What Are Patron Sinners?
A patron sinner is a historical figure who particularly exemplifies Satanic values or ideals. Patron sinners are usually subversives, social critics, revolutionaries, artists, heretics, or criminals, although any person can be a great sinner if they significantly undermine arbitrary authority or bankrupt social norms.
Sinners often also have a certain je ne sais quoi that makes them seem at least a bit edgier or more challenging than superficially similar activists or artists, and many of them are people we believe have not received due fame or attention.
Bay Area Satanists nominate sinners once per year. Final selections are made via secret rite (secret because we’re always changing it…) and inducted at our yearly Walpurgisnacht celebration on or around April 30.
Praising figures from the past always gets sticky, because more likely than not someone whose ideals or actions we admire also held some other belief we find objectionable, and the judgment calls involved with deciding who it’s appropriate to praise are very subjective.
Still, we’re not calling any of these people saints—definitively.
Sinners
Mary Shelley
“Bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.”
Cliff Burton
“You burn out from going too slow.”
Elizabeth Bathory
“Do not think that I shall leave you to enjoy this.”
Eartha Kitt
“It’s all about falling in love with yourself.”
James Baldwin
“The time is always now.”
Marafi
“CULT OF SATANISM IN NEW GUINEA!”
Jose Sarria
“United we stand, divided they catch us one by one.”
Vine Deloria Jr.
“For this land, god is red.”
Freddie Mercury
“I always knew I was a star, and now the rest of the world seems to agree with me.”
John Waters
“I’ve built a career out of negative reviews.”
Oscar Wilde
“Disobedience is man’s original virtue.”
Hatuey
“They tell us, these tyrants, that they adore a god of peace.”
HR Giger
“We are all aliens.”
Nat Turner
“I have made a full confession and have nothing more to say.”
Margo St James
“We have the right to fuck whoever we want.”
Theda Bara
“I’m going to be so bad I’ll always be remembered.”
Robert Johnson
“Hello Satan; it’s time to go.”
Hedy Lamarr
“When I start to fear death, I order a massage and it goes away.”
Terry Pratchett
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
Peaches Christ
“Movie maven, filmmaker, cult leader.”
Julie d’Aubigny
“Beautiful, valiant, generous, and supremely unchaste.”
Robert Smalls
“Lincoln can put them to good use.”
Charles Baudelaire
“Satan, take pity on my long misery!”
Marsha P. Johnson
“History happens because of decisions that sometimes are very impulsive.”
Bayard Rustin
“Protest confers dignity.”
Carol Schuldt
“I was never good at organizations. I was always myself.”
Frank Zappa
“Without deviation, progress is impossible.”
Mary Ellen Pleasant
“A demon from first to last.”
Ignaz Semmelweis
“The Semmelweis Effect: The tendency to reject new evidence if it challenges established norms.”
Hypatia
“To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing.”