HAIL SATAN
It’s better the devil you know for Lucien Greaves, co- founder of The Satanic Temple
The Satanic Temple may not be what you think. Members — half of whom are LGBTQ — certainly don’t perform
child sacrifices and nobody kisses the devil’s arse. David McGillivray speaks to co- founder
Lucien Greaves as a documentary about the group opens in the UK
It must be one of the greatest headlines of all time: Mississippi police want to arrest the satanists who turn dead people gay. It dates from 2013, when the newly formed Satanic Temple ( ST) — angered that members of the hate- filled Westboro Baptist Church planned to picket the funerals of Boston marathon bombing victims — performed a so- called Pink Mass over the grave of Catherine Johnston, the mother of the church’s preacher Fred Phelps.
Satanic Temple co- founder Lucien Greaves conducted a ritual that involved two same- sex couples kissing, then Greaves himself dangling his testicles over the headstone. “The Pink Mass is a satanic ritual performed after death that turns the deceased’s straight spirit into a homo one,” wrote Vice reporter Jonathan Smith with no apparent mockery. “It’s not unlike the Mormon practice of baptising the dead, only gayer.”
So it’s official: Fred Phelps’s mum is a lesbian in the afterlife!
The headline that followed is one of the many laugh- out- loud moments in Hail Satan?, a documentary about Greaves and all his works, which opened at the Sundance Film Festival in the US in
January and played at the UK version in June, both to great acclaim.
One of the first things I want to know when I meet Lucien, 43, is whether a warrant for his arrest remains in force.
“They did issue a warrant for me in Mississippi,” the Harvard graduate confirms. “It was for desecration of a grave and at first I thought I should go [ there] and fight it. I should make a mockery of the court proceedings.
“My understanding was that at worst there was something like a $ 500 (£ 400) fine. However, my lawyer said: ‘ Let me look at this first’, and he determined that [ the crime] is defined so broadly that even saying a swear word near a grave can be considered desecration.
He added that, if I went to Mississippi, they could throw me in jail for a year. Because of the press attention and the disparaging things I’d said about the sheriff, I never went back.”
It turns out, in an example of one of those it’s- a- small- world moments, that both Lucien and I have contributed to David Flint’s anthology Satan Superstar. But that book is about occult obsession and satanic panic and, despite its name, the Satanic Temple has other priorities. Basically, ST is against the promotion of a single religious viewpoint and, in the United States, that viewpoint usually
belongs to Christian fundamentalists. Another of the ST’s most successful campaigns kicks in whenever a Christian memorial, often a giant tablet of the Ten Commandments, is proposed for a public space.
The group’s response is that, in keeping with the First Amendment of the US constitution, which prohibits the promotion of one religion, a satanic monument must also be erected. What’s more, there’s one at the ready: a statue of a goat- headed deity being adored by two children. As often as not, neither memorial is unveiled.
The Satanic Temple may not be satanic in that members don’t venerate Satan the bloke, but the group does practise satanic ideals. “We take from that mythology some of the imagery that was attributed to satanism – the outsider, the feared other,” Lucien explains. ST also performs rituals although we’re not talking The Exorcist here.
“What we’re finding is that the active membership within our chapters have a deep religious affinity for our belief system and our practices, which they’re helping to manifest,” Lucien continues. “The ritual practices of the Satanic Temple, despite the fact that there’s no diktat, have naturally progressed into a system which is pretty much in line with our anti- authoritarian philosophy.”
In case there’s any doubt, the Satanic Temple promotes compassion, empathy and general equality. Is it political, satirical or authentically religious? “In some respects, we can be all these things at the same time without diminishing any one of them,” Lucien teases.
Hail Satan? is essential viewing not only because it records how much of a vibrant force new satanism has become throughout the world
( the UK chapter was established in 2016 and it’s featured in the film) but also for the details it reveals about Christian evangelism in the United States.
Its biggest upsurge was during the Eisenhower administration amid Cold War tensions in the 1950s. “That’s when they put ‘ In God We Trust’ on the currency and ‘ Under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance,” Lucien tells me. “At the time, few people objected [ and] were willing to regard it as merely ceremonial and patriotic, especially in contrast to the supposedly godless communists.”
But today in city council meetings ( as shown in the film) people hold up the dollar bills that declare “In God we trust” as evidence of an exclusive licence to a Christian viewpoint.
“At the point where we stop fighting these battles, we’re accepting second- class status for not identifying with the Christian religion,” Lucien claims. Equally remarkable is that the aforementioned Ten Commandments monuments date back to a publicity stunt to promote Cecil B DeMille’s
1956 film The Ten Commandments.
In a believe- it- or
not moment,
Hail Satan? shows that the Christian memorials proposed for public sites throughout the US are replicas of the tablets Charlton Heston ( himself a staunch Republican and long- time member of the National Rifle Association) displays as he, playing Moses, climbs down Mount Sinai.
“It gives you a new perspective when people accuse the Satanic Temple of engaging in things merely for publicity,” Lucien comments. “Are Christians trying to piss off people who believe in the secular constitution? I don’t think we’re any more guilty than them.”
Let’s not forget why Lucien Greaves ( it’s not his real name, which has not been disclosed) is being interviewed by Attitude. The Satanic Temple is fundamentally gay. but Lucien isn’t. So what’s going on? “I’m not gay, which is almost a minority status within the ST,” he says. “It would be a conservative estimate to say that more than 50 per cent of our membership is LGBTQ. I think that’s because they feel disowned and disenfranchised from the traditional religious institutions. So you have a population willing to embrace a religious identification that is boldly willing to speak out to the contrary.
“From the start, when one of our early actions was the Pink Mass, a lot of LGBTQ people were looking for another community that didn’t see them as defined by their sexual orientation.
“Within the Satanic Temple, we’re all pretty much one and the same. We’re all Satanists and it’s not like we have
‘ tolerance’ for trans people or gay people or sex workers, we just don’t fucking care, and a lot of people in those communities appreciate that.
“Our chapters are always involved with Pride parades in the United States, they’re always doing something for the LGBTQ community and they’re always open about inclusion,” he continues.
“One of the earlier things we wanted to do before the Supreme Court ruled in favour of gay marriage in the US was to test rights versus religious liberty in states that were refusing to allow equal marriage.
“We were going to do this by holding a satanic gay wedding in any one of these states and, if the state refused to recognise it, we’d sue on the grounds that it was our religious liberty to have it recognised.
We never got to do that but there are people who want to roll back other things such as Roe vs Wade [ a Supreme Court ruling which effectively legalises abortion throughout the US] as well.
“We will always fight them, we will fight them to the death to ensure that there are equal rights for the gay community.”
Lucien actually risks his life for us. “In a place such as Arkansas, you have neo- Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other supremacists threatening to murder you,” he says.
“You see in the climactic scene of Hail Satan? that I have to don a bulletproof vest before I speak, standing at a podium.
“What the cameras missed, and I wish they hadn’t, was that there were plenty of people with guns milling about in the periphery and they wanted us to know they were there and that I was in peril.
“It was a harrowing experience.”
That’s enough to have me pledging allegiance to the Satanic Temple.
Hail Satan? opens in the UK on 23 August
“We will fight to the death to ensure equal rights for the gay community”