welcome good faith critiques and corrections for all my work. And in the matter of those who claim false and unjust authority, I and the rest of the LORE Satanic Collective will fight to expose and condemn those usurpers.

Heaven and Hell Announce New Joint Venture In Largest Cosmological Reshaping Since Fall of Eden, by Daemon J. Placebo

May 1, 2019

Pandemonium, Hell and Court of Seraphims, Heaven -- Hell [NYSE: SIN] and its legion of over 666 million demons and Heaven [NYSE: G-D] and its ranks untold of angels today announced a strategic merger of equals to create the universe’s first fully integrated metaphysical cosmology in an all-stock combination valued at 107 billion human souls. 

To be named H2 with combined domains over all aspects and periods of human existence both perpetually and retroactively, this unique new enterprise will be the premier and exclusive metaphysical superstructure delivering humanity transcendental peak experiences, premium hedonistic pleasures, and genuine spiritual development in both the group and individualist context.

The merger will combine Heaven’s vast array of world-class mainstream religious iconography, spiritual texts, and unparalleled delivery systems for architecting groups that provide emotional and material support for members through proprietary ethical platforms alongside Hell’s exhaustive library of libidinal activities, bespoke spiritual practices, and state-of-the-art solutions for providing humans access to autonomy and self-determination.

By merging the universe’s leading vice and virtue organizations, H2 will be uniquely positioned to speed the development of universal consciousness and the personal growth of all humans. The new organization will provide an important new spiritual distribution platform for Heaven’s robust suite of transpersonal development solutions while driving subscriber growth through cross-marketing with Hell’s pre-eminent hedonistic pastimes.

Under the terms of a definitive merger agreement approved by unanimous votes at meetings of each organization’s board of directors, Heaven and Hell’s stock of souls will be transferred from their respective metaphysically bifurcated domains into a single, fully integrated sphere of divine immanence and eminence. 

Lucifer J. Satan, Esq. will be migrating roles from Hell’s Executive Director, Board Chairman, Lord of Flies and Grand Poobah to Chief Legal Officer (CLO) of H2, Director of LGBTQQIA Outreach, and permanent Steering Committee member of H2’s feature film and hip-hop media ventures groups. Jesus Christ of Nazareth will be reconfiguring his duties as King of the Jews (INRI), King of Kings, Son of Man, Son of God, and The Last Adam and pivoting to a mix of nondenominational roles including embodying the archaic/mythic personages of Horus, Dionysis, Osirus, Quetzalcoatl, and Izanami.

When asked if He had mixed feelings about migrating roles after multiple millennia in the same position, Christ told James G. Frazer, H2’s Director of Integrated Mythology:

 “It is with great pride that I look back at the work I’ve accomplished as a historical messiah for My loyal fans who’ve come to call themselves Christ-ians after me. Inevitably there will be some criticism from a few loyal supporters as I pivot away from My previous focus as a specifically Judeo-Christian socio-historical Christ. To them, I can only say: My fans are My life and you know I’d give everything for you (and I have). Also, I must add ‘scoreboard!’ Two thousand years of Christian Hegemony should be enough to satisfy My followers that their Messiah is significant both mythologically and historically. I hope that many of them follow My new projects as I dissolve My socio-religious personage and manifest as undifferentiated divine openness throughout history as a culturally contextual mortal God that dies and is sometimes resurrected to help humans dissolve the illusory boundary being humanity and divinity. I’ve also been getting back into carpentry and you can follow along with that on My Insta Stories.”

Satan was also reached for comment on the merger via phone and detailed to Frazer the following.

“Look, a long time ago, things were said. We all did things we aren’t entirely proud of.  Not just me, I wanna specify. Add onto that a few thousand years of vilifying and persecuting me, women, queer folk, anyone with unconventional spiritual practices, and let’s keep it real -- just straight up rampant anti-semitism, and yeah, there are some hard feelings between us. But we wouldn’t be where we are today if certain divine beings didn’t make the choices they did, and where we are today is a hell’uv’a lot better than when I was first working for the big man in those pre-lapse days when He got off on daring humans not to emerge from the garden of undifferentiated pre-ego consciousness by dangling literal FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE in their faces… sorry, I’m just going off here. The point is that right now, I am cautiously optimistic about this new direction for the universe and not to get too into the weeds but a big thing that gives me confidence that this may work out is there are considerable concessions being made in the highest spheres about the distribution of power and the divine accountability structure.  G-D, to his credit, has brought in some consultants from Hell who’ve already done some great Mission-Vision-Values work and they’ve been setting up some cutting-edge distributive leadership policies that really curb the whole patriarchal, top-down authoritarian vibe of the universe which, despite what that brown-nosing shill Milton claimed about me, was my core issue with G-D from the beginning. And also the lack of universal healthcare for Angels.”

“An Unlikely Partnership”

Transitional teams from Heaven and Hell, led respectively by the Archangel Michael and Asmodeus (former King of Demons), will collaborate synergistically to eliminate redundancies in roles and identify personnel efficiencies for reducing overhead. “It turns out,” Asmodeus, the lead antagonist of the Book of Tobit, commented, “after talking to Mikey, we learned there were lots of folks in Heaven who were far more qualified rapists and torturers than the vast majority of us in Hell. This really opened up the reorg possibilities and wonderfully disrupted our recruitment methodologies, both in terms of souls to torment for eternity and draftees to pick up for the torture squad.”

Archangel Michael, a key stakeholder in Heaven since he and Lucifer negotiated the light bringers’ exit strategy during the Book of Revelation, also expressed enthusiasm about the merger.

“It’s been an open secret for a few millennia that the segmentation algorithms for soul distribution to Heaven and Hell was sub-optimized and there was a lot more art than science to it. There’s also been knock-on effects from our public relations strategies that we’ve been meaning to address, and a lot of good souls have been called a lot of bad names supposedly in support of Our Lord. Heaven would like to unequivocally apologize for these actions on behalf of our supporters, and we pledge to develop better messaging about our values and culture as we leverage the unparalleled opportunity for innovation that is H2.”

When asked for comment on how the messaging strategy for H2 would differ from either organization’s previous positioning, the incoming Director of Communication, William Blake, submitted the following official statement.

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,

Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.

Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing

from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

Let it be recorded too, into the book of nature, that the initial public offer

Shall be set between $63 to $75 per share.

Adapted from the 2000 AOL/Time Warner merger announcement.

By Dæmôn J. Placebo.

The Barcode of the Beast, by Jäger von Heinrich Kramer

(Note: This essay was originally published on the blog of the Satanic Temple of NYC.  Following a difference of opinion with the decisions of Executive Leadership at TST the author left that organization.  It is being re-published here as it appeared previously).

For millenialist Christians, symbols and code have supreme power.  Ministers and preachers for centuries have tried to determine the return of Jesus Christ by interpreting the writings of the Bible, in particular the book of Revelation.  Amongst whores riding beasts, rampaging supernatural horsemen, and evil inversions of Christ, one symbol stands out.  666, the number of the beast. 666 serves as a simple proxy, the mark that Satan, grand adversary to Christ, places on those who forsake His teachings.  Featured in the Left Behind novels by Jerry B. Jenkins, the 1972 film “A Thief in the Night”, and the eponymous song by Iron Maiden.  On a symbolic level it is powerful, a way to remark on a corrupt godless world, and obviously the perversion of retail inventory systems.  Yes, to some end times believers, 666 has infiltrated the very systems we use to buy groceries.

Supermarkets, while existing in some form from the early 1900s, first entered their modern format in the 1950s.  Development of refrigerated trucking made possible the logistical network for a single company to operate a chain of stores in any given region.  This level of scale meant potential for significant profits, but presented several new challenges.  Inefficient delivery of goods could result in shortages of valuable in demand foods, or a glut of highly perishable produce.  These problems continued to mount, and in 1973 the pressures became too great.  The solution was the barcode.  Initially developed in the 1950s using a circular design, an IBM engineer named George Laurer modified the original concept into a rectangle for simpler printing and encoding potential.  The form then that we all know, titled the UPC (Universal Product Code) by the “Symbol Selection Committee”.

It is in this UPC that fundamentalists see a nefarious plot.  Specifically cited; Revelation 13:16-18 "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.  And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.  Here is wisdom.  Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

At this point you are probably horribly confused.  The only common thread between an inventory tracking system and this passage is a reference to buying and selling.  This is where we’ll have to dive into the structure of the barcode.

In order for the code itself to contain useful information, the numbers are broken up into two sections, the left (L) and right (R).  These sections have different binary formats to categorize numbers, allowing the computer to determine the correct full number irrespective of how the barcode itself is oriented.  To divide these sides they are separated by three identical marks, denoting the start, middle, and end of the code.  It’s here that something seemed off to the fundamentalists.  These spacers were two thin lines, suspiciously similar to the thin lines seen in the six designation of a barcode.  The conclusion?  6-6-6 was hidden in a modern tool for buying a selling.  This is, as you may expect, a gross misreading of the numbering system, as the two thin lines are only the first three bits of a seven bit code for the number 6, and only align with the first three bits of the R side numbering system.  Technicalities like these however are of little concern to the true believer, and the myth has endured.

In a post Watergate world and burgeoning culture of Satanic panic, allegations that a secretive cabal had insinuated the mark of the beast into our grocery stores took off.  Here was clear evidence that the end times were upon us, that our proud American institutions had been taken over by dark forces and that evil was all around.  For people of a faith system that views any adversity as motivated by Satan this story has strong emotional power.  This fear would spread to many areas of American life, including a notorious California cult.

One stark example of barcode paranoia was presented in the music video VHS tape “S.O.S.” from Family International.  The video contains several songs detailing how modern office society is crushing our souls, the sin of abortion, mocking Darwinian evolution, and showing the dark future of a world with UPC barcodes.  In the latter example, they implore the protagonist Kathy to not go to the supermarket, and escape with her godly friend to the wilderness, so that their souls will be safe from Satan’s corruption.  This story of escape from society takes on a darker tone when the history of Family International is taken into consideration.

Family International was founded in 1968, a spin off of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.  A millenialist and apocalyptic cult with a theology was centered around a radical “Bridal Theology,”  namely that their love for Jesus was a sexual love, one that demanded they visualize his presence in every sexual act.  This practice was especially appealing to the growing hippy movement that was collecting in California at the time, drawing in people actively embracing the ethos of “free love”.  Unsurprisingly, this theology had a very dark side.  Detailed in a Channel 4 documentary, the cult aided and abetted sexual abuse of children in their community.

It seems shocking that anyone would allow members of their own family to be abused in such ways, but it is important to recognize the role that the cult’s propaganda plays in normalizing behavior.  Those who have left such organizations almost unanimously recount how the charismatic leaders systematically isolated them from their families.  In this way, we can see how the fear of a simple inventory system used in all major stores can be leveraged to drive people away from modern society, and into the confines of an abusive and manipulative cult.

It is important to note though, that Family International was not the first to accuse Satan’s work in the UPC system.  The idea was first widely proposed in the book “The New Money System” in 1982.  Written by Mary Relfe, a more traditional evangelical with a ministry focusing on outreach and end times prophecy.  While still on the fringes of religion in America, ministries such as this still enjoy a wide latitude and de facto legitimacy, while pushing a conspiracy theory that by nature isolates it’s believers from society as a whole.

Fears of the Antichrist marking us with his barcode to corrupt our souls has waned since the 90s, but only because the vector has changed.  Instead of the supermarket checkout, our cell phones stand to mark us as the Devil’s property, or the RFID chips we use to track our pets is now the first step in a sinister plot to mark us all.  What makes these theories even more dangerous, is how they prey on very real and very important concerns with regards to privacy and government intrusion in our personal lives.  While we may rightly worry that GPS systems logged by unaccountable corporations are likely to be turned over to government agencies without our knowledge, we must be on guard to not pass on our capacity for free thought to religious organizations that would seek to drive us away from our friends and society.

Satanic Panic and Dish Soap Distribution, by Jäger von Heinrich Kramer

(Note: This essay was originally published on the blog of the Satanic Temple of NYC.  Following a difference of opinion with the decisions of Executive Leadership at TST the author left that organization.  It is being re-published here with minor edits to remove references to TST).

It’s a remarkable story, straining reasonable credulity.  The head of a major international corporation goes on the air and on the record with a major broadcaster and reveals their contributions to a national organization of Satanists.  What’s more, when asked how he could admit such an incendiary move, he declares “well, there are so few Christians left in America it’s not worth the trouble hiding it any longer.”

This outlandish story could easily have been an expose on Breitbart, or an unhinged screed on a distant relative’s Facebook.  Except this story begins in the 80s, as the nation came to grips with a changing social and political world which many conservative communities blamed on Satanists.

The roots of the Satanic Panic are complex, a form of mass hysteria that arose from the amassed anxieties of white Christian America in the 1980s, as cultural norms continued to change wildly around them.  In the span of just twenty years, pop culture movements of hippies, disco, hard rock and heavy metal had arisen, leaving wide swaths of the country reeling in the wake of their anti-establishment messages.  The ascent of these movements became associated with a decline in attendance at houses of worship as well as a de-emphasis on religion in the daily lives of many Americans.  For people inclined toward a rigid theocratic view of the world, it was obvious that the hand of dark demonic forces was at work.

And while more salacious stories grabbed the headlines – of subliminal commands to commit suicide in Judas Priest albums and propagandizing dark magic in the pages of Dungeons and Dragons – some pastors saw the dark hand in the pedestrian.  In the 1980s, a minister in Minneapolis began alleging that Proctor and Gamble, makers of everything from Bounty paper towels to NyQuil, were in secret an organization dedicated to Satan.  The signs were obvious: just look at the company’s logo.  What at first might seem to be a stylized “man in the moon” was in fact the devil himself, the tips of the crescent actually twisted horns.  On its base, a subtly hidden “666” inverted.  And the stars, obviously Satanic pentagrams, of which there were the numerologically significant thirteen, could be shown to connect into a 666 as well.  Clearly, Satan was working to corrupt our society through the goods we buy, and all good Christians must fight against this corruption.

These allegations are, of course, ridiculous.  The P&G logo dates back to 1851, a time when a majority of Americans were illiterate.  Having an instantly recognizable image associated with your brand was not only symbolically important as it remains today but commercially necessary, and as the company continued to grow, it retained this image as a matter of pride and continuity.  When the rumors began to spread, P&G unsurprisingly ignored them, convinced the consumer population would find the claims obviously absurd.

Until, that is, associates of Amway became involved.  One of the most successful “multi-level marketing” companies in America, Amway has built a business on providing individuals with a variety of household goods for sale, while encouraging its sales associates to enlist friends and acquaintances to sell products, funneling a share of profits upwards.  While the FTC in the 1970s differentiated Amway’s practices from those of a legally defined pyramid scheme, the multi-level system places strong incentives on associates to offload purchased products onto their nominal employees in order to recoup costs from their purchase to the parent company.  In 1995 this pressure drove two associates to spread a voicemail, repeating a false story about the CEO of Proctor and Gamble outing himself on national television as a Satanist.

That they would appeal to a sense of persecution, a feeling that their community of faith was under siege by Satan himself, is not surprising.  Amway has frequently, tactically courted church groups, and they are not the only ones.  Prosperity Gospel may be the most garish and recognizable form, but scam artists have frequently exploited an assumed sense of trustworthiness that a shared religious identification helps to conjure and a common struggle against an external foe can provide.  In 2012 a Chandler, Arizona man named Edward Purvis solicited donations from church group elders and their communities for his non-profit ministry. The nearly $11 million that he collected, he used himself for houses, cars, and gambling debts.

For those that follow conspiracy theories it is remarkable to have seen the rate of change in how these stories are propagated.  The stereotype of the fanatic handing out leaflets containing a poorly argued tract may still be familiar to anyone who has been given a flyer from Tony Alamo’s church on the MTA.  Other systems have been used as well, with amateur radio and direct mail being particularly popular, the latter favored by noted conspiracy theorist Lyndon Larouche.  More powerful mediums of the mass market, especially television, remained beyond the reach of these groups.  And then along came the internet.  Soon, communities of like-minded people could share their obsessions free from critical examination.  From “chemtrails” to “reptoids,” stories of secret cabals bent on undermining a god-fearing society could – and do – thrive  Long after the initial voice mail appeals had been cancelled, stories of hidden Satanic plots in the packaging of Proctor and Gamble products could still be found in online message boards or email chains.

Proctor and Gamble eventually did take the individuals responsible to court, after which they were awarded $19.25 million in 2007.  Amway denies involvement in the actions, and certainly no legal culpability has been proven, though this did not stop them from suing Proctor and Gamble in return, claiming P&G had spread malicious rumors of Amway’s active involvement in their seller’s voicemail campaign.  This author does not accuse Amway itself of spreading these rumors, but we do not need to see a directive from the company to conclude that a business culture that exploits the desire for community and trust in religious faith could conceivably, if not produce, then certainly not wish to restrain or temper accusations like those levels against P&G.  When magical thinking is encouraged, people looking to enrich themselves will exploit fears of isolation, of persecution and irrelevancy, to harness that fervor in pursuit of profit.

Exploiting fears of well-intentioned believers in an effort to exploit their labor for personal gain is disparaged as a great evil in many religions and stands in violation of our second and third fundamental values.  Sometimes these beliefs are sincerely held, but are too often leveraged for financial gain, and always at the expense of someone.   At [LORE], we stand opposed to people that would cynically exploit these fears, and pledge to expose all groups that would attempt to manipulate others with conspiracy theories.

For another account of the Satanic Panic against Proctor and Gamble, you can also listen to this recent episode of The Dollop.