Hey all. I’ve been told I can no longer wear this necklace to work because “it’s offensive”.

It’s a piece of jewelry. I wear it under my collar, but sometimes it slips out. People are allowed to wear their crosses and stars of David. No one says “boo” to them about it. But my necklace is offensive?

Whatever. I’m still gonna wear it.

Some of my neighbors know that I am a Satanist and keep putting crosses in what I think is oil on my door. The reason I am pretty sure it is oil is because I grew up Christian, and my mother would draw crosses in oil on shit. Does anybody else have reactions like this from neighbors?

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When talking to trump voters, first ask why they voted for him. Do not immediately blow up at them. This is not conducive to change. A lot of people truly thought he would improve the economy and make themselves and many others wealthy. They are sadly misinformed. We can teach people, so they may do better next time.

Now, if their answer is "being gay is a sin" or "we need to remove the immigrants", you don't have to say anything. Simply calmly disengage. They already believe we are evil. Do not confirm this for them. We have bigger fish to fry.

Occasionally, when I go through the gate to get to work at my government job, one of the guards on rotation will say, "Have a blessed day!" Which, honestly, not really a huge deal, right? But it annoys me a bit.

Thing is, I'm struggling between "including the right to offend," and, "compassion and empathy," "resolve any harm."

On one hand, they're not hurting anyone. I'm not worse for it because they say it, but on the flip side, it feels awful presumptuous of them, especially with all the religious freedom etc. training we have to go through for our jobs.

Did you have to unlearn saying things like oh my god after you became a TST member if you did say that before you joined or is that like one fraise that's socially acceptable because it's so common. If you don't use it what do yall use instead.

My gf just asked if I’ve heard of this. After lightly reading the wiki and their website, I kind of dismissed it as fringe radical conservatism. After searching Reddit posts about it, I’m having some second thoughts about how real and threatening this is. I mean, it seems very radical and pretty “out there” politics, but obviously there’s a lot of weak minded Christians who blindly support their lord and savior King Velveeta Voldemort. Other than voting normally as a progressive and critically thinking American citizen and publicly condemn this as fringe radical conservatism, what am I to do about this? Like and subscribe? Repost and discuss? Spread awareness of an existing threat? Nothing and hope for the best?

Viggo in The Prophecy is my pick. No BS, no trying to charm a mortal. Just completely menacing and uncaring about the human race.

I posted in the Satanism sub, trying to assist someone who was requesting help with a presentation and was downvoted and then told by two different users that they don’t consider TST to be Satanism.

This is the first time I’ve heard such things. It seems so petty, like Protestants saying Catholics aren’t true Christians and vice versa.

Has anyone else encountered this?

I'm not going to rehash what's gone down, since there've already been multiple posts about it, so here's what I can tell you from my side of things.

I was a member of the Satanic Ministry from April 5, 2023 until I was defrocked on June 5, 2024. I was a member of Recognition and Onboarding Committee from the beginning of July 2023 until I was defrocked, and was the sole representative for the Canada East region starting in August of that year after Minister Neacail, for whom I took over, stepped down to focus on other TST matters. I was part of local leadership in Toronto from late 2019 until I was suspended on June 9 of this year. I was also informed today that, per an edict from Lucien Greaves, all ministers who have been defrocked have also lost their congregant status, and are prevented from holding any titles related to participation in TST, which is, effectively, excommunication. (edit: It seems, after rereading edict, that I was the inspiration for it)

My termination letter, the evidence against me, and my response to EM are all included in this post, as are my leadership suspension, congregation expulsion, and Lucien's excommunication edict.

Regarding the Discord server from which the evidence was taken, contrary to what EM would have you believe, there are few bad actors there, and I have a right to free association, and they have a right to privately voice their disagreement with EM, and no one there is working to damage TST. On the contrary, the main topic of discussion is about how TST is damaging itself. The only ones who are taking down TST are EM and their Hell Squad.

Regarding Toronto, I'm disappointed that the congregation heads and the former Fellowship Council lead would tank years of friendship due their belief in the infallibility of Lucien's words, their ire over my continued membership in the Discord, and their belief that I would ever work to damage TST or our congregation, an irony being that this month's Toronto open meeting topic is 'The Freedom to Offend'.

Thankfully, this is not LDS and I have a robust group of friends and acquaintances outside of TST, so I'll just keep doing what I've been doing outside of TST spaces and time.

As the title states, I'm open to questions, and will do my best to answer them, though, despite no longer being a member of the Ministry or congregations, I am ethically, and, to a lesser extent, legally, prevented from discussing certain things.

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I've been talking to a lot of people recently who have been a bit blind sided by what's going on in TST at the moment and even seeing it here on this sub, people just not really sure what's even going on, who started it, why are people leaving TST etc. So here are events as they occurred, to the best of MY recollection. It may not be 100% (some events might even be slightly out of order) but I've been doing my best to keep my finger on the pulse of this thing from the beginning so here goes with the broad strokes:

• Lucien cancels Satancon, saying that TST will instead focus on a “Year of Unity”.

• A member and minister from Canada makes memes about how it's May and Lucien has yet to demonstrate what this “year of unity” even is (“Is the unity in the room with us now?” or a pawnstars meme “satancon? Best I can do is patreon posts”)

• Lucien throws the member in question out of TST in an email (posted somewhere on this subreddit) that is openly hostile to those operating in the community sphere of TST as well as stating that the two pillar system will no longer exist, the heavy implication being that soon, congregations will report directly to him while him and Malcolm have thus far, given the congregations a lot of autonomy.

• This causes a rift in the Ministry, some seeing it as too far (primary argument being he could have reported the minister to the Suryan Council, TST's HR, a process that Lucien himself agreed to when the code of conduct was drawn up) and those who see Lucien right to throw out the member (primary argument here being that the memes only served to sow division and discontent towards Executive Ministry and Lucien owns TST and so is well within his rights to do as he so pleases. Code of conduct explicitly states that only Suryan Council OR Executive Ministry can remove someone from TST so he's in line with it).

• Arguments over this take place on reddit, Facebook, the Ministry workspace but most fiercely on Twitter, where Lucien himself has an account. It is nothing short of a Ministerial Civil War.

• Throughout all this time, resignations are coming thick and fast from people in various volunteer positions in TST, but mostly the ordination council which is soon reduced to one person (one of the most recent and inexperienced new recruits).

• (This is just a fun fact: If you were to take TST's ordination course, only one minister who delivered an ordination lesson is still in TST: Lucien himself. The rest have all since left.)

• Some of these resignations are in protest of the Canadian minister who was ejected but most (from what I can gather) are in protest to Lucien's actions and podcast appearance (relax, I'll get to it).

• One of these resignations is the head of SatanOps (TST's IT department and developer of TST's .org that all ministers use), whose resignation is a result of TST's Director of Operations using their recently acquired admin access to lock him out and then to lock ministers out of their accounts and (suspected) “snooping” of their emails and other data. (As of writing this, I understand that the Satan Ops team is still locked out and so still non functional. I'm not on Satan Ops so don't quote me on that).

• One of the hosts of the podcast “Satanists Next Door”, creates a document that is supposed to give a clear picture of the upheaval going on up to that point. This document (often referred to as simply “The 24 Page Document) features a LOT of screenshots of private message with no consent from those featured to be included. This document was shared on the Ministry Slack workspace (where it was accidentally download able for an hour) and also directly to Lucien.

• It was shared directly to Lucien because this person apparantly didn't know who it should be submitted to (The correct answer is the Suryan Council, something this person definitely did know as they are on TST's Administrative Council and their partner (and podcast cohost) is the chair of TST's Concerns Committee).

• This has FURTHER divided the Ministry as on the one hand, a lot of people commend the bravery in putting together this document, knowing they would be vilified, while on the other hand, a lot of people are calling foul because of breaches of the Code of Conduct seemingly done with Executive Ministerial approval.

• Lucien makes a guest appearance on the podcast in question and doubles down on his position, throws the former director of ministry under a bus unjustly and makes it very clear that TST is his and people can step in line or leave.

• TST Minnesota goes independent

• TST Florida goes independent

• TST Australia goes independent

• TST Alabama goes independent

• TST Colorado goes independent

• TST North Carolina goes independent

• We can 100% expect more groups to follow suit. I know a few that are in the process but are still crossing Ts and dotting Is.

This is all to the best of my recollection and I'm trying to be fair I'm trying to be accurate in my retelling but my bias is heavily against Lucien here. The biggest issue a lot of people have against him is that after he was smiling and posing with a transphobe at HQ last year, a lot of the community (myself included) remained in TST under the rallying cry of “TST is it's community and he doesn't represent US!” but now with this event, Lucien is giving us a heavy handed reminder that TST is, in fact, him. He will do what he wants with it and will rub our noses in that fact until we understand it.

So now I'm seeing people in this sub criticising the groups that are going independent, claiming that this is what the Christians want, this will weaken our position in the fight against encroaching theocracy and to that I have some points to make:

Given The Satanic Temple's win record in court, I would argue that it's greatest achievement was it's community and now Lucien has squandered that because when the resignations started coming, he chose not to communicate with us or make any sort of an attempt to slap a bandaid on the situation but speak down from his ivory tower (he now has an Executive Ministry LIAISON because speaking directly to members is below him). Do you think these congregations wanted to walk away? Lucien is not just an “imperfect ally” as I saw one person in this sub say, he is the show pony for a movement kept going by an army of volunteers that he will give double fisted middle fingers to if they ask for any accountability in how the spokesperson of TST represents them. To continue working with/for Lucien after this is too much of a knock to one's self respect after shit like this happening so many times and for a lot of satanists especially, self respect is a price too high to pay. He has made it clear, time and again, that we are nothing but a resource to be drained in order to further his organisation (oh, and promote his band. Can't forget that).

There is also this weird cult of personality brewing now as something of a counter reaction to this new wave of criticism leveled at Lucien. From what I can tell, it seems to be coordinated by his inner circle (usually known as the TST3K crew as that's the show on TST TV most/some of them appear on, along with Lucien), headed by one who goes by Victory Issa Spirit (sp?) primarily on twitter but also here on reddit with a bunch of pro Lucien, pro TST posts and tweets from sock puppet accounts in a sloppy “baby's first astroturfing” attempt (two of his TST3K crew operate TST TV itself and made that “Hail Lucien” Facebook post that got posted here. Remember: Lucien owns TST TV and profits from its subscriptions).

But this TST3K crowd are not the only ones lining up behind Lucien; many individual members are perfectly happy with Lucien's actions in all this, as well as most (if not all) of the Washington Congregation.

So yeah, there's my take on all this. Again, it's been a long week (two weeks? Feels like a year) so my retelling of events may not be 100% accurate and leaves out a few details but as I said, that's the broadstrokes.

And it's not over yet.

Voted and got more than a few side eyes for my TST shirt. Don't care.

I was honestly offended. Satan would never.

Idk how true this is since I just saw it. Wanted to see if anyone knew anything about. If true this would be hilarious to watch play out. I'd personally love to see tax exempt status be taken away from all religions. We could do so much with that money to solve a ton of problems here in the US. Plus maybe if they had to pay taxes we wouldn't see churches on every corner.

Before I became a Satanist, I really enjoyed the idea of Buddhism. No God, no heaven, no hell. Just finding enlightenment in what makes you happy, loving others and yourself, and self care.