The Satanic Temple uses people—uses them up and discards them (or worse).

If you think you’re different, look at what happened to those who came before.

TST will use any weakness you give them and hurt you with it later: your housing, mental health, even the death of your pet.

Some of you may even remember this Vice article from a few years back:

Ash Astaroth was then the director of the Temple’s headquarters in Salem, and he was still assistant chapter head of the NYC chapter he had helped found.

So in 2016, The Satanic Temple found Astaroth useful for public propaganda, as in that Vice article, even though it wasn’t necessarily representative of the organization as a whole. How could it be given who started TST (and who still owned it)?

Satanic Trump-supporter Brian Werner’s sign speaks for itself, but Werner also believed abortion was “killing a child”. Werner apparently found the death of Trayvon Martin very funny, or at least wanted to be edgy selling clothing about it.

TST owner Doug Misicko a.k.a. “Lucien Greaves” a.k.a. “Doug Mesner” reaching out to Shane Bugbee also says plenty, and we’ve covered that relationship elsewhere. Short version: “One drop of Jew blood means you ain’t breakin’ bread with me, motherfucker” is something Bugbee once said in the middle of a 24-hour stream with Misicko.

But Zach Black may be less familiar to most.

From The Village Voice in 2014:

Zach Black is a 38-year-old sushi chef in Northern California and a longtime Satanist. He started the Satanic International Network, the largest — though not the only — social media site for Satanists. He was a card-carrying member of the Church of Satan for nearly a decade, from 1994 to 2002. For the first few years after he joined, Anton LaVey was still alive. That made all the difference, Black says, and the church was much more “proactive.”

Black is one of a group of disaffected ex-Church of Satan members who believe Gilmore was never supposed to become the church’s next leader. LaVey wanted to pass the torch to a man named Boyd Rice, an artist and writer who was a close friend, Black says. “But he turned it down. He didn’t want to do it. I’m not sure why.”
…
Rice, meanwhile, went in a different direction. For nearly two decades, he was part of Death in June, a British neo-folk band that anti-racist groups have accused of supporting white nationalism. Rice has repeatedly denied being a racist or a Nazi sympathizer, a claim that was not bolstered in 2008, when an old video surfaced of him on a public-access TV show, describing Death in June as a proud “racialist” band.

In other words, Zach Black thought it was a shame this guy didn’t take over Church of Satan, and therefore Black joined The Satanic Temple to get it going.

Proactive.

So, back to that Vice article, the message was “We’re not like those other Satanists”, the Church of Satan, sure, but also Brian Werner, Shane Bugbee, and Zach Black who got TST off the ground in 2013-2014.

This distinction, which also involved throwing those men under the bus and pretending they weren’t relevant, was made explicit in that interview with Astaroth.

In 2014, as [Astaroth] prepared for a life explaining away his Lucifer tattoos with a spiel about liking the literary archetype, he discovered the Satanic Temple, an unrelated though similarly-named group. It was actually an anti-Satanic Temple rant that drew him to the organization, posted to YouTube by Brian Werner, a former death metal vocalist in the band Vital Remains. “It’s become a very liberal, compassionate, borderline hippie-like outlook on politics and societal issues,” said Werner. “If this guy is leaving the Satanic Temple for those reasons,” Astaroth recalls thinking. “That’s exactly where I need to be.”

Those who were there during this era would remember Ash Astaroth because he was central to The Satanic Temple’s operations, first in New York City, then in the headquarters in Salem as an employee of 64 Bridge LLC, or the “Salem Art Gallery“.

In this capacity, Ash comes up in the Belle Plaine lawsuit depositions:

The Satanic Temple’s owners “helped” Ash Astaroth by letting him move into Salem Art Gallery / TST’s physical headquarters.

This sounds kind, but remember, they weren’t just letting him stay as a friend: they worked him. They really worked him.

Read those depositions and email evidence from 2017, or just run a find for “Astaroth” to count how many times he’s involved in a national campaign over TST’s veterans’ memorial. It is extensive.

Ash’s housing was directly controlled by his employer.

When you are an organization that targets vulnerable populations for “help” and “opportunities” but you control their continued access to resources, no amount of smiles or love bombing or kind words will ever change the inherent threat of what’s going on. Look no further than how this level of control can go to extremely dark places than recent events with the Black Hammer cult in Atlanta.

That’s the context of the article that Ash Astaroth, former director of The Satanic Temple’s headquarters in Salem, wrote after being “excommunicated” from The Satanic Temple in 2018, coinciding with the “Great Schism” where many chapters left the national Temple org over TST’s owners’ priorities and histories coming to light.

We’re going to reproduce Astaroth’s article largely without commentary but with some content warnings where relevant. Then, at the end, we’ll say a little more.

But as a general warning, watch out for self-harm and suicide references, mental illness, abuse, and pet death.

The Satanic Temple is a business cult of alt-lite asshole trolls. Unfollow.

by ashastaroth
November 20, 2018

I haven’t blogged in a while and I thought I’d give everyone an update.

A lot of folks have found me recently to ask me questions about TST and my excommunication from them after their recent Sabrina settlement and resurfaced antisemitic rant of Luciens from an old podcast. Folks are beginning to see the trends and connections identifying them as a business cult, like Scientology, that I was raising the alarm about when I was excommunicated and when they tried to scrub my history from TST.

To update people who may have missed my Facebook posts, each of which garnered me retribution from members and leadership in TST, both online and in person, here is a list of events that have happened to me over the last year after they tricked me into leaving the premises under the guise of “building codes” prohibiting it from being a business and a residence (tho my replacement lives there now).

They shuffled me through NYC chapter member care after convincing me to go back to NYC and work with my chapter. Help that was suspiciously conditional once I got to NYC and which evaporated immediately after my excommunication, leaving me on the streets in a city I hadn’t wanted to go back to in the first place.

Meanwhile, Cara Jeanne (also uses Maris Apis and Em Epiza alts) who was the girlfriend Lucien kept in the shadows in order to make it easier for him to cheat on her with every girl who came on to him, who had been a close personal “friend” to me and had collected a lot of personal information about me was doxing my information in private TST related group forums, encouraging people to stalk and harrass me. She released my dead name and every psuedo I used online along with every city I’ve lived in and my estranged husbands identity as well (who had nothing to do with TST, but whom she was always trying to convince me was abusing me and whom TST leadership often expressed frustration that I wouldn’t cut out of my life entirely). Both Cara and Lucien kept me in the stressful situation of being their unpaid couples therapist and tool to try and spy on each other with. They are both manipulative narcissists who don’t understand boundaries or consent and therefore deserve each other.

They officially excommunicated me for being Facebook friends with a critic of theirs. Demanding that I unfriend her and cease communicating with her or lose all member status. I refused, naturally, cause Non Serviam motherfuckers.

Chalice, National Council member and alt right pleasure model, encouraged members to report my profile as a “fake” one under the thin pretence that I was a “hacker” for taking over Facebook pages for protest that were related to TST that I owned and operated.

Greg Stevens, national council member, Breitbart contributor, and self identified friend of Milo Yiannopoulos told people I was trying to destroy the organization and that everyone on his friend list had to immediately unfriend and stop communicating with me or he would block them.

Memes mocking my art using stills from porn sites of videos my husband and I had made years prior to my TST involvement started surfacing everywhere. Lucien has always had a team of trolls, including Adam “Dodge” Ostrofski and Ragnar Santorum who help him stalk and troll people online so that he doesn’t get his hands too obviously dirty.

**content warning: pet death**
[Note: You may want to skip the next section if you’re not in a great place for this detail]

My cat died in the care one of the TST NYC members, my cat was elderly and I had expressed my concern over the possibility of my transience killing her before leaving for NYC. When she died pictures were posted of her in a Tupperware container online, along with cruel TST NYC member banter in comments about what a shitty person I was for abandoning her when I had to head back to Salem because I was sleeping in train stations in NYC. I have no doubt I was meant to see that and then…

**content warning: sui, self-harm, and mental illness**
[Note: from here on, there will be references to a lot of mental illness and abuse tactics]

That same day, Draco, who had been keeping my stuff in his name in a Uhaul facility in Brooklyn, made a public post that I needed to start paying him for that facility or he would leave my stuff out on the street. He made the post sound like he had been manipulated by me into a freeloading situation where he was being taken advantage of. He refused reimbursement from my mother when she contacted him to take over the unit. He also refused to cooperate in any but the most minimal ways in getting the unit switched over to her name. Almost as if they were disappointed that they couldn’t just dump my stuff on the street within 24 hours.

Hofman, the other NYC chapter head, who i had been staying with, had been updating Doug on my private conversations and doings while I was in NYC. This is where they got a lot of ammo to gaslight me to membership as being “unstable”. They used my suicidal ideation, of which I have always been open about having regularly since adolescence, as further means to encourage concern trolling and then dismissal of me as “not wanting help to get better”. They were essentially trying to make my PTSD worse while keeping it all looking good “on paper”.

They threatened me with “legal action” for the Facebook pages I took in protest to their members continued harassment. I posted a rather amusing video of a friend in a devil mask reading their bloated bluff of an email from one of their alt right local lawyers. They were claiming I had lost them $50,k in funds with my shenanigans. Which was absurd, but I kind of wish was true. I hope I did cost them fundraising.

Lucien came to my new job on a day I was off and that I happened to have just been visiting and publicly harrassed me in front of my coworkers and then attempted to “warn” them about associating with me because “legal papers” were going to be “served”. Effectively trying to keep me from having employment in Salem. I repeatedly told him I was not interested in speaking with him. He kept trying to get me to leave with him and talk privately. The more I refused the more agitated and aggressive he became. My coworkers confirmed that he had been in the shop earlier before I got there and seemed to be waiting nearby for me to show up. Nothing he has to say requires an in person visit. This was to intimidate and affect my employment.

In September I was out alone watching Netflix on my tablet in downtown Salem when Lucien and Adam “Dodge” approached me. Lucien was aggressive before I even got my headphones out of my ear. I again told him that I was not interested in speaking with him. He began making fun of my autism and demanding to know “what the fuck is going on in that goddamned head” and gaslighting me. I asked him repeatedly to leave me alone and he kept insulting me. I took out my phone to video/photo him, or at least get him to leave, and he snatched it from me and threw it. It smashed against a store front and when I got up to get the remains of it he ran ahead of me and stole it, running off.

I waved down police, who were extremely unhelpful and bothered, and said they’d go talk to him and to come pick up a report Monday. The report I picked up that Monday said that they had talked to Lucien and he denied touching the phone at all, which they had clearly taken for convenient truth on the report as they had written that he said I was an “angry homeless ex employee ” or something. Lucien and Malcolm were there when I went to get the report picking up their copies. Lucien harassed me right in the police station. Then we both ended up in court that day trying to get harrassment orders. They were literally trying to get a harrassment order against me for my Facebook posts (just stop and consider that for a moment from Mr. Free Speech Satanist…), I was reporting actual physical stalking and assault/robbery. The judge denied us both, likely partially because of the spectacle they made it into…go figure. Lucien also harrassed me while we waited for court to begin that day, right in the court room, turning around to wave, point, and sneer at me. He gaslit me in court and brought up my mental health, telling the judge that I was mentally ill and deliberately misrepresenting everything I have ever written about or expressed concerning my neuro diversity. He also brought up my autism again tho it wasn’t at all relevant, telling the judge that I was mentally ill and self diagnosed. Again, gaslighting tactics.

I tried through multiple visits and calls to get the Salem PD to look for security footage of that area. Salem has security cameras everywhere. They kept running me around and then just dismissed me without ever even trying to look for footage. Everytime I came back to the station when the police officer I needed was supposed to be there, he would be mysteriously out that day/night after all.

Jobs I would be close to kept mysteriously falling apart in Salem…

They were eventually instrumental if not completely responsible for getting my Ash Astaroth page taken down. Again, suspiciously on a day when I was being suddenly asked to leave the place I was staying and slept in graveyard, with frost on my pillow and sleeping bag in the morning, on Oct 30th. I suspect they were singularly obsessed with that because it made their job of erasing me from their culture easier as all of the content I’d posted for/about them, including saved screenshots I had in private folders, easier.

And all they had to do to accomplish this was barely gaslight and shit talk me to their membership in private forums, and let them do all of the work.

This is all point by point, classic cult behavior. Just like in scientology.

I am safe, out of MA and have shelter and food for the winter. I am focusing on my art and the books and projects I’d like to get going. I still have my Jerek Blackwood Facebook profile and an Ash Astaroth page along with The Process Temple one for the time being (until they target that too) and honestly I’m making this post so I just have most of the main points of my years long cult experience with TST in one place when people ask. Thank you to those of you who didn’t fall for their ironic(?) demonizing of me, and for the rest of you still stalking me on their behalf…

You’ll get yours too. Reap what you sow.

End of article.

Just to pre-empt some things, yeah, it is quite fair to doubt that anyone is being wholly accurate when they are describing themselves as the protagonist of their own struggle. It’s healthy to have some level of skepticism for anyone. The writer of that is not mentally well; it’s also not like you can’t still be an asshole in a situation even if you have disabilities. Let us grant all of these things.

However, there will be members of The Satanic Temple who will use Ash Astaroth’s mental health to dismiss everything that he said as untrue.

If you are a member of The Satanic Temple and your mental health is not perfect, please consider what this means for you if you should try to tell others about something a “sane” person did to you, especially one with power over you.

We do know that Astaroth attempted to do what he said and incorporate the Salem police; we were able to confirm that, and see how Misicko tried to do the same in return.

But also, after ten years of this, The Satanic Temple and its owners have had many people criticize them, including people who absolutely hate each other and could not possibly be colluding with one another.

Ash Astaroth and Brian “Hail Satan / Hail Trump” Werner agree on almost nothing, but they came to similar conclusions on TST.

"You've embraced me and called me brother. You couldn't even pick up a telephone and talk to me? You had to hide behind the lawyers? What is this Scientology?"
—The Satanic Temple's first "high priest" Brian Werner, December 2014https://t.co/XkGJDOdD6d

— QueerSatanic is on hiatus (@QueerSatanic) December 25, 2021

Indeed, when Ash Astaroth talks about excommunication from The Satanic Temple and losing a friend network over it, it sounds a lot like the person talking about fallout from reporting a sexual assault by the Austin chapter leader in 2020.

Intimidation, harassment, even weaponized porn.

1/31/21
I’m not sure I’ll ever be over the act of people I thought were my friends and community in a new area, abandoning me after coming forward about being sexually assaulted by a leader in a mutual community. They encouraged me to go to the police and then banned me when I did and told me I should just move on.People in other TST locations keep telling me “oh, that’s just Austin chapter” when it’s brought up, but it’s not. It involved the entire international council, of which includes a member that is a sex worker whom didn’t stand up for me OR other people in a separate instance attacked for being engaged in consentual polyam relationships and slut shamed.

It’s not just Ash Astaroth’s word you need to rely on to see the giddy cruelty of online mobs that The Satanic Temple’s owners unleash on “enemies”.

We wrote about The Satanic Temple threatening a woman for making a TiKTok video about how TST can’t help you get an abortion. We have the receipts of the email threats from the Temple’s lawyers; we have the receipts that she was right.

TST just bullied her into recording a retraction because they have lots of money donated to them that no one cares to check on how it’s being spent, and she and her family couldn’t afford the costs of a legal defense.

Well, recently TST’s special horse boy “Lanzifer Longinus” left this on our Facebook page.

What fucking ghouls.

If you’re a member of the Temple, and you’re having fun threatening TST’s “enemies”, basking in praise each time you help an owner not get his own hands dirty publicly — remember what they did to those who came before you.~~~

When it comes to The Satanic Temple, there’s always more. Think about what happens when they’re done with you, too.

---

Update: Jan. 19, 2024

We recently got confirmation that Ash Astaroth has passed away.

While he did hurt quite a few people while he was in the leadership of The Satanic Temple, he also was treated horribly and inexcusably by the organization, and he spent the remaining years of his life trying in his flawed way to warn others of TST’s dangers.

He deserved better.