Ep.10: The Bickering Among Satanists

# Satanists Nextdoor
# Ep.10: The Bickering Among Satanists

[Lilin Lavin]
Welcome, dear listeners, to Satanist Next Door. We're your hosts, Lilin Lavin and Tommy Lavin. Whether you're an open-minded, curious onlooker or a fellow Satanist seeking camaraderie, our goal is to share our personal experiences and delve into the intricate tapestry of Satanism in our daily lives, occasionally inviting other guests to share their unique perspectives, leaving no pentagram unturned.

We'll explore how our beliefs shape our views on society, dive into struggles and triumphs we've encountered, and reveal the humanity that unites us all. So grab your favorite chalice and join us on this captivating journey. Satanist Next Door is ready to peel back the curtain and offer you a glimpse into our world, one captivating episode at a time.

[Tommy Lavin]
Hello and welcome to another episode of Satanist Next Door. We thought with this episode that since you've kind of gotten to know us a little bit, you know, we're about seven or eight episodes in, give or take, that we might go back in time a little bit and sort of bring you back to how this whole journey started for us about 30 years ago. About 30 or so years ago, you know, a while ago, we could just say, and you know, sort of how our journey evolved, you know, from where we started to where we are now, and who the hell knows where the future is going to take us.

And in the midst of all this, you know, we could probably even cover a little bit of, we do get questions from users that, or listeners, I should say, that, you know, kind of ask what we think about the bickering that happens with inside of different satanic groups. Yeah, different satanic groups. And I think in order to best answer that question, it helps to understand our journey.

And so that when we give our opinion, you can actually see where our opinion is coming from. And, you know, the experience that we have behind that opinion.

[Lilin Lavin]
What do you think, Lennon? Lennon Yeah, that's exactly. Not necessarily like 34 years for everyone.

But yes.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. All right. So yeah, I mean, maybe we don't go all the way back.

Oh, no, you're welcome to go back. You know, I mean, so long, long story short, I came into Satanism in my late teens, early 20s, which was almost 30 years ago. I entered Satanism as a COS Church of Satan member.

That was really, you know, there weren't a whole lot of options back then. The internet was still pretty new. You know, when you went to go get the satanic Bible, you know, you kind of like went to a Barnes and Nobles or something, asked them about it, and they normally kept it underneath the counter.

You know, they would kind of look around and be like, Yeah, we've got that and, you know, hand it to you. Um, you know, and things like IRC, which, you know, were chat rooms were starting to pop up, AOL did not support satanic chats, because it was against their terms of service. Yeah, they were a Christian organization.

So they would not no matter how many times we tried, they just would never really support those types of chat rooms. But we did connect with other satanists throughout IRC and other other ways. And, you know, so I had been a satanist for quite a few years.

And then I met Lillen, who was not a satanist, but who is not recognized as a satanist.

[Lilin Lavin]
It wasn't until I really started looking into the things that you had shared, and figuring out whether or not it aligned with who I was that I was like, Well, crap, this exactly what I've been, I just didn't know what it was called.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's not saying that when I read the satanic Bible, I aligned with everything, there was definitely things that I didn't totally align with. There was definitely opinions that LaVey had that I did not align with.

And there was things that the Church of Satan was and was not doing that I didn't align with either. And then shortly after that LaVey died, and kind of everything went to shit for a while. You know, but about that time, we had our first child as well, which changed things a little bit for us.

Yeah, you know, I know you had expressed a bit of a, well, there was a lot of different things.

[Lilin Lavin]
So again, some people might know I grew up my grandmother was a huge influence in my life. She was incredibly Catholic, but not in the shitty, you have to believe what I believe way. She was very much Catholic, very involved with her particular, you know, church, and she would do those things.

But it was never mandatory when I would hang out with her. It was just us doing things. I think I went to mass with her a couple of times out of curiosity.

It was never like a you've got to do this stuff. So I knew some things of ritual, because Catholicism is very much ritual based. My other home where I grew up with my parental person who was a shitty parent, and they didn't really have a belief, they bounced around through some Christian stuff, because it was a byproduct of, like, na or a or things they had been involved in.

And then they were also into like different occult things. I knew who I was to Crowley was, I knew about some of the other things. Again, I'm very little.

So these are very surface sort of things. As I'm growing up, I knew about magic, and, you know, these kind of different concepts that I was just able to learn about or read about. But then as I started to grow up, you know, like, there's really not a lot.

I was kind of into pagan beliefs at the time, because I'm still trying to sort my way through, you know, what is this crazy thing called life. But you know, I didn't have any real set beliefs. So I was kind of floating around very much more aligned with more of left hand leaning things.

But I had a lot of those normal things. People believe, you know, Satanists are these, you know, these sort of people, and they do these things and, you know, didn't understand bad people. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. So I remember when you you first, you know, after we met, and you were like, you're a Satanist. You don't seem like what I think a Satanist would be.

You know, I remember that conversation, you know, that we had and, and I was like, you know, you, you know, just that we're only dating at the time, I was like, you don't have to be a Satanist, you know, it's like you, you be who you are. But you had some curiosity. So, you know, naturally, I did what you could do back then, which, you know, I handed you the Satanic Bible.

And I said, well, why don't you read this? There was maybe one or two Satanic websites. I mean, you got to remember, this is kind of the beginning of the internet, you know, definitely wasn't the information out there that there is now.

[Lilin Lavin]
Back in the end of the 90s.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
When you know, the You Got Mail thing was still happening. There was some forums and you could read different, different things, you know, most of it was just user generated items that people would put out there about the horrors of what you know, what is Satanism? Is this awful?

And then you got the Satanist, the very small pocket of Satanists that were online with the things that they, you know, would share.

[Tommy Lavin]
And it was the, I would say also, it was the end of the Satanic panic. Right?

[Lilin Lavin]
Things were just starting to get more, more safe. Yeah, safer, more normalized, I would say, you know, people are able to start talking about occult things, you know, again, without it being this big taboo subject that you could possibly end up in court over.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, or have your kids taken away or all sorts of shit. I mean, police, at that point in time, police stations actually had like gang units, and they also had like an occult unit. I'm not I'm shitting you not they actually had like an occult unit.

[Lilin Lavin]
So you can still find these documents online, there was a little informational packets that the different police departments would put out and the warning signs to look into if you see, you know, pentagrams and, you know, at the same time, they don't understand the language. So there's all these different things they're talking about what to watch out for to make sure there's not satanic cults, you know, in your area. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And so, you know, as, as we, you know, as our dating progressed, and we got married, and you got pregnant, you know, we kind of had a long discussion as new parents. Um, it probably also didn't help that at that time. And like I said, it was shortly after LeVay died.

So the Church of Satan was going through their own sort of shitstorm. You know, and that happens in these organizations when something changes when a major figurehead leaves, or there's a major change or a bunch of people leave or whatnot, you know, there's a bit of an upheaval. It had happened before in the Church of Satan when Michael Aquino left with, you know, a bunch of the priesthood back in 74, 75, something like that.

You know, so there's these upheavals that happen. But at that time, obviously, when LeVay died, you know, it's kind of like, what the hell do we do now, you know, it's kind of, you know, what you saw from a bunch of say, because there wasn't a lot of direction coming out. And again, this was early internet.

So it's not like you had Twitter or anything like that, where people can really talk really quick, real time and information is passed along in the sense that it is now in a much quicker way. But I remember us having that conversation. And I know you were pretty worried about, you know, do we bring a child up as Satanists, you know, or?

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, yeah, I mean, I think maybe fast forward a bit. So we had taken time to have a lot of discussions about what Satanism meant to you. I read through a lot of, obviously, the Satanic Bible, read through a lot of different information that I was able to find.

And I realized, again, this is what I've always been. I just didn't know it was, you know, Satanism by name. And so it was really great to find that it was very freeing to realize, you know, this is what I am.

This is the path that I've always been following. And then I was able to kind of dive into that and explore that a little bit more. And then, yeah, we found out we were having our first child.

And, you know, things like the McMartin trial and all the stuff that happened not that long ago was still very much top of mind. People that didn't even have any involvement with Satanism went to jail. Pete Yeah, prison, prison, prison.

Jessica Had to defend themselves in court against allegations with absolutely no substantiation other than very horrible psychological practices that were very abusive and had one goal in mind to demonize, no pun intended, Satanist and to make it something that, you know, society would know better than to participate in. So here we are looking at being parents and the fears of, you know, well, I had grown up in social services. So, you know, is this something that could result in our kids being taken away?

Will people understand? Is this something that will take away from them being able to have friends or a normal life? Like, how do you, how do you do this?

And there was very few Satanic parents. We knew a few other Satanists, COS Satanists that had some kids. I believe the only other parents I knew were actually out of the country.

They had sent us a really cute onesie. We had an on God father for our kiddo who was involved with COS. And, you know, they didn't have kids because, again, it was not a very common thing for Satanist with children or very out Satanist at all at the time.

So there was just a lot of what do we do? What does this look like? And just trying to figure out how do we move forward?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
So we decided moving forward meant taking a step back from Satanism for a while.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, we took a step back. You know, we're kind of atheistic, agnostic, but, you know, it's just like non-practicing, I would say.

[Lilin Lavin]
We had some close friends that were into, I believe, it was like more Wicca type stuff, which, you know, again, we did kind of explore it. It was not really our thing, but we had really gotten into Satanism. So the step back thing was kind of a eh, but we felt like it was the best thing because we had even applied to do a grotto with COS back then.

And that was a very short lived program. We had gotten approved to do the grotto and we're looking to try and meet other people. And then we thought, well, yeah, we're going to have to step away.

And then the grotto program pretty much fell apart not that long after anyway.

[Tommy Lavin]
So, yeah, I mean, that was kind of our beginning was Church of Satan. And like I said, there was things about COS that I didn't necessarily agree with. Well, both of us, we had a lot of discussions.

Yeah, you know, there was, I've never agreed with LaVey's stance on abortion. To me, you can take LaVey's quotes about abortion and basically put them out there into the Christian national in this world. And if you didn't have LaVey's name on it, they'd probably go viral.

I mean, they'd be shared. So I had a hard time with those views because to me, Satanism has always included bodily autonomy and women's rights and things like that. And so that part I didn't like.

And I know you brought up the Midas right and things like that, that you didn't agree with as well.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, and that was interesting because it wasn't until we had two kids by now, and I had started kind of leaning back towards, you know, these are my roots. This is what I always felt more comfortable. Is it really a big deal?

Maybe we could just be more back burner about it and the kids don't need to know. And then I was doing more research because I was trying to get back involved. And then I started seeing the stuff about Ayn Rand.

And I started seeing the stuff about Midas right. And I was like, well, this is very hard for me personally to dismiss, because I have very strong feelings about community and what it means to benefit as a society. And these were very contrary to things that I held important to myself.

Darrell Bock Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And again, you know, at the time, there wasn't really a whole lot of options. There was no TST. You know, and some of the issues I always had with COS was, you know, we've been watching Christians try and change this country into basically a theocracy for decades now. And I totally agree with religion, not, you know, I agree with the separation of church and state.

But I don't agree with just sitting in the corner and being quiet, because inaction is still inaction to me. And if you just sit there and, and don't give any sort of a counter message or an argument or a voice or something like that, you know, it was like, some of that activity was what I was looking for and hoping for, and it just wasn't there, still isn't there, you know, in the, you know, the way COS looks at it as, you want to go do that, go do it yourself, you know.

[Lilin Lavin]
Chase Again, that's one of the things COS, it's not wrong. And I definitely don't begrudge them the fact that they feel like if you want to go and do something, you go and do it, that's on you, it's your responsibility and accountability and all the stuff attached to it are on you. And I do think that's one of the positives about satanism versus some other beliefs is that every single thing you do begins and ends with you, your choices, your actions, you own them all, good and bad.

And I don't disagree with, you know, don't necessarily want to go ahead and jump into something because we're satanists, we're here to stand up to blah, blah, blah, because I definitely like, you know, I believe in being involved in lots of different movements. I certainly wouldn't show up to most of them wearing anything identifiable as a satanist, because then you're taking away from those movements. And you could, in fact, actually cause more harm than good doing things in that capacity.

So I get it. But at the same time, we are a religion, we do have beliefs, they do matter in our lives. No, they don't belong in schools or legislating or any of those things, but they exist.

And they have every right to exist just as much as any other belief does.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And I believe that, you know, we should be vocal about those things. And I do believe that if you're a satanic organization, and a, you know, Christian lawmakers are passing a obvious Christian law, that, you know, it's kind of hard to argue your way out of, well, you know, maybe some of our people wouldn't support this.

Well, you know, I'm not sure why you're a satanist, then if you're supporting Christian laws. So that was some of the things that I kind of had difficulty with. And then we kind of stepped away.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And in fairness, I didn't have again, I never really experienced Christianity as a Christian person. So I wanted in, you know, a full understanding of what is the job, this, what is interesting, and I've mentioned it in other conversations we've had.

And we did explore Christianity as well. So it again, did not, it was not my thing. But the people were not awful, all of them.

I mean, there's shitty people in every single belief, including satanism. Every single belief has end of sentence. But there were really nice people and really nice communities.

And I could see what's appealing about that to people.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I mean, you can see where the draw came from. You know, I remember our conversation when you wanted to explore that I was like, Okay, this is what it's about, blah, blah, blah. This is generally what they believe in all of this sort of stuff.

And I remember as a partner, supporting you during that journey, and kind of taking that journey with you. Because, you know, I was like, you know, if you're gonna do it, that's fine. I will take this journey with you.

And I will say one thing. And you'll hear this a lot of times, if you talk to people that have been on the left hand path is once you pierce that veil, it is really hard to put that veil back on. You know, because all of a sudden, now you've got all these holes in this veil that this theocratic BS just doesn't match up with.

And no matter how many sermons or Bible studies or whatever it is you go to, there's still all these holes in it that you're like, but what about this? And what about this? And what about this?

And what about this? And what about this? And blah, blah, blah.

[Lilin Lavin]
That was ultimately the undoing, I think, because we would always ask questions. And Bible studies were weird, because they always broke them up, guys did theirs, girls did theirs, fine, whatever. And it would just, you know, I always had all these questions.

I want to understand the different perspectives. And boy, were there, they were always wonderful conversations, tons of stuff to learn the perspectives on just deciphering words alone. And the way that their context applied biblically was always interesting, but I never could see it as anything other than a metaphorical, you know, literature.

It was a lot of really interesting stories that were historically related to periods of time we really just can't relate to as people. But the stories held, you know, value as far as lessons, things that you could take metaphorically and do things with. So that was neat.

But they, you know, I don't mean to be generalizing, but many people took it way too literal. And it just did not make sense to me. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And so there was a time where I was kind of like, you know, we stepped away from that. And then I was like, kind of like Satanism is my core. That's who I am.

So, you know, I'm going to at least myself start exploring this again. But I'm going to explore it from a different point of view. You know, there was some things about COS I didn't like.

So I'm going to look and see what else is out there. And, you know, we found Temple of Set. I read a lot of Michael Aquino's work.

Yeah, really cool stuff, honestly. Yeah, really cool stuff. Read some stuff from Stephen Flowers.

Again, very cool author, very cool guy. If you ever have a chance to meet him, if you're like in the Austin area, and you happen to bump into him, very cool guy. Mm hmm.

You know, but they approached Satanism in a much different way. It was very metaphysical. I would say, you know, they, they very much delved into like, the magic part of it and, and the very much academic too.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, that part was really cool. Like Don Webb was another individual that was more involved in that world, just through immense knowledge, really had a ton of just literary pieces you could pick up and read through and learn a lot of historical context, and just a lot of fun. So that's also another person if you're looking at learning those things, especially when it comes to Temple of Set or Egyptology.

Definitely some interesting stuff there.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, but you know, some of the problems I ran into with that was, in order to kind of be accepted in the Temple of Set, somebody else has to make a judgment that you have, quote unquote, become, you know, you have made this change. And most of the time, you've never met this person, you correspond by like, email or something like that. And a lot of difficulties with how is it that somebody else knows if I'm doing, it just kind of seemed...

It was a bit sterile in a way. Yeah, sterile. And it seemed very much like, wait a minute, I'm gonna have somebody else tell me if I'm a Satanist or not.

Now that's kind of bullshit.

[Lilin Lavin]
But past the recognition portion, there was some interesting and really cool people, really neat stuff. Again, it just fell flat on some of the things that each of us were looking for.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And about that time, you had found TST. You had started following TST. Yeah, so the Satanic Temple, they had, you know, that website was very immature at the time.

[Lilin Lavin]
It wasn't even where it is today. And so you sign up, you subscribed, essentially, you joined by mail list, essentially. You just subscribe to it.

But the thing I loved was, there was that pushing against arbitrary authority. There was, you know, action, there was involvement, there was community. It was very early.

So there was a lot of, you know, the shenanigans you find in a lot of these younger organizations. You can even look back at when the Church of Satan began. LeVay, being that very much a carny, he brought a lot of that showmanship with him, which I'm definitely not saying was a negative.

He had a very strong presence about him. He was definitely someone that people were drawn to. He was well spoken.

He was intriguing. And he helped bring Satanism into the modern era, as we understand today. And, you know, TST had some of those trappings.

You know, it was definitely using the humor aspect. They had a lot of, you know, different components, but the tenants, I really jived with those tenants. And it was what I was looking for.

It talked about the things that really set apart why I chose Satanism. It had that self-deification. It had the self-respect, but it also brought in the things that I personally think you cannot do without when you live in a human society, that the society is there.

And how do you impact that reasonably and responsibly? Yeah, it had community.

[Tommy Lavin]
You know, and again, you know, COS's answer to community now is they have no grotto system. It's like, well, the Internet's out there. Go find other Satanists if you want to have a community.

And not to belittle, they do have communities.

[Lilin Lavin]
People do get together, they do do things, you know.

[Tommy Lavin]
It's just not really organized or anything like that.

[Lilin Lavin]
Which works for a lot of people. Yep. But it just wasn't personally what I know I was looking for.

And it didn't seem like it was what you were looking for either. So I think I had kind of stumbled on that. And I remember showing it to you and you're like, eh, eh.

Because there's a lot of extra baggage there. You're like, you know, I don't know how I feel about some of this stuff. So you sort of kept exploring it.

And then I think we found that Hell's Gate movie had come out. Which was wild, right? Because you see all this, wow, they're going to capitals and they're countering all these very extreme theocratic type behaviors, like Ten Commandment monuments on, you know, government building land, which really shouldn't be happening.

And they're like, I got an answer to that. We're going to bring this giant ass Baphomet, beautiful statue, love the meaning behind it. But we're going to tote this thing down to Arkansas, just knock on Raybridge door and say, hey, you think that Ten Commandments is awesome, check this thing out.

And it was just so cool because they were out there doing something. They didn't just say, oh, we stand up to arbitrary authority and we thumb our nose at, you know, no, they were doing it.

[Tommy Lavin]
And that was the part that I had always felt was missing when, you know, my previous adventures in Satanism, you know, throughout the decades, that was one of the things that I just always felt was missing. Not that I was looking for a political organization, but I do believe that, you know, as part of religion, there is a bit of activism that's involved.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right? Especially if you're... And the beauty of it is because one of the things that we truly align with as far as why do you pick something like Satan to be a metaphorical character that you identify with?

Well, if you can say anything about that character through romantic Satanism or anything that's out there literature wise, the one thing that I think everyone can agree on is they had no problem standing up and saying, no, I don't agree with this shit and this is why. And just tossing things on its head and saying, you're seeing it from one way, try this. And that's exactly why activism becomes part of your religion when you're a group that says, no, stand up against something, stand up for the marginalized, stand up for pluralism, you know, do all of these things because that is what you're compelled as a person to do.

You want to share knowledge, but knowledge doesn't come in one form. Dr. Darrell Bock Right.

[Tommy Lavin]
And of course, TST was still a very young organization at that time. And we had, you know, we had seen what happened with some other young satanic organizations. You know, there was the Church of Lucifer or whatever that started in spring here with Michael Ford, and that lasted maybe a year and it fell apart.

So I was, I was definitely on the fence of what's going to happen with TST, you know, are they going to survive the normal things, the normal things that happen, like I said, you know, early on in COS, they, you know, they had breakaway groups with Michael.

[Lilin Lavin]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani Grant, we weren't there for that.

[Tommy Lavin]
Dr. Darrell Bock No. Dr. Justin Marchegiani But you know, you can read about a lot of those things. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, there's definitely a lot of history. There, you know, a really cool book, if you want all that history is Lords of the Left Hand Path by Stephen Flowers. Now, of course, it doesn't include TST, because the book was written before TST, but it still gives a good historical, you know, how did Satanism kind of come up? And what's the different paths that happened and people's parts that played in?

So, you know, you definitely, I would say, went straight in on TST while I was kind of still a little bit on the sidelines. You know, I was there was yes and no.

[Lilin Lavin]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, I mean, I found out where they even had a chapter at the time, they didn't have congregations then. And so I was like, Well, how do we even get involved? Do we even have anything here?

You know, and yeah, we did find there was a chapter not too far started getting involved folks there, and really loved it. Totally huge diversity among all the different people. But, you know, there was still a commonality of the things that you were looking for in a community.

And so I started to get involved there. And I think, you know, that's where you started to kind of go, Okay, I can kind of see my way into this. There were some things that you definitely liked.

And then there was, you know, the normal growing pains and things that you and I both encountered that necessarily we didn't.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, like, there's definitely things that that I did not like. And I could see those were there because it was an early organization, and they were still working some of that stuff out. So I'd say, you know, for a while, I kind of kept one one foot in each side, you know, definitely participated in the TST stuff.

And, you know, was kind of still considered myself a COS Satanist. You know, even though there were, there are very much aspects of COS that I did not agree with. But you know, Satanism is an individualistic religion.

[Lilin Lavin]
It's supposed to be. And that's a great thing, even though there's things about LaVey, or, you know, any of the people that are involved now, as far as leadership, there was never a mandate, you had to agree with them, right? The whole point was that it was about the self and exploring the self and honoring the self and building up the life that you wanted to have and being that person.

And then somewhere in there, somewhere along the lines, a few people got things confused, in my opinion.

[Tommy Lavin]
I would agree. Yeah, definitely some people got things confused. You know, TST kind of had a bit of, you know, maybe their first falling out where, you know, there was a couple splinter groups that broke away.

[Lilin Lavin]
Oh yeah. But even with COS, I mean, people, it wasn't the whole organization, but there was definitely individuals that began to very much go after TST and anybody that aligned with TST. And it wasn't, again, it was just some, like a handful of people.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I'd say that someone's fast forwarding a little bit, but yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
But yeah, there was just things that, you know, you start to notice. So we did, yeah, go through the TST growing pains. I think right about the time, I think COVID came around.

Yep. We were also kind of just going through a lot of different things and we decided this is the time to pull back again and figure out, you know, what are we doing? Focusing on our family, because it was a very chaotic period of time.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, by that time we've got four kids, you know, all that.

And, you know, so very chaotic time. So yeah, we did kind of step away, still considered ourselves Satanists.

[Lilin Lavin]
Tried to be involved where we could, but we really locked ourselves down, you know, and had a lot of our own things to work through.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And so coming out of COVID, I would say you kind of went full in. Oh, yeah.

On TST. Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
It's not that I hadn't before. It's just, there was still a lot of growing to do. And I had to focus on the things that mattered most in my life, which was my family and myself.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And TST had also gone through a whole reorg. Yeah.

You know, so they were growing up. Yes. Right before our eyes, they were growing up.

Yeah. And so, you know, some of my initial concerns was, will they survive the first couple, you know, things that always happen to these groups?

[Lilin Lavin]
And they did. I'd say they didn't just survive, they thrived. And they really began to say, you know, I noticed here are areas that are struggling, here are areas that need to be addressed.

And then they put an entire system in place to really start to grow and to mature into their own.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And so that's kind of what sold me a bit. Okay, cool.

They made it through that. I see they're, you know, they've reorganized, I see that they're doing this the right way.

[Lilin Lavin]
And I'm going to take a little credit. But I'm also going to say I'm very proud of you. Because I remember you said, there's still some things I don't necessarily feel great about.

Yep. And I said, Okay, no, that's totally fair. You don't have to go hit, you should never completely agree with something.

I think that's when you start to get into trouble when you're just, you know, rose covered glasses, and you stop realizing that there's problems in everything. But I said, Hey, why don't you see about getting more involved, like really involved, if you don't agree with the way things are, I mean, there's probably something that you can do. And then you looked and you found some stuff.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And there definitely was areas where I was able to get involved, especially in the local congregation, because, you know, I have a lot of executive experience, management experience, just from my professional life. And so there was a lot of areas that I was able to, you know, get involved in.

And you're right, you kind of nudged me along to, you know, instead of just kind of sitting on the sidelines. Why don't you get if there's things you don't like, why don't you get involved and change those things?

[Lilin Lavin]
Or at least try? You had observed some very important things. And I think, you know, as I was hearing the things you were saying, I was like, you know, you're right, you're right.

Those are problems. Those are things that need to be addressed. What can we do?

Like, if you don't like it, what's the worst thing happens, you get involved, and nothing changes. And we know, okay, well, maybe this isn't going to work. Or you get involved.

And they're like, well, you're right, these are things that we can improve. And you help be part of that.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. So and so again, for that, I was as mostly in TST, you know, that's where my focus was, I still kind of had a foot over in in COS, you know, because again, it was it was my roots and and all of that. And what changed me in the kind of the reason why we gave this whole long history lesson here was because we get asked quite often, you know, what do you all think about the inner bickering and fighting amongst the different organizations, factions, whatever you want to call it, of Satanism, because you see it out there on on social media, you know, and it's, it can be prevalent at times.

[Lilin Lavin]
One of our very good listeners, he nots was very kind enough to say, Hey, how do you feel about this? You guys have definitely seen it. I've seen it.

We've all seen it. How do you feel? Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And so my answer is, I personally think the bickering is bullshit. I don't care what what group it is. Honestly.

I don't care what group you're in. It's, it's, it's bullshit. There is so many more other things going on.

You know, there are actual, you know, Christian nationalists that if it was really up to them, we would, we would not exist. And I mean that in both ways, if it was truly up to them, we would not exist. And so to me, the bickering kind of, you know, it got annoying and stuff like that.

But I did notice one thing, you know, as I sat back and I watched it, I noticed that a lot of the bickering was coming from the, some of the COS people, you know, they kind of put themselves out there as gatekeepers.

[Lilin Lavin]
Literally, it was in a lot of their descriptions about who they were. We're gatekeepers.

[Tommy Lavin]
You know, so, I mean, somebody from TST would do an interview that had nothing to do with COS. And then they'd get spammed with, you know, the internet would get, or the interview would get spammed with all these comments from, you know, this group, this select group of COS people that just were acting like trolls. They really were, they were acting like internet trolls.

And that's really what turned me off on that because I was like, you know, seriously, this just seems like a cry for attention. It seems like, you know, I don't, it seemed childish.

[Lilin Lavin]
It was, it was really useless because honestly, because it happened to me and a very good friend of mine, Jenny. Jenny and I had done a little, we had been invited to do an interview and just talk about satanism, period. And we were focusing on, both of us are involved with the satanic temple.

So of course we were talking about it from that perspective, but you know, just generally satanism. And so here come a bunch of, you know, folks from COS just shitting all over, you know, you guys can't speak for satanism. You guys aren't satanist.

Well, why? How? Under what, what pretext are you, you know, what is, what is your basis for this argument?

And it really came down to, well, you guys don't, you know, LaVey created satanism. And if you don't believe in the satanic Bible, if you're not, you know, understanding these philosophies, this is what makes satanism, satanism, then you're not a satanist. And I was like, the fuck I'm not, you know, satanism is individualistic.

It is made to really celebrate the self. And how do you, as another human being who is not me, tell me who I am? It was so counterintuitive and just so gross.

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And, and nobody owns the term satanist. Nobody owns the term satanism. I mean, satan, satanist, satanism was used long before LaVey, you know?

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, that's what brought him into it. That's why he bought, why he brought it forward to, you know, now.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And I have no problem giving LaVey credit for helping to bring satanism into the modern era. But in satanism, you're supposed to continue to evolve, you're supposed to continue to grow.

And there is nothing wrong with new factions showing up. And like I said, it just, it really came across very childish and petty to me. It's like, look, you, you know, you guys are supposed to be big enough and been around long enough.

You know, why does this matter so much to you? And why are you attacking people? You know, there's, again, you want to attack Christians who are literally trying to put in laws that are taking away your freedoms, but instead you're going to spend your time trying to attack satanists and telling people that they're not satanists.

[Lilin Lavin]
I think the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and it was like a stupid ass conversation, to be honest with you, it happened again, as all fucked up things seem to do anymore on social media. And there was some article that somebody compared Anton LaVey to Lucian Greaves. And I guess the comparatives for me don't really extend that far.

It was really going into some very specific things. And my whole point that really kicked off some ugly shit was, well, Anton LaVey didn't believe in bodily autonomy. He did not have all these stances that I feel make satanism satanism, like respecting the right to choose whether or not you're going to remain pregnant.

If you find out you're pregnant, you didn't plan to be pregnant. That's a big deal. And you have a right as an autonomous individual to say, I'm not in a place where I want to do this.

And that should be respected, just like it should, if you do, and you need help, both things matter. And I was like, so there's no real comparative that right there alone, kind of just sealed the deal, sealed the deal. And so here again, come those those trolls that exist, and it became like this big argument.

Next thing you know, and I don't want to say like, oh, all of COS is like this. But the problem with that is the actual account for the Church of Satan shows up into this conversation and starts like getting involved. Because that's when we started talking about another big difference.

Again, like we've mentioned, Midas right, or, you know, Ayn Rand, these things are part of the Satanic Bible, they're part of the Church of Satan, they can separate it. And I'd be fine if they did, they said, you know, we're, we're contrary that we don't agree with that, but they haven't. And so you started bringing some of that up, and it turned into this giant shitty social media argument that was completely unnecessary.

And all the point really was, here's the differences, people get to decide what they feel matters. Now, just because I'm going to go ahead and say it, there's some of those very negative things in there doesn't mean that you align with that. If you choose to be a COS Satanist, it does not mean that you agree with these things.

However, I have to ask you as a person, because some of the things that they would shit on the Satanic Temple about is, well, you know, if, if, you know, Lucian Grieve said this shit, you know, that means that that's what you think. No, no, it doesn't. It means that's what Lucian thinks.

And Lucian's his own independent person. It's amazing. He's well spoken on a lot of stuff.

He has a lot of really great points. But sometimes he says some stupid shit. We all say stupid shit sometimes.

[Tommy Lavin]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, especially 20 years ago. I mean, some of the stuff they were pointing to that Lucian said, Oh, yeah. He had said 20 years ago, and Lucian has, you know, Lucian has evolved.

He's he's changed his stance, which that's what you're supposed to do and say, yeah, but you're supposed to– Dr. Justin Marchegiani Is he perfect?

[Lilin Lavin]
No. Dr. Justin Marchegiani No. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Are any of us?

No. Is he a very well known spokesman for the Satanic Temple? Sure, but he's not the Satanic Temple.

[Tommy Lavin]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, and that seemed to be the big difference is like, LeVay is the Church of Satan.

[Lilin Lavin]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, and that was their big argument.

[Tommy Lavin]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani He's dead. LeVay is the Church of Satan. And Lucian is just the spokesperson.

Again, you know that they pulled up some stuff from 20 years ago and Lucian has changed his point of view as he should. Dr. Justin Marchegiani As we all have. Dr. Justin Marchegiani And and, you know, even apologize to it. LeVay took his abortion beliefs and, you know, misogynistic views on women and stuff like that to his deathbed. It never evolved. There was never a, you know, yeah, I guess it was a sign of the times back then.

But, you know, yeah, you know, you should have bodily autonomy. That never happened. And so, you know, and I look at it and it's kind of funny because if you go out and you criticize LeVay, you know, you go and you get all these trolls come, you know, running at you or something like that.

I don't know. It's weird because I can criticize LeVay if I don't agree with him. And I criticize Lucian if Lucian says something that I don't like.

But I don't expect a whole bunch of TST people to come and, you know, try and troll me because, again, Lucian isn't TST. And, you know, I was joking with you one time. I was like, you know, if if somebody came to me and said Lucian's an asshole, I would kind of be like, OK, why? But first, I've never met Lucian.

I don't know Lucian. So I'm not some like Lucian, whatever devotee or something like that. You know, he seems like a really nice guy.

I've talked to him on social media quite a few times. Seems like a nice guy. If somebody said that, I would ask, generally ask them, why do you think that?

You know, and they would allow them to have their opinion because people are allowed to have their opinion. You don't like the guy, you don't like the guy. That's your business, your business.

I don't care. I'm not going to lose my shit over you saying Lucian's an asshole. I'm not going to lose my shit over it.

You know, but in COS, if I say LeVay did this wrong and LeVay did that wrong, it's almost like they've deified.

[Lilin Lavin]
Unfortunately, and again, that's not all of the church's opinion. But there does seem to be a very loud group of people. You know, you will see it a little bit when people talk about LeVay in a way.

They'll come out and they'll jump all over people. And yet at the same time, when, you know, they bring up Lucian or they'll try to, like, use other names that he's been known as to just be confrontational. If you bring up LeVay's other, you know, name, they'll lose their shit again.

Like, oh, you can't you can't do that. Well, why? He's just a guy.

No, you know, blah, blah, blah. Well, you know, I guarantee you Lucian's not losing any sleep about you using a different name of his and I don't really give a shit because, you know, that's, it doesn't matter.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And you know, at the end of the day, like I said, you know, I don't that if somebody doesn't like Lucian, they don't like Lucian. They don't have to.

You know, you can be a TST member and not necessarily like Lucian. There's nothing in the tenants or the bylaws or anything that say you have to, you have to like Lucian and be friends with Lucian and defend everything Lucian's ever done. I mean, again, some of the stuff he said was 20 years ago.

We all say shit, stupid shit when we're in our 20s. I said tons of stupid shit when I was in my 20s.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, you know, and unfortunately, I do feel bad like in some ways for different people. And he's one of them because he is a spokesman. He's very, very well known.

And so no matter what he does, he's almost like stuck. Yeah. In certain shit.

Does he do things that I think maybe aren't always great? Sure. Do I do things that maybe someone would look at and go, God, that wasn't helpful?

Yeah, I probably do. I'm certain I do. But that's just the thing.

He's so public that he's kind of like always going to be under that microscope. And it sucks. But it's what he's chosen.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And we even see, you know, splits with inside of TST. You know, and then you see, people that were in TST, for some reason, they got pissed off or something didn't go their way. And they throw their temper tantrum, and then they leave, you know, they stomp out the door, and then they yell and scream and all that.

And now we're going to start up our own group. And they start up. I hope you're successful.

I hope you're successful. Most of the groups, what do they actually do? They put out memes, and they talk on social media.

[Lilin Lavin]
They become an anti-TST group. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And really, that's the purpose, the sole purpose of their life.

[Lilin Lavin]
And again, just like the COS folks, what are you accomplishing?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
What is that doing for you or for anyone else?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I mean, it's like, get over it. I mean, it's like, holy shit, come on.

You know, we're supposed to be grown adults here.

[Lilin Lavin]
We're supposed to, you know, we're supposed to be intelligent and have a, you know, we're supposed to be intellectual, open minded, able to criticize things, look at something, you know, subjectively, and objectively, and decide, does this make sense to employ critical thinking? That's part of what I like about Satanism. It attracts a lot of incredibly intelligent, creative people.

And you are supposed to be able to, sure, have your feelings, because everyone's going to have different ways that they feel about something. And then you're supposed to go, you know, actually, after I took some time to think about this, this is how I feel about it. And maybe you agree.

Maybe you don't. And that's fine.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And so, you know, again, we thought when we got asked this question, you know, it was like, how can we answer this question as neutral as possible? You know, and I think that's why it was important to kind of walk through our history, because, you know, I've been a part of, or we have been a part of all these different organizations.

So I'm not just somebody that doesn't know what Satanism is, just came into TST, I have no historical understanding or anything like that. I do. I've been around for a while.

And I personally think all the bickering is just bullshit.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And it doesn't fucking matter if you're in COS, if you're in TOS, if you're in TST, or whatever the fuck acronym that you happen to be involved with. It doesn't matter.

What is it that you joined any of them for or even none? If you're a Satanist, what about Satanism brought you to it?

[Tommy Lavin]
Right? I mean, did you join Satanism to go troll other people on social media? I really hope you didn't join Satanism for that reason.

Because if you did, you're kind of wasting your time and everybody else's time.

[Lilin Lavin]
There's not going to be anyone that's the most Satanist of all Satan that ever was. The fact of the matter is, it's individualistic, and it's supposed to be we are a mosaic of different spectrums of satanic belief. And that is what makes it so damn cool.

I can disagree with you. And we have had plenty of disagreements. And yet we're still Satanist.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, yeah. Like I said, there was things about TST that I completely disagreed with, especially early on. Did I spend my days trolling TST and looking for them?

And you know, no, that's a complete waste of time. Because to me, the one thing you can never get back, I mean, you can get money, you can get all that sort of thing. The one thing in life, you can never get back is time.

So that's why to me when people troll, I normally just block them or mute them. And I find it somewhat comical, because sometimes they'll continue to troll, they'll continue to say, and it's like, you're wasting your time on me, that it took me 10 seconds to solve that problem. And now I'm literally stealing time away from you.

I'm living in your brain rent free. And you can never get that time back. And so for me, time is the most important thing.

So I spend my time on things that matter to me, things that I find are helpful, or valuable. Yeah, in some way, shape or form.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, and I think like we covered, Anton LaVey did a lot of really great things, but he wasn't necessarily a perfect person. I don't necessarily agree with everything he did, but I'm never going to find someone that I completely feel that way about. Whether it's Malcolm, whether it's Lucian, whether it's Anton, whether you know, whoever the fuck it is, they are not supposed to be someone that I idealize to the point that I can't see their flaws.

If I can't see their flaws, then I've gone too far.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, definitely. You know, in Satanism, we're not supposed to be worshiping idols. That's not- Unless it's me.

Satanism.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right. That's fine.

[Tommy Lavin]
You know, we self-deify.

[Lilin Lavin]
And still, if I can't see my flaws, I've stopped growing. I'm no longer useful to myself.

[Tommy Lavin]
Exactly. You know, I need to be able to continually look at myself and say, where am I fucking up? What can I do better?

You know, and be honest with myself about that. And so, yeah, we thought it was really important because, you know, if you ask somebody that question and you don't understand their full history, you might just be like, oh, well, they're just tainted because they're TST members.

[Lilin Lavin]
And I do really love a lot of things about what TST is doing and who they are and the many people I've met that I absolutely, I love my community, but it's not perfect. I'm not perfect. So, that's just the reality.

We live as imperfect people in an imperfect world, and none of us are fucking perfect.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And so, yeah, like I said, I normally don't spend any time bickering online, on social media anymore. It's okay.

I bicker for you. I should rephrase that. I don't bicker with other Satanists.

I don't bicker with gatekeepers. If somebody comes along and they give that stupid gatekeeper sort of speech, and normally, you know, we'll give them one chance where I'm like, look, nobody owns Satanism. And then when they go into their spiel, I just literally mute and block.

And those are wonderful tools. So, if you... Save yourself some peace of mind, friends.

Save yourself some peace of mind. If you're getting hammered on social media by a bunch of trolls, just mute and block.

[Lilin Lavin]
Now, that's not to say if you started some shit, that sometimes you got to deal with the lumps that come with it.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And I would say the same thing. You know, again, like I said, I saw a lot of the trolling coming from this group of people from COS.

Now, again, I don't believe it's all COS. You know, I don't even believe it's like all leadership or anything like that. I don't know.

So, it's a group of people. I did not see TST people hunting out things within COS and trolling them. But I will say this, if you are in TST and you are hunting out, specifically hunting out COS or other satanic organizations just to troll them, knock the shit off.

It's doing nobody any good.

[Lilin Lavin]
Explaining to yourself, how does it benefit any of us? It doesn't. And that's the thing.

There are Christian people that are trying to do things to stop the bullshit that are happening, too. And if you truly want to support us being able to move forward as a pluralistic society, then support those people in the way that you comfortably can. But that doesn't mean you have to agree with them either.

You know, the thing we're all trying to do is prevent our lives from being taken over by a bunch of assholes that don't really care about who we are, what we are, as long as we bow down to their beliefs. And that is not a world I want to live in.

[Tommy Lavin]
No, that is not a world, not a country I want to live in. So yeah, I spend my day commenting and fighting on freedoms and choice. And countering bullshit.

Countering theocracy bullshit that is actually happening in America. And I just don't see any time to waste bickering between factions or anything like that. So take your bickering, go somewhere else and refocus.

[Lilin Lavin]
Consider what it is that you want out of your life and who it is that you want to be. And please don't tell me it's like another fucking, just everybody else jumping on a toxic bandwagon. Just what does that do?

It doesn't do anything.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. I mean, we can literally tear ourselves apart from the inside out, you know. And there's enough of that.

There's enough of that. And to me, it's more important, all the things that TST has done for the LGBTQIA community, the women's rights, abortion. There's just so many things that the organization has done well.

And if for some reason you got pissed off at something, okay, great, cool. If you want to leave, cool. I wish you luck.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, but I will challenge you to the same shit that I challenged Tommy on. If you don't like it, what the hell can you do to change it? How can you create what you want to see?

And what are you willing to do to do that? Are you willing to put your skin in the game and get involved and actually make the changes, to work with people and make the changes?

[Tommy Lavin]
And realize it's not all about you. At the end of the day, this is a creator organization, and it's not about just you.

[Lilin Lavin]
I want to say you're like someone that really believes in women's rights and you want to see changes that you don't necessarily see. Talk to people. See how you can get involved.

How can you make those differences? If it's part of the LGBTQIA community, same thing. If there's things you want to see, get involved.

You are the key to that change. Exactly.

[Tommy Lavin]
So I hope we have answered some of the questions from the people that we have received questions on this about. Again, we hear it on a regular basis. I mean, when we talk to people, it's pretty regular that we hear people say, well, what do you think about this bickering or all of this sort of stuff?

And so hopefully you can walk away from this with an idea of...

[Lilin Lavin]
I think that we're all going to disagree on things. And I think if we only focus on that, we're never going to move forward. That's what I think.

[Tommy Lavin]
So with that, I bid you adieu.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yes. Hail Satan to you all. Hail Satan.