0:00

Murder Holmes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.

0:07

Snowball I have to admit got me into a little

0:09

bit of a Satanist wormhole. It started

0:11

with that illustration of Bephamet the androgenist

0:14

goat, and then I wondered, what

0:16

are Satanists and androgynist goats up

0:18

to these days. Goats, it turns

0:20

out, aren't doing too well. Apparently hundreds

0:23

of them are turning up headless in the Chattahoochee

0:25

River, the victim most likely of some nuts

0:27

falling with Centeria ritual. The

0:30

Satanists are doing better, and a lot

0:32

of them, it turns out, aren't the cemetery hopping,

0:34

animal sacrificing, flushiating devil

0:36

worshipers of old. In fact, one of

0:38

the biggest organizations in the United States,

0:40

The Satanic Temple, is a body

0:42

positive, pro choice, LBTQ friendly

0:45

organization that is so empathetic

0:47

it's almost scary. So it came

0:50

with some surprise that somebody just tried to bomb

0:52

their headquarters and sail in Massachusetts.

0:54

I guess when you have a name like the Satanic Temple,

0:57

some folks still get their panties in a twist. So

1:00

to learn a little bit more. I reached out to de des

1:02

Jardine's co founder of the Albany

1:04

chapter of the Satanic Temple. This

1:07

is Murder Holmes. I'm Memorovich.

1:21

My name is Dix sta Jardine. I'm a minister

1:23

of Satan through the Satanic Temple.

1:26

There was recently a bombing uh

1:29

in Salem at the I believe

1:31

the headquarters of the Satanic Temple.

1:33

Is that correct?

1:34

That's correct.

1:35

I think it was an attempted explosive device

1:37

either went off or didn't go off last

1:39

week, right.

1:40

Yeah, I don't know exactly. What

1:42

I had read initially was that someone had thrown

1:45

a rudimentary pipe bomb up onto

1:47

the porch, which sort

1:49

of went off, caused some damage,

1:51

but didn't do as much damage as it would have done

1:54

if it had, you know, functioned correctly.

1:57

Right, And then it's not the first in the

1:59

last couple of years where there's been a

2:01

couple of other attempts at violence

2:03

on that on the headquarters,

2:06

right.

2:06

Yeah. There was a substantial arson attack

2:09

a year or two ago, I can't remember exactly where.

2:12

They did several tens of thousands

2:15

of dollars of damage to the front porch, the main

2:17

entryway, smoke damage to the upstairs

2:19

rooms, I believe, and

2:21

of course you know the water damage which comes with putting

2:23

out such a such a thing. We've

2:25

also had threats against people in leadership.

2:28

My own partner had a gunman show up at her

2:30

house one time. It's risky

2:32

business.

2:34

Well, I'm glad that you seem okay.

2:37

I wanted to

2:39

quickly get into the stereotype notion. So

2:41

of course when I think of a Satanist, I think of you

2:43

know, blood sacrifices and people

2:46

in woods, you know, running in circles and

2:49

you must And

2:51

when I was reading about the Temple,

2:54

it just it surprised me, first of all, how there's

2:57

so many good social issues you're on the

2:59

right side of right. And my

3:02

question is because of the bombing and because

3:04

of the attention you do get from

3:06

wing nuts, isn't it

3:08

kind of like a double edged sword where if you're going

3:10

to get publicity by having

3:12

such a provocative title, right, and a lot of people's

3:15

minds, right, wouldn't it be better

3:17

to be called that, you know, the Positive

3:20

Church of Milton

3:22

or something like that, you

3:25

know something, It would.

3:26

Make life a lot easier if we had a

3:29

name that wasn't quite as spicy as the one

3:31

we have, But then we would be we'd

3:34

be basically giving up on what we are. It's

3:36

a church that focuses on

3:40

activist causes that we believe in as

3:42

an extension of our beliefs, not the other

3:44

way around.

3:46

So is there a movement in the country

3:48

towards more positive Satanism?

3:52

I would say so yes. So,

3:54

you know, the Church of Satan for the most part, which

3:57

had been around from sixty six and is

3:59

still around, has been for the most part, you

4:01

know, pretty insularly. They stick to themselves.

4:03

They don't as an organization get involved

4:06

in the public forum the way the Satanic

4:08

Temple does. What I've we've seen

4:10

with a Satanic temple is Satanists

4:13

come out from the shadows and start

4:16

to demand equitable

4:18

footing in civic life. We've seen

4:20

enormous, enormous growth. We

4:23

went in the course of a year or two from

4:25

having a few thousand

4:27

members, know, maybe like three fourish

4:30

two, Now we have somewhere

4:32

in the realm of a million. Is

4:35

there?

4:36

I always try to get to the more I

4:39

guess I when I would drag it

4:41

down to a more satany

4:43

kind of thing is there is there other

4:45

bad eggs in the in the organization?

4:47

In other words, people say I come into

4:50

the organization or chapter

4:52

and I'm like, well, what's going on here? We're just going to

4:54

go rally for pro choice? I mean, where's the blood,

4:57

you know, the blood sacrifice? Like, where's the

4:59

good stuff that there? Rosemary's baby stuff? And when

5:01

are we going to go in the woods? You know? Do you have

5:04

people? Do you have among

5:06

those millions? Some people are like, you know what, like

5:08

I'm waiting for something a little evil

5:10

to happen, you know, who misunderstand where

5:13

you're going with it.

5:14

I mean, we've had people who join and they're like,

5:16

Okay, when's the orgy and we have to disappoint

5:18

them and say, well, there won't there probably won't be

5:21

one, at least a lot of officially

5:23

probably well, I mean, you know, so we're

5:25

a fairly liberated group

5:28

overall Satanists, I guess you could say so. We have

5:30

an awful lot of members who are in unconventional

5:33

relationship structures, you know, polyamorous

5:35

or you name it, you know, and

5:38

certainly members have had plenty

5:41

of orgies I'm sure over the years. I'm

5:43

not privy to all of them, but they haven't been done

5:46

as in an official capacity as part of

5:48

the Satanic Temple's operations.

5:50

This has been more like, you know, you get ten or twelve

5:52

Satanists together, and you know

5:55

it could happen that an orgy breaks out. I can't

5:57

promise that it won't, but it's not an

5:59

a fish least sanctioned activity. It's more just

6:01

like, you know, we're we're we're young and attractive

6:04

and sexually liberated. Let's let's have some fun

6:06

or not. We also have a very very large asexual

6:10

community within the State Temple that's

6:12

very vocal.

6:13

And marginalized communities

6:15

that you stick up for. But absolutely but in

6:18

the origin, they wouldn't be like an animal sacrifice

6:20

or absolutely not.

6:21

No, no, we do not believe in harming

6:23

anything, you know, just to

6:25

just create harm. And since we're not worshiping anything,

6:27

there'd be nothing to sacrifice too, so it'd

6:30

just be a pointless exercise and cruelty, which

6:32

would run directly contrary to several

6:34

of our tenants.

6:36

There are certain rituals that you do,

6:38

like, for instance, the destruction ritual. Can you

6:40

can you explain that?

6:41

Yeah? Absolutely so, any ritual

6:44

we do is meant to have cathartic or

6:46

bonding elements. So it's

6:48

it's meant to, you know, increase

6:50

your your

6:53

will, so to speak, to make you feel

6:56

empowered, or to bring a community together.

6:58

So what a destruction ritual is, and it's it's one

7:00

of our most common ones that you would see is

7:03

members will find or

7:05

create an object that represents something

7:07

either painful from their past or an obstacle

7:09

to their future, and we ritualistically

7:12

destroy it. And you know, you can have fire and

7:14

incense and make blood and all that stuff. You know, we can

7:17

go hand with it sometimes and have fun with the

7:19

satanic aesthetic you'd expect. We're just not

7:21

actually hurting anybody or any animals

7:23

in the process. And nor are we expecting

7:26

like the Dark Lord to appear from puff

7:28

of smoke or something like that. It's

7:30

purely meant to be. It's a psychodrama,

7:33

it's cathartic. It builds community, and

7:35

it helps to energize people to go then go

7:37

out into the world and actually do stuff

7:39

to create the change that the ritual

7:42

symbolizes.

7:43

Can I follow op that with the black Mass ritual,

7:45

because when I think of a black mass. I mean, I

7:48

don't know, I think of something

7:50

pretty heavy, right, and can you tell me what that ritual

7:53

is? Just briefly?

7:54

Oh yeah, so this is they'll enjoy this one. So

7:56

black mass in the Satanic Temple is

7:59

exactly like what you read about in like

8:01

a Satanic Panic horror pamphlet,

8:03

except for the part where people get hurt. So

8:06

I'll tell you I can describe to you a black

8:08

mass I've attended, if you so.

8:10

Back in twenty seventeen on Halloween at

8:13

the Satanic Temple headquarters, I attended a

8:15

black Mass. And

8:17

one of the things that was kind of cool about it was generally,

8:20

in traditional depictions of a black mass,

8:22

you've got like a man who is the priest or

8:24

whatever, and a woman on the altar helpless

8:26

sexual symbol most likely. And

8:29

what we did differently in that case

8:31

was the altar was a man, yes

8:34

he was naked, and it was a priestess

8:36

who oversaw everything. And the black

8:38

mass, simply put, is

8:40

an inversion of a Catholic mass.

8:43

It is a desetration

8:46

of what a regular Catholic

8:48

mass would look like. So for example, there

8:51

was urine involved in this case, there a

8:53

holy waifer disappeared up somebody's bottom.

8:56

It was pretty wild, I will tell you that.

8:58

You know, there was fake blood involved. There was singing

9:01

and chanting and incense, but

9:04

at no time was any body or thing

9:06

hurt. And we were at no time expecting,

9:08

you know, a hoofed

9:11

being to appear to give us magic

9:13

or something.

9:14

Can I love that description? Can I? Can? I on

9:16

this note of hoof beings. The reason we're

9:19

talking to you is because we got on a tangent

9:21

somehow. We were doing this episode about a goat,

9:24

and one thing led

9:26

to another. You know, when you go to

9:28

the Satanic Temple's website, you do see at

9:30

least the illustration or the goat,

9:32

you know, the famous the horns. Can

9:35

you tell me what your take on beames?

9:38

Yeah, basically Bahmed

9:41

or Aba however you want to pronounce. It is sort

9:44

of a symbol of the reconciliation of opposites,

9:46

which has long been one of the sort of

9:48

central themes of the

9:50

Satanic Temple. You know,

9:52

the history you murder already

9:55

know quite a bit about goes back to the

9:57

Crusades, and you know the Crusaders,

10:00

specifically Templar knights were accused

10:02

of worshiping a being called

10:04

bat Fame, which you know was the

10:06

pretext by which they were executed.

10:09

And then you see the you don't see the name

10:11

again for quite a long time until Elave

10:14

Slibby's book is published

10:16

with the sabbatical goat with the

10:18

salve and coagula on the arms, you know,

10:20

salve a dissolving,

10:23

you know, falling apart, and coagula

10:25

coagulate coming together. I've actually got them

10:27

tattooed on my forearms

10:31

to see that now, I know,

10:33

the one hand

10:35

pointing up and the other one down for as

10:37

above, so below and so on.

10:40

So it's just a it's just a great and multifaceted

10:43

symbol for the reconciliation of

10:45

opposites. And it's it's been tied

10:47

to Satanism going

10:50

back into the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen

10:52

hundreds through people such as Alistair. Probably

10:54

there's a there's a passage in the Old

10:56

Testament I camera which or actually

10:58

I think it's the New Testament where it talks

11:00

about God hurting the sheep

11:02

to the right hand and the goats to the left,

11:05

and the goats are the dams in this

11:08

parable. And and interestingly

11:10

though it isn't the direct connection left hand

11:12

left hand path. Satanism is

11:14

considered a left hand path tradition, and that

11:17

it's it's a tradition through which the self

11:19

self empowers, as opposed to calling

11:22

on a home side or greater power

11:25

to assist them, which would be a right hand path, which

11:27

could be anything from Catholicism

11:29

to Wicca.

11:31

You actually had at one point a statue, a gigantic

11:33

statue when you when you would when you would rally

11:35

somewhere, say for pro choice or or

11:37

for some marginalized community issue,

11:39

right, you would have a gigantic statue

11:42

of Bethame that

11:45

that you build, that this is the Satanic temple, build

11:47

some kind of statue to to to rally around.

11:49

Right, that's correct.

11:52

And how tall was it?

11:55

I think I believe from base

11:58

to horn it's eight feet tall if

12:00

I'm correct, and weighs several

12:02

hundred pounds. It's it's made of bronze.

12:04

It's actually it's at our headquarters

12:07

in Salem, Massachusetts, and visitors

12:09

are allowed to, you know, come

12:12

in and see it, sit on it, take pictures

12:14

with it. There's

12:16

been a lot of nude butts on that statue

12:18

though, so you know, FYI

12:22

we'll be.

12:22

Back after a short break. We're

12:26

back with murder Homes. I

12:28

think I think of you as the nice Satanic

12:31

organization or or that you know, the Satanic

12:33

Temple. But there

12:35

are Satanic organizations

12:37

that aren't so nice, right, So I will give you

12:40

an example of like what you think of them, Like the

12:42

Order of Nine Angles.

12:44

Oh, yeah, they're they're pretty terrible.

12:47

So, yeah, the Order of Nine Angles is a

12:49

is a Satanic group. Unfortunately, every

12:52

every group of human beings has you

12:54

know, good and bad actors, and

12:56

I would say the Order of Nine Angles is high up

12:58

there among the real ones.

13:03

Dex Can you tell us a little bit about why they're they're so

13:05

bad?

13:06

Well, Adolf Hitler is one of their saints. They're

13:09

white supremacists. Uh, They've committed

13:12

terrorist aacks in the United States and the

13:14

United Kingdom and maybe other places. I'm not

13:16

sure that that's you know, a smattering

13:18

of what makes them a little unseemly.

13:21

Yes, And then and they've gone

13:23

their roots inside the US military a little bit,

13:25

right.

13:26

Yeah, Unfortunately, it seems that you know, some

13:28

of them have made their way into the military, and

13:30

I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are in h

13:34

you know, police forces. Are there any basically any

13:36

place where people have authority,

13:38

you'll find jerks trying to, you know, make

13:40

in roads.

13:42

Have you had a with with underground

13:44

organizations that are unsavory? Have

13:46

you had any direct experience with them in other words, where

13:48

they call you or say hey, do you want to join this

13:50

or that? Or do you

13:53

have anything? Do you have any connections?

13:56

Not not connections as in your allegiance,

13:58

but have you met them, you know, at

14:01

various events?

14:03

Thankfully no, not to my knowledge.

14:06

Where do you see this in ten years?

14:09

So we kind of just go through these constant cycles

14:11

of growth and shedding, growth and shedding, but always

14:13

more growth than shedding. So if

14:15

things continue in that path, I can see us

14:18

cropping up in more European countries.

14:20

I know. We've got interest from folks living

14:22

in Latin America, We've

14:25

got interest from folks in Southeast

14:27

Asia. And there's some places where we can't

14:30

officially grow, like Poland, Russia,

14:32

Iran, places that have anti

14:34

blasphemy laws.

14:36

There must be some fear amongst some members because

14:38

of what's going on in this country with you know, QAnon

14:40

and this. You know, the

14:42

you know, accusations of the deep state conspiracies

14:45

and sexual abuse and all. Isn't there a fear

14:47

amongst some members that we're headed towards a little

14:49

bit of a confrontation.

14:53

Oh sure, absolutely, yeah. A

14:55

lot of our members are taking

14:58

self defense classes, folks. You

15:00

know, they're getting concealed carry permits.

15:03

One of the reasons a lot of Satanists use

15:05

what we jokingly call is satanem you know, a pseudonym

15:09

is. Part of it is for identification,

15:11

It's like a recreation of yourself

15:14

as this new persona. But the other part

15:16

of it is just not getting shot and

15:19

you know, and nothing is going to ultimately protect

15:21

you from someone who's motivated enough to come

15:23

and kill you if they if they want it bad enough, they'll

15:25

find a way. But at least it makes a little

15:27

harder for them and gives you a chance to get a head start

15:30

if you know someone's coming for you. So

15:32

you know, it's just a it's just a reality. If you're going

15:34

to be a public Satanist in America, you are

15:36

putting your life in danger.

15:41

Thank you for listening to this true crime plus bonus

15:44

content. This is murder Holmes. I'm Matt

15:46

Merinovitch. Murder

15:55

Holmes is created by an executive produced

15:57

by Matt Merinovich. Executive

16:00

producers are Jennifer Bassett and Taylor Chockoine.

16:03

Story editor is Jennifer Bassett. Supervising

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producer is Carl catell. Producer

16:09

is Evan Tyre. Sound design

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by Taylor Shockoine, Evan Tyre

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16:18

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