I get asked this question a lot in email, so I thought I would post my reply here on the Sixsmiths website.
I’m an active member of the Modern Church of Satan. It’s more progressive and less LaVey. There are a couple of Facebook pages that kinda exemplify the Sixsmiths’ portrayal of satanism. They’re pretty funny. All misconceptions, though. I’m just wondering where the ideas in this book came from?
When we came up with The Sixsmiths, Marc and I were looking to do a comedy book and it seemed like is would be funny to make the book about a family of Satanists. Although The Sixsmiths is usually compared to the Addams Family, if you look closely you’ll see that it is a lot more akin to The Simpsons or South Park. It’s a family sitcom as much as it is a religious satire. As for the ideas…
My family is Jewish and a lot of the stuff in the book is based on the various Jewish festivals, although I have taken plenty of inspiration from Catholicism as well. ‘Mammon in the Park’ is a direct play on Channukkah in the Park. Jehovah’s Witnesses did actually canvas me with magazines about how video games make children worship Satan. There are plenty of real elements in the book, but making the story about Satanism lets us dress everything up in horror movie drag. That’s what makes it funny.
When I was writing the scripts I was very conscious of the fact that the central metaphor of the book needs to work if you substitute Islam, Christianity, or any other monotheistic faith for Satanism. What we see in the book is normal monotheistic religion in drag, with a bit of sex and magic for slapstick. One thing that we do not see in the book is proper La Veyan Satanism, or any other variety.
I admit that I’m not familiar with the Modern Church, but I have read all of Anton La Vey’s work. Real Satanism just doesn’t work as the carnival mirror to religion that I wanted, so I went with the PT Barnum version.
In volume 2 we will see some glimpses into about the history and the structure of the Church of Satan that exists in The Sixsmiths’ fictional world, but it is exactly that–a fictional world in which Satanism has a long history as an organized religion, governed in a similar way to the more conventional religions that most Westerners have grown up with.