Preface: This is part of an ongoing series about a former Mormon turned atheist attempting to visit 52 different religious groups within a year. Every episode is caught in a podcast that you can subscribe to at 52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel . This post is part of a test series for the book version, so if you see any mistakes or have any questions, please leave a comment. And if you like it - please click the Recommend button (the little thumbs up symbol at the top). Thank you!

 I knew from the beginning that I wanted to meet someone from the Church of Satan. Mainly because I knew nothing about them. I’d probably heard everything – that they’d been wrongfully accused of killing animals, that a bunch of kids had claimed years ago to have participated in devil worship (which turned out not to be true), and a host of other things.

Which meant I knew diddly-squat about them. I think I had heard that there was a Satanic Bible out there, but I wasn’t sure if that was an actual “bible” for the group or just something someone made up.

Because I knew nothing about them save for vague rumors of rumors, I knew I had to find them myself. There was just one problem:

How do to it.

Now, in my stupidity, I overlooked the most obvious method of just going to http://www.churchofsatan.com. I mean – that would have been the smart thing to do. So far though, I had relied only on local contacts, and I liked it that way. I was focusing on what I could find right around the Tampa Bay area, and I didn’t want to rely on calling some national center for any religion[1].

First I did what had worked so far – I went to Google Maps and typed in my zip code and “church of satan.” What turned up was  a listing of several Christian churches in the area (including a few I had visited) preaching about the evil’s of Satan worship. I went on for page after page of search links – and every single one were various Christian churches speaking out against the evils of the Church of Satan; how worshipping Satan led to everything from child abuse to rape to anal pimples[2]. Cleary, Google Maps wasn’t working.

OK. So much for that. Google – you failed me[3]. I went on to other tools. A search for “Satan” on Craigslist proved equally fruitless. So did making appeals via Twitter and Facebook.

I started just typing “Church of Satan” into Google, trying to find someone. I know – I could have gone to their web page, but damn it, I wasn’t going to give in and make it easy on myself.

I finally found an article written in the Orlando Examiner by Robert Johnson titled “The Church of Satan Part 1[4].  He talks about his experiences with the Church of Satan, reading through the literature and the like. I sent him an email asking him for some help finding a Church of Satan contact.

He replied back at 2:57 PM on June 24^th, 2009. By 3:11 PM, I had an email from Peter H. Gilmore, High Priest of the Church of Satan:

Dear Mr. Hummel:

The Church of Satan is unlike most religions in that ritual is a tool for self-catharsis and is not necessarily employed by all of our members. As skeptics and atheists, our perspective is not one of faith nor is worshippart of our rubric. We don't do regular "services" and since ritual is verypersonal it is not something we allow outsiders to attend for observance,regardless of their motives for doing so.

Thus, we decline to participate in this series of yours.

We do not consider any other groups claiming to be Satanic to be worthy ofthat moniker, and our literature explains why.

May you enjoy success in your endeavors.

Sincerely,

Peter H. Gilmore

High Priest

Church of Satan

Very polite, very precise – and very heartbreaking. Shut down just when I had finally made progress.

Well, I wasn’t going to give in that easily.

Mr. Gilmore,

Thank you very much for your email, and I can perfectly understandyour desires not to have people attend your rituals. I had a similarissue when dealing with some other religions, and the last thing I'dwant to do is disturb someone's system of worship.

If I may ask, is there any chance of speaking to an educated member of the Church of Satan such as yourself either in person, or over thephone, or in even an internet chat session just about general beliefs(such as "how did the church start, what are the basic principles, soon and so forth"). This way my listeners would have the informationdirectly from the horse's mouth so to speak, and not from a thirdparty that may not have the correct information.

If you still don't want to participate, I'll perfectly understand, though I'll be disappointed. Either way, thank you very much for getting back to me, and best of luck.

John Hummel

A few minutes later I stood in line at Starbucks, lamenting to a poor redheaded barista that the Church of Satan had turned me down.

I’m sure I had him worried. Then again, he was a redhead, so he was probably naturally evil[5].

My iPhone dinged at me that there was a new email. And inside:

Dear Mr. Hummel:

Either I or one of our Florida representatives can speak with you I'm certain to answer your questions - depending upon scheduling needs.

Best wishes,

PHG

I pumped my fists into the air. “Yes!” I shouted. “The Church of Satan WANTS ME!”

I may have scared some patrons.

A few hours later, I was in contact with a Magistra Ygraine Mitchell via email. And I was soon blowing it. First I called her “Mr. “ in the email – I had never seen the name Ygraine before, and thought maybe it was the name of some guy from a European country[6].

I was soon set straight – turns out Magistra is a female term for someone who is above a priest in the Church of Satan[7]. Since she lived in Orlando, that meant I’d have to make a long drive. My wife and children were going to visit family, so this worked out all right. The only question left was where to meet for the interview. I asked her what was good for her.

“How about we meet at the Starbucks in Celebration?”

Sure. Why not. I could meet a representative of the Church of Satan at Starbucks. I mean – where else?

My coworkers and friends were interested to hear that I had scored the Church of Satan interview. My favorite thing was to tell them where I was going to meet her at.

“Where?” They’d ask, wide eyed, wondering where it could be. A dark warehouse at night? An abandoned church?

“Starbucks,” I’d say.

Everyone would stop, think, and shrug. “Oh.”

I know by most of the rumors I should be meeting in a meat locker somewhere, or maybe a graveyard at midnight. Which is silly. They are people just like anyone else. Programmers, doctors, lawyers – law abiding citizens. Logically, they had to be, because even if they wanted to do bad things, they’d be in jail. Therefore, they couldn’t be the boogey people that some people described them as.

I drove out to Orlando on my own. Originally I was going to take my dog with me, but then he decided to drink my iced mocha. Now he was going to stay home.

I don’t think I was at all scared, or worried. Just curious. What would Magistra Mitchell be like?

I found the Starbucks without a problem and headed over. While waiting outside, a woman asked me to sign her Relay for Life sheet to fight cancer. I thought why not – I had walked in a cancer relay not too long before.

While I was signing, a middle aged woman with dark hair came up to me. “Excuse me,” she asked. “Is that your dog?” She pointed at a pooch tied to a tree by a leash.

I looked around her. “No, I’m afraid not.”

I knew this was her. I probably should have just said “Hi, I’m John, are you Magistra Mitchell.” I should have, and I was probably rude for not doing so. But I wanted to wait. To observe for a moment. Like I said, not really polite, but I wanted to see.

She went up and ordered some tea. Nothing unusual. She joked with the lady at the register, paid for her drink just like anybody else.

It was what I was expected, but maybe there was a part of me that felt it was a little anti-climatic. She had some tattoos, but wouldn’t have looked out of place just about anywhere. I introduced myself, and we went outside to sit on a park bench over looking a lake.  We chatted for a bit. She told me a bit about her family, I told her about mine and why I was doing this project.

There was nothing unusual about her. She wasn’t a goth, she had a sense of humor – I wouldn’t have thought she was anything other than a divorced mother with several teenage children to attend to. She had the same family issues that I did – shuttling kids around, balancing work and marriage and family. She just belonged to a church that made fundamentalist Christians completely freak the Hell out.

No pun intended.

When I had her introduce herself for the microphone, she identified herself as “Magistra Ygraine Mitchell”. “Magistra”, the female version of “Magister” is actually a level above “priest”, which made her an official clergy member inside the Church of Satan.

In her youth, she had been drawn to the Wiccan Neopagan movement. She had owned occult bookstores, had even taught classes. But she found contradictions within the Wiccan faith, and on a trip to San Francisco, met Anton LaVey.

Dr. LaVey, as the group refers to him, used to be a carnival worker. Playing music, entertaining the crowds that came by. And observing. Especially the men who came by to see the shows:

“On Saturday Night I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing the organ for tentshow evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday night they’d be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian Church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man’s carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scourged by any white-light religion.”[8]

Magistra Mitchell explained. “He didn’t see anything wrong with adults practicing wanton sexuality. He didn’t see anything wrong with indulgence. He saw something wrong and dangerous in the suppression of it.”

Most religions seek to teach people to suppress their natural urges because “they’re wrong”, because they need to be controlled because God tells you to, or because they’ll stain your soul.

LaVey saw it differently. He saw that “Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his ‘divine spiritual and intellectual development’, has become the most vicious animal of all!”[9]

For the Church of Satan, mankind are predatory animals. They want to claw themselves to the top. People want money, they want power. They want sex.  So why deny those urges? Why shouldn’t the people who are the smartest, the strongest be the leaders? Why not let the law of Natural Selection let the healthy rise, the sick fall, and by doing so make society as a whole better rather than allowing the weak to be coddled?

Rather than forgive one’s enemies, LaVey says “Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom.” If you can build connections with the powerful to advance your position, do it. If you want to have sex, then have it.

As I listened, I was reminded of Objectivism, the philosophy created by Ayn Rand. When I was a teenager, I read her book “The Fountainhead” and “Atlus Shrugged”, tales of men who did what they wanted, for whom selfishness was the highest virtue. Her ideals were a kind of hyper capitalism, where only by people acting in their own selfish self interests can society move forward.

LaVey took that idea, and wrapped it into a religion. Rand thought that religion was one of the worst creations ever, since it encouraged man to debase themselves before a higher power and sacrifice their goods to the weak and lazy.

For LaVey, religion should be all about the Self as the highest being, and therefore the rituals should reflect that belief.

Magistra Mitchell put it this way. “LaVey identified the fact that mankind may no longer need God, but he seems to need ritual, and dogma, and fellowship, and all the things that culminate in a church. So the Church of Satan is essentially an atheistic church. There are no gods but the self. And we have ritual, and we have dogma, and we have a canon of beliefs. But we do not perceive them as a direct ruling from god but more of an acceptance of human nature, and what naturally happens anyway.”

For Ms. Mitchell, meeting LaVey was a life changing event. However, she didn’t up and join right then. Mainly because she didn’t want to be a cliché, one of those people who went “Hi I met Anton Lavey and – boom! I’m a Satanist!” As she said, “I mean, it wasn’t like anything had to change, it was more of an identification. I was lucky enough to know so many members of the church and when I joined it was – it felt like coming home.”

As far as becoming a Magistra, the Church of Satan doesn’t have an official school or tests to apply. The whole promotion system boils down to, as Ms. Mitchell puts it, “Are you doing what you want to do, and doing it well. Are you a success in the realm you choose to be?”

Those who are doing well, who are succeeding, will be noticed by others in the Church of Satan and offered promotion. As she put it, the “alien elite” – that if you are clearly smarter, better, more clever than those around you, then you deserve your success, and if you earn more power – then you deserve to lead. If you use your personal contacts to advance yourself, then good for you.

Even joining the group is a process in your ability to succeed. Anyone can join the Church of Satan just by sending in the membership fees. That just gets your foot in the door. To become an active member, however, you have to fill out the application. As Ms. Mitchell explained, “And once you’ve filled out that application, you can be considered for promotion. And so I went through the promotionary process, and became a Magistra after I was a priestess for many years. And I was made a Magistra.”

I asked about what their beliefs in God were, or in this case, Satan. This was the one thing that had always perplexed me. If God was the Supreme Being, how could anyone decide to worship Satan? That was like being a Red Sox fan, and knowing they’re always going to lose.

That’s where the shocker came in: the church of Satan doesn’t believe in Satan.

“Well, unlike other Christian heresy – which is devil worship and what some people perceive to be Satanism, Satanism is actually a very new religion.” She said it so matter-of-factly, but my mind was reeling. All of these years I heard half rumors and whispers of “people who worship Satan”, or people just accused of it. So what was that about?

I delved deeper. “So if I asked about gods or the existence of Satan itself, or himself, or whatever, your response would be ‘Doesn’t even exist’?”

“Doesn’t even exist,” she agreed in her low voice. “No gods, no devils, no angels, no demons, no hobbits, no fairies – there is nothing. If there is a God, he is utterly and completely uninterested in man so he might as well not exist. The danger of all gods and the perception of them being real is it takes responsibility from the human. There’s always “the devil made me do it” or “I’ll pray to god and see if it will happen” – and it is irresponsible and we see it every day.

“That’s why – it’s not that we’re disgusted in the white light and love of Jesus. We’re disgusted that people use it an excuse to avoid their personal responsibility. No – if there’s something out there it doesn’t care.” Her voice had a tone of resignation.

So just what is the link between Satanism and – well, Satan? Magistra Mitchell explained the misconception about the just what Satanists worship. “…I think the biggest misconception again is that we’re devil worshippers, and what’s really upsetting about that is devil worship is Christian. You have to believe the Christian bible, you have to accept everything it writes in there and in order to worship that devil you must believe that mythos. And – you may be perverting it, you may not be taking it the way they want you to take it, but you certainly are buying it – hook line and sinker like a Brooklyn bridge. And you’re embellishing upon it.

“Devil worship is created in the pews. As the priest and the pastor stand there glamorizing this Hollywood notion of what Satanism is suppose to be., they’re disenfranchised youth or the angry people there are thinking ‘Wow. That sounds so good , that’s so interesting, that’s so dirty’, you know – and they embrace it. So they actually create the very demon they’re afraid of.

“Then those demons try coming to us, and we promptly show them the door!” Her voice hitched in indignation at the idea of those angry souls coming to the Church of Satan to express their rage. “We are not interested or angry – we love - love! We love have no need to hate and everyone thinks we’re all gothic and black, and I think they would just die if they actually went to an event held by Satanists and saw the laughter and the joy that would be in that room.”

What goes on in that room is ritual that, yes, invokes Satan in a psychodrama, she explained. “…what Dr. Lavey found is that people enjoy the bonding and the psychological catharsis that comes from ritual. Why should that be lost simply because we don’t have a belief in God? We have a belief in our own higher selves and our ability to change ourselves psychologically. So the term “psychodrama” applies. What ritual is, is a way to tap into various aspects of the self, the psyche, let it out, explore it, access it, and see if there’s an epiphany or catharsis that allows us to move forward with a different reasoning or sense of purpose. We want to explore.”

Satan, then, became merely a symbol. For someone who’s will remained unbroken before even the almighty. A symbol of vengeance, of performing the life one wanted to lead unimpeded by others.

With all of that, you’d think the Church of Satan would be a group of anarchists doing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. No belief in the afterlife, no belief in a divine being – so they’d be a bunch of lawbreakers, right?

Um – no. Before the interview, Magistra Mitchell told me about experiences dealing with members of the Church of Satan who had been found to have broken some laws. The response from the group was to promptly call the authorities.  Perhaps it’s a part of that praise of selfishness. If someone commits a crime against you, or against society, then they should be punished for their wrongdoing if for no other reason than to make sure you aren’t the one hurt by their crimes.

“There’s a notion that we’re going to be exactly opposite of everything, and that’s not true,” Mitchell told me. “I mean, I am a member of three separate organizations to prevent and help stop abuse of a sexual nature. I’m pretty sure I’m the only Satanist in my local chapter. I could be wrong, I haven’t exactly waved a banner, but I’m pretty sure I’m it.

“And we have the same goal. We just see things differently. They want to catch them, and some of them do say ‘I want to kill them.’ But they have a little different notion, and almost all of them will say ‘God’s gonna get them, and they’re gonna roast in Hell.’ I’m not satisfied waiting.” Her voice took on a note of – satisfaction. Just the potential of Schadenfreude at the expense of a child molester clearly made her feel pleased.

Not that I could blame her. Who hasn’t wanted to see criminals get their just desserts? Who didn’t feel a bit of joy at hearing that Ken Lay died in jail after he caused so much misery? I know years ago, when I had my apartment broken into, the sight of the man that had stolen my things carried away in handcuffs was so satisfying.

I’d like to think I’m better than that. I honestly believe in reforming people, in forgiveness, in second chances. I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for second chances and my own lovely wife forgiving me for being an idiot sometimes.

But the impulse is so – human.  Revenge is a powerful emotion. Maybe there’s even something genetic in knowing that someone has been punished for their crimes, that justice has been done. It would certainly explain the popularity of torture-porn shows like “24”.

I can’t help but think that no matter how good it feels, it’s just not an effective way of establishing justice. I’m a believer in reforming people, in making sure they have the tools they need to learn from their mistakes and succeed. It requires a greater commitment than just saying “Finish them!”; it takes education, job training, perhaps even psychological help. And even forgiveness. I know my marriage would have ended years ago if my lovely wife didn’t forgive me the stupid things I’d done.

I asked Magistra Mitchell about forgiveness, and what a true Satanist believed of it. “There’s not an automatic forgiveness of sin. It is not demanded. You find in Christianity that you’re to let God do the forgiving, or you’re commanded by god to forgive because it’s his job to weigh out the [punishment]. We don’t have that commandment to do so. If you choose to forgive someone who has done you wrong, that’s you’re choice. You’re doing it with your eyes open, but they could do you wrong again. But you’re not commanded to do so. And frankly, if after that, you are harmed by that person, it’s on you.”

What about doing charity? It would seem with the belief in “survival of the fittest” that would be out. Or – maybe not. She set me straight. “The Church of Satan has a position that first of all that phony altruism is phony altruism. There is nothing wrong with an individual to feel good about himself chipping in and helping other individuals. But the good guy badge – which is what most people are looking people ‘Hi, I’m a good guy’, or the ‘ticket to heaven badge’ actually we find insulting to the very people that are being helped.

“On a personal level, and also most of Satanists I know personally, we have a kind of charitable rule. That is the “no fault of their own” rule. I may not help a 40 year old who is on crack. He may not get a dime from me, but the local animal shelter knows my name, and they get checks regularly. And I’ve never met in my entire life a Satanist who did not love animals. Love them and feel in fact, we have whole message boards “animals are better than people”, I mean – everybody loves animals, and we all contribute again “No fault of their own that they require assistance”. Children: “no fault of their own that they require assistance.” Veterans, to me, is a good one.  They’ve been screwed unrightfully – but we’re also very pro-law and order, so you get a kind of mixture with that too.

“So yeah – when a charitable donation is for real, and you really feel it. Those people who just have to do it look good for themselves are unimpressive in the extreme.”

I probed her about if she believed the world had gotten better or worse over time.  “That’s a great question. And I really don’t know. I think better. I think you’d have to say better. But in some ways – worse in so far as we have bypassed Darwin, and bypassed survival. We have allowed and contributed to those who are either weak or cruel or mentally unstable, we have allowed them to reproduce because we give them so much so they can continue. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. But aside from that, I mean, I like the fact that I’ve got this big bruise on my arm from getting a shot, that shot’s going to keep me from getting a disease. I like that. That’s a good thing. We’re amazing things, people. We can do fantastic things, and I don’t think that’s – I wouldn’t want to go back to the 1600’s. I have a real obsession with English history, I’m an anglophile. But when I think of going back to maidens and Merlins, I think of it smelling and ptomaine and just “No – no.” So I think better.”

I had come to my last question – what she would tell everyone, the one thing she would tell the world if she could. “Take personal responsibility. Do you own. Make your world better, and everything else will follow, if everyone would take responsibility for themselves, what would be wrong with the world?”

In the week to follow, I let Mr. Gilmore know how the podcast episode was progressing ,and finally sent them a link to the final version. They put it on their News section of the Church of Satan website.  That was nice of them.

I think of all the churches I’ve visited, the Church of Satan still seems to get the most interest. Usually first people are shocked, then ask “What are they like?” It’s like I’ve met Hannibal Lector and they’re wondering if I walked away missing a kidney.

But – nothing much really to tell. The people – or at least the person I met – that are member of the Church of Satan are law abiding people like everyone else. The philosophy may be more Objectivist in nature  than other religions, and sure – they’re rituals from what hints I was able to gather from Magistra Mitchell’s description is different than most churches. More nekked people probably.

It’s funny. When I was showing my lovely wife Holli my notes, she came back with a look on her face. “Well? What did you think?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Honestly? They seemed kind of – boring.”

Maybe that’s the funny thing about the whole experience. People expect the Church of Satan to do something extreme, as the Magistra said, something “dirty”, like killing goats – only, according to Magistra Mitchell, many of the members feel strongly about not hurting animals. Or maybe if the Church of Satan did some law breaking! Only – they believe that people should be severely punished for disobeying the law.

You’d expect that people calling themselves the Church of Satan, who have pictures of themselves on their web page in black robes and devil horns would be more salacious. But when you get right down to it – no, not really. It was all kind of anticlimactic. Like waiting an entire movie for Jaws to show up – and when it does, it’s a rubber ducky.

Not as scary as you’d have thought.