You're Wrong About

Summer Book Club: "The Satan Seller" (Part 2)

July 12, 2021 Michael Hobbes & Sarah Marshall
You're Wrong About
Summer Book Club: "The Satan Seller" (Part 2)
Show Notes Transcript

We continue our journey through Mike Warnke's 1972 "memoir" about his rise through the ranks of Satan Inc.  This week, Mike gets a promotion, attends a regional conference and dabbles in some light human trafficking. Despite filling this book with his wildest imaginings, he cannot conceive of a non-patriarchal institution.

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The Satan-Seller pt2

Sarah: Yeah. He's like, “You know, I’ve never been a Satanist, but I have been a misogynist with a boring job.”

Mike: Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast that would never charge you until you're hooked. 

Sarah: Ooh, that's good because we do that. We're like Dean the Satanist.

Mike: I am Michael Hobbes.

Sarah: I am Sarah Marshall.

Mike: And if you want to support the show, we are on Patreon at patreon.com/yourewrongabout and you can also buy t-shirts or donate on PayPal or do nothing whatsoever.

Sarah: Or you can just send us good vibes because maybe you're a scary witch. 

Mike: And today is the part two – the two towers – of our deep dive into The Satan Seller or Satan's Seller.

Sarah: The Satan Seller. 

Mike: I can't get the spelling. I can't get the apostrophe situation down. 

Sarah: It's a weird title.

Mike: It's a really weird title.

Sarah: And I also realized when I was listening to episode one that I think that you think that the author of this book is Mike Wormkey, like a lowly “worm”. 

Mike: I noticed that, too. 

Sarah: And that's a reasonable mistake to make because the words sound extremely similar, but it's Warnke, like he's warning you about the Satanists. 

Mike: Not like he's a little worm for making up a book. I may or may not continue to call him that. I don't know.

Sarah: All right.

Mike: So, where are we picking up this time? 

Sarah: First of all, I would say that this is our Empire Strikes Back, actually. It is the best installment, And after this it's going to get real loopy and not as exciting. 

Mike: And he gets frozen in carbonite at the end. It's very strange. 

Sarah: This novel perfectly encapsulates a cultural moment in America, which is the post 1960s fear that really nursed the evangelical movement in America, I think. That higher education meant radicalization away from Christ and directly towards Satan. It's a great historical text. 

Mike: I do think some of the greatest literature is, like, fake memoirs. Somehow, I think that people who lie about things that happened to them are weirdly revealing of anxieties that are floating around the culture. 

Sarah: Oh yeah, of course. 

Mike: Or what kind of trauma are we now ready to recognize? 

Sarah: Yes. And also, to write a fake memoir or a hoax memoir, whether you are intentionally hoaxing your readers or also hoaxing yourself.

Mike: Yourself.

Sarah: –is to write a novel with great urgency, which is something that a lot of novelists can't muster because they’re not getting paid very much and they're all anemic. 

Mike: True. I'm still not convinced that this book isn't something that you wrote to satirize other satanic books. I need proof. 

Sarah: Can I show you the cover? Let's talk about the cover.

Mike: Oh yeah. I can't even see what it is. Is that a cauldron? 

Sarah: It is a cauldron and it's a robed figure beside it. 

Mike: Oh yeah, there it is. Yes. It’s a robed figure with his hands, like, raising the roof next to a cauldron with flames and sort of red smoke coming out of it. It's quite boring. Like, it's quite bad. 

Sarah: Oh what a feeling, to be dancing on the ceiling.

Mike: Yes. 

Sarah: It looks like an illustration of a clitoris almost. You see that? 

Mike: I am a gay man. I have no idea what a clitoris is. That also sounds like something you made up. 

Sarah: You looked at anatomy books. You know the diagrams. But imagine that it's, I don't know, the eighties and you are at the Christian bookstore and you see this book next to all the, like, Focus on the Family stuff. 

Mike: It does have a biblical font. 

Sarah: Yeah. This is a Christian font. It's so weird how there's such a defined Christian aesthetic. 

Mike: Totally. 

Sarah: Okay and then the little description on the bottom says, “A former Satanist high priest reveals the demonic forces behind the fastest growing and most deadly occult religion in the world.” They kind of backed down off it when they didn't say “fastest growing religion.” They were like, “Ahh, fastest growing occult religion.” How many are there honestly?”

Mike: Yeah. Also, “fastest growing” is always, always a warning sign. Like, from four people to eight people, you just doubled. Like, that's very fast growth. 

Sarah: Yeah. You're right. Very hard for Christianity to double at this stage honestly.

Mike: Yeah.

Sarah: So let's get the story underway. Can you catch us up? What has happened so far in Mike Warnke’s life?

Mike: Jesus Christ.

Sarah: If some reckless maniac out there wants to just join us now. 

Mike: Basically, he tells us he grew up as an orphan. His mother died and then his dad married some lady who sucks and then his dad died. So then he leaves Tennessee. He moves out to California. He gives us some Land of Contrast platitudes about the west coast and then he falls in with the wrong crowd. He starts doing drugs. He ends up at an orgy and then in-between chapters, like Arrested Development “Next time on…  Previously on…,” he tells us he discovers that they're Satanists and now he's, I guess, in this cult. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Mike: And you said that this is a middle management story so I can only imagine that this section is going to be him going to satanic business school and doing satanic case studies. 

Sarah: Honestly, yes. So, chapter four. Mike gets initiated. 

Mike: Oh yeah. They're going to flash some high beams. 

Sarah: So the anticipation is obviously killing him and then the next full moon comes around and it's time for him to go to the next satanic event. When they arrive, Mike clashes with a guy in a business suit who seems like a big wig to him: “I just saw a guy snooping around outside,’ I muttered. “He's a man, about who you call a creep.”  That’s how Dean talks. “Dean took my arm and guided me toward the interior of the barn. Dean continues, “You don't question those guys. Right now you think our group is top drawer, Daddy-O.” He didn't say ‘daddy-o’, but said everything else. But doesn't it seem like he should be saying daddy-o? 

Mike: Again, I'm not convinced that you didn't write this.

Sarah: “Right now you think our group is top drawer. You keep thinking that way and have pride in your outfit. But remember this, there could be something even bigger than us.’ He led me to where the group was scattered in small groups talking in low tones. The brothers took their places on the perimeter of the circle facing in and Dean turned to me. ‘Strip,’ he hissed.” 

Mike: Okay. I'm interested. 

Sarah: How do you picture Mike at this stage? 

Mike: Yeah. We haven't gotten any physical descriptions. 

Sarah: Well, he's got long blonde hair and he's thin because of all the speed. 

Mike: So imagining Rutger Hauer from Blade Runner, but like, not buff.

Sarah: “I've seen [Satanists] who people wouldn't believe.”

Mike: Tears in rain.

Sarah: “Sure,’ I said, clearing my throat. I untied my thin purple tie, unbuttoned and removed my orange shirt with the large blue polka dots, unbuckled my belt, and let my pants fall to the floor.”

Mike: So  he's wearing an orange shirt and a purple tie? 

Sarah: Yeah, because Mike Warnke already can't remember the sixties and things people just dressed like circus clowns.

Mike: He sounds like The Riddler

Sarah: He sounds like Pennywise. “When I was completely naked, I was told to kneel facing the altar. ‘Take this necklace,’ Dean murmured, ‘And hold it in your left hand.” It's like when you level up in Girl Scouts. “Dean extended both arms out in front of him toward the altar so that the sleeves of his robe hung down from his forearms. He pivoted to face the east and said, ‘Lord Master Satan, the high priests of this, your coven have agreed to accept a new brother into this unholy congregation and we pray for your blessing and approval.’ The other members made a chant and clapped their hands. ‘Let us have a sign that you will accept Mike to be called Judas into the brotherhood of your slaves.’

Dean closed his eyes, meditated, and time seemed to crawl.” 

I like that even in this exciting Satanist initiation ritual he's saying that time seemed to crawl. That's what makes it feel really authentic as a religion? 

Mike: He's bored. He's checking his watch. 

Sarah: The kids are playing with the hymnals looking for sexy language. 

Mike: Is the Judas thing because Christians think Judas is bad so Satanists must think he's good.  Is that what they're doing there? 

Sarah: Yeah. Because Judas betrayed Christ. “Suddenly Dean gave a loud, piercing moan. A sardonic grin consumed the lower part of his face. ‘Thank you, Lord of Darkness,’ he said almost in ecstasy, ‘for your favorable reply.’ He looked down at me. ‘Rise Judas Iscariot and prepare to dedicate your soul to our Lord Satan.’ I got to my feet. Dean wafted the hood over the fumes from the burners, then dipped his fingers in a chalice of holy water, which I later learned was water in which the priests have urinated.”

Mike: Nice. Like you said last episode, it's just a bunch of gross stuff that isn't appealing to anybody. 

Sarah: “He placed the hood on my head, then turned to the keeper of the seal and nodded whereupon the counselor handed him the black, long sleeved, inner robe. Dean performed a similar gesture and incantation and helped me put this robe on. He repeated this procedure and helped me on with the black sleeveless outer robe, which was like a floor length vest.” So, I think it's fantastic to learn that the Satanists are in fact wearing an inner and an outer robe this whole time. That's a great piece of trivia 

Mike: I was just thinking you are reading this entire thing because you are interested primarily in the robes. You want to know the robes situation.

Sarah: I just love how Mike Warnke is like, “I'm going to tell you a little bit about how these robes work.” “Dean says, ‘Now dip this Quill in the blood and sign your new name.’ He handed me the feather pen and shoved the book at me. All the names were written in blood, which had dried and darkened and looked black in the illumination in the barn except for one name, which reflected a greenish tone.”

Mike: Okay.

Sarah: “What's with the green bit?’ I whispered as I shakily began to scroll my name. If someone unlocks the book and opens it and sees one of the signatures green, he knows that guy copped out. There aren't too many. It's not healthy to cop out.” 

Mike: So if you eventually quit Satanism, your name turns green. Is that what they’re saying?

Sarah: Yes.  

Mike: Okay!

Sarah: Or if you cop out. Like, if you go to the coppers is what I assume that means and then the Satanists are like, “She’s it! It's the bulls!” So he's given a necklace that has a scorpion on it because he's a Scorpio, because astrology is Satanist.

Mike: Psshh, sure.

Sarah: And they hand him a large silver ring, which carried the symbol of left-hand Palm forward “with a pentagram and crescent in the hand’s center.” I think it's a college ring or whatever. 

Mike: Oh, okay. And left-handedness is also satanic. 

Sarah: Yeah. Never trust a left-handed person. 

Mike: Swarthy southpaws. 

Sarah: Are you left-handed, Mike? 

Mike: Yes. Gay people are twice as likely to be left-handed as a straight people. 

Sarah: That's fascinating.

Mike: It's weird, right? 

Sarah: Huh. 

Mike: So that's why I'm left-handed or why I'm gay. 

Sarah: Well, they're both excellent states of being.

Mike: Also both satanic.

Sarah: So then, okay, so they put the ring on his finger. He's like, “Oh my God, I'm a real, live, Satanist.” It's like when you take an online quiz and find your new identity that way. 

Mike: Okay. So he's now in. 

Sarah: He's in. 

Mike: He's, like, officially a Satanist now.

Sarah: And interesting– what I love also is that he says he gets hired back to his job that he got fired from at a hamburger stand. So, he works at a hamburger stand for four hours a day. 

Mike: This is also back at the time when, like, that was enough to go to college. 

Sarah: I know. Well, I guess he's getting away from the Satanist now too, which helps.

Mike: Oh, okay. 

Sarah: So Mike is feeling kind of cocksure now and he sets his sights on one of the members of the coven, a 35 year old prim redhead named Theresa. 

Mike: Oh! We have a love interest. 

Sarah: And so she agrees to do a potion demonstration for him.

Mike: Potions. 

Sarah: Yes. Like Snape

Mike: Again, it's such a landfill of ideology. We've got, like, Satan and witches and full moons and horoscopes. Like, it's just a grab bag.

Sarah: So he describes her making a potion. She gets out a mortar and pestle and she has to mix together at certain minutes of the night and – this part I love – he writes, “She ground the solids together, then added the liquids,” which is exactly my mom's recipe for brownies.

Mike: Yeah. I imagine the reality show, The Great Satanic Bake-off. This is the technical. They're only given brief instructions. 

Sarah: “Maybe if I sprinkled a little pot on the spoon,’ I suggested, ‘It would magnify the effects.’ ‘It could also be disastrous,’ she replied in a low tone. ‘Why do you think I keep glancing at the clock? There are only certain minutes when you can vaporize it properly. See this scar?’ She pointed to a bluish stitch-like line just in front of her ear. ‘An enraged demon clawed me there. They don't like to have to obey you and if you give them the smallest excuse, they'll turn on you.’ She lapsed into quiet than intoned something in Latin.” Okay. This part I really don't like. “Suddenly she inhaled sharply. ‘Now!’ She grabbed up the spoon and held it over the burner. A thin green vapor uncurled. She recited something else in Hebrew then shouted, ‘Now! Make your request known.” Just throw it right in there. Yup. The Satanists speak Hebrew. 

Mike: Yeah. We had to get the light antisemitism out of the way. 

Sarah: Oh, I think this is classic, like, heavy as a star anti-Semitism. “In my musing I had not gotten around to deciding upon a wish so I was startled into an instant decision and thought ‘I wish Theresa would fall at my feet and beg me to make love to her.’ I strain to keep from chuckling at the whole thing and also at the spontaneous wish, which had caught even me by surprise. The next second, I was staring in fascination as Teresa roughly dropped the spoon, gazed up at me, her shoulders hunched slightly forward. She shook her head as though trying to throw off an unwelcome compulsion. She stepped back slowly from me saying as if trying to say, ‘No, no,’ knocking into the table, which contained the apparatus. I was scared to death.”

Mike: “Dear Penthouse, I never thought it would happen to me.”

Sarah: Yes, exactly. “But when the Satanists came to my campus, I thought I would go to a meeting. One thing led to another.” “Then she sighed deeply and sharply and started muttering, ‘I know what you wished. Why did you do it? I told you this isn't a game anymore.’ She gave up resisting and dropped to her feet and kissed my ankles.”

Mike: Kissed my ankles… 

Sarah: And basically, he releases her from the compulsion, and he says, “At that moment, seeing Theresa compose herself and revert back to the serious and businesslike servant of Satan, I believed in Satan's powers fully and I wanted to control them.” What do you think of that scene?

Mike: I mean, they're just piling on extra rules of this universe. There are potions and there's mind control and there's literal demons who sort of act like attack dogs. 

Sarah: And I love how one of the ways that tries to warn you away from it is being like, “Do you want to be attacked by demons? Because that's a real risk.” It's like working at SeaWorld

Mike: What does it say to you?

Sarah: Well, to me, one of the key things here is that he's implying that he used to be this cool Satanist because he was really debauched and he had sex with a lot of chicks and also is saying, you know, one of the cool things about Satanism and one of the things that would naturally attract you is that you have the power to sexually dominate women and it's interesting that he understands that to be a selling point of a religion. 

Mike: And that that's, like, the first place that his mind goes. 

Sarah: Oh yeah. Then he comes home, and Dean turns up. He says, “You're holding back on Satan, Mike, coasting.” And he's saying he needs to be out recruiting more kids for Satan.

Mike: Like, door to door, selling magazine subscriptions.

Sarah: Mike is like, “I talk to kids at the college almost every day. Of course, I feel like I have to be careful what I say and size them up and all that.’ He waved his hand. ‘But there are ways and there are ways, Mike. It has to be done on an organized, systematic, planned basis. Take right now. You could be out on the strip, getting acquainted with guys at the bars, doing a little hardcore recruiting. Haven't you ever heard of Melanie? She'll work with you?’

‘I don't understand,’ I said. 

‘You haven't heard of her? Well, after you screen a guy, you take him up to her apartment. Then, act as her foil. Let her do the work. It boils down to getting them gradually involved leading up to the drug and witchcraft bit by easy stages.” So he goes to a bar, and he looks for young guys. He says, “I spotted a guy I knew from the college. Claud was writing a term paper on sexual fantasies. During talks with him on the campus, I had learned he was having a rough time because he just could not push himself forward enough with the girls. We had a few drinks, and we discussed the subject. ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I know a nympho who's real flipped on the subject herself and is willing to be a living laboratory. In fact, I was going to see her just after two on my way home and she said I could bring a friend if I wanted to.” 

Mike: Okay. So that's the honeypot. How he's going to lure dudes into Satanism is by having Melanie have sex with them.

Sarah: Yeah, but I get the feeling that the men are in the hierarchy and women are kind of like chattel.

Mike: It's funny that he can't imagine anything other than a patriarchal institution. 

Sarah: It's very revealing, isn't it? Yeah. And also, there's this whole thing where satanism is supposed to be the opposite of everything so you’d think that women would be empowered by the Satanic church.

Mike: That's too far.

Sarah: But no! Yeah. So he brings the guy over to Melanie's and this part kills me. “Melanie had prepared a nice little supper for us and took it out of the refrigerator after letting us in.” Like, really? She has to make supper for you? You can’t just make some chicken on the way there? You're coming over to her house!

Mike: She's slaving over a hot stove in her evening gown.

Sarah: Yeah, her little Satanist teddy, frying chicken, burning her legs. “Claud was really impressed. Melanie sat next to him on the sofa and before long, she had him very interested.” 

Mike: Oh my God. 

Sarah: She asked him to try a new dance step as an excuse to get him real close, a real slow number, and before I knew it, they were in the bedroom while I stretched out on the sofa to get what I wanted most, a few minutes of good, plain sleep. 

Mike: It’s like the plot of a porno movie. It's just so vague and none of the characters’ motivations make any sense. 

Sarah: Yeah. And it's brilliant because it's, like, softcore that you get to read for the glorification of Christ, and you have to learn it because you have to learn about the occult threat to America and the youth.

Mike: Yeah. All the prurient stuff is fine because you're saying that it's bad. 

Sarah: Yes. So he describes how they recruit, and he says, “And that was the way it was done. That method was duplicated hundreds of times during the following months by myself and my cohorts using a number of different chicks.”

Mike: So this is like networked human trafficking.

Sarah: Well, it's like human trafficking, it’s just they have these women who we have no confirmation that they're paying who just have to have sex with anyone who might become a Satanist at any hour of the day. 

So all this is going well. Mike is very dedicated to this practice, which is worrying, and then he comes home one day and Dean appears in his apartment and he says, “How’d you get in? The door was bolted.’

‘Never mind that,’ he answered in a thin voice. ‘So get this. I'm being moved up, way up. You got to take my place, Mike.’

‘Sure,’ I said weakly.

‘It's better I don't come out and name it,’ he said, ‘but they, the big guys, like my style and want me up on their level. I've got an assignment in Mississippi.’ Mississippi? Were we pawns on a giant chess board, I wondered, playing this game?”

Mike: At no point has he asked any questions about the broader hierarchy of this movement? “Do you have a boss, Dean?” Like, he's never shown any curiosity. 

Sarah: Well, he's busy exploiting Melanie. “Dean says, ‘First off, I spend a week or two at a training conference up north.”

Mike: Love it.

Sarah: “Meanwhile, you dig in and study the ritual backward and forward. You get initiated tomorrow night. Then after that you have a week before you actually take over a meeting. Remember, from here out whatever you want is yours. Rent? Forget it. Food? Just give the keeper of the seal a weekly shopping list and list the places you want to dine out on given nights. Transportation? No sweat. You know where you can charge the gas. You've got a free ticket. 

Mike: I can't believe we skipped over the fact that there's a training conference. There's a Marriott somewhere in Wichita that hosted the Northwest regional training for the Satanists. 

Sarah: It makes me so happy to think about and then the Satanists, they're looking through their photo album and they're like, “Oh yeah, that was at the regional training, ‘73. That was such a great year. I had pesto for the first time.” Do you have Plaid Pantry in Seattle? 

Mike: Yeah.

Sarah: So it's a Northwest thing. I would call it a grittier 7/11.

Mike: Yeah.

Sarah: I had multiple friends in high school and college who worked at Plaid Pantry. And the way Plaid Pantry seemed to work, from my anecdotal experience, was that if you were a relatively together cashier, even if you were 19 years old, they would very quickly try and promote you to be the franchise manager. And then he would have to work all hours of the night and day because people would be crashing cars into your franchise or whatever and you wouldn't be on an hourly wage anymore because you'd be salaried. What I'm saying is that this reminds me of the temptation of getting promoted at Plaid Pantry, where you join this organization and you do an adequate job, and extremely quickly they're like, “We'd like to give you a ton of responsibility” and are trying to appeal to your youthful sense of “Oh my gosh, really? You want me to be in charge of this whole Plaid Pantry?” 

Mike: Right. And you're, like, twenty-one and you have no idea what you're doing and you're in charge of procurement for this entire organization. 

Sarah: Yeah, and it's going to destroy your life. 

Mike: So this is the middle management tier that Mike is entering now.

Sarah: Yeah. He's like, “Oh my goodness. I have to learn how to take Dean's place because he has to go to the training conference.” So, chapter five, we begin with another ceremony and he's getting promoted, “Judas is your new counselor, master of rituals,” Dean intoned, “And the well-being of all of you depends upon his well-being. Treat him with reverence and respect and come to him with any problems that you may have regarding ritual.

Mike: I'm imagining everyone crammed in the break room. It's like one guy retiring and he's introducing the new boss and he's like, “You know, Jeff's going to be taking over. You know, he's been heading up our Omaha division.” 

Sarah: Yeah. And then Jeff walks in and he's wearing a polo shirt and he's like, “You guys, I'm so excited to be your new master of rituals. I love working for this organization and I was able to double ritual efficiency in Omaha during my three years there, not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty excited to see what we can do here in Dubuque.” 

Mike: And there's a grocery store cake on the break room table. 

Sarah: It’s a very Midwestern-feeling Satanism book.

Mike: It is.

Sarah: “Afterward, we were all invited to this chick’s place up in the Hills, another one of those exclusive homes with the large glassed in areas.” And this is when he meets Charlotte. She says, “You're a smart boy, Mike. You'll catch on fast.’ She turned away and I thought, ‘Not you, baby. I like tigers, but I'm not sure I'm ready for a devil cat.”

Mike: What? 

Sarah: “When she was out of earshot, Andy whispered, ‘That's one from the fourth step. Some people think it's the Illuminati, but you better not breathe that word to anyone.’ 

Mike: This is the only realistic thing about the organization that we've heard so far, that there's the inner circle within it and everyone's trying to get there. 

Sarah: And people are condescending about it. “By the time Dean and I left for our apartments I felt lightheaded. The fact that the ceremony had gone so smoothly, and I was the new master counselor gave me great satisfaction.”

Mike: Now that all of our emails have transferred over, and we've introduced ourselves to the clients. 

Sarah: “We decided to have lunch at Bennigan's!” He drops him off at the apartment, “As I walked upstairs, I noticed a light showing through my window and I had not remembered leaving the lights on. I opened the door cautiously, looked in, and thought I was in the wrong place. Where there had been flimsy curtains at the windows, now there were gorgeous drapes. A long, low, oxblood leather couch replaced the sagging, old, brown, horsehair one and there were two sets of bookshelves full of books beneath the windowsill where there had been a rickety, scarred table. The biggest surprise was on the floor. Two chicks sitting on a white rug. Who knew the type of furniture I like? In my casual conversations I probably had mentioned being attracted to certain types of furnishings, colors, et cetera, but I could not help thinking of Satan's power. The girls just grinned and came over and sat on each side of me. “We hope you like it, Mike, because we come with the apartment.”

Mike: Oh my God. Also this is basically a home flipping show on Bravo. Like, he leaves and then he comes back and there's this different interior decoration. 

Sarah: And he’s like, “How did you know I’d like that sofa?” and Joanna Gaines is like, “Oh, we have our ways.” 

Mike: He’s like, “I love old travel posters on the wall!”

Sarah: And again, these women are desperate to make him food all the time. “Can I make you anything?’ And he says, ‘If I'm going to get through the rest of this night, I’ll need plenty of chow.’ While she was fixing my snack, I browsed through the books that had been furnished’, and they're all about how to be a better Satanist.

Mike: Where are these books? This implies satanic publishers!

Sarah: It’s an artisanal press. And then basically the apartment becomes his base of operations, and he says, “Part of one corner had to be turned into an office and there were a lot of people coming and going on coven business. The chicks did a good job of keeping the place neat and tidy.”

Mike: I like that he can imagine that demons don't like doing all these tasks assigned to them, but not women. Women want to have sex with random guys and make sandwiches all day. No reason they would complain. 

Sarah: I want to see the conference notes for the year when a woman stepped forward and said the satanic church of San Bernardino has a long and terrible history with subjugation of its female members and it is high time that we are allowed to be satanic priests and not just sandwich makers.

Mike: Yes. Can I be promoted past waiting on a white carpet for a dude?

Sarah: For every dollar that a male Satanist makes, a female Satanist makes seventy-six cents and also a sandwich. “The day before the first meeting at which I would preside, I still felt touchy about how to call on those demonic spirits. I had already read one case where two jokers had been fooling around and had stood in the wrong part of the circle with their toes on the pentagram and the demons had crushed them to death. I did not want my first meeting to end that way. I went around practicing the words I was supposed to use to get the demon back where it belongs. I also had to make sure the pentagram was freshly painted on the altar stone every week so there would be no break in the lines forming it. If there was a break, a demon could get out.” This is one of my favorite paragraphs in this whole book though, that he has to keep the pentagram freshly painted. 

Mike: I know.

Sarah: Okay and then we learn about demon. “Demons can talk or can cry with a loud voice using the tongues and lips of humans. They can tell lies and make people believe lies. They can even preach. They can stand, walk, and seek rest when embodied in the human being. They can make people strip off their clothes, cause suicides, render a person insane, or cause a body to be bowed in affliction. They can cause jealousy, pride, or lust. Demons seek to inhabit human bodies that they might work out they're indescribable lust and evil longings. They will not willingly leave a human they inhabit. If cast out, they will seek to reenter the same body inviting other demons to join them. It is known that as many as 2,000 demons inhabited one man.”

Mike: This is now a Maintenance Phase episode. It's very clear that they've been using demons as a cure-all for anything that is wrong with somebody. Right? So it can cause back pain or chronic illness or mental illness. They can be cast out and come back. There can be one of them or 2000 of them. It's like, okay, so they're literally everything. So the church for hundreds of years has just been saying “demons” as the answer to everything and just changing the definition and the capabilities of demons willy-nilly according to whatever that person is going through. 

Sarah: Yeah.

Mike: This is a tactic that is now being perfected by Gwyneth Paltrow

Sarah: Yeah. Because it's natural for people to assume that there's a demon inside of them or their body has gone wrong in some crucial way, but also in a way that can be fixed very easily by the casting out of the bad thing.

Mike: It's a very human drive to think there is something wrong with me and it's also a very human drive to invent things like religion that can explain that.

Sarah: And to want things to be wrong with you that make you special because if you're afflicted by a demon, that's kind of a cool holy war to be a part of but also that can be easily fixed. As I recall, I haven't listened to it in a while, but I think the takeaway from our exorcism episode was that exorcism is kind of effective because it's a great placebo. You feel like something major has happened and it can be a really cathartic process psychologically for people. Also, if you fail to exercise someone's demons, you can blame the person. 

Mike: Definitely. Yeah. Cause they drank the wrong holy water, or they didn't sleep on a plank for 40 days or whatever rules you've made up.

Sarah: Or they didn't want it enough. “My two girls were waiting for me with a hot meal and the message that a guy had stopped by to inquire if he could see me tomorrow. After they had finished describing him, I guessed it was an old school buddy of mine from Crestline.” And so he gets together with this guy and the guy's like, “What kind of work are you doing, Mike?” because he notices the chicks.

Mike: And Mike's like, “Waste management.”

Sarah: He says, “I told him just enough to impress him, but not enough to give anything away or put the finger on the group or implicate me in anything,” which is a hard thing to balance, which is why we're not being shown him doing that because it seems impossible.

Mike: Can you be specific, Mike? 

Sarah: Because he says, “I find all of this hard to believe. If you're really in witchcraft, put a hex on that building over there so it'll burn.” So he does and it does burn. 

Mike: Wait, so he says he told this guy nothing substantial, but then he also proves to him that he has magic powers. 

Sarah: Look, this book has some flaws.

Mike: He's like, “Look, I was super slick. I didn't tell him anything that would incriminate me. Anyway, here's my fire starting power.” 

Sarah: “All I did was set a bar on fire with my mind.” “That was the last time I bothered with anyone outside the witchcraft group, unless I felt they were definitely going to be a potential brother. We had discovered Christians were a complete waste of time and we had already learned to leave them alone.” And then he lays some theology on us. “Although Satanists believe there is a God, – to believe in Satan, you have to believe in God – they have become alienated from believing that God's representation of good is the only way to fly. They believe God is good, but they don't believe that good itself is good. They do not want to wait until they die to get the rewards that Heaven offers maybe if they are really pious, and all go as well. No, they're impatient and impetuously want a little bit of heaven right here and now while they are alive to enjoy it. Heaven in the form of kicks, chicks, and checks along with the agonizing ecstasy of drugs.

Mike: This is such a Christian worldview. It's basically saying that Satanists are actually Christians, but they just want the rewards now. 

Sarah: But they just want to have sex. 

Mike: So it's basically Christians with no impulse control.

Sarah: So like, Paula Cole is a Satanist. That song from Dawson's Creek is very satanic. Then, they have another meeting. He's feeling very authoritative and then a gray haired man stepped forth and said, “We have a problem. A certain professor at Valley College is going around the campus saying witchcraft is a bunch of baloney and that we are crazy and liars. I would strongly suggest that you take appropriate measures to correct this gentlemen.” 

Mike: Wait, what? We want to prove that witchcraft exists? 

Sarah: I don't get it.

Mike: We’re in a secret cult, but somebody’s saying that we don't exist. We have to correct the record. 

Sarah: “But instead of going through him, well, he has two daughters in grade school. It might be effective to let him know of our presence through them.” 

Mike: Oh God. 

Sarah: This is the moment for Mike to be like, “This is kind of extreme. I don't know about hurting kids, but I'm getting all these chicks and checks” and the professor's kids are afflicted by welts because of the demonic attacks and then Dean reappears again like Gandalf.

Mike: On the Dawn of the fifth day 

Sarah: And Dean says, “I think you're right on. Just keep up the bad work and don't telegraph your punches. Well, I've got to get going.’ He gave me the brotherhood signal, the one with the little and index finger extended instead of accepting my offered handshake.”

Mike: Oh, is that the fucking demon horns thing from Ozzy Osborne concerts?

Sarah: Yeah. 

Mike: He's saying they actually do that to each other?

Sarah: Yeah, that's what the Satanists do. Not very subtle. 

Mike: Again, like, this ostentatious hand symbol that anybody watching you can see is your secret communication to each other.

Sarah: Right, you could tickle Dean’s palm with your middle finger. 

Mike: Yes!

Sarah: “Wait a moment,’ I said turning to get the notepad I kept by the telephone, ‘How about giving me your address in Mississippi?’ But when I turned around, he was gone.

Mike: Sure. Mystical Dean. 

Sarah: “The next day as I leaned against the eucalyptus tree on the campus of San Bernardino Valley College,” where he still continues to hilariously spend most of his daytime hours, “I saw Charlotte swinging past, ‘Hey Char,’ I called. ‘Hold it, will you? I just was wondering if you have the time to talk with me about some ideas I have?’ ‘Sure, Mike. If you haven't got anything on tonight, I could drop by your place, and we could talk.” This also suggests it's fun to be a Satanist because any girl you like, you can be like, “Oh, I was wondering if you wanted to talk about Satanism” and she'll be like, “...yes.” 

Mike: Yeah, this is like Harvey Weinstein. This is how men with power do this. 

Sarah: Oh, I love this line. “For the rest of the day, I cannot think about anything else but Charlotte. When she finally arrived, she looked exactly as I expected, only more so.”

Mike: Oh my God.

Sarah: “As she accepted a high ball and sat on my oxblood couch while I draped myself over the chair, she said, “I think you could very well get rid of some of that archaic stuff. Put a more mod appeal into the rituals. Use some acid rock music to set the mood. Get a little hand-clapping into the meetings.” So she's basically like, you know, you're in charge of the rituals. Like, it's time to streamline and to get rid of some of this old timey satanic stuff and instead use some of the sixties cultural tools that are already recruiting kids anyway, apparently. 

Mike: Oh yeah.

Sarah: And so she gives him a bunch of ideas for how to do his job better. She's basically doing unpaid labor. So one of his big innovations is that he gets a good blood supply for their communion. He makes you, if you're attending the ceremony, you have to donate your own blood. He says the higher ups really liked that. “Charlotte came to one of our parties and stayed long enough to advise me that a bunch of people in the Victorville area would like me to come and tell them about our experiences.”

Mike: Oh my God. He's doing regional meetings! This is what I used to do for a living. 

Sarah: “A night or two later around midnight, I was sitting on the couch with a fat book on formulas and incantations when, flash, this chick materialized in the middle of my living room.”

Mike: Oh my God.

Sarah: “I have a message for you. Char says it's on for Saturday afternoon.’  Then, zap, she was gone just like that.” I love the idea of someone astral projecting into your living room to be like, “Charlotte wants you to come over at seven.”

Mike: Yeah. It's an email. It's a text.

Sarah: So they go to Victorville which is very exciting because he's selling Satan on the road. He writes, “In a level land fanned out in a broad valley dotted with scanty shrub we found them, the flower children, blank eyes peering out through veils of hair.”

Mike: Oh, this is more hippie bashing. 

Sarah: Yes. They've gone to a big, kind of hippie encampment out in the area and he's going to minister to the hippies. 

Mike: He's such a Dick. 

Sarah: He is. Yeah. What do you find dick-ish about him? I think he really is quite a deck.

Mike: Well the whole book is just implying that all of these flower children, college student, war protestor people of the 1960s were secretly Satanists and drug users and totally amoral. 

Sarah: Or at least a step away from Satanists. Like, they're either evil or they're too dumb to notice that they're practically Satanists.

Mike: Exactly. 

Sarah: And so Mike meets a kid named Sonny and says, “I've never seen such dead eyes.” And then he meets a chick, and the chick says, “Myself, I think Lucifer is beautiful like Sonny. They're free, but they don't know what they're free from. They don't know how to focus flower power. They think they're tuned in, but they're not really. Don't know how to get rid of their hassles. They say they're doing their own thing, but they don't know what their thing is. That's the point. Their thing is nothing. No thing. They're empty vessels and they're ready to be filled. You can fill them, Mike.” 

Mike: They’re empty. They have no real ideas. They're installing critical race theory in all the schools. It's the same rhetoric that we get about societal others throughout history. 

Sarah: Yeah. Do you feel like what was going on at the time was fundamentally the same as what's happening now? Because I feel like we're, you know, a lot has changed. A lot is different, but I feel like one of the essential fears is that it's dangerous when a critical mass of young people start to notice that society is unjust and that changing it is something that you should try occasionally. 

Mike: It's a different context because the college students at the time weren't associated with ethnic minorities. Like, we've now injected race into this in a way that is very noticeable, and I think has turned up the volume on all of this demonization, but it's basically a version of the same thing, that these social justice warriors, right, protesting against the Vietnam War, what if they go too far? There was a huge anxiety among sort of the greatest generation and the silent generation about the following generation. Like, what was up with young people? And that manifested itself as a lot of this kind of shit, this totally unfair language about like, “They're hippies. They don't even have an ideology. They're empty vessels.”

Sarah: Waiting for Mike. 

Mike: Yeah. And it's just a reason not to actually listen to them. 

Sarah: Right. And also, like, discrediting reasonable ideas by aligning them with Satan himself.

Mike: Yes, with no evidence.

Sarah: This book is the evidence. I don't know how you could disagree with this. It’s a book in which everyone wants to make food for and have sex with Mike Warnke, so it’s score is very high on my believable monitor. 

So he goes to Victorville. This hippie chick is like, “They're ready. They're empty vessels,” and he describes his sermon basically or his pitch. “Taking my cue from the words Lydia,” that's the chick, “had used in describing to me earlier the needs of these people, I definitely manipulated the word ‘love’ and described in glowing terms how beautiful Satan was and how faithfully he looked after his worshipers. I had no idea how I came over with that bunch, but as I analyzed it later, I guess it was a-okay. The flower kids picked up on certain words and did not really try to structure anything logical out of it. Mostly they were tuning in on my general expression of sympathy with their cause, whatever it was and my appearing to share something good with them. 

Mike: I can't believe people have read this book and actually fell for it. It just like, “These kids were so dumb. I just used some key words and they bought it.”

Sarah: I mean, it's funny too because it's like– he's describing– the sales pitch for Satan is the sales pitch for Jesus. Like, Jesus will take care of you, Jesus loves you, et cetera. 

Mike: I was just gonna say that he describes his own recruitment to Satanism as this months long process. He loses his job. He's addicted to drugs. People are having sex in front of him and then it slowly throughout the course of the book morphs into he gives a boring speech to a bunch of hippies outside their tents and they're like, “Yeah!” Which one is it? Like, you can just recruit people with a dumb, six minutes, Glen Gary Glen Ross monologue?

Sarah: Right. Because before it's like you have to get them to have sex with Melanie before you even broach Satanism. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Sarah: Yeah. He's playing kind of fast and loose.

Mike: It's also funny because there's nothing whatsoever to recommend Satanism other than the sex and the drugs and the fun stuff to do. What is he pitching them? You get to dip your fingers in some pee? 

Sarah: Maybe some of them want to get stomped on. And then the tall man who he clashed with at his official initiation is there and congratulates him and says, “You're a real traveling salesman for Satan, Mike and we want you to go to Salem and get more hip with some really serious organization.”

Mike: I love it that even in the text of the book, it's pointing out kind of how ridiculous this is. Like, he's a traveling salesman for Satan. 

Sarah: I mean, that's how they sell Bibles. So, why not? He's having the time of his life when he gets to the Salem conference. He says, “I was credited with doubling the size of our group in San Bernardino from 500 to 1000 in the short time I had been master counselor.” He's sitting there. He's finally hearing, you know, all this inside stuff, which obviously he's not going to quote directly from because that would be too hard and he writes, “Another rocket went off in my head. They did it through a Satanic knowledge of all the centuries of self: self-love, indulgence, superiority, pride, righteousness, and they gently nudged the most ambitious and promising toward the final motivational hook, power, for power was the ultimate lust, the thing that even an elitist would sell his soul for and what better price than power, the universal corrupter, for the more corrupt the man, the easier he is to control.”

Mike: Yeah. It's capitalism, Mike. This is how every company works. 

Sarah: It's also organized religion. 

Mike: Yes. He's so close to getting it.

Sarah: And he's thinking, you know, the kind of thought that people often have about the idea of organized Satanism, which is like, how on earth is it possible to have this much foresight and organize something this large without anyone detecting it and to launder all these robes and all of it? Like, how is it possible? And he writes, “Blam. I saw it. There was somebody who could mastermind the whole thing and he had all the help he needed. Of course! He ran the whole operation. He worked out the details and the planning councils of hell and sent his emissaries like military couriers on endless relays to the surface, Satan.”

Mike: Well, yeah. He’s in a satanic cult. Of course Satan is the CEO. Was that supposed to be a twist, Mike? 

Sarah: Actually, to me it's kind of a twist because it's the first time I've seen someone being like, “Yeah, Satan. We don't just worship Satan. Like, he's the CEO.” 

Mike: He's the founder and also a client. 

Sarah: “I had heard one or two of the brotherhood jokingly refer to poor, old, Hitler and the archdemon who ran him and Stalin and Nero and the Borgias. Puppets. Not monsters, just puppets. So that was how it was done. The global conspiracy buffs were right after all. Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray were the pawns of a much bigger plot, but the bulls weren't given credit where credit was due, nor did Satan want them to for such knowledge could turn men to his immortal enemy. As C.S. Lewis said, ‘Satan's neatest trick was convincing men that he did not exist.’

Mike: Oh my God. 

Sarah: I had no idea that The Usual Suspects was quoting C.S. Lewis this whole time. 

Mike: So he's positing that all of the conspiracy theories are true. Illuminati, Rothschilds, moon landing. 

Sarah: Hitler, which also makes him kind of, well, sort of a Holocaust denier. Well, no, I guess he's saying the Holocaust still happened, but it just wasn't Hitler's fault. So, I don't feel good about that. 

Mike: I fucking hate this world view of there's some mystical force behind everything. It's like, no dude. It's human beings. Like, these are human impulses. 

Sarah: Right. I also love that he’s trying to think of legendarily evil people and his fourth example is the Borgias, which is not very timely. Maybe this is where I don't understand this area of Christianity because later on, he's like, astrology is evil because it tells you that there's no free will and you need to believe in free will in order to glorify God, but then he’s like, well Hitler didn't do anything wrong.

Mike: Right. 

Sarah: He was just controlled by a demon and it's like, well, wait. Which is it?

Mike: It's always funny trying to impose coherence on these beliefs because it's like from one chapter to the other, he's just completely changing his underlying premise. Like, he hasn't thought this through at all.

Sarah: He remembers the hot canapes. I don't think he could have made that up. So he is sitting here, like, having his mind blown, you know, during this meeting. He's probably got a little cracker in front of him and then he has a final revelation, which is what motivates Satan and what is it? “It's hatred, pure unalloyed hatred of God for denying him infinite power, of Christ for usurping what he considered his rightful position, and of all mankind for being God's favorite creation. He hated us, every last one of us for all eternity. He hated me. 

Mike: You have to be so pickled in fundamentalist Christianity to find any of this remotely convincing.

Sarah: And it makes Satan, like, Joan Collins in Dynasty. 

Mike: What do you mean?

Sarah: Alexis in Dynasty, her motivation was that she was the ex-wife of the main guy and so her whole thing was that she had a big rivalry with the current wife of the main guy. So it's like mankind is God's current wife in this scenario and Satan is just really bitter and can't let it go. It's just like, okay. I guess that's an understandable motive, but if I were writing a comic book, I feel like my editors would tell me that I need to go bigger.

Mike: But this is like Saturday morning cartoon villain explanations. Like, mwahaha, hatred. Like, this is dumb. 

Sarah: Yeah. It is dumb and it's funny too because I feel like the scariest villains are the ones who are condescending and pass as normal and who are convinced that they are doing what they're doing to you for your own good 

Mike: Yeah. As usual, it's just totally uninterested in the ways that the world works. 

Sarah: And it's funny too, because I feel like the sort of extremely hierarchal satanic church that they've described… like, you can see how it would be corrupt just based on the ways that hierarchies sort of motivate people to grow as fast as possible, acquire as many Satanists as you can without thinking about infrastructure, use women the way that this organization does, and these are all things that feel not anathema to the Christian Church, but the idea is it like, “It was really bad what we were doing because we were evil and we were aware that we were evil and we're waking up every day and deciding to do evil things as opposed to the concept that I think in America it would be good for all of us to spend more time thinking about, that you are capable of the greatest damage when you believe that righteousness is on your side in one way or another.

Mike: Yeah. These African tribes just really need to learn about Jesus and we're going to go visit them all and nothing bad happened as a result.

Sarah: And bring our communicable illnesses. Once again, you know, the more he rises, the more he feels like a little fish surrounded by big fish. He keeps having to get bigger and he's like, “Well, I've done some great streamlining of the rituals. I've gotten all these new recruits. I've doubled membership in the San Bernardino area, but I have to do something really big, something really exciting,” and he gets an idea when he notices that there were some guys at this conference who have missing fingers.

Mike: Oh, what? We're back to this? 

Sarah: We're back to missing fingers. 

Mike: This was something from Michelle Remembers that she said the Satanists were cutting off their middle fingers, right? 

Sarah: So this is the great finale of the Mike rises through the ranks sequence. He goes to a ritual. He's really got his act together and he's going to take it to a new level. He says, “I had power now and I was going to use it. ‘You have contributed your own blood to the chalice. Now we have a new request. We want your flesh,’ I told them. ‘Any of you guys not chicken, come forward and let us see what you're willing to give to Satan.” It really kind of deflates the ritual to use the word chicken. A guy comes forward and I will just read you this little cutting-off-finger-and-eating-it scene and this will be the end.

Mike: Oh, they’re eating it?

Sarah: Yeah. There's some flesh-eating in here. He says, “I lived with the ax and brought it down with force. Womp! His little finger down to the second knuckle remained on the board when he withdrew his hand. I left it to Andy to apply a simple tourniquet and after giving him an opportunity to taste a bit of his own flesh, another guy drove the brother to the dock who was on our retainer plus list.” End of chapter. So next time Mike is going to take it too far and end up losing his membership in the satanic church and have to find his way in the world and we're going to talk about how in hell this book exists and what Mike Warnke was really up to during these years.

Mike: So he's running the franchise. He's rising through the ranks. He's getting more profile within the organization. He's dealing with some middle management stuff. 

Sarah: He's bulk ordering peanut butter cups. Yeah. He's chugging along and he's revealing what makes an organization appealing to lost youths, I think, which is to be important, to be listened to, and to get women do whatever you want.

Mike: Sandwiches. Everybody just wants sandwiches. 

Sarah: Everybody just wants a sandwich with a little bit of finger on it. 

Mike: So that's where we're going to leave Mike, at the altar nibbling on somebody else's finger.

Sarah: I also love that this is such a dramatic moment, and we end with a description of infrastructure.

Mike: Perfect metaphor. Somehow Mike finds the boring part of something interesting. 

Sarah: That's one thing that you have in common.