Ep.46: Internal Strife and the Path Forward for TST

# Satanists Nextdoor
# Ep.46: Internal Strife and the Path Forward for TST

[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. So today, we were originally going to talk about abortion, the abortion laws in Texas, given that our daughter just gave birth to our first grandson and the conflicting emotions that go around that with all of these restrictive laws. But given all the shit that went down this week with inside of TSD leadership, some of the ministerial stuff, I thought we should cover that and actually get the story out there, you know, why, you know, the whole nine yards.

And with us to help us do this, we have Lucien. Hey, Lucien. Lucien Great.

[Lilin Lavin]
Pete So… Lucien I figure we should probably just start from the beginning. Pete Start from the beginning.

Lucien I wasn't even sure if we'd have this conversation, just knowing that it would be a tense thing to do and there was already a lot of opinions. But I think kind of in the spirit of what I wrote, I thought it was important to follow it up for other people to understand that weren't necessarily in a position to read what I'd shared or to understand the full picture of what was happening. So my daughter recently had a baby and we were all celebrating together.

I was helping them with all that comes with it, you know, the sleeplessness and just having someone to kind of talk you through all of that. And I started seeing some messages in a conversation about some memes or something that had just come across. And I was only half paying attention, kind of figuring it was just the normal, still, you know, silly stuff that people share.

So it wasn't until I started seeing other people also having this conversation and there was a group where many people had gotten together during other really difficult situations that would pop up now and again. You didn't get a lot of them, but there would be serious things that people would join together really quickly to find ways to deal with it and make sure that it really didn't affect congregations and people in general and provide support. So when I saw this group become active, I assumed that was what was happening.

So I went in and they had shared a link to a signal chat. So I went in just to kind of see what the conversation was and what the plan was. And they were talking about the memes, but I quickly realized that they were in favor of what was shared.

And granted, the memes were, in my opinion, not very tasteful. They were, you know, something that was divisive. When people had already expressed that there was division and there was anger towards executive ministry, there was a lot of people feeling a certain ways.

And instead of talking about it constructively, a group of people decided to share some really Pete Untasteful. Yeah, distasteful and just rude. Honestly, it was rude.

But that wasn't, that's in and of itself is not an issue, right? People have the right to blow off steam, but it's when they started talking about all these things, and it became progressively negative. And then I started seeing conversations about moving content, not that they had done it, not that, you know, it was something that they were thinking about, they had talked about, and then it went into emails, it went into files.

And again, not saying that they did it, but they were planning it, they were talking about how you would do it, what you would move, and what that would look like. And I started to really panic because I knew several of these people, one of the ones in my own congregation, and someone that I've known for quite a while. And I felt really horrible, because I realized I was going to have to make a decision knowing some of these folks were in committees that would take these kind of complaints.

I didn't know exactly what to do. I hadn't really had a lot of serious discussions with executive ministry when it came to these situations. So do I send it to them?

What does that look like? What's going to happen? And what will this look like for these people that I consider my friends?

Because this was not lighthearted stuff. It was definitely things I kind of panicked about, and I wasn't sure, excuse me, where to go with it. So...

Well, I would say you also didn't know what it would mean for you, too. Well, I had an idea, because I'd seen some stuff in the past where people had talked about things, and I knew that there were some individuals that would get very negative, but I didn't know how much. I didn't know the ramifications, and I definitely had some concerns.

But I figured, well, yeah, maybe I won't be someone people will like very much. But honestly, if they see what happened, then surely that would make sense to them, and they would want to maybe think about a little bit, look at it a little bit, and then they would realize, yeah, that there was a gravity to this situation that merited doing something about it. So I decided to write out what I saw and try to also include, I had seen a lot of comments in the community.

I tried to have a few conversations with people in my region. I had known things that I couldn't share with people, obviously, because I had a responsibility to send that somewhere else for other people to deal with it. But I was really aggravated, because a lot of people made a lot of lighthearted comments, and I didn't agree.

I had a lot more context than they did, so I couldn't say why I was so angry, but I definitely expressed, why would you guys be doing this? We have so many things happening this year. This is a very heavy election year.

A lot of people are already stressed and scared. There's a lot of reproductive rights issues. There's LGBTQIA issues.

There's a lot of really weird stuff happening in the Supreme Court. Our religion has literally been called into question. Materials being taken from schools, like, why are you wasting your time with this stupid crap?

There's so much to do. Why don't we just work on doing that? And people actually got irritated with me, and, you know, fine.

But there was so much going on, and I didn't understand. So, I wrote this all out. I took in some of the things the community had mentioned.

A lot of people complained about, you know, what about the tenants? And, you know, EM's obligated to follow these tenants just like everyone else. And what about the invocation?

You know, what about the invocation would align with the things? And as this all unfolded, the letters that had been shared between the individual that made the memes and Lucien. And rightfully, it was very insulting and negative.

So, Lucien, I'm not going to put words in your mouth. I'll let you take care of that later. It seemed had confronted the situation in as eloquent a manner as possible, considering just the egregious nature of it.

And I don't even feel it was bad. It was not done in bad taste. I thought it was, you know, pretty to the point.

And then they shared, of course, the response, right? So, people are having this whole conversation about, well, they should be held to a higher standard. And, you know, people have a right to feelings.

And all these things should be taken into the context of the tenants and the, you know, spirit of which we put all these things out. And I'm like, well, what about their feelings? You do realize they're people, right?

So, that kind of started to get heated. And I said, you know, it doesn't even matter. I'm not going to get into these discussions.

Nothing healthy is coming from it. I wrote out what I saw going on. I tried to present it to the community in a way that it I felt would make sense.

I'd already shared what I had seen. And... Well, you shared what you saw with EM.

With EM. And I wanted to know, you know, I know you're getting a lot of flack for this. People are acting like you guys are on a paranoid witch hunt.

I don't feel comfortable with that. I need people to understand you guys didn't just suddenly get a wild hair and say, you know what, let's just go on a spree and start just going after people for the hell of it. So, I wrote this out in the hopes that and in the spirit that it would bring transparency.

All I ever see people say is there's no communication. There's no transparency. And I felt the oneness was on me because I'm the reason that these individuals were brought to EM's attention.

And I didn't give any guidance on what should happen. I just said, here's what I saw. Presented everything as I saw it.

I didn't do it my own words. I literally just gave them what happened. And the decisions that came after that were based on that information.

But what I really needed was for the community to understand this wasn't some wild, you know, off the wall witch hunt. So, I felt that this would help to clear that up. I truly thought that people would use all this, you know, reason and logic that we talk about so lawfully and don't actually seem to apply to ourselves, which I found really upsetting.

So, you know, that's pretty much where I found myself. And then, yeah, I'll kind of give it to Lucian to talk about his perspective. But that's what happened.

And I really feel like, you know, granted, people have every right to feel the way they're going to feel. And I don't begrudge people if they're angry with me. I do hope that they maybe take some time to look at what I actually shared and why I felt compelled to do what I did.

[Tommy Lavin]
Pete Well, and I would jump in with one thing really quick, just for context. You shared this only within the TST community, so it's not like- Stephanie Well, not just the TST community.

[Lilin Lavin]
It was strictly in the minister slack, which is only to ministry and congregation heads are part of that. And it was limited. So, only people that could view it were people that were in TST and had TST org access.

And it wasn't even made downloadable. So, the hope was that, you know, I was sharing it with people that should, not should, I should not say that, people that I felt would be able to look at it and hopefully kind of parse it and see the spirit that, like I said, the spirit that it was shared and reason it and come to why I just wanted them to come to a conclusion either way.

[Tommy Lavin]
Pete Right. So, it wasn't blasted all over Twitter and social media and all that sort of shit. Cool.

I just wanted to clarify that part. Stephanie Thank you.

[Lilin Lavin]
So, yeah, I guess, Lucian, I'll hand it to you because I can't speak for you, but I'll let you speak for yourself.

[Lucien Greaves]
Well, yeah, let me talk about what happens in the most proximate events, and then I'll give, like, further background context to it. But most proximately, I got these screenshots of a group of ministers acting really childish on Facebook, talking about how they've outgrown TST and generally talking about what a piece of shit I am and how I really don't do anything but post on Patreon. And their major beef was that we weren't having a convention this year.

We weren't having SatanCon, that we had the audacity to cancel it, and apparently the function of EM is only to finance the parties that we have annually. And I thought that was extremely ignorant given the intensity of things that are happening in this election year, all the things we've been dealing with, and how little interaction I've seen with the ministry in general when it comes to some of these primary issues. And I really have never asked people to be engaged with reproductive rights, after-school state and club, or any of these things if they don't have an interest in them, but to openly be disrespecting me and EM for working on these issues, especially when you're talking about politicians working to literally illegalize our practice and to act like this is something superfluous that we're doing, seemed to me just absolutely insane. And so I emailed the primary minister who had been posting these memes, and I laid out my grievances. I said these are the things I'm working on, this is the duress we're under, this is the situation we're in with this, this is the dire state of needs we have, and we're working with people who identify as ministers, professionally acting this unprofessional and saying these types of things publicly.

And furthermore, being that they don't pay dues, they don't pay membership fees, there's no startup costs, and they're using this kind of network we had put together, and using it as a resource for the things they do, the fact that they appear to be attacking my livelihood by congratulating each other for not subscribing to my content and not reading it either, seemed insane to work with that kind of people, like people who would actually discourage one another from possibly contributing to my income, that makes it possible for me to work over full-time hours for this organization they enjoy the benefits of. So I sent that letter to this minister, kind of outlining this, and I get a shitty reply back, and the point of this message that, or this reply to me, was that the real problem here, and I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember the verbatim, but the real problem was my ignorant removal from the real day-to-day boots on the ground of TSP. So my response to that was, well then get gone, you know, I can't work with this, you gotta go.

And so he was fired, and I messaged people and said, remove him, that's it, he's out. And I knew that would cause an uproar, because I have never done that kind of thing before, and you know, you see that now in the reactions, all of a sudden I'm acting like I'm a dictator, but you know, it is a weird kind of dictator in which you didn't even know that I was a character who actually had the power to remove you from your professional position in representing us. But when you have somebody who's going to disparage the management of the organization, and the organization itself, and talk about having left the organization, I felt it was, or having outgrown the organization, I feel it's completely legitimate to suggest maybe you should leave the organization.

And the subject heading of the email I had sent said, invitation to leave. And I know that these things will be posted publicly, so I kind of gave the go-ahead in advance. And that's why I kind of took the effort of listing my grievances, because I feel like part of the issue here, and it's the reason I'm talking about this tonight, I mean people will say I'm just being provocative, and that I'm just going to cause more negative response.

But I feel like this comes after years of feeling held hostage by a group of people under the threat that if I make any move that they disagree with, they're going to go wide to the public with what an abusive character I am, or make any type, any number of accusations. And we've seen it happen before. And to be honest, it has prevented us from doing a lot of things before.

And in fact, by design, executive ministry has not been managing the ministry. We've been at a state of removed from it, because we realized earlier on that the satanic temple had a real problem of people coming in, and wanting to change the organization to fit their needs. They wanted to be focused on other political issues, their own pet projects.

They want the kind of latitude to speak in the name of the organization, without a focused message that we might be, that we might agree upon. And I just don't think the organization could survive in that way. And I don't think intelligent people would want to be part of the organization, if they had to worry that in no case, do we take a stance of kind of institutional neutrality and act more like a religion where we guide people generally on their ethics and provide a sense of community for them, rather than dictating the minutiae of what they think.

So I mean, if you want to talk about dictatorship, I think it's more than just a matter of the single person in charge against a body of people, because sometimes the mob can act in a very hypocritical, tyrannical way themselves. And I think we were dealing with a mob of people who really wanted to dictate the fine granular details of everybody's belief. So I felt it was entirely appropriate to fire the minister.

And that's what it is. And honestly, at that point, I was inviting more resignations, because I felt we had really developed a negative culture in which people coming in to our ministry were immediately adopted into this culture where it's understood that they're at war with EM. And I've always done my best to consider the other side and to assume that I'm wrong and try to look at it from the other point of view.

But at the point where we've been so long now, in a position where EM has not been making any demands of anybody, has not been dictating anything, and everybody signed on to the standards they agreed to in advance. And they still managed to attack me, attack my livelihood, and suggest they want to overthrow EM. And it's been happening for a long time.

And I ignore it, for the most part. We ignore it. And when I think things really started to fall apart was last SatanCon in Boston.

You know, EM decided that we wanted to throw a convention for everybody, so we delegate people to do that. And as so often happens with these projects, the project almost becomes its own schism. And we had first our first SatanCon in Scottsdale, not long after the pandemic, I guess 2022.

And then, you know, the last one was 2023. And the Scottsdale one I didn't go to, but we chose Scottsdale because we had a lawsuit in Scottsdale, and we wanted to attention onto that whole issue that we're dealing with there. And I won't bother to go into that, because that's superfluous detail.

But Boston was similar. We wanted to have SatanCon in Boston, because we thought it could help bring people's attention to problems we're having with Boston and its discrimination against us as a minority religion. We feel like it really hasn't gotten enough media attention.

We feel like where our rights were openly being violated in the courts, and now we're doing much better in the appeal courts, and it looks like that will go in our favor. But in the lower court, the judge was all by pushing us out and not even listening to the arguments and acting very, very rash and not properly, not proper behavior for a judge. And, you know, we felt there was a real lack of media coverage regarding that.

So when we were putting together SatanCon, we wanted to agree on what the kind of message was going to be behind it. And that message included the fact that Boston had treated us that way. That's why we were there.

And, you know, we had speakers, and they had these different events and everything. But we wanted to have some kind of vetting process as to what the public message would be. I work under parameters when I'm speaking on behalf of the satanic temple.

And yet, it seems like a lot of people have the idea that when they speak on behalf of the satanic temple, they should be able to say whatever they want, and it's nothing but tyranny to tell them otherwise. But there again, you have to consider there's a certain tyranny in the idea of identifying yourself with something and having no idea one day to the next what somebody's going to say in its name and how that will reflect upon you. So we were really disappointed when in front of all the media, they decided to go with the performance that was completely off script as far as we knew, it wasn't run past us.

And there was a Bible torn up and a Blue Lives Matter flag was torn up. And we wondered, how did this happen? Nobody told us this would happen.

And when we sent a letter a some of the people involved with that and said that it was not, you know, it was not in our best interest to do that. I think what you will of the police, but it's in our best interest to not get involved with all cops are bastards type protest or ripping up Blue Lives Matters flag, because we work very closely with the Salem PD in preserving our fucking lives on a day to day basis. And the Salem PD is good enough, oftentimes, park a car directly across from our headquarters, they contact us right away, if anything's wrong, they show up immediately.

And we don't want anything to damage that relationship. The relationship was already strong enough that when it turned out we were on Fox News ripping up a Blue Lives Matter flag, we were actually asked about that. And we were given the opportunity to say that really wasn't us.

And, you know, it's, it's scary to us. Like if you give somebody a reason to wait an extra 30 seconds, or fill another cup of coffee before coming to HQ, that could be the matter between life or death for us. And I think we made that clear in our letter to them.

And they actually some of them got back to us very offended that we had the audacity to suggest that we could put words in their mouths that we could do such a thing that we can say this in kind of a negativity against the management of TST, the idea of EM was I felt very prevalent in SatanCon, at least from people who had been organizing and upper levels, that kind of thing. You know, a lot of the attendees, of course, were happy to see me got pictures with me, great crowd, great audience showed up to Satanic Planet and things like that. And it was it was really great to see that happening.

But there was also just this palpable anti me anti EM sense going on. And I could feel it at the time. And I felt like something was really developing.

And I feel like what did develop was that eventual outrage of me being caught in a picture with a known transphobe, as they referred to him. David Silverman, the former head of American Atheists, stopped in the Satanic Temple, got a picture with me at the Baphomet. And next thing I knew, everybody was pissed off because they're telling me that he's now a known transphobe.

And I really had no idea what his positions are in these things. Still haven't even bothered to look it up or ask him about it in light of all his controversy. But ministers in particular, made a public display of really trying to harangue me, harass me, push me out of the organization because I was in this picture and it had embarrassed them.

And ultimately, the Atlantic wrote an article in the Atlantic was not really, I don't think, on the side of the people who were who were trying to have me canceled for lack of a better term. But that didn't cause any introspection with people. I think they still held on to this narrative that somehow I'm embarrassing, somehow gotten out of hand.

And even I had seen people talking about and still see people talking about our legal battles, campaigns, the things I work on on a daily basis as being my pet legal projects that really aren't, don't have anything to do with what TSE really is. And I felt like that was so weird because it goes beyond not having respect for what you do. And then, but it's too much to ask and not have open disrespect heaped upon you.

And as we kind of, as I kind of talked about these things with people, people began to throw our head of ministry under the bus and say that he was really fomenting these types of feelings and that the message they were getting more often than not was that EM is not TST. You don't really answer to executive ministry. You know, this is, this is bigger than that. It's bigger than them.

And it's a very kind of divisive message. And to be completely honest, I was getting really pissed with our head of ministry for a while. And I was recommending his removal and I was having a difficult time for a while convincing others of that.

And it carried on for a while, but I had stopped having communication with them. I let it be known that my trust was completely burnt out on that front. I didn't, I didn't trust them anymore.

And I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to work with him. And I felt that it should be removed in order to help them try to build a culture in which we didn't attack one another. And I feel like some of what really got some of the wolves hungry was that I had expressed a desire to kind of step out of my position and something I would really love if I had ever been able to do and assign somebody else.

But it was, you know, everybody was ravenous, I think over that idea and then trying to prove my general worthlessness to try to insert themselves. And I felt like it was so very irresponsible. And it was their opinion seemed to shift with whatever winds were blowing at the time that honestly, I didn't think they could, they could handle the job.

And in the fact that in the way they talk about it, I think show that they didn't quite understand what the job was to begin with. So this was kind of the backdrop leading up to all this. And we have these cases going and we have these threats against us.

And we had a, you know, we've had an intense amount, an incredible amount of work coming up. And then we had our recent, the recent bombing attempt on our, on our headquarters. And I found myself in consultation with people from all different branches of the law enforcement while they're investigating this case, trying to find out who was trying to kill us.

And all the while, they're not telling me what they're turning up in the investigation. But they're telling me I really need to make serious efforts to preserve my life. You know, they're talking about security measures and talking about me getting a trained dog and things like that.

And so I'm wondering what they know, I'm really concerned. In all the while, I'm getting shit on like this. I'm getting messages of support from people on the outside.

And I'm seeing this on the inside. And I also knew that there was a growing presence of people from the outside who had been messaging us all along and saying that they had found this culture of ours, this internal culture of ours to be impenetrable in this kind of isolated friend group in which these kinds of demands of polarized politics came into play. And if you didn't, and if you were in some kind of disagreement with any small point on these things, you would be pushed out.

And I felt like that was not really becoming of ministerial conduct. And people should be acting diplomatically. And they should be able to lend guidance to people rather than forcing an ethos upon them, bringing people to certain revelations rather than dictating to them by fiat, because I don't feel that's terribly satanic.

And when, you know, in on that issue of, you know, me being a tyrant and that being unsatanic in making these demands, I think we're going to have to make the distinction between running an organization and running a nation. You know, if we were running a nation and we have a population of people and we were running a diverse pluralism, it would be completely out of line to demand that they're Satanists. That would be the opposite of religious liberty.

If you are an organization of Satanists fighting for religious liberty and fighting for pluralism, it's not also fascistic to demand that that is what you do. And that is what you identify with. That's just the nature of doing fucking things.

So those are the lines drawn. You're either going to be a part of this and want to work with this or not. And the thing is, is, as I said, I was always going towards this kind of knee jerk response of my own to assume that I'm wrong.

Right. But when I've gone for years by not giving demands to people, not even having contact and interaction with them, not telling them to do anything, and yet they're still making the same kind of complaints, claiming that I'm difficult to work with when they've never heard from me at all, shows me that these complaints are going to happen one way or the other. And we really have to just make sure we're working with people who want to work with us or we're never going to move forward.

And the time is, is now there's just too much to do. There's too much to be done. I see too many people who have wanted to be volunteers saying they've been pushed away.

I know too many people to have resigned from TST because of this kind of internal conflict culture that's been fomented there. And I'm also kind of humbled and depressed that since this has happened, since I fired that minister, and since, of course, a group of ministers ran to post it on Reddit, the email I sent, the response, and the fact I fired this guy, I've gotten an outpouring of support. It seems like the people who, the only people who think this behavior was appropriate are the people who were involved in it.

And they seem like they don't get out much and talk to other people. They truly seem isolated. They seem like they're in a negative dysfunctional feedback loop where they convince each other of their justifications and they just continue to carry on from there without considering what other people are saying.

And I didn't really know how it would be received that I take finally the move of removing bad actors. But I have to admit, I have never had in recent years a stronger uptick in subscribers and followers than when this happened. And I found that so many people had kind of been waiting for this to happen.

And a lot of people who resigned in the past, and I didn't even realize they had resigned for these reasons, were reaching out now. And I feel like I just have to speak about these things because I hate seeing a different narrative take off. And I hate the fact that my general silence on not trying to amplify these issues within our organization, have given people that sense of security that they can say what they want, and nobody will ever step in to correct them, or that the record will never be set straight, in that it's going to be a one-way feeding, propaganda-wise, where we'll be quiet and they'll be able to claim that they've been abused in all manner of ways, all manner of times, and that just seems to be the way it has been for so long. And our head of ministry had stepped down at the first of this month, was his last day, in the position that he held.

And so, you know, I was paying attention to ministry more. I had been talking about unifying the organization and the fact that ministry was going to be run under EM, and that we were going to have a unified, mission-driven organization, and that's just the way it's going to be. And if people had bothered to read what I was writing, maybe they wouldn't have been so surprised.

So the head of ministry stepped down on the first, and by whatever it was, the 9th or something like that, I'm removing a minister, 9th, 10th, 11th, whatever. So I remove a minister, and you know, this causes panic. And in the course of this panic, nobody seems to consider that what they did was inappropriate, that maybe they should have some professional conduct standards, that maybe somebody should apologize, maybe somebody should take some ownership for this kind of thing happening.

No, they started melting down, and they make a mad run on internal documents. And in background chatter, that they don't know I'm also getting screenshots of, they are speaking openly of taking our internal documents and doing their own thing. And people complain that we have NDAs, and I wonder if those fucking people have ever had a job.

Because we deal with documents that can contain people's social security numbers, we do everything we can to maintain people's anonymity when they want it and use their pseudonyms. But we also have personnel documents, we also have proprietary operational documents. This is what an organization is.

This is how an organization works. You don't come into an organization and claim that you have ownership of any part of that. You disagree with the organization, you feel the organization is going another way.

It's too fucking bad. The organization still holds those documents. We started locking people out of their access because apparently they didn't realize that we would be able to see from an IT perspective that these mass downloads are happening.

So we start locking people out of their accounts, sending them messages saying this is why you're locked out of your account. Why was this going on? And people start resigning.

People start resigning and saying now we're going on a mad witch hunt. All they did was nothing, and I just went insane. And now heads are coming off and they need to scramble and get all the assets and resources they can and take off with them or kind of hold them hostage for the next time around when they try to push me out of the organization and use that material or whatever.

And so it was a panic kind of perpetuated by themselves. And then our former head of ministry who had resigned, he removes people from our ordination council. And then they think, well, we've dissolved the ordination council.

So here's just another part of this lopping of heads in this in this mass dismissal that just came out of the blue because now the story starts that I just sent an insulting email about some lighthearted memes. Sorry. Yeah.

But so, you know, somebody posted the logs that show that the removals from the ordination council were actually done by the prior head of ministry who still had access at that time. Now, now we've gotten rid of it. And then last night we get this bizarre ransom letter from the former head of ministry.

And it says that if, uh, you know, he, uh, sorry, he set up a TST dot link, which was a link shortener account thing in that he had done this with his own money and didn't ask for compensation. And, uh, therefore he was going to hold on to this and he was going to hold on to this, uh, Sam AL archive that he had put together, which was rituals and documents from the ministry. And he wasn't going to give those to us unless we posted this message on our, our ministry Slack for like an hour and then sent him a screenshot, like total ransom note shit.

And the message said that of course that he had been lied about in that what had really happened was that he didn't really remove people from the ordination council, but that, uh, he had, and that, uh, or nonetheless, he had claimed that he had only done it because somebody else was removed and other people were suspended and there was literally nobody left. And in any case, EM could add them back at any time, which was ridiculous because the fact that anybody was removed or, or suspended or from their accounts for mass downloads did not justify him removing anybody. He still didn't have to do that.

So this message, even if posted wouldn't have made him look any better, I don't think to begin with, but the offer was that if we posted this message and then sent him proof that we did, he might be willing to sell us these assets that had been set up in our name. So obviously the answer to that was no. And we moved forward and that's pretty much the entirety of the situation now.

And in all this time, as I said, I haven't seen any real introspection from people. And I think they've been waiting for me to learn my lesson from all of this because by God, do I not realize they're going to leave? And with some of these people, I am counting on it.

I'm telling you, if you don't want to be here, leave, just go. There really are plenty of good people still. And I, I've been getting messages from them.

Believe me, people feel like they've been silenced by these bullies within the organization. They feel like they can't work with people. I know people who feel like they've been pushed out.

And I get messages from people who are potential volunteers, really productive community members who have interest in doing various things with TST and seem to be very competent. And they're, they're, they're willing to step in and they're willing to do these things. And, you know, if people, I mean, I'm, I'm happy with anybody that wants to stay.

I'm not saying I'm dissatisfied with everybody by any means. A lot of those messages are coming from inside the house. The loudest people though are this group and they are so certain that they're right.

And they're so loud about it. And I think they've just gotten to a point where people are, are feel beaten and they're, they're not, they're not willing to argue that face with them. And they're, they're not willing to have this angry mob descend upon them.

And I've been, I've taken so much abuse from this crowd, I think, and I've never said that, you know, I've never really talked about that. I always want to put forward a more stoic face and I've always wanted to be the guy who can take it and feel like I, okay, I am the guy in the news. I am the guy they see as a celebrity.

I'm the guy they see as being in power. They don't realize I'm actually a person. They don't realize how much they beat on me, but it's time I started talking about that because now I've started looking in the context of how could I put somebody into my position in a culture, in an institutional culture that's going to treat them that way?

Because I feel like it could be anybody, whoever's going to be in that position. They've developed a frame of mind in which they're going to attack, disparage, and ultimately try to ruin that person. Whether they realize that's what they're doing or not, or if that's just part of a dysfunctional social dynamic they have failed to break out of.

It's something that's very real and I don't think it's something many people would survive in their jobs and it's something I'm not going to fucking tolerate anymore. That's my hopeful, happy-go-lucky, optimistic message for a future of productive going forward in TSD.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well yeah, I mean, I can't count the amount of times that I tried to make the very basic argument on social media or even internally on the Minister Slack and stuff that TSD is an organization. You can be a Satanist and not be part of TSD, but if you're part of TSD, if you're part of an organization, if you're part of any organization and you're in a leadership role and you start talking shit about leadership or the organization, or you start actively planning stuff, negative stuff against that organization, you're going to be asked to leave. This is job 101.

I was like, how are you on that understanding list? This seems like really fucking basic to me and if you don't like it, if you actually just for some reason hate the organization, then leave. People would argue back and challenge back.

Like you said, I heard the whole EM doesn't equal TSD sort of thing. I got that argument. A lot of the stuff that you said was arguments that I would hear back and it just seems so fucking basic to me.

Have you never worked anywhere?

[Lilin Lavin]
I have to say that was one of the hardest things. I tried not to take any position either way. EM does what EM does and I felt the SOC did what the SOC did and my hope was that they at some point worked in conjunction and I realized very quickly that working in the SOC, that the SOC felt it was a body onto itself.

They demanded all the rights and privileges and yet at the same time felt very almost offended that EM almost felt like they were supposed to have any kind of involvement at all and I found that very odd.

[Lucien Greaves]
People are offended that EM thinks they own the organization but I would like to tell them we own the organization. Malcolm and I co-own the organization and I see people all the time questioning whether we're doing any work and I would be able to tolerate that if it weren't very public facing. We are working all the fucking time.

We don't have time for our lives, you know, like pretty much 100% of the time we're working on things, you know, and I have barely enough time to work on the things that actually get me paid. So that's just something I'm not, I just have no, I have no sympathy for that viewpoint and I have a very difficult time taking it seriously that anybody arrived at that conclusion or if they did that's a failure of their own ability to actually look at things and evaluate evidence and whatever their failure is I think it shows a lack of confidence to hold a professional position in an organization like this one and if we don't take it seriously clearly nobody else will and if we're taking this organization seriously we need to demand at least the basic standards of conduct that ministers representing us at least advocate for the organization.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah and that's not cult behavior.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right, I heard that said a lot.

[Tommy Lavin]
This is like again organization 101 sort of stuff. I can't count the amount of times that I said the same thing. TSD is owned by EM.

The SOC was given freedom, not ownership, they were given freedom and somehow with that freedom they thought they had ownership and they thought they had power over EM and I'm like how do you not understand this?

[Lucien Greaves]
I mean it literally they call it a cult because that's a pejorative for a religious organization that you disagree with but if you can take your definition of a cult and find that it applies to any job then you're a little bit off course.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right, I tried to break it down in other ways. Okay, let's pretend this isn't TST. Let's pretend this is the children's cancer organization and you're a volunteer there and you're given a leadership position and you start spreading memes and talking shit about the members of the board. Guess what that organization is going to do with you?

They're going to fucking remove you.

[Lilin Lavin]
Even if you're a volunteer though?

[Lucien Greaves]
Yeah, even if you're a volunteer and oh by the way talk about that idea that volunteers deserve more deference when it comes to that kind of thing. I disagree. The fact that it's volunteers makes it even less forgivable on their part.

When somebody's working a paid job they might have the excuse of being able to say like look I need the paycheck, I'm not able to look for another job right now, of course I don't believe in this or the mission, I'm getting paid. I totally understand that. When you're a volunteer there's no excuse for you not identifying with the organization and the cause.

If it's tedium to you, if you don't agree with it and it's not just a paycheck, just go.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, I wouldn't stay in an organization if I hated the leadership. If I thought the organization was moving in a different direction, if I didn't agree with it, if I hated the people that were in charge, why the fuck would I stay in that organization? Unless I was there to try and stir up trouble.

Unless I was to try and do some sort of a coup or some shit like that. I had so many people disagreeing with me. Oh no, that's not what it is.

It's just memes. It's like this is so much more than just memes. It was a symptom of a greater issue really.

If you think this is just about a fucking meme, you're so fucking lost.

[Lilin Lavin]
The reason why I felt this had to happen is, starting the year off, we had people literally go drive states away, more than once obviously now, to destroy things and to claim that TST, satanist, satanism, these things are not valid. They don't deserve a space in the religious sphere, that that's only reserved for very specific groups that get to use that term. Here we have a group of people that see this happening, they see these things unfolding, and instead of taking those things seriously, the things I thought we all joined an organization to participate in and to do something about, they've decided that they're going to be team on our own and they're going to do this all themselves and they're going to miraculously make all these changes in something that's taken at least 10 years of active work on behalf of the people that they like to call the ivory tower group. And I was just outraged, to be honest, to see this kind of thing happening.

And I was also heartbroken because these are people I held such esteem for and had so many wonderful interactions and thought I was really working with a group of people I could collaborate with and I was proud of that. I was so proud of that. And I know now that at this point, I've lost that relationship.

Those relationships are gone. The things that I had worked hard on that I was proud of, I can no longer participate in because those people have very strong feelings. And I accept that.

I accept their feelings. I accept their anger. That's fine.

But I thought we were all here to accomplish the same thing. And that was the biggest heartbreak to me.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Well, and you see the term compassion and empathy used as a get out of jail free card, well, what about compassion and empathy? What about compassion and empathy?

And I looked and I was like, well, what about compassion and empathy for the person who did the right thing? They saw something wrong was going on. They saw that something was being planned that was malicious.

They didn't know who to go to and they brought it to the people's attention that they should have. Does compassion and empathy go out the window when people are doing something wrong because it's your buddy? Do we ignore when people are doing something wrong because just because it's your buddy?

Oh, well, I would have said something about it, but Bob would get in trouble. And I really like Bob. So I'm going to just ignore that and pretend that it's not happening.

That was like infuriating to me. Yeah.

[Lilin Lavin]
So, you know, to those people who were left in the lurch and stuck in chaos and wondering what was actually happening, I'm sorry. I truly am. I wish that, you know, I could have just told everybody, but there is there's things that have to be done out of responsibility and respect.

And you try to go through the right channels and you try to do the best you can to show people what's going on in the hopes that they'll actually take accountability and they'll take account and they'll look at things and understand why and maybe even express some remorse or some some kind of acknowledgement that there was necessity for these moves. And and that didn't happen. And I was really there were a few people.

I won't say no one. But I was also sad because people did reach out. And of those people, they shared with me similar stories of having been involved in these situations and feeling completely helpless and pushed out.

And others that were involved in these very distasteful screenshots that I shared, they were just openly talking about people, individuals, and disparaging them for no good reason other than their own amusement. And that was just very...

[Tommy Lavin]
Or that they disagreed with them, you know, because if they didn't agree that EM was the big bad wolf and and this, you know, you know, I don't know, or this group of dictators...

[Lucien Greaves]
Imagine we saw a group of Catholic ministers acting like this online. Yeah, we'd be dragging them for years. You know, people would have screenshots of them and they would say that's indicative of this foul culture of theirs.

And nobody, nobody has any sense of respect for the dignity of the religion itself, when they're going around with the title of minister in their ministerial capacity, as far as people are concerned, online, and they're talking this way. And to see people comparing that to some of my brash behavior that's directed, I think, in a focused way towards our known opposition, I think they've completely lost the plot then. It's, you know, it's not simply a qualitative analysis.

It's, you know, it's a matter of where you're taking aim and what you're doing it for. And if you really don't have that sense either, I don't think it's it's our job to teach you. You're just not prepared for this kind of work.

And I think ministerial work should be taken seriously. Ministers should be able to be there as a trusted source for people, as a neutral source that people can come to, even maybe with topics they're uncomfortable with, and feel like they're not going to immediately be judged. And we're not seeing that kind of behavior that would inspire that kind of confidence from anybody.

And it doesn't do any of us any good. It makes a joke of it all. And we don't want to, we don't want to degenerate into that just because we're trying to preserve the feelings of somebody who's trying to destroy us.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right? Yep. Yeah.

I mean, I did a post on it shortly after it, when it was blowing up on Twitter, this was before the whole, the room thing happened, you know, and Lil and Kev, the screenshots, this was while it was still on Twitter talking about the memes. And you know, I did a whole tweet on it. It was basically the same thing.

If you are that unhappy, if you feel like you're entitled to a party with everything else going on, if that's your biggest bitch is that we didn't get a party, go. You know, I mean, again, you don't have to be part of TST to be a Satanist. You can be a Satanist all by yourself, you know, and you can have your own rules.

Then you could talk bad about whoever you want, but you know, you don't get the benefits of the organization. If you're going to disparage the organization, especially in a leadership role to me, it's, it's just untamed. It's distasteful.

[Lilin Lavin]
How do you not take yourself serious enough to recognize what it is that you've chosen to willingly do and represent? And how do you just care so little for the reputation of that, which you purport to care so much about?

[Lucien Greaves]
Well, in the rot seems so severe to win. Like I said, there's such a failure to take ownership of any wrongdoing. And then the narrative is, is changed by convenience to the point where now we do have the unfortunate situation where I do feel forced to talk to the, about this to a certain degree, because people are wondering why were people locked out of their access?

Well, they know well, why they just decided not to tell you like the mass downloads of the documents were real. People feel entitled to steal from us. And that shows to me that they were never qualified for the job to begin with, no matter what disagreements you have taking that kind of proprietary information, like nobody can, nobody can take an organization seriously.

If they don't protect that who would want anything to do with it. If we're not going to protect your information while protecting ours, that's, that's just what an organization is obligated to do. And for people to feel entitled to start downloading every document they have access to for whatever reason to do their own thing or whatever else it was that they were looking for.

And we see openly screenshots of chats where people are talking about migrating proprietary material into, uh, into, uh, offsite servers or whatever to, uh, to keep it for their own. That to me is, is, is disgraceful. And then to pretend that they don't know why things are happening when they fully well do or why, what started this, when they know that as well, and they develop a narrative about, you know, whatever it is they're saying about, you know, I just got a wild hair up my ass and decided to start firing people just to prove, um, prove I'm the man or something like that.

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
That's the reason why Lilin went public with, with everything that happened was because all of these people that were in there playing victim, you know, Oh, I got, I got removed. I don't know what they're, they're just going crazy. They don't know they're, they're paranoid.

They don't know what they're doing there. You know, you, you might be next, you know, all of that sort of shit. They knew damn well why they got removed.

And every again, I kind of went back to, look, everybody says they want transparency until that transparency shines a bad light on you or your buddy. Then all of a sudden you don't like transparency anymore, you know, but I think it was the right thing to do to show the reason why, because if, if they it's very possible, I don't, I can't speak for you Lilin, but it would be very possible if these people weren't in there playing victim and stirring up more trouble that way, maybe you wouldn't have shared the whole story, you know, because it was resolving itself through EM and through the people directly.

And maybe they were taking responsibility for it or they were just quietly going, but the fact that they were in there playing victim and they were trying to stir up more trouble, they were trying to get more people to leave. You know, again, if I was at a job and I got caught stealing something and I was released and, and I went and sat back down at my desk to clean it out. But while I was at my desk cleaning it out, I'm there telling all the other people, Oh, I don't know what the hell happened.

They just went nuts. You could be next. I mean, they'd have security walk me out the door.

[Lucien Greaves]
They'd be like, no, you can't do that. They abuse you further and further until they finally reach the point where you need to engage in self-defense and then they immediately play victim.

[Lilin Lavin]
I do truly hope that this gives people that, that lauded transparency that apparently was missing, because I think that, you know, the best thing we could do is shine the light on things. And as we have often brought up the invocation that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. And so here you are, you guys have the truth.

[Lucien Greaves]
Well, I would, I would like to end on a positive note and let it be known that we do have plenty of people willing to take whatever role in people who are very competent and we're open to getting messages from other people who are willing to help. And we're going to make sure that every functional role, every administrative role, every, every role that's necessary to keep things running smoothly and, and timely and keep things operational and on schedule. All those posts are going to be filled and everybody else, they can stay or they can leave.

And, but we will be fine. The, you know, the, you know, the satanic temple is going to go on. We're going to do all the things we do, whether we're doing it with completely different people or not is up to a lot of people.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah.

[Lucien Greaves]
And I think we're also going to be doing it with a lot of new people too, but we are going to have a different internal culture and it's going to be one that is more respectful and more productive. I hope so.

[Tommy Lavin]
I really do because you know, it is the one thing. I guarantee it. Yeah.

[Lucien Greaves]
That is my promise to everybody. Like my promise is we are going to have that a new internal culture and it's going to be one that really is more accommodating and not going to degenerate into this petty bullying and a, and it's just kind of an insular friend group that's bureaucratized its meetings.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Cause I know there's, there's many, many times that it was, it always seemed like it was the SSE versus EM, you know, and it's like, why, why is there this internal, why, why are we verse each other? We're supposed to be on the same team where we're supposed to be fighting the same shit out there.

You know, it's the same thing I complain about with other, you know, other different, whether they're Satanists or pagans or any of that, we're all fighting against the same shit. You know, there's no need for us to be fighting against each other because when they say they want to take Satanists out, they don't just mean TST, they mean you too. And they mean you too.

And they mean you and you and you and you and you. So they mean all of us, you know, we all need to be fighting against, you know, this, this theocracy that they are trying really hard and have a fucking chance of putting in, in November, you know, I mean, that is the biggest threat.

[Lilin Lavin]
And that's just one small hurdle, right? November is one aspect, but this is an ongoing thing. So even then we can't just put our guard down and pretend that the threat is passed.

So we have a lot of work to do. And there are a lot of wonderful people all throughout this community that I know are ready and willing to do it. So this is the time if you're listening, and you're ready, we're ready to hear you.

And this is when we get to change things and really instill something that we can be proud of all of us. Yeah, exactly.

[Lucien Greaves]
One last thing, if you are somebody who's messaged within the past few days, in the past week here, and you express support and your willingness to volunteer, and you haven't been gotten back to yet, that's because we have gotten so many of those messages, but we will, we are keeping this on file and we will try to get back to you. And for those who think that they're going to hold their departure over our heads, just think about what I just said in the emails I'm getting. I guarantee you, I'm not bluffing.

They're there. There's a whole army of people here, it seems, willing to support us. And they have felt pushed away by a small crowd of people who have been acting very irresponsibly.

And that's just not going to happen anymore.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Well, I think on that note. On that note, I think we can adjourn the podcast.

And yeah, again, any questions that people have, comments, you know, letters of support, send us letters of hate if you want to, you know, but let us know what your feelings are, what your thoughts are.

[Lilin Lavin]
And Lucian, is there anywhere specific people should be reaching out if they want to be involved, if they want to reach out to help?

[Lucien Greaves]
You know what, let me determine what the best address is for that. And you can put it in the description.

[Lilin Lavin]
All right. Well, you know to look for it when you get to the end of this, go ahead and take a look. We look forward to all the wonderful people that are ready and willing to help fight back against the insanity that we're all up against.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. Thank you for your time today, Lucian. Great.

Thank you so much.