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- [00:00]
A
Cooler days call for layers that last and Quince is my go to for quality essentials that feel cozy, look refined and won't blow your budget. Quince makes the pieces that will turn into your fall uniform. They look designer level but cost a fraction of the price. That's because Quince partners with top tier ethical factories that cut out the middleman. I own so many Quince pieces at this point. I love that they sponsor this podcast. Find your fall staples at Quince. Go to quince.com/for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com/ to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/ this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one website platform to help entrepreneurs, artists, creatives, podcasters stand out and succeed online. I am a longtime Square Squarespace user. You should check out Sounds Like a Cult dot com. I'm a bit of a Luddite when it comes to the techie stuff, but with Squarespace that's not a problem. Thanks to features like their Design Intelligence, which combines decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology. Squarespace also makes email campaigns possible. And if you're looking to become an educational guru of sorts, Squarespace has the tools to create and sell your own course online. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com culture to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only.
- [01:38]
B
Trump is not a religious man, but I think he understands the power of religion to control other people. And I think he also recognizes the utility of the this nice conservative religious shorthand we have in America, where anything you don't like you can just condemn as satanic.
- [01:55]
C
It really does feel powerful to say, like to call your sister's shirt ugly is so last Tuesday.
- [02:01]
B
But like satanic, it does make you feel important. You're like I'm at war with Satan right now.
- [02:06]
A
If you're bored and full of ennui and just on Facebook too much, you're going to start inventing abstract conflicts with which to engage and what conflict is ready to embrace you like that between good and evil, Satan and Jesus. This is Sounds like a Cult, a show about the modern Day cults we all follow. I'm your host, Amanda Montel, author of books including Cultish and the Age of Magical Overthinking.
- [02:32]
C
And I am Reese Oliver. Sounds like a cult's resident rhetoric scholar.
- [02:36]
A
Every week on this show we discuss a different group or guru that puts them cults in culture, from Disney adults to digital witches. To try and answer the big question.
- [02:47]
C
This group sounds like a cult, but is it really?
- [02:58]
A
And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out. After all, we're all susceptible to cultish thinking in 2025. That might be a hard pill to swallow, but it's true. And sometimes cultish thinking can be subtle, seemingly harmless. Other times it's a little more obvious. And you never know these days where the true danger might lie. On this show we look into how devotion, belief and ritual show up in everyday modern life and why humans are so drawn to following leaders, communities or philosophies with culture like intensity. Even in places where you might not think to look. Sometimes these days, cultish influence can just be a little harmless group solidarity. Sometimes it's just a fringy interpretation of social belonging, but sometimes it's moral panic in its purest form.
- [03:51]
C
Oh, would you mean something like a cult of horned robes, ritual altars and whispered invocations promising ultimate rebellion, forbidden knowledge, and maybe even eternal damnation?
- [04:05]
A
What are you talk about?
- [04:06]
C
Rhys, I am so glad you asked. Today we are talking the cult of Satanism, a subject of both ancient fixation and modern frenzy that has been captivating and alarming society for centuries.
- [04:21]
A
And please stick around because our interview today is with a podcaster who I think many of you listeners are a fan of, who I've admired for a very long time, and who has obsessed obsessed over Satanism and specifically the phenomenon of the Satanic panic for the past year. For her new podcast series, the devil you know. We are so excited to share that. Later we're going to be chatting with Sarah Marshall, host of the iconic you're wrong about podcast. We're going to be chatting with her about the Satanic Panic's ideologies and rituals, how those ideas are alive and well in conspiracy theory groups today, and how you might actually subscribe to the cult of Satanism without even knowing it. We couldn't get through the October 2025 season without talking about my boyfriend, Satan. Our boyfriend, our lover. I mean Satanism. What a time honored ideology for us to cover on. Sounds like a cult this isn't the cult of Labubu. And yet Satan keeps finding ways to rebrand, to refresh for the modern public. And that's why we love and fear her.
- [05:30]
C
I really appreciate Satan more as like a rhetorical concept than as like an actual tangible being. There's something that is so over simplifying and yet so freeing about just looking at something you don't like or something that scares you and going, satan, that's the devil. Yeah, a great thought terminating cliche.
- [05:48]
A
Yes. So today, Rhys and I are finally going to yap a bit about Satanism as indeed a rhetorical strategy, a belief system. And if you think that Satanism does not apply to you, let me give some teasers challenging that. Are you interested in role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons? No. Okay. Have you ever hardcore embraced ideas of recovered memories or thought you might have unearthed a repressed memory of some kind of horrible thing that happened to you when you were little that you forgot about? Or are you familiar with the Wayfarer scandal, a conspiracy theory putting forth that nefarious elites were trafficking children in cupboards and armoires on the furniture site Wayfair and naming. Naming these pieces things like the Britney and the Chelsea and selling them for $10,000 because they were actually kids in there. Okay, then buckle up, settle down, and sink your trident into this romp of an episode on Satanism. Rhys, what is your personal relationship to Satan?
- [06:57]
C
It's deep and complex. I've never really been a religious person, so I kind of grew up just acquainted with Satan as, like, you know, the red guy in the movies. My first impressions of Satanism were the apocalypse season of American Horror Story.
- [07:13]
A
So I feel like there has actually been a kind of like pop culture reclamation of Satan, like Lil Nas X. What was that, like, Satan inspired performance that he did?
- [07:23]
C
It was a response to homophobic critics that were saying that he was Satanic because he had come out and he was like, fine, if you're gonna call me Satan, I'm gonna lean into the aesthetic and really go for it.
- [07:34]
A
Totally. We're living in these polarized times where believers are dividing figures and ideas into good and evil b binaries. And when someone is calling you the devil, you can either defend that you're actually an angel, or you can just embrace being the devil.
- [07:49]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [07:50]
A
So for context, my introduction to Satanism was through studying the Satanic panic, which was important for my research process of writing cultish. And it was obviously fascinating to hear about this period during the 80s that was kind of this Reaction by conservative Christian white suburban parents to the rise of New Agey deviant religions in the 60s and 70s despite having absolutely zero concrete evidence. So many were convinced that their children were going to be abducted by Satanists out of nowhere and subjected to ritual abuse. And I thought, okay, well that sounds weird, thank God that's over. But the weird thing is that it's actually not over. I've discovered the Satanic panic has just kind of rebranded for the modern age. And I think a lot of that probably has to do with just generally living in a time of crisis when there are so few clear answers to people's pa, when there is collective trauma and we don't know where to put it. These types of, I guess kind of like delusional panics can like whip people up into a frenzy. And that happened in the 80s and I think in a way it's happening now too.
- [08:55]
C
Everybody wants answers and nobody knows where to find them. So if we can find or create something to point our finger at, then we can feel better when whatever that thing is gone. Even if it's not solving the problem that we want to solve.
- [09:07]
A
Exactly. Now to understand this like giant concept that is Satanism and the Satanic panic as well as its modern day remnants, I think it would be helpful to give a little bit of context as to the historical figure of Satan. So I think a lot of us tend to think of Satan as a figure that came from Christian religion, but the archetype of Satan actually predates Christianity. One of these earliest prototypes was the evil spirit from this ancient pre Islamic religion called Zoro Zoroastrianism. And that figure represented death, deception and chaos in this ancient belief system. The world, the universe, was a battleground between benevolent and malevolent forces. And that was a cosmic struggle that set the stage for later religious ideas. It was the contact between Zoroastrian ideology and Jewish communities that helped shape the Satan that we know and love or hate today as the figure opposing God. And then by the time of later Christian thought, this adversary had a home, AKA hell. A fiery realm where non believers and sinners would ultimately be cast. And that is where I anticipate ending up alongside you, Ms. Reese. Actually, you're totally going to the good place. And that's how we got the figure of Satan that we know today.
- [10:29]
C
So for centuries, Satan stood for everything that society feared most. Chaos, desire and defiance, deviance, love. I know all of my favorite things. However, over time the fallen angel stopped being purely a terrifying figure and became something a little enticing what can I say? We love a bad boy. Milton's Paradise Lost. You may have read it, you may have spark notes. It gave Satan kind of a little makeover in the form of a persuasive and rebellious voice, which Romantic period writers later interpreted as a symbol of personal freedom.
- [11:08]
A
Okay, so that is kind of the history of like the image of Satan. But let's talk a little bit about how it then informed a new occultic movement.
- [11:17]
C
By the 20th century, Satan has shifted into a figure that is not just something to be feared, but maybe even someone to be understood or allied with. And that is how we get the whole brand shiny spanking new occultist movement of Satanism. Enter one Anton Lavey, who founded the Church of Satan in 1966. Lavey, I mean, he looked exactly what you would think he would look like an evil Jackson galaxy. Shaved head, black cape, goatee, candlelight, the.
- [11:48]
A
Whole nine daddy Satanism, right? Black Philip.
- [11:52]
C
Black Philip. Black Philip is probably my favorite depiction of Satan.
- [11:56]
A
We're referencing the movie the Witch, by the way. If anyone is unfamiliar God this spooky season, you simply must watch or re watch the witch. Oh, God. Like mild spoiler alert. But at the end, when Satan is like, do you want to taste butter?
- [12:13]
C
Does thou like the taste of butter?
- [12:17]
A
Butter? Dost thou want to see the world?
- [12:20]
C
Dost thou want to wear pretty dresses? Yes, I do.
- [12:24]
A
Philip. I know when he's like, let me guide your hand. I'm like, slay.
- [12:33]
C
They made it go sexy.
- [12:35]
A
How they do that, I don't know. I don't know. But every time I see a goat, I'm like, Black Philip Black.
- [12:41]
C
There's a.
- [12:41]
B
There's.
- [12:42]
C
There's goats at the. At the Queen Zoo petting zoo. And I always give extra to the black one because he reminds me of Black Philip.
- [12:48]
A
Oh, my God, that's gorgeous. I love that. See, this is why media representation is important.
- [12:52]
C
This is why media representation is important. As you can tell, only little freaks are into Satan, including Anton lavey, whose early life as a carny evolved into the first gatherings of the church. I don't know why that's not.
- [13:04]
A
Wait, what's a carny?
- [13:06]
C
Like carnival folk, travels with the circus. Yeah, it's kind of. It used to be kind of a derogatory term, but I feel like it's been reclaimed to a degree.
- [13:13]
A
Yeah, Cute carney. Hello.
- [13:15]
C
Lavey's version of Satanism was a little bit different from how Satan had been perceived by the public before. It was not about worshiping evil to any degree. It was more of a reaction against what he saw as the moral hypocrisy of Christianity and its followers. Instead of framing life as a battle between good and evil, as we've seen across so many religions, lavey, Satanism cast the true divine battle as a struggle between repression and indulgence, with Satan representing freedom from the constraints of moral pretense.
- [13:46]
A
Okay, so it's almost like a battle between stoicism and hedonism.
- [13:51]
C
Yeah.
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A
If you want to get philosophical about.
- [13:53]
C
It, nature and nurture, like, who are we really and who are we forced to be?
- [13:57]
A
God. Humans love a binary. We are so dumb.
- [14:00]
C
We love a good and a bad, and we want to be doing the good thing. And that's about as far as any of us think. It's wonderful. To the onlookers, the non cult members, the Church of Satan looks often plainly like a trolling effort. A kind of like campy glam rock theatrical middle finger to organized religion.
- [14:17]
A
That's how I saw it for sure. Like an upside down cross.
- [14:20]
C
It was very hot topic. It always read to me.
- [14:22]
A
Yes. Oh, my God. Goth. It's just. Yeah, I just. I thought Satanism and goth were the same.
- [14:29]
C
Yeah, I think just again, kind of the contrarian, like, I don't want to be something that's likable by mainstream standards that.
- [14:35]
A
That exactly. Like, I'm gonna stick it to the man. Rage against the machine, you know. That's cool. Yeah, it's punk.
- [14:42]
C
So in lavey's own framing, his version of Satanism was a legitimate philosophy built around radical individualism. Sounds a lot like our country today.
- [14:52]
A
Not to sound like an evangelical, but like, we do live in a country where Satan rules radical individualists.
- [14:58]
C
I will say, as journalist Burton H. Wolf wrote in his introduction to the Satanic Bible, this was a blatantly selfish, brutal religion, one that rejected altruism and the love thy neighbor ethos in favor of unapologetic self interest. Its principles drew as much from Darwin and Freud as from anything supernatural. Think survival of the fittest meets in id. Unleashed, in the words of Wolf, the church of Satanism challenged other religions. Deal with the carnal desire in the flesh in a logical, rational manner, or lose the struggle not only for men's bodies, but also their souls.
- [15:33]
A
Okay. Yeah. It was like all those things that Christianity wants you to repress. Not only like, honor them, but go ham.
- [15:42]
C
Yeah. Western society over time has placed such an emphasis on. Again, we love a binary, like the mind versus the body. And this is not to sound too foucaultian. But a lot of the like repression and by ignoring the body, it's going to come back up. And if the so called legitimate gatekeepers of cultural discourse aren't going to answer to this very real lived reality of people, then someone's going to find it and pick it up and say, hey, I know what you actually live like and care about and want, and I have the way for you.
- [16:11]
A
Whoa. Okay, so if someone right here and right now was like, yeah, you know what? Yes, let me surrender to the desires of the flesh and become an official Satanist, what exactly would they have to do? Rhys.
- [16:23]
C
So Satanism has continued to, I don't know if I would say thrive, but it certainly still exists. So you're ready to sign up. You're here, you've got your pen in hand, you've cut off all your friends, your family, your quill, you're waiting for the goat to show you the dotted line. And we just want to make sure that you know exactly what you're getting into first. So I am about to read for you all the nine satanic statements that lay out the Church of Satan's true ethical code of conduct and innermost values. There are nine, not ten, because that's stupid and we're different. There are nine?
- [16:59]
A
Yeah. No, it's an odd number. Christianity has ten commandments. Satanism has to have nine because it's six upside down and it's scary.
- [17:09]
C
See, now you sound like a way of hair conspiracy theorist, because why wouldn't they just make it six then? It sounds like a swifty doing swifty math. The nine satanic statements. Lave's nine statements lay out what the Church of Satan actually values. These are some guiding principles. So, number one, Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence. Simple enough. Two, Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams. All of these end with exclamation points. I would like the listener to note. Three, Satan represents undefied wisdom instead of hypocritical self deceit.
- [17:42]
A
Hop off.
- [17:43]
C
Four, Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates. No further explanation of who that might be. We don't need to know. That's just up to you, I guess. Five, Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek.
- [18:00]
B
I don't know.
- [18:01]
A
Vengeance. Not to plug my other podcast, but real quick, I did just do an episode of Magical Overthinkers on Overthinking about Revenge where I interviewed a revenge scholar and I thought I loved revenge. And now I have a whole different Perspective on it. So for you? Yeah, it's been ruined for me. So if anyone is thinking about what to do to get back at your enemies, you should listen to that before you sign your name in the devil's book.
- [18:26]
C
This is so true. Number six. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires.
- [18:35]
A
What does that mean?
- [18:36]
C
I think that. I don't think we're supposed to know. I think if you know, then you can hold them to it and you can. They don't want that.
- [18:41]
A
Wait, but I am concerned about psychic.
- [18:44]
C
Responsibility to the responsible.
- [18:47]
A
Responsible. That is word salad on par with Keith Ranieri.
- [18:51]
C
It is. Psychic vampire is a good insult, though. So you're probably wondering, but, like, who is Satan, really? And number seven's gonna answer that for you. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all fours. Because of his divine spiritual and intellectual development has become the most vicious animal of all. You know what?
- [19:11]
A
Being divinely intellectual can make one vicious.
- [19:14]
B
It can.
- [19:15]
C
We're too curious. All of our damage we've done in the Anthropocene is all just because we're curious. Little.
- [19:21]
A
Okay, what's number eight?
- [19:22]
C
Number eight. Satan represents all of the so called sins as they all lead to physical, mental or emotional gratification.
- [19:30]
A
Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna have to think about that to see if I agree.
- [19:33]
C
I think it's kind of pushing against the, like, the Christian asceticism of, like, make yourself miserable and that's the only way. Yeah, be happy now.
- [19:41]
A
We're going for pleasure here. Totally.
- [19:43]
C
Life is short and then you're in hell. And our last statement, that you must be willing to identify with Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years.
- [19:54]
A
Okay, get that bag.
- [19:56]
C
Okay. As with any religious group, y', all, there is some trepidation to be had. It is worth noting that some critics and some conspiracy theorists have drawn connections between lavey's emphasis on hierarchy, personal strength and social Darwinist undertones, and the kind of philosophical ideas that historically informed eugenics and even Nazi ideology. Yikes. To be clear, the Church of Satan itself has consistently formally rejected white supremacist and fascist alignments. But these comparisons illustrate how provocative or theatrical belief systems can be misinterpreted or deliberately misused by outsiders.
- [20:36]
A
Cooler days call for layers that last. And quince is my go to for quality essentials that feel cozy, look refined, and won't blow your budget. Just think $50 Mongolian cashmere premium denim that fits like a dream and luxe outerwear that you'll wear year after year. Quince makes the pieces that will turn into your fall uniform. Every time I look at Quince's outerwear category on the website, ooh, I just feel the need to open my wallet. They look designer level but cost a fraction of the price. That's because Quince partners with top tier ethical factories that cut out the middleman, which means they're able to deliver luxury quality pieces at like half the price of similar brands. I own so many Quince pieces at this point. I love that they sponsor this podcast. My favorite boots are these little white Quince ankle boots. They're like sock boots because they fit tightly at the ankle. They're so cute. They go with everything. I'm really excited to check out their denim and their coats. It's one of those brands that just makes you ask, why can't every clothing company be like Quints? Find your fall staples at quince. Go to quints.com slac for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-E.com/ to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slac this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace Squarespace is the all in one website platform to help entrepreneurs, artists, creatives, podcasters stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it incredibly easy to get set up with a beautiful website, to connect with your audience, and to sell anything from products to content, even your valuable time. I am a long time Squarespace user you should check out. Sounds like a cult.com I'm a bit of a Luddite. I don't exactly know what I'm doing when it comes to the techy stuff, but with Squarespace that's not a problem. And that is thanks to features like their Design Intelligence which combines decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology to help you build a gorgeous website that really suits your brand. If you're trying to become a marketing guru, Squarespace also makes makes email campaigns possible with all of the tools that you need to engage your subscribers, drive sales and simplify your audience management. And if you're looking to become an educational guru of sorts, Squarespace has the tools to create and sell your own course online. You can charge a one time fee or sell subscriptions, choose a layout that fits your needs, upload video Squarespace is just the best. It's a household name for a reason. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com and/cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So now I think it's time to transition into chatting about the Satanic Panic because this is where things start to get culty in a way that affects the modern day mainstream public. And the weird thing is that the Satanic Panic kind of only barely had to do with actual Satanists because the Church of Satan has historically kept a really low profile. And that isn't just as a stunt or a fashion statement. It's historically been to protect members from fear and suspicion and misunderstanding very much like that which erupted during the 1980s and 90s during this era known as the Satanic Panic. Now, practitioners of Lavey's Satanism philosophy were targeted during this time, but the Satanic Panic went far beyond those who actually practiced Satanism. Rhys, do you know much about the Satanic Panic?
- [24:09]
C
I know about it just as kind of a larger part of like the Reagan era pendulum swing towards conservativism and more of a fear driven like the flattening of subcultures just as a facet of a larger problem. But like, not specifically. I'm not super familiar with the mechanisms of the movement. No.
- [24:28]
A
Well, it's super interesting because it was kind of this underrated bridge between the fear surrounding the cult groups of the 1960s and 70s. Some of that fear was totally valid. I mean, the Manson family murders and the Jonestown massacre were tragedies that should have alerted the wider public to the nefariousness of cults and cult like groups. But there was also a lot of general hullabaloo from conservatives and Christians during that time surrounding anyone participating in spiritual practices perceived as deviant. And now today we have so many conspiracy theories and weird unsubstant woo woo, sort of like New age therapy practices and things. And the Satanic Panic really illustrates how we got from one of those eras to the other. So a major spark for the Satanic Panic came from a book called Michelle Remembers and it was published in 1980. The book was written by the psychiatrist from Canada named Dr. Larry Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith. And the boy book claimed to document Smith's experiences of being abducted and abused by a Satanic cult as a child. So according to the book, Smith was allegedly given over to the cult at age 5 where she endured 14 months of horrific ritual Abuse, including witnessing murders and mutilations. So Smith's memories were apparently recovered through a therapeutic method that has now been widely discredited. But at the time it was considered cutting edge and the public devoured it. Okay. Pasner and Smith quickly gained credibility, credibility as experts. And they appeared on shows like Oprah's talk show and advised law enforcement. So basically like this story was so popular and with support from people like Oprah, it helped ignite the whole satanic panic at large, turning ordinary outsiders into suspects. Like it was freaking salem during the 1600s.
- [26:30]
C
It's giving Abigail Williams period.
- [26:33]
A
So in one extreme case where the panic was really panicking, this group of three men, which has since been nicknamed the West Memphis Three, was convicted of the brutal murder of three boys. They served over 18 years in prison before being released in 2011. Through this plea that allowed them to maintain their innocence while also acknowledging that the state had enough evidence for a conviction. Regardless, they are now, you know, pretty much known to have been innocent. But the reason they were convicted was because of their appearance as outsiders and supposed deviant behavior. Their accused motive was, is satanic ritual abuse, which is just like so insane. It really was like the Salem witch trials. Like it truly, truly was just in like suburban 1980s America. And that just goes to show that the satanic panic wasn't just about Satanists or even crimes that didn't happen. It was actually a culty ecosystem all on its own. This panic thrived on shame based principles, convincing parents and communities that their children might, might be corrupted. It reinforced a fear of outsiders painting anyone who didn't conform to suburban norms, like teenagers with long hair or goth kids or even those who played Dungeons and Dragons. Do you know that during this time Dungeons and Dragons was associated with Satanism because of like, I don't know, just.
- [27:52]
C
There'S dragons, there was monsters and fire and weapons and leather and none of that is allowed.
- [28:00]
A
Exactly, exactly. And it was just a fucking insane time. And it reminds me, reminds me so much of the conspiratorial and even like anti vax thinking that we find nowadays. People claim that they're protecting their children, but really they're just suppressing critical thinking, elevating pseudo therapy and pseudoscience as well as these self proclaimed experts who use anecdotal evidence to claim authority. And all of that just leaves ordinary citizens terrified to question anyone out of fear for their family's safety.
- [28:33]
C
Yeah, it comes from like a place of genuine fear. And then it's the Duggar children are not allowed to Listen to music with drums in it because it's the music of Satan, which has gone a little too far. Yeah.
- [28:43]
A
Our ideas of Satan, depending on who you talk to, have just gotten like, really wiggly and really easy to use as a weapon to manipulate people into cultishness. And speaking of that, as we've sort of hinted at, the satanic panic, in a sense never ended. I mentioned the Wayfarer conspiracy earlier. Rhys, I know for a fact that you didn't know that this was a satanic panic derived conspiracy theory.
- [29:06]
C
I did not. I knew it was a conspiracy theory. I. I knew it was kind of qanoni, but I didn't know that it was like fully satanic panic induced.
- [29:15]
A
Totally. So during the pandemic, I remember that the big tent conspiracy theory community, QAnon, briefly took on the ideology that the furniture retailer Wayfair was trafficking children through overpriced cabinets and throw pillows that happened to share. I don't know how you stuff a kid into a throw pillow, but whatever that happened to share names with missing kids. Okay. People really, really embraced this. It helped corrupt the hashtag savethechildren. Of course, no evidence ever surfaced of this, but the moral outrage spread like wildfire in the same fear fueled, shame driven way that once powered the Satan panic panic. Now there has been evidence disproving the Wayfarer conspiracy. The Washington Post actually tracked down one of the missing children whose name appeared in these listings. Her name was Samara Duplessis, and she was a teenager who briefly ran away from home and then safely returned. Can you imagine logging onto your phone one day to find out that thousands of strangers online were convinced that you'd been sold through a 9999 Duplessis zodiac sign constellation? Personalized throat.
- [30:28]
C
It's so, so sad and scary and weird, and it's what really scares me about the insurgents of generative AI and especially its pollution of social media platforms like Facebook that are mostly populated by, like, older people whose media literacy and the ability to discern what's real and what's not online is non existent.
- [30:45]
A
Dude, Facebook moms are. I mean, we didn't have Facebook in the 1980s, but Facebook moms would have been the targets of the satanic panic, just like now they're the targets of Qanon, Wayfair conspiracy theories and anything else that people want to frame as a threat to their children in order to manipulate them and have power over them.
- [31:05]
C
AI generate a GIF of it, throw it on Facebook, and pump it through some old people circles Exactly.
- [31:11]
A
Now, I've said many times and have written about how at bottom, a conspiracy theory is just a sense making narrative that helps connect causes with effect. And when people are experiencing pain and chaos globally, in their community or in their personal lives, conspiracy theories feel really satisfying. It provides you with an explanation and then the disturbing thing is that it then helps you work backwards to find the right clues to support that conclusion. And conspiracy theories fall on a spectrum, just like cults, you know. So if believing that children were being sold on Wayfair or that a D.C. pizza shop was hosting Satanic rituals and its basement Pizzagate feels like a stretch, just know that it's really a part of the same cultural impulse that's been around for decades that will probably always spring up during broader times of crisis. Just this need to find simple villains, dark rituals and cosmic evil in a world that's actually way messier than that and sometimes even scarier than that. It just all circles back to the same origin story. The age old myth of Satan as the ultimate adversary, a cosmic battle between purity and corruption. It's the same logic, just remixed for the Internet age. In other words, the Satanic panic of the 80s has just continued on and operates today like a cult.
- [32:30]
C
Alright, we've covered the Church of Satan and all of its derivatives. But to get even deeper, stick around for our interview with Sarah Marshall, host of the new podcast series the Devil youl Know where she spoke with survivors, investigators and historians of the Satanic Panic. Sarah, welcome to Sounds Like a Cult.
- [32:55]
B
Thank you for having me. It feels like a cult already in the best way. Could you tell us what led you.
- [33:01]
C
To take interest in the Satanic Panic?
- [33:03]
B
Oh, gosh. I mean, I'm shocked at the number of people who aren't interested in the Satanic Panic, although I like to think that number is getting smaller every day. But I became curious about it when I was in my early 20s. I was a grad student. I still had what is to me now a heartbreakingly innocent belief in like the basic sort of logical nature of human beings, which I see now is just assuming people were a lot more like me than they are typically. Or also kind of a willingness to believe, as I think millennials, maybe as a generation kind of did, that there were adults in the room, because the adults in the room were like, I'm in charge. So, I mean, I first heard about the Satanic Panic in the context of the documentary series on the West Memphis Three, which was a case that took place in the early 90s and in large Part. As part of the long tale of the Satanic Panic, which sort of stayed in rural areas of the United States, I think, longer once it had burned itself out in places like Southern California, where it began with the McMartin trial. And so I became really fascinated by just the existence of this phenomenon where people were being convicted of crimes that there was no evidence connecting them to, based on the sort of local belief that Satan was just around and motivating kids to carry out unspeakable evil for no apparent reason, which allowed one to have no theory of the case except for Satanism. And I was deeply scandalized by that and have never stopped finding layers of the story that make me more scandalized. And I've grown up with it, and now it's back.
- [34:35]
A
It is, it is. And that's why, as old school as this topic might seem, it's actually hauntingly timely. I want to start out by first discussing who were the sort of OG major players cooking up the Satanic Panic, and what were their sort of key beliefs and goals?
- [34:55]
B
Yeah, I mean, the thing about the Satanic Panic is that it's a conspiracy theory at heart. And the interesting thing about conspiracy theories is that they often don't have to function in the way that they're born and the way that the theory itself is imagining conspiracy to work. You can find these pretty deep roots of it. Like there's a book by conservative Christian religious writer Hal Lindsay called Satan is Alive and well on Planet Earth, which I just love as a title. Like, he's not just alive, he's thriving. He's rollerblading. You know, he's like, trying stuff out. He's all oiled up and frolicking like you do. The argument of this book, which sells very well and is kind of a classic of Christian book stories of the 70s, is that Satan has an agenda. And your child is wearing bell bottoms and. And taking pot and listening to rock and roll music. Not as innocent acts of rebellion or. Because a lot of these things just are good, but because Satan is intentionally softening up the boomer generation by getting them hooked first on rock and roll music and astrology and horoscopes. And then eventually your interest in horoscopes will transition into a desire to be a full fledged Satanist. And this was always part of God willing and.
- [36:12]
C
Right.
- [36:12]
B
And as I'm saying that, I'm like, well, I feel like there are lawmakers making that argument, like today.
- [36:17]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [36:17]
C
Period.
- [36:18]
B
And so we have Rosemary's Baby as a big cultural moment that Scares the bejesus out of people once again. Interestingly, a movie that's really about the powerlessness of women in society, when you get down to it, but that we take away the moral that we need to be vigilant against Satanism and not just John Cassavetes and any kind of husband who will sacrifice his wife's well being in order to get ahead career wise. Which again, is really what that movie is about. But, you know, we're the country that walked Wall street and we're like, I think I'm gonna work on Wall Street. You know, we often, we struggle with nuance as a people. And so a lot of these kind of nascent cultural flutterings really catalyze around the publication in 1980 of this book called Michelle Remembers, which is purporting to be the true story of a woman in Canada, in Victoria, bc, which the book later calls one of the global centers of Satanism, which will never not be funny to me. Victoria's iconic.
- [37:15]
A
Oh my God, that sounds like a tourist marketing.
- [37:18]
B
They're not using that enough. They're like, victoria, home of Mini World. And it's like, you gotta bring in the Satanism aspect more. Mini World is great, by the way. And so this book comes out and is in theory this bombshell about this woman who went into therapy was like, I'm depressed. And her therapist was like, why? I've already fixed you. And she was like, I don't know, just something. And so she came to believe that he had allowed her to age, regress and recover memories of being given to a satanic cult by her mother and then tortured by them until a ceremony called the Feast of the Beast at which Satan himself appeared and gave his plan for the late 70s. And part of his agenda was saying that he would return in 1980. And the book came out in 1980. And so as you can imagine, some people who had made it all the way to the end, which is hard to do. Oh, shit, Satan's coming back. Like, honey, Satan could be back right now. We gotta get on this. And so the backstory behind the book is even more over the top than the contents of the book, I believe. And we got to talk about that in this, this new CBC show that I'm doing. But this was a book that, because it was marketed as nonfiction, was used to educate social workers and police officers who were, as the 80s progressed, more and more frequently getting trained by other cops and social workers to look for these Satanists who to the book we're supposed to number in the hundreds, to the thousands, and to be all over the place and to be a major threat to your child's welfare. And so the spread from the entertainment world into the legal world and the publication of Michelle Remembers was kind of the beginning of that.
- [38:54]
A
It's so fucking weird. Like conservative Christianity can just weaponize whatever it wants.
- [39:01]
B
Yeah.
- [39:01]
A
And it's interesting though, like, what catches on because they really tried to demonize.
- [39:06]
B
Like Harry Potter and now the creator of Harry Potter is a billionaire transphobe. So they seem to like her fine now.
- [39:13]
A
Yeah, 100%. I know. And that's the thing too, about like this wiggly ass ideology. Is that like it's a conspiracy theory. So the argument can change whenever you want.
- [39:22]
B
Yes.
- [39:23]
C
That's what I find so funny about the ever shifting goal posts and why even evangelical Christians love to define dates where things are going to happen and then just watch it go by and be like, actually, no, it's going to be a little later. Like as you were telling that story about Satan coming back in 1980, I was like, oh, I'm getting deja vu. To two weeks ago when everybody said the rapture was here.
- [39:44]
B
What bothered me most about it was people assuming that they would be raptured but not their pets. Like, there is not a world in which I am getting to heaven before my pets. You know, it's just, I feel confident about that theology.
- [39:56]
C
I wouldn't allow it.
- [39:57]
A
I mean, my cat Claire is definitely a Satanist and I've talked about that at length in my private life, but that's another episode.
- [40:04]
B
Cats do belong to Satan. And that's what's kind of interesting about which obviously there's a lot of concepts of Satan, but I've always found Satan, I guess, to be kind of an annoying wise assumption in the Bible. And it's God's problem for taking the bait and being like, you know what? I will take everything away from my servant job and kill everyone he loves. Because I'm a murderer too. And the guy who dared me to do it is the bad one. It's like, I think Satan comes out looking all right in that story. And that's a whole other topic. But really it's, I mean, a big part of the story of the Satanic panic is that Satan does also then become, as Amanda Urig is saying, whoever you need him to be, moment by moment. You know, there's no consistency to it and it becomes almost like a superhero movie where like the stakes have been raised so many times that nothing feels like it. Matters anymore.
- [40:52]
A
Totally.
- [40:52]
C
Nothing matters. Okay, so why do you think personal testimonials like Michelle of Michelle remembers were such an essential form of media for.
- [41:03]
A
Satanic panickers and such an essential recruitment tactic?
- [41:06]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. And to be clear, there's no evidence that actual satanic ritual abuse has ever taken place in North America or anywhere else. If you define organized Satanism the way that we were during the Satanic panic of the 80s and today, we're definitely having either one or many satanic panics right now. And I'm just so thrilled that my work gets to keep getting more relevant. I was really hoping for culture to move so far away from this that it would become more and more surreal seeming, but it gets closer to everyday life all the time. But I think it's, it's interesting, right, because the late 70s more for mainstream culture and early to mid-70s more within kind of women's lip circles. This was a time when people were talking about normal non satanic sexual abuse and sexual assault really in many ways for the first time, right, where we had the chance for women to come together and achieve some kind of solidarity or at least at moments, and to be able to realize that the sexual trauma that they had been through wasn't something that just had happened to them for personal reasons or because it was their fault. And that A, it was a grave injustice and B, that it was endemic and happening to seemingly the majority of people. And so I think that it's interesting that it was a time of these extremely powerful pieces of testimony about sexual assault and sexual abuse not carried out by Satanists, and that that did have a lot of catalyzing power for a lot of people. But as we can kind of see now, when conservative forces within our society are confronted with powerful testimony that represents kind of a systemic issue, what can really help is to invent an issue that either doesn't exist or exists in such a vanishingly small statistical area of the population that you would have to have some kind of ulterior motive for focusing on it, like for example, violent crimes carried out by undocumented people. And I think that the Satanic panic and this alleged testimony around it really served the purpose of allowing religious leaders certainly, and plenty of other more kind of mainstream and secular figures to ignore real issues around child abuse, sexual abuse of also just the whole issue of domestic violence and the fact that if women have the power to leave abusive marriages, we frequently do, and that defending the nuclear family at all costs was in itself kind of a culty move. Right. So how do we distract from the danger of the nuclear family? We invent a Satan who's hanging out out there and who only men can protect us from, obviously, you know, So I think that it was kind of a weaponization of a truly powerful thing.
- [43:43]
A
Oh, my God. It is a strawman. It's a red herring. It's a scapego.
- [43:47]
B
It's like it's all those things, just a straw. Red goat.
- [43:51]
C
That's good.
- [43:51]
A
Exactly.
- [43:56]
D
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- [44:15]
E
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- [44:42]
A
So we've been discussing how the satanic panic is still alive culturally, politically, in the form of the attitudes toward undocumented immigrants in how we engage in certain movies and books. Can you talk more about how the satanic panic has impacted mainstream media and culture and how we interact with it to this day in ways that we might not even detect at first glance?
- [45:06]
B
Well, I don't think that it ever went away. I think we're given a period where we could believe that it went away. And then, like in Stephen King's it, we all started getting phone calls about it. We knew we had to go back and deal with it again. And, I mean, I think that it came back very clearly at the start of the first Trump administration and has become very healthy in the past decade. Because I think one of the things that Trump is not a religious man, but I think he understands the power of religion to control other people. And I think he also recognizes the utility of this nice conservative religious shorthand we have in America, where anything you don't like, you can just condemn as satanic. And it's again, a time much like the 60s and 70s, a time when the children of the United States and this country's young people have real grievances with the way that the country has been run.
- [45:57]
A
I thought you were gonna say are wearing bell bottoms.
- [46:00]
B
That too, yeah. And are wearing some halter tops and freaking out their parents. And rather than saying, I don't like that halter top, you can say that halter top is satanic or your gender is satanic, or the fact that you got to learn at college is satanic.
- [46:16]
C
It really does feel powerful to say, like, if you believe it, like a really good insult, like to call your sister's shirt ugly is so last Tuesday.
- [46:24]
B
But like satanic. They got my Dutch brothers order wrong. That Dutch brothers is satanic. Satan is obsessed, inconveniencing me personally. It does make you feel important. You're like, I'm at war with Satan right now.
- [46:40]
C
The level of hyperbole is very comfortable.
- [46:43]
A
If you're bored and full of ennui and just on Facebook too much, you're going to start inventing abstract conflicts with which to engage. And what conflict is ready to embrace you like that between good and evil, Satan and Jesus. Although you know what? Trump has been loosening his lips with regard to that religious vernacular recently. Because didn't you both just hear the other day, like, two days ago at the time of this recording, how he said, he's probably going to hell? He was like, I'm probably going to hell.
- [47:12]
B
Fascinating.
- [47:14]
C
Well, it's the classic strategy of say so many things that no one can hold you to any one thing that you've said, because who can even discern anymore?
- [47:22]
B
I just feel, based on having a dad who did this, that he is going to do that thing where he is dying for so long. He's going to be dying for as long as he can possibly hang on, and it's going to be a long time and it's going to drive us all insane.
- [47:37]
A
Yeah, for sure.
- [47:38]
C
Ew.
- [47:39]
B
Sorry. Everyone's like, maybe he'll be convenient and quick about it. And it's like, no, no, it's going to. There's no Get Roy Con and hell dragging it out with the paperwork down there.
- [47:52]
C
Inch by inch.
- [47:56]
A
Cell by cell, tissue by tissue, organ by organ. That's really.
- [48:01]
B
It's going to be like the demons who control me are repossessing my body, but I'm duking it out. They've only got one cornea.
- [48:07]
A
I possessing my assets.
- [48:09]
B
I really try to restrain myself.
- [48:10]
C
No, no.
- [48:11]
A
It probably feels powerful to do it. It's like. It's almost like being possessed. Honestly, impression, it's Satanic.
- [48:19]
C
So in the echoes of the satanic panic that I'm seeing in our modern culture, I'm noticing that the perpetrators themselves behave in ways that are often quite cultish. And I'm wondering if those behaviors and that same, I guess you could say, hypocrisy has always existed within Satanic panic. So what, if any, rituals or ritualistic behaviors have emerged throughout the Satanic Panic that rivals the cultishness of the Satanists themselves?
- [48:49]
B
I think that's such a good question because I feel like, I mean, you're way ahead of me. Because what I realized while working on this project is that the Satanic panic itself absolutely functioned like the kind of cult that it was trying to find and destroy. Right. Especially as things progressed and as the belief system became more codified, because it became not just a movement within law and, you know, it caused a great number of wrongful convictions or it was introduced as a theory into a lot of cases where there might have been actual child abuse, but where we lost the ability to really determine the truth as well as we might have because of how much witness contamination happened. But then as things progressed, it also became this massive move within therapy and also a very lucrative one because one of the core beliefs of the time was that hypnotherapy was especially useful in treating satanic ritual abuse, which is again, something outlined by Lawrence Pastor, one of the authors of Michelle Remembers, who went on to marry his own patient, which you're not supposed to do. You weren't even supposed to do it in the 80s, incredibly.
- [49:48]
A
Oh, then you know, it's really.
- [49:50]
D
Wow.
- [49:51]
B
Exactly. We know that it's common decency to, if you're going to do blow in front of your patient, offer them a little, but don't marry them. That's too far. But they did anyway. And from this very trustworthy narrative where I think it's very easy to believe that these people kind of needed to believe that they were engaged on a holy war because that would make it more acceptable for. To them than to both leave their spouses in the name of Catholicism, which is just a hard hat trick to pull off.
- [50:18]
C
Yeah.
- [50:18]
B
But boy, did they. So it becomes a movement within therapy as well. And we have patients whose lives are really quite destroyed by the aggressive forms of therapy that they're told they have to undergo to deal with the trauma from the satanic ritual abuse that they must have experienced. Because in the 80s, as a woman, you could basically go into therapy for anything. You could go in for moderate depression, you know, an eating disorder, insomnia, memories of trauma that you had not forgotten about and were ready to discuss. And your therapist, if they were on the Satanic panic train, would be like, that's all fine. But I knew from the second I saw you that you had been satanically abused. You have that glint in your eye that makes me think you've been made to sacrifice babies. And I think we need to hypnotize you and just see if we can get those memories to come out. And the thing about hypnosis is that it doesn't make people more truthful. It doesn't give them absolute recall of the past. It doesn't function the way we kind of trained by pop culture to believe it does. But it is possible for a lot of people to experience some degree of basically disinhibition and ability to kind of communicate more imagistically and without a sense of the inhibitions that they might have in their more day to day frame of mind. And so what that state does to people, it doesn't make them necessarily more truthful or more able to access memories, but it does make them more suggestible. And it's easier to plant ideas in their head if they're in that state.
- [51:45]
A
It reminds me of the suggestible state that people enter when they speak in tongues. You know, like you enter like a mild state of dissociation. It also, you know, stick with me as I make an analogy here, because I feel a little conspiratorial about dentists because they've been trying to take out my wisdom teeth for a long time and my wisdom teeth feel fine and I don't want them to take them out. And this sniffs of the satanic panic because what if I went into a dentist for a teeth whitening and they were, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, like, I get that you want to whiten your teeth, but actually we want to take out your wisdom teeth because that's what we're really interested in here. And that will be more profitable to us because you'll have to, you know, undergo all this stuff. But if this were the satanic panic, those wisdom teeth wouldn't exist. My teeth whitening procedure would be actually medically necessary for me to move forward in life. And like, what I want to say with this analogy is that when professional, professionals are whipped up into some kind of trendy state because they're motivated by who knows what. Conservatism, money, it creates a breed of cultishness and conspiratorialism that I just cannot accept on any level. I'm disturbed and I don't want anyone to take out my wisdom teeth ever. No.
- [53:01]
B
And you should hang on to them and to kind of close the loop on the cult Analogy there. What one of the things that happens, happens with this kind of recovered memory therapy where a lot of patients could see the negative effects it had on their life and were asking to stop. And their therapist was like, no, you've got to keep going. You must get better. So we have to do more of this thing that's ruining your life in therapy groups for women to just do kind of group therapy. Some of the women who later filed lawsuits against the therapists who practiced this and who won settlements that eventually led health insurance to stop covering hypnotherapy. Thank God, in the United States States, there was this kind of marked phenomenon where if you stopped going to group therapy, you would stop exhibiting symptoms because there was a degree to which it was a social phenomenon. And also, you know, it came from sort of suggestibility and sort of being in a group with people. And also from, I think, one of the ways that we typically define cults, which is you have that kind of social pressure working on you that you have to keep. You have to maintain a certain worldview or you're going to lose your group identity and all the relationships that you've made. And this idea that once the social pressure is removed, the symptoms go away too, too. I wish that worked for depression. It really doesn't. Yeah.
- [54:11]
A
It reminds me so much of this phrase, folie a deux, you know, that French phrase which means the madness of two. The sort of like mental delusion that is shared and comes from two people who are like, intimately intertwined, kind of like mutually escalating. And. Yeah, I mean, like, there are real neuroscience studies to reflect that. Like, group think whips people up into a state of extreme suggestibility. And of course it does, because we're social creatures and we need to be in smallish groups for survival. And if everyone in your group is saying, believe this or else you'll be ostracized. Our survival instincts say, okay, yeah, I'm going to delude myself. Let's fucking go. And speaking of those in groups, an us versus them dichotomy thrives in most cults to the satanic panic. Who exactly was the them? Because they seem to be operating on some pretty broad strokes here. Is it actually the same Satanists themselves? Are they the core them? Or is it like literally anyone with bell bottoms?
- [55:09]
B
I mean, it depends who you ask, but I think that this is one of the very culty things about it that it starts off as like, okay, there are these Satanists out there. We have to look for them. They want to infiltrate Daycare centers. They love working long hours for lousy pay, apparently. I don't know why. And the idea is that they're using preschoolers in these elaborate rituals of theirs, which, again, I can't believe that none of the cops working on these cases had ever been to a preschool concert or graduation. It's so clear how hard it is is to get kids that age to do anything. There had to have been the kid at the satanic ritual who sitting there, twirling around, waving at people and then ran away. But you never hear about that. And so it begins with this quest for the search for Satanists. But then as more and more people begin to express doubt. Debbie Nathan is one of the first journalists who really writes doubtfully about the satanic panic. And I think her career suffered because of that. Because this was a difficult truth to publish or to really present to people, because people who raise credible questions in the 80s, kind of, as this was first flourishing, were accused of being on the side of the Satanists, of being on the side of molesting children. And then as the conspiracy theories kind of progressed, I think it became difficult for some people to know when to stop, because I think kind of what we've seen with the theories and kind of storytelling around QAnon, the more information the theory has to expand to accommodate the more extreme and out of pocket it gets until at a certain point in the early 90s, really are going to be in step with like the true believers leading the satanic panic. Especially in therapy communities, you have to kind of believe that it is like a global government conspiracy, kind of along the lines of the Illuminati. And I think that it partly just became too extreme for some people to continue to put their belief in the more elaborate it got as the years went on.
- [57:00]
A
Yeah, it just got too fancy.
- [57:04]
B
It's like the super bowl halftime show. Just like, keep it simple. Get us a marching band.
- [57:09]
A
Yeah, keep it simple.
- [57:14]
C
So hearing about that journalist really re emphasized to me what a mainstream grip that the satanic man had over, like, a lot of people with a lot of power. It very quickly spiraled into a witch hunt that created a culture of fear and constant baseless accusation. In large part because as we've been talking about, the net that they were casting kind of of kept getting wider and wider. What were some of the other social costs of not conforming to the fears of the satanic panic, like defending things like Dungeons and Dragons or heavy metal music?
- [57:47]
B
Yeah, I mean, you, I think, were marking yourself as a member of an out group or a defender of an out group. And this was a conspiracy theory that very conveniently allowed the mainstream and you know, sort of conservative white Christian America to identify anyone who fell out of style up with its relatively conservative values is not just somebody with different beliefs, but somebody who is actively dangerous to you and wanted to convert your teenager. So in this way it's kind of the classic homophobia of the late 70s in response to gay liberation, but conveniently re skinned for a new market. So you don't have to be an overt homophobe, you can just be afraid of satanic cults and then you can still have your homophobia and eat it too or something.
- [58:35]
A
Have your homophobia and eat the fruitcake too. I love contextualizing this historically and sort of like socio culturally because like the 80s are an underrated time in terms of like how we got to where we are today politically. It's the frickin actor Ronald to reality TV Donald Pipeline. And I think like placing the Satanic Panic and its mass many masks against those backdrops and those cult leaders of sorts is really telling. Did anyone financially benefit from the Satanic Panic? Like did its drivers and leaders have anything material to gain beyond just like validation? Religious power, political power? I mean there's money wrapped up in all of that. But was anyone like just in it for the bag?
- [59:22]
B
I mean I think there's some decent money and moral panics but nobody leaps to mind. To me as somebody who I think was purely financially motivated or just grifting simply for the payout, you can go back as far as Mike Warnke who wrote the Satan Cellar and then became an evangelical comedian. And the worst part about that is that he's actually pretty funny. But who wrote about becoming a college Satanist in I believe San Bernardino. And that book was completely made up but became kind of part of the Satanic Panic bibliography in the 80s when he could look back and say well we have the Satan cellar from 1970 too with some previous made up Satanists who are consistent with today's made up Satanists. So you know, you could go on the circuit as a police officer and train other cops in cult recognition. I don't really think anyone was making major bucks doing that frankly. I think that the people who got the biggest payout on this were in media because he had Geraldo doing I think multiple specials on Satanism. He was also one of the only major media figures who apologized later for his role in the Satanic Panic. So like I hate to hand it to Geraldo. But sometimes you do have to. But if you look at Oprah Winfrey was really getting. It's weird that I called her by her last name. As if people are gonna think, I mean, a different Oprah. Oprah was really, like, you know, cementing her role in American daytime TV in the 80s, and her and all of her competitors did satanic panic stories at one time or another, because that was just. That just became what you did. It was just good ratings fuel, you know. And so at a certain point, you don't want to ask too many questions about the holes that you could poke in a certain guest story, because you have to do five of these show a week, for God's sake. But I also think that, like, the chance to play a heroic role really motivated a lot of people to do a lot. And I think that one of the more dangerous things that you can encounter in a story is the chance to be a hero, because I think that we shouldn't have to need that kind of incentive to want to be helpful.
- [61:18]
A
Oh, my God, that is such a good point. And I think having this conversation really, like, exploring all the corners and pockets of, like, how this cult manifests is important because I think a lot of people. People think a cult leader is someone who's just in it for sex and money. That's what a cult is all about. But that's not really what this cult is all about. This cult is all about control and heroism and, like, these other things. And so it just, like, I don't know, to, like, bring it back to the thesis of the show. It's worth keeping your eyes peeled for cults that have nothing to do with the things that we've all been taught cults are all about.
- [61:55]
B
Well, and this is kind of, I mean, the way of the performative male today, which I feel like is an archetype people have been naming more late of, like, maintaining problematic degrees of power by claiming to be against the very thing that you're using, basically, oh, no.
- [62:11]
A
We'Re not a cult here. It sounds like a cult. We just critique them.
- [62:15]
B
We're just doing the fun parts because, you know, the occasional potluck. Sometimes you just need to bring people together to have a casserole.
- [62:23]
C
Sometimes you just need to bring people all together.
- [62:26]
A
Sometimes.
- [62:27]
C
Operative word being sometimes. And that's how the satanic panic feels to me, because it wasn't cultishness in a super straightforward, material sense where, like, it wanted you as a member to, like, go somewhere physically and donate all of your money and it was much more of a psychological attention economy of a cult. So it leads me to think that the effects of the satanic panic, therefore might be a little bit more ambiguous than the effects of some of the other cults that we've covered on the show. What were the most devastating effects of the satanic panic? Or some of the worst case scenarios of joining up with either the satanic or the panic?
- [63:07]
B
I think that, I mean, to join up with the satanic probably just meant burning a candle, wondering if real Satan would show up, realizing that he wasn't gonna, and then maybe spray painting a pentagram on an overpass and scaring the bejesus out of a local sheriff if he were lucky. Which to be fair, is pretty fun. Yeah, nothing, nothing wrong. That's just a hobbying out adults. And I think that the lives that the panic itself steamroller over it did so much damage that can never be und put people in prison for years, for decades in some cases. Or if you didn't go to prison, your life could be effectively over in the community where you lived. And also just the experience of wrongful convictions function partly because a lot of people go through life willing to believe that they deserve to go to prison or are capable of worse things than they're immediately able to imagine. You know, and there are people who have been wrongfully convicted who have created false memories of crimes that they, we now know absolutely could not have committed it. And yet it is possible to believe that about yourself in addition to other people. And so, you know, just the families that were torn apart by this, the wrongful convictions. The way that the therapeutic belief system that the satanic panic helped inspire kind of destroyed the lives of the generally women who sought out therapy during this time is really, I think, kind of impossible to quantify. But this was the therapy actually is often what I think of first, beyond even the legal problems that this caused, because it, it really. Amanda, you were fed up with this too. Just the. But to build on that, just the idea of trying to improve your life, being told that the things that you think are your problems are not your problems, it's actually this thing you never thought of, you idiot. And then being told that you're not allowed to stop and you're not allowed to leave and it's all for your own good, that feels so sinister to me. Because the thing is that at least if a judge is sentencing you to prison for a crime that you didn't commit, they're at least not pretending to do it for your own well, Being, you know. And so I think that if you got caught up in kind of the culty aspect of this and the sunk cost fallacy of it all, where at a certain point, if you stop believing what you believe, you have to accept that you have helped a moral panic to rage out of control and compromise people's lives and freedom. It has to be so incredibly difficult to climb off the other side of that and see the truth after you put so much energy into making it make sense completely.
- [65:30]
A
Oh my gosh.
- [65:31]
C
Yeah.
- [65:32]
A
Just this notion that women would go to therapy, many of whom probably were sexually assaulted at one point or another in their life. Those perpetrators were probably not those who these satanic panic oriented therapists unearthed repressed memories of. So it's just like such a hot mess. And it also reminds me of a study that I came across while writing my third book, the Age of Magical Overthinking, that talked about how women can actually be more morally punishing than men. And so this just feels like such a manipulative cult for women in particular, who are not only not getting the actual therapeutic help that they might need, but are also like, oriented toward placing moral punishment on people who might not even deserve it while the people at the in power benefit.
- [66:20]
B
Yeah. And it's that classic feminine role within the American legal system where you're told, like, it's pretty threatening of you to want to be a lawyer or a judge or even a juror. Like, this country does not fully trust female jurors. But if you can be someone who a crime happened to, and if you can be crying about it, and if we can pass a very constitutionally iffy law with your name in it, that would be incredible. Yes.
- [66:44]
A
Women as mascots and not as actual voices or people in positions of power.
- [66:50]
B
And the idea of female victimhood is the only legal role that women are allowed to inhabit, which again, makes us fundamentally inarticulate in the eyes of the law, because it's all about justifying what men feel like doing and are. Are using women's trauma as an excuse to do. And then of course, you could be like, what about all these people who committed non satanic crime? And they're like, what? I can't hear you. I'm in the shower. Totally.
- [67:16]
A
Oh my God. So well put. We've got one more question for you, Sarah. You said something at the beginning of the interview about how, like, the remnants of the satanic panic lasted in rural areas long after it faded from places like Southern California. Are there still people who believe in like the OG OG satanic panic from the 80s. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, what are they up to?
- [67:36]
B
I. I could find you one by tonight, I'm sure. I just needed to make a couple calls about it. Yeah. Because you think about so much of what's going on today. Culturally, I think, is about a lot of different things. But one of the things it's about is the apparently God given right to not update any of your ideas about anything since 1985. You had your last new thought in 1985. You don't have to take any new information about gender or politics or the economy or you're done. It's fine. You. Because so many of the kind of conspiracy theory believers of today who insist they do their own research are the same people who refuse to even allow new information in over the threshold of their brains. So I think that, you know, if you are so committed to learning being an act of treason, then of course you're going to still believe in the original satanic panic and you're going to feel validated that it's coming around again. You know, it's like how I feel when Fleetwood Mac goes viral.
- [68:30]
A
Oh, my God. I have never heard the phrase learning as an act of treason. That is what's happening, huh?
- [68:35]
B
I know. And it's like, you want to. Learning is fun. Like, not even in the school way. I hate. I hated school too. But like, just, oh, my God, Sarah.
- [68:42]
A
I didn't like school either. Rhys loves school.
- [68:44]
B
That's the thing. Like, school can be the place where you learn that linear thinking jerks have power over you. Like, I get it. It's not always fun, but like, the act of learning something feels incredible. You should let yourself do it.
- [68:58]
C
Try it sometime. Okay, this last question, well, it was kind of just a silly one for me, but as we started talking about the underlying misogyny that flavors the satanic panic. And I was thinking about how my real introduction to Satanism was kind of the mini cultural blip in the mid-2000s, wherein there was like kind of a perception in some corners of the Internet that Taylor Swift was Satan incarnate.
- [69:27]
B
I remember this.
- [69:27]
C
Yeah. And like a main driver of this was Bart Baker, who would make all of these YouTube parodies depicting Taylor Swift as Satan. And it was like a narrative that spanned like 30 videos. And I remember watching as a kid being like, why has everyone chosen this person and this woman to depict as Satan? And then that picture started going around of, I believe it's Anton lavey's daughter, Zena lavey. Who looks. I mean, a pretty spitting image of Taylor Swift. So I kind of just want to know your commentary on this phenomenon, man.
- [70:04]
B
You know, I just. I think people just enjoy theorizing that somebody is Satan, and if we can allow it to not get deeper than that, then, like, whatever, have fun, you know.
- [70:15]
A
Oh, my God, she does. She looks exactly like her.
- [70:17]
C
Yeah. Taylor Swift, I think, represents a lot of things that people think are evil, that in a similarly vague way to a lot of the other things people didn't like during the 80s. It's easy to just be, like, satanic, because I don't like it.
- [70:29]
B
Right. I mean, what this does make me think of is when there was the tragedy at AstroWorld, the Travis Scott concert, right, where people were, I think, suffocated because of lack of adequate crowd control, which is a thing that happens, you know, we lack adequate infrastructure for massive crowds. This actually happens a surprising amount at Mecca, where crowds will. You know, the people in the back don't know that people at the front can't move. It's like a very known phenomenon where just like, if you lack adequate infrastructure and a large group of people are together, then you can have a human crush. Disaster. But of course, there were immediately theories that, like, there was a satanic ritual and that's why all those people died. And it's like, don't you think that if you were Satan, you would maybe keep a lower profile? Like, why do we think Satan is an idiot in all these scenarios? Like, why wouldn't Satan be one of the nameless, faceless billionaires who are confused, controlling society much more than Taylor Swift is? Like, she's certainly got a good amount of power, but, like, the really powerful people are the ones whose names we don't know, and they're the ones who are really destroying our lives. She should stop flying.
- [71:34]
A
Exactly.
- [71:35]
B
Yeah.
- [71:36]
A
No, she loves attention. She loves working, and that is satanic sounds.
- [71:40]
C
I know. I was like, devil does not sleep.
- [71:41]
A
The devil's in the details.
- [71:43]
C
The devil works hard, but Taylor Swift works harder.
- [71:47]
A
Sarah, thank you so much for joining this episode of Sounds Like a Cult on Satanism and the Satanic Panic. If people want to keep up with you and your devilishly good work, where can they do that?
- [71:59]
B
Oh, well, please visit me at my new show. It's called the Devil. You know, it's out from the cbc, CBC podcasts, and you can find it anywhere you normally find podcasts. And I try to see. Say that in a creepy way, but I didn't really.
- [72:15]
A
It was.
- [72:16]
B
Yeah, no, it was creepy. But you can also find me at my podcast. You're wrong about where we talk about moral panics and all kinds of other stuff.
- [72:24]
A
Beautiful. All right, Rhys, out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the out. Which of our three cultures categories do you think the cult of Satanism falls into?
- [72:44]
C
I'm gonna go live your life because I just think that, like, the QAnon and all of the derivatives are not the fault of the Church of Satan. They're the fault of the reactionaries and the. The panickers and the religious folk in the first place. I think the Church of Satan, they try to keep a low profile. We said it ourselves. They're not really here to get into our business. We keep inserting them into our business, and that is not their fault.
- [73:11]
A
I don'. Man. I think religion, period, even if it's a fringe religion like Satanism, is an automatic watch your back at least. I don't know, man. Like, Satanism itself has got to be a watch your back. And then, yeah, the derivatives, the QAnon, the Wayfarer conspiracy theory of it all, the starting with a conclusion and working backwards to find an argument just because it makes the world feel manageable and you're afraid you'll be ostracized by your community of fellow conspiracy theorists if you push back. That's a good out.
- [73:44]
C
Like, no.
- [73:44]
A
No doubt about it. But, yeah, I think you're right that the panic part is cultier than the satanic part.
- [73:52]
C
Yes. I think, like, the actual, real, dyed in the wool Satanists of today are probably just kind of minding their business.
- [73:58]
A
Yeah. And honestly, I want to get into that business. Not permanently, but, like, I would love to go to a satanic, like, ritual circle or whatever the fuck they do.
- [74:08]
C
To be a fly on the whole.
- [74:10]
A
Horn of a goat in that room every Halloween. I mean, you've been to my Halloween parties. I try to invite Satan through the door once a year.
- [74:18]
C
I was gonna say Satanism's a watch your back, and then your. Your ragers say otherwise. Amanda. Yeah.
- [74:25]
A
Anyways, that is our show.
- [74:28]
C
Thank you so much for listening.
- [74:30]
A
Stick around for a new cult next week, but in the meantime, stay culty.
- [74:35]
B
But that too Goldy.
- [74:43]
A
Sounds like a cult. Was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Pod Cabin. This episode was hosted by Amanda Montel and Reese Oliver. This episode was produced by Reese Oliver. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, the Age of Magical Notes on Modern Irrationality and A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network studio 71 and be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult Cult on Instagram for all the discourse oundslikeacult Pod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad free at Patreon.
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