The Church of Satan has released a statement in regard to the Satanic Temple's lawsuit against Netflix and the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. To put it simply, the Church of Satan doesn't have any problems with the hit Netflix show and its use of the Baphomet statue. The Satanic Temple and Church are separate organizations, and the Temple is suing the streaming platform for a total of $150 million for "appropriating" the statue and causing harm to their reputation as a respected group.

However, the Church of Satan has an entirely different view on the lawsuit and the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series. Reverend Joel Ethan released a statement on behalf of the Church of Satan to explain their views on the situation. Ethan goes on to reveal that the two organizations are not connected to each other. He explains.

"Recently, The Satanic Temple has filed a lawsuit against Netflix over a depiction of the symbolic deity Baphomet in their series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. As a significant number of people seem to be confusing this with us, we would like to clarify that TST is a political activist group that has nothing to do with us, nor with the religion of Satanism which we founded over 50 years ago. The Church of Satan has not filed a suit against Netflix, nor do we have a problem with their Sabrina show, which we've previously discussed."

The Satanic Temple is claiming that the Baphomet statue used in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a complete rip-off of their design. That's when things start to get a little cloudy. Yes, they look similar, but they're both based off of the same 19th century image that nearly all images of Baphomet are based on. Reverend Joel Ethan continues his statement and had this to say.

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"Netflix built their own Baphomet sculpture for their show which obviously references the TST version, but also references numerous public domain versions. Differing details in the chest, wings, beard, head and so on make it clear that the Netflix version is not an exact copy of the TST version, rather a situation of fair use of public domain and popular cultural imagery."

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina uses the Baphomet statue as a connection to Lucifer, and is a symbol of evil. The Satanic Temple takes offense to this, and believes that it sends the wrong message and makes their group look bad, and possibly evil, which apparently isn't their intent. The Satanic Temple's Baphomet statue was unveiled in 2015 and was originally supposed to be situated across from a statue of the Ten Commandments.

Reverend Joel Ethan ended the Church of Satan statement by putting the Satanic Temple on blast. Ethan compared the lawsuit to past stunts that the organizations has pulled off over the years. He says.

"To reiterate, while TST is known for childish PR stunts such as fake political rallies, mailing c*m rags to congress and rubbing genitals on grave stones to turn people gay after their deaths, these actions are not in any way representative of the apolitical, individualistic and atheistic religion of Satanism. Please do not attribute their actions to us."

In the end, Netflix and the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina are the true winners here. They just received a whole bunch of free publicity from the Satanic Temple. And even better, they now have the backing of the Church of Satan. You can read the entire statement over at the Church of Satan website.

Kevin Burwick