That's One Way To Do It!

After the news came out that The Satanic Temple had lost the original venue for the unveiling of their Baphomet statue in Detroit, emboldened conservative Christians announced various plans to protest and disrupt the event at its new location, wherever that turned out to be. But the event promoters came up with an clever and hilarious way to weed them out, and the unveiling went off without a hitch.

First, taking a hint from rave culture, they kept the location secret to the public. Anyone wanting to attend had to go to the ticketing location in person to buy tickets, and only then would they receive the site of the unveiling. Better still, before anyone could buy a ticket and obtain the location, they had to sign their soul over to Satan. Predictably, no protesters made it to the event. Most likely none of them wanted to take the chance that signing might have real spiritual consequences.

Any conservative who wanted to ruin the Satanic Temple’s party would have had to sign a Transfer of Soul Agreement literally signing their eternal soul over to Satan. Here’s the text of that agreement:

"I agree that by signing this document under any name, given or adopted, actual or pseudonymous, I am hereby avowing my soul to Satan (aka Abbadon, aka Lucifer, aka Beelzebub, aka The Antichrist). I do so knowing that He (aka The Fallen One, aka The Father of Lies) or any of His representatives may choose to collect my eternal soul at any time, with or without notice. I understand that my signature or mark representing any name, real or made up, upon these papers constitutes a lasting and eternal contract, and that there will be no further negotiations on the matter of my eternal soul."

Predictably, with ingenious measures put in place, the whole event happened without a single problem and the long-awaited unveiling of the statue finally occurred in all its glory sealed by a kiss between the two men who removed the sheet covering it.

Now as I've mentioned before, Satanic Temple members are mostly LaVey Satanists who don't literally believe in an actual being named Satan who could take your soul. For that matter, my guess is that most of them don't even believe that "the soul" exists. But the point is that the sort of fundamentalist Christians who would protest the statue do. Apparently, they even fear that simply signing a form could place theirs in jeopardy.

I expect we may see this tactic adopted again at other events, since it worked so well this time around. What's so amusing about it is that nobody takes it seriously aside from the exact people that the "contract" is designed to exclude. Even from a magical standpoint you can't really sell your soul. The popular fiction surrounding the idea is based on the lore of pacts with spirits, which can be magically effective. But spirits also know that "the soul" is not a thing that can be traded.