To celebrate the release of the thought-provoking documentary Hail Satan?, we chat to the head of the Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, about all things religion and Satan, of course

RD: What is the Satanic Temple?

LG: Right now, it is a federally recognised tax-exempt religious organisation based in the US. We’re explicitly a non-theistic religion which means we don’t endorse any supernatural beliefs and we don’t believe in a personal Satan; but rather in Satan as a literary metaphorical construct that stands as an icon for ethical beliefs, cultural identity and values related to personal autonomy, individual liberty. We see Satan as this idol for the ultimate rebel against tyranny.

RD: Where does “non-theistic religion” currently stand in the US?

LG: I feel personally that the future of religion is non-theistic and I think a lot of people have a cultural attachment to their religions and they feel obligated to claim they believe things that are simply intellectually insulting today.

I think as time goes on, people will feel more comfortable identifying with religion in non-theistic terms. They can still have a prescribed set of ethics built from this religious narrative that they have, they can still have their cultural identification, but they don’t need to pretend they believe in these supernatural elements that don’t exactly agree with what we know scientifically.

RD: In that case, why wouldn't you just swap it for atheism? Wouldn’t that be simpler?

LG: Atheism, as it says in the film, defines what you’re not; Satanism defines what we are and defines our place in the world. It’s not like we manifest it from out of a vacuum, like we decided we wanted to provoke and offend Christians.

"We always want to be aware of who we are and where we came from, and never to engage in witch-hunting behaviour ourselves"

Most of us grew up in Judeo-Christian culture and a lot of us took these claims when we were children at face value: that there was this supernatural deity from above acting as this arbiter of everything that was morally correct. When we were coming out of that mindset and growing sceptical of supernatural claims, we also saw the amount of corruption that came from the moral self-licencing of those who felt that they were unquestionably on the right side of the moral dynamic in their religious identification.

Embracing blasphemy, looking at this counter-narrative was very liberating and very much gave a context to our own kind of growth and expansion and I think that’s what makes Satanism relevant. You couldn’t arbitrarily rename it, you couldn’t create a new mythical structure for it.

RD: Do you worry about corruption and hypocrisy creeping into your organisation, just as it does into other religious systems?

LG: I think we already see evidence of that from some of the new membership that comes in, to be honest. It’s something you always have to be vigilant towards. We always want to be aware of who we are and where we came from, and never to engage in witch-hunting behaviour ourselves.

We want to adhere strictly to certain principles rather than political identification or other such things. Immovable principles, we feel, are immovable unless given scientific evidence or data to the contrary and as time goes on, some of those principles might be associated with one side of the political spectrum or the other, but we want to stay focused on what our affirmative values are as Satanists and not let it be corrupted by outside influences.

RD: How do you make sure you get the right people joining the Satanic Temple? And, more importantly, how do you become a member?

LG: To become a member, all we really ask people is to register online, if they identify with us. And that might seem a bit low-level but I don’t know why there should be stricter requirements for those identifying as Satanists than there are with any other religious beliefs.

On a deeper level, we have to vet our leadership very thoroughly and probably a bit more thoroughly than most because we feel very vulnerable to accusation. We have around 100,000 members—statistically speaking, it would be nearly impossible for a few of those not to be psychotic. In fact, while we were fighting to have our monument put up in Oklahoma, I found it interesting that, while we were big news over there, there was another story that took place. This Christian kid cut off the head of his roommate on suspicion that his roommate was engaging in witchcraft or Satanism. And what was funny about that was that nobody really implicated the religious beliefs of the person doing the decapitating, it was taken for granted that this was just an insane person.



The Baphomet monument which was initially commissioned to be installed alongside the Ten Commandments outside the Oklahoma State Capitol

But if it were the other way around, if it were somebody who was involved in Satanism or a card-carrying member of the Satanic Temple, it would have been the entirety of the story. So, we want to make very sure that people understand where we’re coming from and we can express it properly and they’re at least mentally competent enough to not severe heads or anything like that [chuckles].

RD: What’s your relationship with other Satanic organisations?

LG: Oh, we don’t have any relationship with any of the other ones. And in fact, there are not really any other ones worth the mention. People always talk about The Church of Satan as being the first organised Satanic religion who got it into the mainstream consciousness which is true, but today they’re little more than a Twitter account that does nothing more than b**** about the Satanic Temple.

RD: What’s your personal story with Satanism?

LG: I guess my introduction to the concept would have been during what the sociologists refer to as the “Satanic Panic.” In the 1980s and 90s there was this conspiracy theory that gained mainstream favour in the media which speculated about Satanic cults trying to undermine basic moral values and engaging in cannibalism and human sacrifice and other things.

The fact that no tangible evidence of this could be found was seen often as evidence of the efficacy of these organisations in covering these things up. The conspiracy theory grew larger and larger; the less evidence would show up, the more people became convinced that police were involved, judges were involved, law enforcement, journalists and this is common conspiracy theory stuff.