Archpriest Alexander Novopashin uses an old picture, whose meaning he does not understand, to present the editor of “Bitter Winter” as a demon-in-chief.
by Massimo Introvigne
Be afraid. Be very afraid. A certain R.S., who claims to have been at the event, directed me to pictures of a lecture the notorious Russian anti-cultist Archpriest Alexander Novopashin gave to children of Suzun, in Novosibirsk Oblast, on April 24. Novopashin, who looks like a madman and increasingly also behaves like one, is Vice President of Russia’s main anti-cult association, which until March 2023 was part of FECRIS, the French-supported European umbrella anti-cult organization.
The archpriest scared the children and their teachers by telling them that the “collective West represented by the United States and its European henchmen” is waging an information war against Russia by “defaming its armed forces” and spreading Satanism and suicide among Russian youth. For this nefarious activity, the U.S. Department of State went shopping to “buy European ‘experts,’ pseudo-religious scholars, who have long been known as defenders of destructive and openly satanic cults.”
And here Novopashin decided to scare the poor children of Suzun by showing them the ultimate bogeyman, i.e., the undersigned. As evidence that I promote “openly Satanic cults,” he showed to them a picture that is often used by anti-Jehovah’s-Witnesses websites to prove that I am somewhat associated with Satanism, a movement the average Jehovah’s Witness is supposed not to sympathize with.
I circulated myself the picture several years ago, and would add for the benefit of Novopashin that it was taken on July 14, 2018, in Salem, Massachusetts. The Archpriest may or may not sympathize with the date celebrating the French Revolution but Salem, the city of the witches, may add some spice to his next lecture.
R.S. tells me that Novopashin scared the children by explaining to them that the bogeyman Massimo Introvigne appears in the picture with a statue of Satan and three Satanists. If he said this, he made three mistakes in one single sentence.
First, anybody vaguely familiar with the history of esotericism would recognize the statue as a depiction of Éliphas Lévi’s Baphomet. Simply identifying it with Satan is a common mistake, and one that Lévi himself would not have condoned.
Second, appearing on the left of the picture is Lucien Greaves, the leader of an organization called The Satanic Temple. Here the cat, presumably black, is out of the Satanic bag, Novopashin would probably say, but he would be wrong again. The Satanic Temple does not correspond to Novopashin’s own definition of Satanism, i.e., the worship of the character called Devil of Satan in the Bible. In fact, Greaves does not believe that anything included in the Bible is true. He leads an organization of atheists and secular humanists who fight for the complete separation of church and state. Wherever they find a statue of Jesus or a table of the Ten Commandments on public ground, they put their Baphomet, the one you see in the picture, on a truck and deposit it near the Christian artifact. Then they go see the local judge asking in the name of “equal rights” that if a symbol of Christianity is displayed on public ground, a symbol of opposition to Christianity should also be visible next to it. In most cases, the judge would order both the Baphomet and the Christian monument removed, which was what Greaves and his friends wanted in the first place. They also fight for abortion and same-sex marriage by claiming they are part of their “religion.”
On that July 14, 2018, in Salem, where they have their headquarters, I jokingly told Greaves and friends that “People believe you are a Satanic cult, but you are actually much worse, you are a cult of lawyers.”
The context in which I uttered this sentence was a scholarly conference The Satanic Temple had organized to interact with academics and explains what they do and why they do it. And here comes the third and funniest mistake. The other two “Satanists” depicted on the right side of the picture are not Satanists at all, but well-known American scholars who spoke at the same conference, Joe Laycock (who later wrote the definitive book on the Satanic Temple) and Richard Noll, a well-known specialist of Jung. I am sure they will be in turn surprised to learn that their images are used to scare Russian children: but they are, after all, Americans, thus quintessential representatives of the Satanic “collective West.”
Even if The Satanic Temple is not exactly a Satanist group by Novopashin’s own definition, should scholars interact with such organizations? Absolutely. I published some years ago the standard manual in English on Satanism, a book praised in the book review magazine of the American Academy of Religion by Swedish scholar Per Faxneld as “the best, most detailed, and broadest overview of Satanism produced thus far.” Where the heck does Novopashin believe scholars get their information about new religious (and not-so-religious) movements if not by interacting with their leaders and members? He doesn’t, and this is one reason why his reports on minority religions are so pathetically inaccurate.
Although not really believing in the supernatural, members of The Satanic Ritual would perform mock rituals for the fun of it. But they are not effective. The conference in Salem was on July 14, 2018, and the next day, July 15, France had to play Croatia in the final of the soccer’s World Cup. Italians can tolerate not to win, and even not to participate, in a World Cup of soccer. What they cannot tolerate is that France wins. Italy was full of Croatian flags in these days. I asked The Satanic Temple folks whether they could put a spell on the French team to make sure they would lose the final. They did. Actually, France won, 4 to 2.
