Podcasts/Sacred Tension-TST vs CoS
TST_vs_CoS SUMMARY KEYWORDS satanism, satanic temple, people, satan, lavey, church, satanic, anarchist, idea, tst, belief, tenets, interested, interpretation, thought, episode, conversation, scientific, find, long SPEAKERS Greg Stevens, Stephen Bradford Long
00:00 Hi,
00:01 I'm Liam Hooper. And I'm Peterson Toscano. Together, we co host the Bible bash podcast. Each month we look into a different ancient story. We're curious to find insights into our own queer lives. We discuss these and share our findings with you. You can find the Bible bash podcast pretty much anywhere you listen to podcast, New episodes come out at the end of each month.
Greg Stevens 00:29 For me, personally, one of the real draws that Satanism has is the fact that it is a religion that overtly and explicitly admits that, hey, all of this stuff is socially constructed.
Stephen Bradford Long 01:14 This is sacred tension, the podcast about the spiritual discipline of asking questions. My name is Steven Bradford long and we are here on the rocket candy Podcast Network. For more shows like this one, go to rock candy recordings.com All right. Well, before we get started, I have to thank my patrons. As usual, we have a whole new crop of patrons who've been coming on board most of them say tannic, we still have a few progressive Christians still enjoying my work, but it's mostly Satanists. So thank you so much Satanists for supporting my work. I so appreciate it. So I have to thank my latest patrons Laura Laura Elliot Mixon, the Lizard King Amy Sillars, Adrianna Herman, David Limca, Eric Moore, and incidentally Greg Stevens, who I'm talking to today. And if you want to join their number, please go to patreon.com forward slash Steven Bradford long and for $1 A month or $5 a month you will get an extra patrons only podcast called the House of heretics in which my assistant Ramakrishna das and I have long meandering conversations about coffee and fisting and gay sex and the new Joker movie and any any number of things that that's on our minds that morning. It's very not safe for work. All the things that I edit out of my sacred tension episodes, stay in on the house of heretics episodes. Also, you will get access to my weekly meditations on the Tarot and you will get access to me as a creator you can help give, you can give input about the direction for the show and my blog. So really, if you want to see my work has a long life, then the best way to do that is to support me on Patreon and join that community. Well, with all of that out of the way. I'm delighted to welcome my friend Greg Stevens, aka priest Pena, moo to the show, Greg, welcome back. It's been eons, it's been ages.
Greg Stevens 03:20 Thank you very much for having me back on again.
Stephen Bradford Long 03:22 So you are the director of ministry at the Satanic Temple. And you are, you know, you've you've kind of been involved in the operations of the Satanic Temple for a very, very long time, the Satanic Temple is my religious community. And I thought that, to start this out, that you could spell out some of the differences between the Satanic Temple and the Church of Satan. So we can start there, because they often get confused in the media. I see people use the two terms interchangeably. Or they will talk they'll say, oh, you know, when Anton LaVey founded the Satanic Temple, or you know, stuff like that, so what, what are the most basic differences between the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple?
Greg Stevens 04:13 Well, I this is a conversation Yeah. that I feel like has to happens a lot. And it's very understandable because especially for new people who are just coming in. It's not necessarily clear I have a I have a close friend who is just very excitedly started getting interested in this and sometimes just as a matter of verbal slip will be like the satanic church. And I'm like, Well, hang on. Normally, like a little stuff like that wouldn't matter. But in this case, Church of Satan is actually in other organizations. It's very different. Like if it weren't for that, like you know, substituting one word for the other, no big deal, you made a verbal slip, but in this case, it actually means something very different. Yeah. So, so yeah, it's a, it's a conversation that comes up again and again. And I do try to point people to, like on the satanic temples, main website, there is a link to a nice little explainer essay that Lucien has written about key differences. And I do try to point people to that. It even has a cute little little checklist graphic with like, the two different columns of like, what statements apply to one versus the other versus both. So so I feel like the way I'd like to approach it right now with you, instead of doing the sort of laundry list or the checklist, because that's something people can get online.
Stephen Bradford Long 05:46 Yeah, and I'll post that, and I'll post that in the show notes, for sure.
Greg Stevens 05:49 Excellent. So So I think that it would be fun, I'm going to, I'm going to approach it by talking a little bit about, like a narrative perspective, because because this is something that so Anton LaVey, founded the church of Satan, in the 60s, and there were a bunch of elements to it, including everything from obviously the rebelliousness aspect, the idea of using fact based rational scientific knowledge instead of just faith for belief, the idea of having to grounding things in pride and sense of the self, rather than the automatic assumption that you should bow down to others. There's a lot of different elements to it. But part of that part of the part of it was wrapped up in that for a living was this idea that according to live a, if we are taking a rational view and a scientific view of morality and the way to approach the world, and it should be grounded in biology, and the way things quote unquote, really work in the real world. And it was this very part, tooth and claw vision of evolution, survival of the fittest, you have to watch out for yourself. And we are predators in this whole sort of view, that was, you know, when it was popular, and since he was popular prior to that it became popular in the late 1800s. And, you know, it's Nietzsche was all about the idea of being the strong lone wolf on the hill, and, and all that sort of thing. So this vision of, of claiming the a scientific view of how to approach the way we deal with social interaction is this everyone out for themselves view, it's sort of very old. I mean, LaVey didn't invent that. But LaVey definitely included it in church of Satan philosophy. Now, over time, you know, some time has passed since the 60s, science has gone on and, you know, accomplished some stuff since the 60s. And there's been a lot of work a lot of research on the evolution of cooperation, the evolution of empathy, the fact that there actually are real scientific biological functions for things like working together and even seeking justice and some of these ideas. There's been a lot of research in the evolution of why societies, human societies function better when people cooperate, when people look out for each other, and, and so on. And so in 2012, when Lucien and Malcolm are formulating the ideas for the Satanic Temple, there really was a very deliberate split from that aspect of the from the, the that element of the Church of Satan's philosophy, the way I would describe it, and this is not necessarily how I've heard the stand describe it at all, he does, you know, one can go out and read his writings on this aspect of things to my interpretation, my my understanding of it is the when you know, that science has evolved to the point where you can't really support this view of everybody needs to you know, only the strong five everyone needs to be out for themselves and, and caring about other people is weak and is not the way you know, biology ought to work. When when science has evolved to the point where that is no longer a, you know, rational or a scientific perspective. You have to look at lovies interpretation of Satanism, and you have to sort of make a choice. What do you think is more important? The fact that he said, Hey, follow science instead of just, you know, your intuition, or what someone tells you, or you follow the idea that morality should be all about pure self interest and tooth and claw and survival of the fittest. The Satanic temples path was to say yes to science and no to that sort of harsh everyone was individuality. And so and so took the path towards prioritizing social justice and empathy as things that, from the point of view of the Satanic Temple are 100% compatible with our current understanding, scientific understanding of how biology works, but goes against what LaVey is understanding of how biology works,
Stephen Bradford Long 10:52 yeah, there's been quite a bit of angst over Satanism on the left. So I consider myself kind of left of center, you know, not as left as some of my friends, but definitely very, very far left, very far left for American standards, I should say. And there's a lot of you no angst over Satanism, in certain leftist circles because of that past within you. And you know, the vase embrace of, for lack of a better term social Darwinism, and how that kind of attracted some more unpleasant figures of the Satanic Temple is, from my observation, just as you know, like a lay person, just someone off the street who's a member, is that it is totally opposed to that, and totally opposed to I don't know that that emphasis on power and hierarchy and social hierarchy and the elite and all that kind of bullshit that encourages, you know, fascism and alt right bullshit. And I see at its core that TST is fundamentally opposed to it. So So basically, what I hear you saying is that TST took the core insight that LaVey was also building his church on but allowed it to evolve and allowed it to be more in sync with the sciences and what with what we know to be true about human nature, whereas I think Church of Satan has kind of become, I feel like it became frozen in time.
Greg Stevens 12:30 I agree with that. I feel like there is such a, there's such a strong impulse among the members of the Church of Satan that I have spoken to or where I've read their stuff, just such a strong impulse to go back to the well now this is the original text. This is what elevates
Stephen Bradford Long 12:52 the most King awful killjoys. Okay, I am a recovering queer Trad Anglo Catholic and I thought I got the fuck out of that to to get away from that bullshit. Like, I thought, I got a I thought I got out of Catholicism and hide in the high church and Anglicanism to to get away from people like that. And then I come to Satanism. like, Fuck, it's here too. But you know, what have you. It's everywhere. It'll be everywhere. There'll be gatekeepers everywhere.
Greg Stevens 13:26 I agree with that. And, and, you know, in principle, I think that if there wants if there is a cadre of people out there want to keep interpreting things very strictly according to lovies original writing, like, that doesn't really appeal to me, but fine, you do you if you want to and all that the only place where it becomes contentious then is when they are constantly harping on saying that any other group, including the Satanic Temple are not real Satan.
Stephen Bradford Long 14:04 They've said that to me, they've gotten into so they've gone after me on Twitter. And so on one side, I have the I remember one time in particular, on one side, there were the annoying apologists, Christian apologists crawling out of the woodwork like god damn rats, try, you know, trying to fight with me. And then on the other side, we're the Church of Satan, the you know, the official Church of Satan account basically saying, you know, who your article demonstrates that you know, absolutely nothing about Satanism or Satan. And this has nothing to do with Satanism, which was founded by Anton LaVey in 1966, or whenever and is represented in his writings and I'm like, you fucking killjoys like you, you. Yeah, it's it's an it's embarrassing to me. It's really, really embarrassing.
Greg Stevens 15:01 I find it weird because for me personally, one of the real draws that Satanism has is the fact that it is a religion that overtly and explicitly admits that, hey, all of this stuff is socially constructed. All of this stuff is human creation, there isn't some shining glory and ephemeral thing on high that we are trying to discover. We're creating it as social beings through the act of being sickness and defining that for who we are. And and if that is the case, then being so rigid in this idea that there is no there is no way that we can admit that this term, or this religion, or this idea could possibly evolve or have different interpretations to different people. Just is so weird to me, because I always, I always thought of that as a symptom of, you know, all supernaturalism of the idea that you can't change it because there's the glowing floaty thing in the sky that says, so. Yeah, floating thing in the sky. So what is the big deal?
Stephen Bradford Long 16:18 Well, and, you know, I was actually just thinking about this earlier today, how I think that every religion is ultimately an individualist religion, in that the vision, the private conception, that any Christian has of God is going to be different from every other God in the heads of every other Christian, right. And so because, because it is a social construct, it's an imaginative social construct, that is communal, it is shared, but also it is intensely private and unknowable to others. And what I find so appealing about Satanism, is that I think it accepts that reality, it accepts the fact Yeah, it accepts the fact that this is a private religion, you know, and this was always, this is a source of nonstop grief in the Christian world, because someone will have, you know, some transcendent mystical experience or whatever during prayer and you know, sleep deprivation and fasting and, and they will come down from the mountain from, you know, from the metaphorical mountain, and will have a an experience of God that is funded, or what they call God, that is fundamentally different from the conception of everyone else's God. And so this is when you believe that God is actually an objective reality that has objective qualities that are true across the board for everyone, then that just creates like horrific conflict within religious communities. But what I love about Satanism is that you don't have to have that there's this understanding that the Satan that I contain within myself is private and personal to me. And no matter how much we may talk about it and share it there, it will, you know, no matter how similar it might become to your state, and it will always be different by a matter of degrees. And that's great. That's good. You know, and so do you think that there's a so for people who are the uninitiated? You know, if you're listening to this particular episode, I assume that you've already read a lot of my writing on Satanism that you've already heard my interviews, my conversations about Satanism, with Jackman Turco and Greg and Shelley's Blythe, and so on. But for the uninitiated, modern Satanism is really rooted in a literary tradition that goes back to the reinterpretation of the mill, Tony and Satan, the Satan of Milton's Paradise Lost as a positive and heroic figure. So that is the that is the cliffnotes version. But do you think that there is a different story between T S T and Church of Satan? Do you think that TS TS Satan, as it is told that that story is different from how the church of Satan tells that story? Does that make sense? Does that question make sense?
Greg Stevens 19:10 Question does make sense. It's a really interesting question. I think the there definitely is a different emphasis on on what character traits you know are interpreted out of the myth and you know, like, like any, like any mythical figure, there is such a richness of references of Indian texts throughout history, not just obviously Paradise Lost but other other explicitly fictional texts and then of course, ancient scriptural things that are the may or may not have been meant to be fiction when they were written who even knows and you know, there's so much more from it not at all a lot of it's inconsistent with with other parts of it. So one can really is is the thing about long standing mythological figures? Yeah, you're had a lot to choose from, you're gonna pick and choose what character traits are the ones that you're like, No, these are the important ones. And I think that there probably is some some difference in, in the, in the interpretation between Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple, I am not entirely sure the extent to which I can't speak for members of the Church of Satan. And I don't know the extent to which they place importance on the millstone Ian kind of view, I do know that there are members of the Satanic Temple, who are so interested in having a clean cut separation, and that they don't even I don't want to say they don't want to acknowledge but because that sounds judgey. But they, rather than thinking of the Satanic Temple and their views as something that has evolved since the Church of Satan, there are a lot of members of the Satanic Temple that just skip right over the Church of Satan, like, No, we're referencing Milton, you're just skip right over the 1960s. And they're like, you know, they was interesting and had some things to say. And, but but that's not a part of what we're interested in, including. So that's just to be clear, when I say that's not a part of what we are interested in, including in our narrative. That's not me talking. But that is some subset of members of the Satanic Temple that simply are interested in calling this a completely separate branch that doesn't even touch bases with that view. And I don't know, I mean, you people can create whatever. It's sort of like trying to trace the evolution of genres of museums, like who even knows what influenced what at this point, right. So
Stephen Bradford Long 21:55 yeah, I mean, that's interesting, because I think that in a way, both of those are true, you know, so Ruben van Lewin, which wrote a gargantuan tome, which I'm sure you're familiar with called called children of Lucifer, and it's awesome. And what he talks about is how LaVey was inspired far more deliberately and consciously by kind of contemporary and very near past for him influences like Aleister Crowley. And you know, Aleister Crowley is kind of the father of us all to do what thou wilt. And he really, I think, created a bad rock for you know, witchcraft and Wicca and Satanism and all all the weirdness for the occult milieu, as as Joseph Campbell calls it, the occult milieu that we're in. I think a lot of that is really informed by Aleister Crowley. And you know, of course, he was influenced by Nietzsche and iron Rand and all that, where and he wasn't really draw, he didn't seem to draw, if I understand Roop, Ruben van luik. correctly, it doesn't seem like he drew much from the romantic tradition, from the robotic poets. Yeah, it doesn't seem like he was even very aware of them, or I mean, I'm sure he was aware of them. But that didn't seem to be, you know, the locus of his attention, right. And so instead, he drew from, you know, these other sources. And so I think it's correct that a lot of people in TST, myself included, are kind of reaching back further than then Anton LaVey. reached, you know, is reaching back further to Blake and Byron, and Percy, Shelley, and all that. But also, I totally get the, I really, really understand the impulse to just, you know, write LaVey out of our history, because there is a degree to which he's kind of embarrassing. And, and
Greg Stevens 23:48 I'm sorry for interrupting No, no, you're good. I just I just want to add to that, not only is he sort of embarrassing in a lot of ways, but the current socio political and cultural moment that we're in, I know that there's a lot of anxiety about subterfuge and possible behind the scenes influences between different groups that are a lot of accusations to go around and be like well, are these people being sincere about what they're expressing and you know, we can have a whole conversation about how social media has impacted the last elections I'm tempted that that's like a whole other episode but having said that, I can I can understand for that reason, the given that not only was was a kind of a dick, but there are a lot of current members of Church of Satan. Like if you go and listen to the special features in the in the DVD of Hail Satan with everyone.
Stephen Bradford Long 24:52 Everyone needs to watch. Everyone, everyone.
Greg Stevens 24:57 Unintentional. That's right. Exactly. Play, you don't get the special features by doing the streaming thing. So if you get the DVD, one of the special features is an interview that Penny Lane The director did with a member of the Church of Satan to give a contrasting viewpoint about Satanism and to basically critique the Satanic Temple. And like, this guy is very sitting there answering questions very confidently with a sense of confidence. I mean, Penny is asking open ended questions and letting him talk. And he is right there. Like he busts out with statements like if you're oppressed, it's because you choose to be he busts out with these statements that are so radically so
Stephen Bradford Long 25:46 obviously wrong. And not just wrong, but fucking dangerous,
Greg Stevens 25:51 dangerous, and associated with sort of extreme All right types of ideologies. And so and so the fact that those people exist as not just, you know, people who identify with the Church of Satan, but like, he's doing the interviews on the DVD representing the Church of Satan. And these are things that he's saying, not just, this isn't a hot mic caught at a dinner table chatting amongst his friends. This is him sitting there telling the world proudly This is the viewpoint that I have. Right. So it is for that reason to I can understand people's sense of you to be like, I don't know, you don't even want to acknowledge that there is some sort of common history with that dude's viewpoint? I totally get
Stephen Bradford Long 26:45 it. Yeah, absolutely. At the same time,
Greg Stevens 26:48 I don't know. I just I'm, I think I think it would be it would be nice if we could at least acknowledge the V is a part of satanic history whether we agree wholly partially or don't agree at all. Yeah, we live as a part of and had some interesting thoughts for the way they live. They recast notions of magic as purely psychological and No, he wasn't the first one to do that. But he did have an important impact on the framing of of magic in this non supernatural stick way. There was some there's some stuff in there. I think that uh, I'm generally not a fan of the the need to turn people into either pure idols or pure villains. So I'm okay. With have they had some contributions, but generally being a dick, who was wrong and having both of those things true and
Stephen Bradford Long 27:47 have them? And yeah, and for me, Satanism is about rejecting false binaries. And so one of those false binaries is good versus evil is seeing someone as all good or all bad, but completely villainizing them or completely idolizing them. And, you know, one of those core insights that I think is, I don't know, the reason why I don't think we can't just remove LaVey completely from our kind of satanic heritage is because I think one of his core Insights is non theistic Satanism. I think that that, you know, maybe that can't be traced to him. I don't think that that is maybe his original idea, but I think he's really maybe the one who popularized the idea of that, that religion, as purely symbol is, is positive. And I think that that has pretty much infiltrated most of modern Satanism. You know, I, and I think that we can draw a lot of that from, we can trace a lot of that back to love a, and I'm sure, you know, other people said it, I'm sure, you know, that's been an idea that's been a, that's an idea that's been around for forever. You know, the Greeks were talking about shit like that. Ancient pagans, were talking about shit like that. But LaVey, I think, was able to popularize it in a way that has infiltrated all of modern Satanism or most of modern Satanism. I don't know what you think of that. But that That, to me alone is a reason why we can't just completely dismiss him and say, Well, you know, we have nothing to do with him. We obviously trace a lot of our philosophy back to him. So um, okay, so apart from the main differences between TST and Church of Satan, what are some of the my the more like minut expressions of Satanism that you notice within the satanic community? Big question.
Greg Stevens 29:45 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting to me one of the things that I like about the seven tenets, the Satanic Temple is the they are very open into individual interpretation and they are sort of flexible in that way. So one can be, yeah, one can be a member of the Satanic Temple who says I align my core ethical and moral beliefs with the seven tenets and choose to interpreted in, you know, some people like to ground their own desire to be vegan and say that springs from their interpretation of the seven tenets, which is totally valid, but there are plenty in there, but there are plenty of non vegans who also feel like they live their lives consistently with the seven tenets. And that's also valid. People can that's my, that's one of the reasons why I like to, when I'm the way the word smithing, I did just a second ago, I, I tried to be careful about saying that it's not the veganism for that person is derived from the seven tenets, it's the ID is something that is consistent with or can be seen as for that person, a natural connection with because I don't, you know, I try to be careful that I'm not giving the implication that if A then B, right, you know, it's because like, the example that I use for my own self is I am, I am hugely and enthusiastically, all about transhumanism. And I think that
Stephen Bradford Long 31:43 that's something I'd love to pick your brain about later. By the way, at some point, we need to talk about that. But sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt going.
Greg Stevens 31:51 No, absolutely. And we should we should do that episode. But yes, let's but, but like, when I think about the idea that one's body isn't viable, and subject to one's own will. For me, a thing that flows naturally from that and is naturally connected to that is the idea of technological or medical life extension, the idea of being able to die when you choose to die, rather than due to the inevitability of old age, or, or, or even the idea of pure phenotypic freedom, that eventually we get through either biology or technology or a combination of the two, to the point where one day if we want to change genders, or we want to grow purple wings, or we want to do whatever the fuck we want with our bodies, we can become that, because our technology enables us to take on these different forms. I am hugely a fan of these sorts of ideas in the post humanist and transhumanist communities and in my mind, in my feelings, they're very satanic there are right there with tenants. Now, there are plenty of people who would probably who are probably like, what my okay, but that's not produce something that's important to them, and that's fine.
Stephen Bradford Long 33:22 Well, and actually, you know, along those lines, you know, one of my big passions is climate justice, and, you know, combating climate change. And to me, climate change the, the, you know, the reality of climate change and living in light of that is an incredibly satanic endeavor for me, because, you know, that plugs for me directly and to Milton's Paradise Lost, you know, where Satan was this figure fight, you know, rising up against incredible impossible odds to overthrow the powers that be and to me, that is a very good analog for what we are having to do right now with climate change, you know, where we're having to, to rise up against incredible odds and shift our culture and alter the powers that be in such a way that that we can have a better future and so to me, climate change fit you know, that was a passion of mine, you know, no matter what I would be, but it fits it clicks really well into my Satanism and that's it's something that actually that I want to write an article about because to me it is our you know, our fight against climate change is so mill Tony and it is like so say to Rome, romantics, Satanism for me, because it's all about you know, fighting against the powers that be to create a better world. One of the points that seems to be a really big hitch for a lot of people and you may not want to talk about There's at all but one of the things that seems to be an issue for a lot of people is, you know, I, I, they say I love Satanism. I love the figure of Satan. But I'm just maybe too open to the idea of the supernatural to be in the state to be in the satanic community or in the Satanic Temple, they point to, I forget which tenant ID it is, let me let me pull out my membership card right here. 12345 tenant, five, believe should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world, we should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs. And what's really interesting to me about that, I call myself a methodological materialist meaning I think that the best way we come to understand the world around us is through material means it through through the sciences, and if it isn't falsifiable, if there's a claim about the material world that isn't falsifiable, then I have no, then I have no reason to fucking believe it. I don't, I cannot, you know, in principle, believe something that has that is unfalsifiable, that is unfalsifiable, or hasn't, or is falsifiable and has not been proven, you know, so I have no reason to believe something that doesn't mean it isn't out there. That doesn't mean it won't be discovered at some point. But it also is to say that it also isn't to say that it will be discovered, and so I have no reason to believe it. So I'm withholding belief in the supernatural, I'm withholding belief in a higher power. That doesn't mean it isn't there, it just means I cannot sign off on it until it has met scrutiny, you know, scientific scrutiny and rational scrutiny. So I don't have a problem with this tenant. But a lot of people do so. So for someone who is aligned with the principles of TST, and is in fact trying to live, you know, in is trying to conform their beliefs to their best scientific understanding of the world. What if their scientific understanding of the world is incomplete or wrong? I don't know. I don't know what my question is here. But I don't know. Maybe you have a thought on this.
Greg Stevens 37:09 So all tips for understanding the world of the world are incomplete and wrong. Right.
Stephen Bradford Long 37:15 Exactly. It's a method. Right, right.
Greg Stevens 37:19 Exactly. And so and so, you know, this is me may need to dedicate entire thing to that actually, actually, let me phrase it this way. Can we after this is over schedule. Another conversation to talk just about this? Because Absolutely, there are there is. There is a lot going on here and an actually have one more mental bookmark of different interpretations of Satanism, our original topic that I want to get
Stephen Bradford Long 37:47 oh, yes, I'm sorry. Yes, absolutely. It's okay. But
Greg Stevens 37:51 I will just tease I will tease. The reason why I think all that episode is we get into things like the way the allowing supernatural belief can end bleeding into conspiracy theory can lead into pseudoscience and pseudo science can actually kill people. So on some level, there is that there is that problem that a certain amount of simply allowing for stuff that is truly non vibe, verifiable, non scientific belief can have horrific outcomes. Now, does that mean that if someone is fully aligned with TS TS values and beliefs, but happens to think that crystals have healing powers? Should we care or not? Is like another side of that question. And it's really complicated. So let's put it that
Stephen Bradford Long 38:47 I would. I would absolutely love that. Because, okay, I will just save all my thought I will say, I will save all of my because for that conversation, and we'll move on.
Greg Stevens 38:59 Let's do that. Because, okay, let's do that. Because I did have one thing that I wanted to make sure that I got in to just sort of today's topic about different interpretations or, or flavors or whatever of Satanism. I am in the process of developing a show, a new media show that's going to be on the web with a friend of mine, who, whose name is also Greg Stevens, we have to come up with some cool title like the plays off of that, because if we don't take advantage of the fact that we had the same name, what are we even doing, but
Stephen Bradford Long 39:38 I agreed, yeah.
Greg Stevens 39:40 He is. He is an ex Baptist minister, and has gotten disillusioned with the church. He was a fiery sort of very left wing minister at a Baptist congregation. And I guess I'll just I'll tease it that like Hey, keep an eye out for it. that but one of the things that he's interested in, in Satanism, as he learns more about it from me and then goes off and does his own reading is he also politically is very much a anarchist in the radical progressive, like anarchy in the sense of community used to take the care for each other, but don't have hierarchy sense, right? Not in the brain shutdown sense, although not not that it isn't needed to burn shut down sometimes, et cetera, et cetera, as well don't take that clip out of context, please, everybody like that. He's he's a big as a ideological anarchist. He's a big fan of saying, logic, you know, I don't mean anarchy in the sense of bringing should down, although sometimes that might be needed like that. It's totally his line. But anyway, definitely. And he's interested in sort of alignments between that and Satanism. between that, and the would you call it, you know, even going back to Crowley, do is thou wilt will be the whole of the Lord is the whole of the law, you know, just all of these sorts of things that are in the kernels of expression, that are have a lot of correspondence with political energy. And I do see out there in this sort of Twitter sphere, so there are definitely people out there who are gravitating towards interpretations of Satanism that I feel are different enough from the satanic temples, that they, you know, I wouldn't even call it a variation of the satanic temples, social justice perspective, I would put it almost in its own category of being interested in social justice, but having a really strong anarchist kind of bent. And I find that fascinating. I don't think it's a I don't want to really, I don't want to, I don't mean it in a dismissive way, when I say don't think it's a big group, but it's certainly something that I have seen and I want to keep an eye on because I find it fascinating.
Stephen Bradford Long 42:03 Yeah, I can think of several people in that situation actually, but also wasn't Lord Godwin. You know, Mary Shelley's father, he was an anarchist, and he was actually you know, he was an anarchist philosopher and he was one of the first articulators of modern Satanism I really think that I'm pretty sure if my reading is correct on this he was the first one to articulate the kind of the the reversal of the mill Tony and Satan as a positive figure and I and for those of you who are interested, I have that passage quoted in my wife's age and article and I'm pretty sure that was the very first articulation on paper of the mill Tony and Satan as a positive figure. But he was an anarchist so that it kind of finds its roots there.
Greg Stevens 42:46 Interesting, though. I didn't know I don't know where I didn't know enough about him to know that he was an anarchist. I should look into that. That is fascinating, too.
Stephen Bradford Long 42:56 So unfortunately, I think we're at the end of our time this this is flown by and we're going to have to do more of this now that you are a full time satanist and I'm so very very jealous maybe I shouldn't be I'm I'm just yearning for the day that I can do you know content creation and do Satan II stuff all day long every day. I'm sure it has its downsides too, though. Maybe we can talk about that. And another.
Greg Stevens 43:22 Yeah, yeah, that's that also is a whole other episode but but ya know, I this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for having me on. And I am. So literally looking forward to the next time we talk when specifically we talk about that issue of the boundaries of interpretation of the tenant about following scientific belief and the extent to which it is or is not important or is or is not a problem when people except supernatural list, or pseudo scientific beliefs. That's that's the whole episode. I'm looking forward to awesome.
Stephen Bradford Long 44:06 Yes, let's definitely do that. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. The music is by the jelly rocks and eleventy seven, you can find them on Apple Music Spotify, or wherever you listen to music, be sure to go check out our other shows on rock candy recordings.com. We have Bible bash, bubble and squeak and we have so many more on the way also, if you're interested in joining our network, I want to hear your pitch for a podcast. If you have a show or you're thinking about starting one, please let me know send me an email at my website and I cannot wait to hear your pitch the artwork is by Rama Krishna Das and this show is only possible because of my patrons to join their number go to patreon.com forward slash Steven Bradford long and you will get extra content each week. The show is written edited and produced by me Stephen log. And as usual, thanks for listening.
45:43 Proud jacked up on we got buried down thing is next to them.
46:52 You