![]() ![]() ![]() In 2012, state representative Mike Ritze fronted $10,000 out of his own pocket to have the marker installed in the shadow of the capitol’s dome, prompting the ire of those who believed it flagrantly violated the separation of church and state. The monument she refers to is a six-foot marble slab engraved with the Ten Commandments, controversially situated on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol. “We chose Baphomet because of its contemporary relation to the figure of Satan and find its symbolism to be appropriate if displayed alongside a monument representing another faith,” Blackmore said. The Baphomet statue is the Satanic Temple’s defiant retort du jour. One witnesses in the Satanic Temple militia a certain knee-jerk reaction to encroachments upon personal liberties, especially when those encroachments come with a crucifix in hand. Most vitally, though, the group does not “promote a belief in a personal Satan.” By their logic, Satan is an abstraction, or, as Nancy Kaffer wrote for The Daily Beastlast year, “a literary figure, not a deity - he stands for rationality, for skepticism, for speaking truth to power, even at great personal cost.”Ĭall it Libertarian Gothic, maybe - some darker permutation of Ayn Rand’s crusade for free will. The Satanic Temple holds to the basic premise that undue suffering is bad, and that which reduces suffering is good. Asked whether her group is a religious organization (or rather an anti-religious organization) she explains that it’s less of a church and more of an affinity group, built around what she repeatedly refers to as “Satanic principles.” It’s not the dogma you might expect. ![]()
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