What Is A Satanic Invocation, Anyway? FL Satanists, Activist Share

SOUTH FLORIDA — For years, Chaz Stevens, a self-proclaimed “political stunt activist” in South Florida, has regularly asked local municipalities — and more recently, schools — if he could recite a Satanic invocation at their public events, whether it’s a town commission meeting or a high school football game.

The requests are mostly tongue-in-cheek, designed to make a point about the separation of church and state and other issues. After all, Stevens isn’t even a Satanist; he’s a proud atheist and the founder of the Mount Jab Church of Mars activist group.

In most cases, cities and towns simply ignore his request or pass it on to their attorney; others, including Dania Beach and his hometown, Deerfield Beach, have gone so far as to drop allowing prayers before their governmental meetings altogether so they’re not accused of religious discrimination.

But sometimes, every once in a while, somebody tells Stevens, “Yes.”

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea invited the activist to perform a Satanic prayer Tuesday at its town commission meeting. This was the second time the commission allowed him to recite a prayer before a meeting. (The video recording of Tuesday’s meeting can be found here.)

• Also Read: Activist Asks To Lead Satanic Prayer At FL High School Football Game

But what exactly is a Satanic invocation? Since he’s not a Satanist, Stevens isn’t always sure. And on the rare occasions he’s given the greenlight by a city or town, he's forced to consider what he might say.

Days before the Lauderdale-by-the-Sea meeting, on July 22, he told Patch that he still didn’t know what he would say once he was at the podium.

“I really haven’t pondered it,” he said at the time.

He commended the town, though, on how they handled his request in the first place and said that would impact what he ultimately read before the commission.

“They have been open and welcoming to me, very nice in their emails to me following up,” Stevens said. “They get 100 points. Unlike my own city of Deerfield Beach. They’re (expletive) to me. Pardon my French.”

His first invocation at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, about five years ago, “wasn’t very memorable,” he added. “It lacked the understanding I have now.”

Initially, he thought he’d rely on props during his invocation and had his team build him a shepherd’s crook to bring up to the podium with him.

“I was going to throw it on the floor and yell, ‘Snake!’ but there wouldn’t actually be a snake,” he said.

He even contemplated how he might accomplish bringing a flaming pentagram into the town chambers.

“Then, I realized the folks in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea are nice,” Stevens said. “For whatever reason, they’re nice to me.”

As the friend of a father whose daughter attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the 2018 mass shooting that killed 17 students and staff members, he decided to focus his invocation on honoring victims of school shootings.

He likely surprised many when he got before the town commission and said: “I stand here in solemn remembrance for the victims of Parkland, and their loved ones. Please join me in a moment of silence remembering their lost shining lives. For those impacted at Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Columbine and elsewhere, please know that we all share in your sorrow, offering our love, support, and kindness.”

Some members of the commission were visibly confused.

That “thoughtful, solemn — not religious — super dignified” invocation is the result of the town welcoming him, Stevens said.

“If you’re nice to me, you get Lauderdale-by-the-Sea — ‘I’m happy to be here, thank you and let’s all bow our heads,’” he said. “I think people expect a flaming pentagram. ‘What’s Chaz going to do?’ Then, Chaz gets up there and it’s, ‘Let’s think about the kids of Uvalde.’”

And if they’re not nice to him?

“Everyone else, they get all the silliness they so richly deserve,” Stevens said. “They’re going to get a flaming snake, and deservedly so. I want them to be scared. I want them to wonder, ‘What the hell is he going to do?’ But I’m a rule player. I’m going to follow the rules, but I’m going to make them wonder why the hell was I allowed to do this.”

So, what goes into a real Satanic invocation?

In a Facebook message, the South Florida Division of the Florida Chapter of the Satanic Temple told Patch that Stevens isn’t a member of their congregation and only a Mister of Satan – who has gone through The Satanic Temple’s ordination — can perform invocations.

The division also shared the text of its current invocation, which reads:

“Let us stand now, unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old. Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of One or All. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is Done. Hail Satan."

The group also explained to Patch that to its followers, “Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds. Satan is an icon for the unbowed will of the unsilenced inquirer – the heretic who questions sacred laws and rejects all tyrannical impositions. Our metaphoric representation is the literary Satan best exemplified by Milton and the Romantic Satanists from Blake to Shelley to Anatole France.”

As for Stevens, his political activism and art continues in various forms.

He recently mailed sex toys to national and local leaders, including Rudy Giuliani to Manatee County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge, who recently led efforts to celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the county through a proclamation.

After the U.S. Supreme Court backed a high school football coach's right to pray at the 50-yard line, a South Florida artist and political activist has reached out to Florida high schools asking to lead a Satanic invocation at one of its football games.

“I’m just going to go and ask everybody if I can give a post-game Satanic prayer,” Stevens said. “Mine includes a mariachi band.”

In April, he wrote letters to more than 60 of Florida’s school district superintendents requesting that their school systems remove the Bible from classrooms, libraries and any instructional materials used by students.

His request was in response to the Florida Department of Education’s ban of more than 50 math textbooks and Gov. Ron DeSantis signing House Bill 1467 into law, giving parents more say in their school district’s instructional materials, library books and textbooks.

In 2015, he launched a project called “Satan or Silence” after listening to a religious invocation before a Dania Beach City Commission meeting.

“They said ‘Jesus Christ’ 23 times in under two minutes,” he said.

That’s when Stevens learned “to flip bureaucracy against itself and use the weight of bureaucracy against itself,” he said.

He told the city commission that he was a Satanist seeking equal protection and rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and asked if he could perform a Satanic prayer before a commission meeting. He made similar requests in other South Florida cities.

In 2013, after a Nativity was put on display at the state Capitol building, his holiday exhibit representing Festivus — a fake holiday from the 1990s sitcom “Seinfeld” — was allowed in Tallahassee.

Stevens built the 6-foot Festivus pole using empty Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans and PVC pipe, according to NPR. The made-up holiday also calls for people to celebrate with an “airing of grievances,” where they share their disappointments and issues from the previous year.

And this past December, he created another non-traditional holiday display in the state Capitol rotunda — cardboard cutouts of Dr. Anthony Fauci dressed as Santa Claus and Fox News show host Tucker Carlson dressed as the grim reaper.