{"id":3188,"date":"2015-04-23T06:16:30","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T11:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3188"},"modified":"2015-04-23T20:05:23","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T01:05:23","slug":"an-quick-and-dirty-field-guide-to-satanic-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2015\/04\/23\/an-quick-and-dirty-field-guide-to-satanic-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"A quick and dirty field guide to Satanic diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IMG_20150415_083311\"<\/a>
Unlike certain holy books, there is no genocide or slavery or taking war brides in this coloring book<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last week I contacted Doug Mesner<\/a>\u00a0in hopes that The Satanic Temple<\/a>\u00a0will come up with a plan to distribute their lovely coloring books here in Oklahoma, for the sake of trolling the Attorney General<\/a> and all the\u00a0school districts partial to\u00a0the idea of distributing religious literature to public schoolchildren.<\/p>\n

To my great\u00a0surprise (and mild chagrin) a totally different Satanic church stepped\u00a0up first<\/a>. This is personally embarrassing for me, because I know Adam Daniels<\/a> and should have thought to ask if they had literature to distribute.<\/p>\n

In the reporting and commentary about these sort of events,\u00a0people often tend to get the different players confused with each other and with the infamous Church of Satan<\/a>\u00a0founded by Anton Lavey. It’s sort of a mess, really, so I decided to put together a very brief guide which I can point to in the future.<\/p>\n

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The Church of Satan<\/strong><\/a> is sort of like a regular church\u00a0in that they have a holy book<\/a>, a venerated founder<\/a>, and a tendency to promote themselves as the one true expression of Satanism;\u00a0however,\u00a0they are fundamentally atheistic and believe primarily in the virtue of selfishness<\/a>. Basically it is “Ayn Rand with trappings<\/a>” and way more black leather.\u00a0I interviewed a card-carrying Laveyan Satanist from my local military base, way back in the day before our podcast\u00a0acquired a taste for decent microphones: [audio<\/a>].<\/p>\n

The Satanic Temple<\/strong><\/a> does not have a holy book, but they do have an awesome\u00a0coloring book<\/a>. Like the Church of Satan they are nontheistic, but unlike the CoS, the TST holds to broadly humanistic principles<\/a> and actively campaigns to make the world a better place. Typically they do this by leveraging Satanic literary symbols and demanding equal access<\/a> whenever Christians strive for special treatment, as they are wont to do so often here in Oklahoma. We interviewed one of their activists in the most recent episode<\/a> of the Oklahoma Atheists Godcast<\/a>. We haven’t done an interview with Doug Mesner yet, but I swear by the horns of Baphomet that we are working on it. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other interviews<\/a> to go around.<\/p>\n

The Dakhma of Angra Mainyu<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is rather unlike the other two in that it more closely resembles pagan theistic religions, with magically effective rituals and supernatural beings and all that. This mysterious community of faith is based right here in the Oklahoma City, and they are the ones\u00a0responsible for the recent Black Mass<\/a> which my friends Caleb and Brian attended<\/a>.\u00a0I had the chance to speak with their founder awhile back<\/a>, and it was a strange trip. (It’s not everyday you set up your\u00a0recording equipment on a dark altar, taking care not to bump the ritual blade or knock over the frightful\u00a0figurines.)<\/p>\n

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As a strict separationist, I will gladly take help wherever we can get it. If all three of these groups want to send a message to our wayward Attorney General<\/a>, that would be just fine with me. Hell, if the Mormons and Taoists want in on the action, that would be great, too. The more the merrier. We will do whatever it takes\u00a0to get us back to the point where no one religious system is privileged over any other by the government, just as the Oklahoma Constitution<\/a> demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I contacted Doug Mesner\u00a0in hopes that The Satanic Temple\u00a0will come up with a plan to distribute their lovely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,30,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","category-eat-the-church","category-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3324,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188\/revisions\/3324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}