What do Satanists believe? It's a timely question, given that accusations of Satanism and reports of Satanic activity have become worryingly mainstream in recent years, particularly in the USA.
We're all familiar with the feverish imaginings of QAnon adherents and their belief in the existence of a global network of Satanist paedophiles.
But even among seemingly rational people on the American political right, the name of Satan is dropped with increasing frequency, and unwelcome cultural phenomena routinely denounced as "Satanic".
Are Satanists really out there? And do they pose some sort of demonic threat to decent society?
The short answers are (1) yes, and (2) no — and beyond the scare stories lie some fascinating complexities.
From sketchy figure to symbol of freedom
It's worth noting that while the image of Satan in Christian folklore and popular culture is elaborate and detailed, Satan in the bible is a sketchy, minor figure, and a surprisingly innocuous one.
Satan first pops up in the Book of Job (his Hebrew name satan means "opponent" or "adversary"), where he and God appear on perfectly amicable terms, and even engage in a friendly wager.
In the New Testament Gospels, Satan subjects Jesus to various temptations, but he's easily outwitted by the Son of God. In the Book of James, it's suggested that even the everyday Christian might find Satan something of a pushover: "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
So far, so unthreatening. But what do Satanists take from all this?
The first and most important thing to understand is that by and large, Satanists are not devil worshippers. They don't believe in the existence of Satan as a supernatural entity.
Satan in modern Satanism functions more as a symbol of certain things that Satanists venerate: freedom, knowledge, fearlessness, power, pleasure. But there's no God-figure, and no worship.
Peter H Gilmore, current High Priest of the international Church of Satan, puts it very simply: "There's no belief or spirituality in Satanism. We're carnal, we're sceptical, we're proudly faithless people."
So why make it a religion? Why have a church of Satan?
"Satanism understands that we are creatures of conceptual consciousness", says Gilmore, "and our concepts are put together in such a way as to make symbols."
This activity includes the creation of such symbolic institutions as churches.
"It's a very powerful thing, and it leads to ritual as a form of human behaviour. We employ symbols and ritual to enact self-transformation and catharsis — hence the church, and the religion."
'Being our own gods'
It was founded by Anton Szandor LaVey, who established the Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966, and three years later published The Satanic Bible, a collection of essays and rituals that's become a central "scripture" for the Church.
LaVey was a notorious hippy-baiter — he hated the burgeoning peace and love movement at least as much as he hated the Christian church, if not more so.
He was also a devout individualist who articulated a philosophy of what today we would call self-empowerment.
"What we invoke in Satan is a projection of the best in ourselves — a symbol of pride, liberty and individualism," says Peter H Gilmore.
"When it comes to celebrating ego and self-deification, we understand that nature is hierarchical, and that there are always going to be different levels of people.
"So we're aware of our talents and our abilities — but in being our own gods, we can be beneficent gods, and we can deal with others in a very charitable and loving way. It's not about crushing other folk, which is how people tend to interpret self-centredness."
Hierarchy and heft
This all sounds well and good, but even a quick browse through The Satanic Bible reveals an unnervingly steely kind of social Darwinism:
Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth — Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!
Blessed are the powerful, for they shall be reverenced among men — Cursed are the feeble, for they shall be blotted out!
As it happens, Anton LaVey was an admirer of arch libertarian Ayn Rand, indeed he once described his own writing as "Ayn Rand with trappings", and Satanism as "Ayn Rand's philosophy with ceremony and ritual added".
Whether or not LaVey was being entirely serious — he loved to troll and provoke in interviews — there's no doubt that in its rational egoism, its celebration of power-differentiated hierarchy and its aversion to altruism, The Satanic Bible has a distinctively Randian flavour.
It's an often-noted irony that much of The Satanic Bible anticipates the social and economic doctrines of modern-day Republicans in the USA.
Church of Satan members have pointed out that LaVey's more problematic beliefs (he was also a eugenicist, and often advocated in interviews for the establishment of a police state) are not official COS policy positions, and that individual members should not regard them as gospel.
But statements from Church of Satan leaders over the years espousing Survival of the Fittest as a fundamental law of nature have been too numerous to be easily brushed aside.
And it was partly in opposition to this perceived might-makes-right ethos that another Satanic religious organisation was founded in 2013: The Satanic Temple, which is based in Salem, Massachusetts (scene of the infamous witch trials of 1692).
From the outset, The Satanic Temple rejected the Church of Satan's apolitical stance and jumped with both feet into public affairs.
Its stated mission is "to encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority… oppose injustice and undertake noble pursuits".
Its principal targets are manifestations of what founder Lucien Greaves has called "theocratic assaults on the separation of church and state", and the privileging of Christianity over and above minority religious groups.
In addition to public campaigns protesting (for example) the establishment of Christian monuments on the grounds of the public buildings, The Satanic Temple also runs an addiction recovery support group, a campaign opposing corporal punishment in schools, refugee support outreach and so on.
Satan: Champion of the outsider
According to Stephen Long, who's a minister and member of Ordination Council with The Satanic Temple, this activity is very much in keeping with a certain literary interpretation of the figure of Satan.
Like many modern Satanists, Long takes his Satanic bearings from John Milton's 17th century epic poem Paradise Lost, a work that tells the story of Adam and Eve's fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, Satan's subsequent expulsion from heaven, and a three-day battle between God's angels and Satan's rebels.
In Paradise Lost, Satan is unquestionably the bad guy. But he's also one of those irresistibly noble villains — a tragic antihero, dynamic and charismatic, who pushes back against the authority of God.
Early in the story, Satan — or Lucifer, as he's known at this point — says it is "better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven", a declaration that's endeared him to romantics and revolutionaries ever since.
"During the 1800s, the Romantic poets started to look at Lucifer in Paradise Lost as a heroic figure," says Long.
"The foundational belief structures of the Western world were being reconfigured, and so during that time he started to be seen as a champion of the outsider; a champion of reason and enlightenment. So that is where I root my Satanism."
Socially just Satanism?
As a gay former Christian who underwent ex-gay therapy and other attempts at "deliverance" in his teens, Stephen Long knows what it's like to be an outsider. But his perspective on Satan as champion of minority rights also informs his understanding of Satanism as a materialist, carnal religion in interesting ways.
"Satanism is a religion of the body, and my concern as a Satanist goes downward, toward the earth," Long says.
"Part of that means material pleasure — but I'm not some kind of libertine, I'm very conservative in how I live my life.
"As I understand it, the carnality of Satanism also needs to be put in the broader context of material conditions, physical conditions — and that includes people's physical needs being met. What are the conditions that people are living under, and are those conditions just?"
At the moment The Satanic Temple is running campaigns for abortion access, LGBTQIA+ support, mental health, education, religious liberty and much more.
So, does this mean that The Satanic Temple is really just a political activist organisation dressed in Luciferian robes?
"One can argue whether or not TST started as an activist organisation," says Long, "but we're a church. We are a community of religious people.
"The political action of the Temple emerges from deeply-held Satanic religious beliefs — in the same way that when Quakers get involved in politics, they're not activists pretending to be Quakers.
"Nobody would be stupid enough to say that Quakers are just activists masquerading as religious people — it's the same with Satanists."
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