There are more than 700,000 people in America who identify as Satanists. Many of its members belong to the Satanic Temple, a real place in Massachusetts who turned the devil into the ultimate symbol of resistance. But what do Satanists actually believe in?
Is it a religion, an anti-culture movement, or maybe even a cult? I'm about to head straight into the belly of the beast, the Satanic Temple, and to get access, I'm meeting up with Sandora, who identifies as a real Satanic witch. Hi, how are you?
Good, how are you? Good to meet you. You too.
Do you mind showing me your house? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, cool.
So right now we're in the living room. Try to do like this kind of monochrome -y, burgundy and black situation. Looks wonderful.
So, Anton LaVey, to my knowledge, he is like the founder of the Satanic Church? Yeah, he is founder of the Church of Satan. It was founded in 1966 in San Francisco, California.
The Satanic Bible was published in 1969, and that is basically the book that everyone reads as becoming a baby Satanist, and it lays the ground lines for Satanism. Basically what Satanism is, self-empowerment. Yes, it's called Satan because Satan represents carnal desire.
He represents the rebel. We embrace sexuality. We embrace sensuality.
We also embrace humanism. We have empathy. We're very sensitive people, but also if you smite me on one cheek, I'll smash you on the other.
I think that the word Satan scares people. When we say, Hail Satan, we say, Hail thyself. Hail Satan!
Hail Satan! Xandor. That's Anton's middle name.
Is that where you get your name from? When I started doing fetish modeling, I had to come up with a pseudonym, so I came up with Xandora. What's your relationship to him?
I was married to his grandson, Stanton, but I was a Satanist and Xandora before I met his grandson. Interesting. This is my bedroom.
Welcome. I bid you welcome. So this is my broom.
This is really special to me. My friend, my best friend, Christine. Hi, Christine.
She makes these with her witch co-op. It's symbolic to me. It's like from nature.
It's made from a witch for a witch. I think that's special. Too delicate to fly.
Right. And then out the window, my front yard is a graveyard. The little old lady that is my landlord was like, you know, I do have to be honest.
You know, there's a graveyard up front in the front yard and it's been turning some people off. And I was like on the phone going. I've always loved cemeteries.
Everywhere I go, I will always visit a cemetery. I don't know, it's just kind of relaxing. I like to look at people's last names, look at the stories on their tombstones, kind of celebrate who they were, even though I didn't know them.
I've tried to look some of these people up, but I haven't had any luck. I do research people in graveyards and tombstones all the time. You told me you haven't cursed someone in a long time.
And the thought of you cursing someone was really interesting to me. How do you curse people? And I would not want to be the person.
Sometimes curses can be in the form of rituals, but sometimes it can be a form of just manifesting. I like to call it manifestering, but I also do compassion rituals. I do those most of the time.
That's nice. Yeah. What does that look like?
A lot of people are familiar with Christianity, right? If you're a Christian and you pray for someone and you know, you put in that energy towards them and they get better, you're like, oh, yay, Jesus. Same kind of thing.
You know, I'm doing my compassion ritual. What is my intent? What kind of energy do I want to bring to that person?
What kind of wealth do I want to bring to them? And I put that out into the atmosphere. I put that in my energy towards them.
It's been very interesting to learn about Sandor and her beliefs, but now she's going to take me to downtown Beverly to teach me more about the history of witchcraft in Massachusetts. Has anybody ever asked you to put them in touch with the devil? All the time online.
I can't do that. You know, like that's not the brand of Satanism that I'm peddling, you know? There's a church right here.
There's a church right there. There's a church right there. We are in a land of churches.
We are. All these churches around us, like, they believe that the devil is like sin and bad. I've had friends that didn't realize that I was a Satanist because like, it's not something I just say, hey, I'm Sandor.
I'm a Satanist, you know? And they have found out eventually and just not been my friend. Right.
And it's like, well, I'm a good person. Why would he be my friend just because of what I believe in? You believed in Christianity and I was fine with it, but that's life.
You know, maybe they're not my friend anyway. Oh, I love this. And I love how they have the stories.
Here lies the body of Reverend and Joel Hale. This is John Hill. This is the guy that was the witch trial guy.
We just randomly. No way. Yes.
That is crazy that we just, I haven't seen this yet and I've been wanting to come here. We just randomly pulled up to a random graveyard and we found. Wow.
Yeah. His wife was accused of witchcraft. He persecuted the witches and he was the one that retracted his statement saying this was hysteria.
We shouldn't have believed these kids. This is wrong. But only when this happened to him.
That's bizarre. Isn't that a crazy story? That's the first grave we went to.
I was like, look at this. There's like a hundred gravestones here. Wow.
Back in 1692 in colonial Massachusetts, hundreds of women were accused of being witches. Neighbors turned on each other. Fear spread like wildfire.
And by the end, 20 people were hanged, crushed or left to die in prison. It remains one of the most infamous moral panics in American history. To learn more, we're meeting up with one of Sendora's friends, a Satanist named Adam.
Tabitha, the woman that was brought here by the owner of this house. And you know, the two kids had accused her of being a witch. This is where it all started.
You're a satanic witch. What are the other kinds of witches? There are thousands of different types of witches.
There are white witches, gray magic, black magic, right? Those are your three kind of basis of magic. And like anyone can claim themselves as a satanic witch.
Like how do you? I think anybody can say that they're a witch, right? I've put in the work to be a witch, first of all, you know, I feel like I was born a witch.
I will die a witch. At 13, I started reading about like occultism and things like that and started doing little rituals and building that. And throughout my lifetime, you know, I use practical magic on a daily basis.
I use manifestation for everything in my life. How do you feel in here? I feel really great.
It feels really powerful hearing what Xandora has just said, because she's accurate right on the point about witchcraft and satanism is that it's really what works for you and how it works to help other people in the process. Satanism isn't about murdering things, hurting people. I'm going to cut you off.
It's a misconception that people think it's all about death and drinking blood and killing people. That's what people think. That's what Hollywood does.
And you must struggle if you go somewhere random and you're alone and you're trying to explain it to someone. It is. They were almost always like, you're joking.
Like I see media likes to play this part where it's a theatrical thing where, oh, there's devil worshippers. Let's go follow that and let's hype it up. So it looks like they're terrible people that are going to do this, but they're really behind something that is so positive and has nothing to do.
What is the core belief? Is it almost like anti-society belief? Is it anti-religion?
Like what? Satanism is a para-religion, which means it's an alternative to religion. There's like a lifestyle satanist, right, that believes in the core basis of satanism.
A lot of people call it a religion because it's the church of Satan, the satanic temple. So it's been there for me every day of my life. So to me, I would consider it that way.
Like in Judaism, we light the candles for Shabbat. Is there something like that in Satanism? Oh, we have rituals for sure.
We have three major types of rituals in Lilvean Satanism. Lust, compassion, and destruction. You'll see these like very theatrical themes, but the reason that they're theatrical is because for a curse or a compassion ritual to work, everybody has to be on the same energy level.
And adding that part of theatricalness to it makes the energy of that ritual higher. It makes it stronger. Yes, you can do a ritual without lighting a candle, and that's more of a manifestation, right?
Before coming to Massachusetts, I had no idea what satanism was about. But with Sandor as my guide, I now understand that most satanists are atheists, which means they don't believe in anything supernatural. They're more like artists or activists than they are devil worshipers.
I can't wait to meet real believers at the satanic temple, but first we can't leave without visiting the famous graveyard. Hey guys, just want to take a quick second to thank the sponsor of this video, Opus Clip. Since I'm always traveling around the world, staying consistent with posting is really tough, and that's exactly why I use Opus Clip.
It's an AI video editing tool that transforms my long videos into short clips so I can keep posting no matter where I am. If you're a creator or a business owner, you know how much time it takes to edit long form videos into short form content. Opus Clip does it instantly.
It automatically repurposes my YouTube videos into clips that are ready for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. And with their brand new automation features, Opus Clip can pull in my latest uploads, auto -edit them, and soon I'll even be able to schedule everything in advance so my content keeps going live while I'm on the road. This is such a game changer for keeping content coming consistently.
What I love most is how smart the AI is. It finds the best hooks, adds captions, reframes the video perfectly for each platform, and it still gives me full control if I want to adjust things. They've also just rolled out a brand new editing experience with faster performance, new caption styles, smarter search, and trending clip suggestions.
So if you're looking to grow faster or just want to reach more people without spending hours of editing, Opus Clip is the tool you need. Just click the link down below or scan the QR code on screen, and don't forget to use my code Binsky to get one free week plus 50% off for three months. All right, now let's head back to Massachusetts to meet more Satanists.
So this, where we're taking you right now, is the most haunted cemetery in Salem. Really? Yes, this is where Mr Giles was a victim of the Salem witchcraft hysteria, was crushed to death.
So when you say haunted, like do you think it's haunted? Like do you feel something different in there? Well, this is what people say because back then, you know, they crushed him to death.
15% of the people that are buried here were crushed to death. So, you know, a lot of people, myself included, are very scared of death and we don't like to think about it. What does death mean to you?
In Satanism, the reason we celebrate ourselves is because this is the only life you got. When you die, you're dead. There's no heaven, glory, bright, and no hell where sinners roast, right?
Basically, make the best of your life. If you're going to be an asshole, apologize. Be a hedonist with responsibility.
What does hedonist mean? If you want to have sexual freedom, if you want to party on the weekends, you want to be a weekend warrior, you go do that. But get to your actual life too, right?
You're personally not scared of death. You embrace death. I've had a lot of my friends die.
My ex-husband's dead. So, you know, it took me a while to process all these deaths because they happened all so suddenly. Right.
And that's it for me, you know? Like, I'll never see those people again. To me, that is the last that I'll ever hear from those people.
Right. And that's, I think, what makes me the saddest. Yeah, that is sad.
Because life is for the living. Depends on what you believe in, where you're going to go, but I think that we go in the ground or we get spread into the air or into the sea. So, satanists in general don't believe in heaven or hell.
Absolutely not. We don't believe in Satan. Satan is a metaphor.
So, why is it called satanism? It's confusing. It really is, right?
It's a double-edged sword. Satan represents personal freedom. That's what you believe in?
Yes. People say, oh, it's a religion or it's a philosophy. You could say it's a little bit of both.
But what satanism gives you is that freedom to be yourself. Like, yes, there's some guidelines to satanism, but you can be you. I don't believe in the actual devil at all.
I've been actually close to death many times where I've had 30 intubated surgeries, several scars. 30? Wow.
Yeah, my whole leg is completely just messed up. Really? Yeah, I mean.
Damn, sorry to hear that. It's just, I mean, I had my entire leg taken out. I was hit by a car when I was 20 years old.
I mean, I had three, four rods put in because one of them snapped. Sorry to hear that. And he's stronger than anyone I've ever met.
I could have gone to Christianity at that time, but I decided to stay with, no, you are, with satanism. Wow. I mean, I would have never known.
You're walking fine. Yeah. People coming over trying to preach to me in the hospital, tell me that, you know, God really was on your side.
That's why you survived this accident. And you're thinking like, no. I'm like, um, how do I get the f*** out of here?
Science saved you. Science saved you. Do you say to them, like, you just keep it in your head, like about God?
You're just like, eh. I listen to them and I listen to why they believe in God and why it helps them guide themselves through personal problems. The devil, satan, like you go to hell.
You guys don't believe in that. So what's this, what's going on here? I think hell is on earth.
Like hell is what you make of it, right? Like if you're having a shitty time, I consider that to be hell. Yeah.
If you're here and you're having a great time, that's your heaven, right? We're in downtown Salem and it's really cool. I really feel like I'm in Boston because of the brick buildings and every sign I'm seeing is literally witch.
Magic. Magic. Haunted.
When she told you she's a satanic witch, like you said, I love that. There's a huge misconception about satanists and the satanic temple and what they have to offer. And I think satanists and people that care about the satanic temple and support it just care about supporting other people.
Honestly, my wife and I, we moved here like two years ago and immediately noticed a huge community shift here. There's a huge sense of community, a big sense of care for one another. Everyone talks to each other.
Everyone's really welcoming. And that was one of the very first, I mean, you noticed that at Absolutely. Yeah.
I want you to meet my friend. Hi, I'm seeing Dora. You may panic, which why do you love that?
I was born here and I love, I love everything. Really? It's so cool.
How about y'all? How y'all feel about I believe like strongly with, you know, witchcraft and like the crystals and like the tarot. I grew up like that with my mom and stuff.
I have a natural witch vibe. Thank you so much. Is your family supportive of you and your beliefs?
They have never said shit to me about my beliefs. They're really cool with it. I don't have a very good relationship with my mom, but when I did, she was very supportive.
And I talked to my dad sometimes. I'll tell him about it, but he might not see it. He has gotten the brunt of being my father and me being an erotica model.
One time I was in playboy. You were? Now my dad doesn't order playboys ever again.
Because he saw you? Yeah. Do you enjoy performing on stage?
I love performing. That's my ritual. Like that is the ultimate ritual.
That's what gets you going. As soon as I step on the stage and I see the lights come on and the curtain spread, I go to a different place. What do you think about blood sucking?
I don't suck people's blood. That sounds really dangerous. But if you're into it, hey, and the other person is consenting, I don't have a problem with it.
As long as there's consent, you can do whatever the hell you want. If you agree to something that's consensual. Agreed.
I agree to that. Consensual is sexy. Consent is sexy.
Consent is very sexy. Amen. Behind me is the satanic temple.
And what's kind of crazy is it's located inside of a neighborhood. There's literally houses like everywhere around us. What is it like to live next to the satanic temple?
The good neighbors. They don't bring any issues to our area. It's the fanatics that come and are disruptive.
But they've been fantastic neighbors. They're not satanists. That's the thing.
Tell me more. They're not satanists. They believe in equality for everyone.
They do. Equal ground for everyone. So who's the satanist?
No one. The bottom line is the satanic temple is named as such to be shocking, to get the known, to make people react. They're all about rights for all.
And you know, whenever some state wants to put the 10 commandments in school, the satanic temple is right there going, wait a minute, no, no, we're all the same. That means you have to put a false memet. You're right.
Statue. So you think it's all kind of for show? I think it is.
The name, the name, not the movement. I think they're very sincere about having equal freedoms and religions throughout the country. But yeah, the name, it's shock value.
Some of the people who want to look at it as something different in other parts of the country. It's unfortunate. It's something easy to latch onto.
It is. It's an easy thing as an outsider. Like it's interesting.
Why do we watch scary movies? Why do we watch serial killers? Exactly.
It's refreshing to meet the normal residents of Salem and see what they think of satanism. But now's the moment I've been waiting for. We are about to step inside the actual satanic temple.
It's strictly forbidden to take photos or videos here. So we're lucky that Sendora got us permission. Here we are with modern satanism with the satanic temple.
Want to come on in? Let's go inside. Let's go.
They have seasonal artists come here and they curate these beautiful art pieces. And then you have sigil work, right? So like sigil work is really important to ritualist satanists.
And some people have their own sigils. Some people go off of sigils like the Baphomet. So basically this sigil that I have is called the satanic power symbol.
And it was Anton LaVey's personal symbol. So it's a inverted star with a lightning bolt in it. And that lightning bolt like goes downwards because it grounds you as a satanist.
They all mean something different to everyone. So yeah. Wait, so is this more of an art museum or a temple?
Right now it's the daytime. So they got to make money, honey. When they turn the lights down, that's when the magic happens.
And speaking of the magic. This is the Baphomet right here, designed by Martin Porter in Florida of all places. We have some people that had donated, if you come look on the back in the secret spot that nobody looks at.
So basically the Baphomet originally was created by a occultist called Eliaphus Levy. He was the first person to draw the Baphomet, not with his little children. That's added on by the satanic temple.
But Baphomet was basically trans, right? It had this male body of a goat, but he also has boobies. Yeah.
And this one doesn't have boobies. No. To me the Baphomet represents a lot of different things.
It represents to me like the duality of just being a human, right? Like especially nowadays, everyone's sexuality and like preferences on blast. Like I think that all of us have some feminine and male divine energy within us.
And I think the Baphomet represents that. How does one become a satanist? Satanists are born not made.
When I first read the satanic bible at 13, it made sense to me. And then when I read the satanic witch, it really started to make sense to me because I never read an occult book that was written for women. That really solidified me as being a satanic witch.
It taught me how to use my attributes and my sexuality and my sensuality. And even if people think I'm dumb, let them think you're dumb because you can use it to your advantage. It's crazy to me how publicly the satanic church operates in this day and age.
Because back in the 80s and 90s, a wave of fear called the satanic panic swept across America. Warning signs of satanic behavior may be apparent. People believed there were secret cults abusing kids, performing rituals, and hiding in plain sight.
Smurfs carry a homosexual connotation in that most of them are male. I believe so. None of it was ever proven, but that didn't stop the media, the courts, and the churches from turning it into a full-blown hysteria, not unlike the witch trials or communist Red Scare.
So what happened to Anton LaVey during this time is basically they almost destroyed the church of Satan. And it's really important that we take a moment to focus on this because this place wouldn't be here if he didn't fight for satanism during that time. Do you think there'll be another satanic panic?
I hope not in my lifetime, but if it is, honey, I'm coming. I'm gonna come for you. Find me.
Fight me. I love that. The satanic temple uses art as well to make a political statement, right?
It's not about you. There's not a satanist that you've met in your life probably or even a trans person or someone that thinks differently that's done something bad to you. You know, I'm not here to do anything bad to anyone.
I'm actually doing very good positive things in the world, and I don't judge you, so please don't judge me, and we can all get along. So that's how I kind of feel about it. And hail Satan.
When satanism was created in the 60s, you have to think of the climate that 1966 in San Francisco was free. Sexuality is a part of our rituals. Sexual freedom, you know, like if someone comes up to me and they're a sex worker, cool.
I don't have any, you know, beef with that. Like whatever sexual empowerment makes you great as long as you're not going behind somebody's back and f***ing their husband or something. You know, let's not do that.
That's not cool. I'm probably not going to judge you, but I take sexualism from satanism, and I definitely use it as a ritual on stage as a burlesque dancer. One of my most famous acts is me as a stripping double.
When I was in high school, I ended up getting arrested for something that I did in school because I was gothic and I had serial killers A to Z in my book bag and the satanic bible and some Marilyn Manson lyrics. I became a victim of the satanic panic. They shipped me to a mental institution for three months trying to whitewash me of satanism.
We'll see how that worked, right? When I got on probation, a part of my probation was that I had to have normal hair color and I couldn't wear any black. Yes, they can actually do that there.
And the day that my probation was over, I dyed my hair black. I was wearing like vinyl to school. And then the officer that arrested me somehow ended up coming to my school and saying, Hey, can I talk to you for a second?
And said, Oh, I'm concerned about you. They told me, they called me and told me that you went back to yourself today. And I was like, yeah, myself.
And he basically sat me down and took a Polaroid photos of me for his book on cults that he was going to write. And from that day forward, I never went to high school again because my mom came and signed me out and I got my GED and I left school because of the way that I was treated. It makes you stronger.
It does. If that didn't change me, nothing will, sweetheart. So the word cult gets thrown around a lot, not only with satanism, with everything.
Everything's a cult. Everything's a cult. The word occult scares people.
And I think the word cult has been overused so much also by the media. Occult is a group of people that believe in, have esoteric beliefs of one thing or another. It doesn't have to be one specific thing.
Occult is just a umbrella statement, right? Occult. It didn't come from Manson, but Manson made it popular in modern times.
So when you look at me, do you think of Charles Manson? No. Thank you.
You're not a serial killer. So I'm not a cult member, even though people think I am. If I was in the Manson family, then I would be a cult member.
Does that make sense to y'all? It makes sense to me. Cool.
Whether you see it as trolling or a form of protest, satanism today is less about the devil and more about the separation of church and state. From courtroom battles to community outreach, they're using shock to spark change. The people I met today in Massachusetts are thoughtful, organized, and they stand up for something bigger than themselves.
And I gotta say, it really isn't that strange after all.
