Oct 11, 2019

Inside The Satanic Temple's Salem headquarters

SALEM, MA: September 27, 2019: Lucien Greaves of the Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts. (Staff photo By Nicolaus Czarnecki/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)
OLIVIA VANNI
Boston Herald
October 10, 2019

The Satanic Temple that has made headlines nationwide for its highly confrontational political displays calls Salem home. The Track went behind the scenes to get a glimpse at the group’s local headquarters and see what life’s like for the Satanists next door.

“When we first got here, I was concerned about revealing our presence, that there might be an angry mob with pitchforks and torches,” co-founder Lucien Greaves told the Track of the house on Bridge Street. “But we did an open house and invited neighbors to come and sit down and chat with us. We answered any of their questions, in case they were concerned.”

Amid the witchy hoopla of downtown Salem, the international headquarters occupies an antique home that — save for a facade of pitch-black clapboard — looks unassuming. On the front porch hangs a wreath of kindling in the shape of a goat head. Inside, it’s every goth teen’s Victorian dream home. A grand yet chilling staircase stands in the entryway, off of which branch rich rooms decorated with elegantly creepy touches like heavy, dark carved woodwork, velvet damask wallpaper and glass display cases filled with twisted artifacts.

Unlike any fixer-upper you might see on HGTV, the temple’s notorious Baphomet statue dominates the main sitting room. Unsurprisingly, the house once served as a funeral home.

Besides providing office space for The Satanic Temple, the building doubles as an art gallery and often opens its doors for intellectual events, including scholarly presentations from professors and film screenings. The Satanists throw dinner parties catered by Adam Dodge, aka the Satanic Chef, hold candle-making classes, and have lively discourse over tea. Yes, tea.

As a tax-exempt church — a federal designation it received in April — they do host weekly, nontheistic, nonsupernatural services at the Temple.

“Pretty much in line with our anti-authoritarian values, the services themselves are usually more like guided open discussions with people,” Greaves explained.

Also to be expected, the activist said the property has “an excess of security,” a precaution they took when they moved there in 2015 given the nature of their avocation. As seen in the recent Penny Lane documentary about the org, “Hail Satan?” — the locally based Satanists previously garnered a crowd of opposition in the Bay State in 2014, when Catholics and the Archdiocese of Boston protested their attempt to hold a Black Mass at Harvard University, Greaves’ alma mater. The group, which asserts it doesn’t worship the devil but rather revere Satan as a metaphor for humanistic values and the ultimate rebel against tyranny, has also ruffled feathers nationally with its bold, sometimes vulgar political demonstrations on issues like separation of church and state, religious pluralism and reproductive rights.

“So far, only one guy ever came with a sharpened screwdriver wanting to stab me,” Greaves said, later showing us a recent death threat from Arkansas, where the Satanists are still suing to have their Baphomet placed next to the Ten Commandments statue in front of the State Capitol.

“The only other time we really ever had anything worth mentioning was a group of ladies — from I assume some church — walking around the house, chanting, throwing holy oil on it,” he added chuckling. “If it had been holy water, that would have been fine. But oil stained the siding. We’ve painted it since, but it was like, ‘Why oil? Why oil?’ ”

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/10/10/inside-the-satanic-temples-salem-headquarters/

No comments: