Wonder and Kent discuss the experimental documentary Realm of Satan which is a shifting kaleidoscope of satanic imagery featuring satanists set against rich backdrops curated by ritual and imagination. Emerging themes center around taboo worship, the gravitas of ritual and giving over to it, centering materiality in a religion vs repudiating it, delighting in and extolling the senses, a healthy dose of trickster energy, plus much dry humor. Also, goats, goats, goats. Astrologically this correlates to Saturn NOW AND FOREVER, the 9th house, the earth element, Venus, Mercury, and Saturn again. Saturn, Saturn, Saturn.
Distribution: More info
Director: Scott Cummings
Run Time: 80 minutes
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.476] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All The Way Down podcast, where we're diving deep into all of the Sundance documentaries from 2024. In today's episode, we're going to be unpacking the archetypal dynamics of Realm of Satan, which is in the next category within Sundance, directed by Scott Cummings. And this is the sixth out of six of our mini series on Faith and Ritual. So yeah, Wonder, would you read the synopsis, please?
[00:00:42.538] Wonder Bright: I would love to: Realm of Satan, an experiential portrait depicting Satanists in both the everyday and in the extraordinary as they fight to preserve their lifestyle, magic, mystery, and misanthropy. (giggles) I love it so much. Filmmaker Scott Cummings is no stranger to Sundance, having edited many highly acclaimed festival premieres over the past decade, including Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Monsters and Men, and Wendy. Realm of Satan marks his feature-length directorial debut after first staking his claim in the peripheries of nonfiction-adjacent storytelling with his acclaimed short film Buffalo Juggalos. His unique approach is to work in collaboration with sinister subcultures to conjure up video portraits that express a vision of their personal existence. As Cummings works in lockstep with cinematographer Gerald Kerkletz, each shot is its own small treasure to explore, whether fantastical, explicit, mundane, or all of the above. Realm of Satan's acceptance in an unreality sets itself on an anarchist path through expressions of identity and image-making that nobly fights all forms of tradition. And that really wonderful synopsis was brought to us by Sundance programmer Charlie Sextro.
[00:02:03.243] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's a really beautiful summation of The Realm of Satan because this is, of all the films we watched, I think it's one of the more experiential films because the structure and form, it's very fitting for the Next category, which is doing these non-traditional narrative structures. And there is this experience of this film that is a little bit difficult to talk about the narrative structure without talking about the experience of watching this film. So I'd love to maybe throw it back to you and tell me what was your experience of watching this piece?
[00:02:35.188] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I also want to, like, confirm that that was a really brilliant synopsis of something that actually can't be put into words. So, what was my experience of the film? The first thing I want to say is it starts with watching the birth of a goat. And that is something that is just going to stick with me. I actually initially had placed this episode first in the series because it starts with a birth. It’s, like, the beginning of something. And because this whole experience, when I say this experience, I mean this film, this whole experience, the experience of Realm of Satan is a deeply confounding one that is marked by imagery that means one thing in our culture. And as we're watching it shot in a really cinematic way, which is very loving and well lit and beautiful, but also eerie because the soundtrack is quite ominous. But as we're watching it, we're being confronted with imagery, which we can't help but be aware, no matter how little you have of a Christian background, like myself. But the ideas about Satanism in our culture are so verboten that there's no way that you can escape feeling that you are watching something that is secret and maybe shouldn't be seen, because we've been told in so many ways in our culture that that is the case. So there's an experience while watching it where you're being confronted, if you're willing, not just with imagery that is supposed to be verboten, but your own experience of watching imagery that is verboten. What does it mean about me that I'm watching this thing? And I personally really enjoyed that aspect of it. And I found the film really beautiful and really evocative and very thoughtful, actually. And at times, really, really funny. It is a very dry film, which I deeply appreciated. And anybody who has a passing understanding of astrology will recognize that the goat is a symbol for Capricorn. So, there are some really primal astrological images that happen in this film because the goat is repeated over and over again. And there's a lot of the color black, which is also associated with Capricorn and with Saturn in general. So, the film is extremely Saturnine. In fact, when I initially wrote my notes for it, my first note was “and remember, son, if you see your mother this weekend, be sure to tell her Saturn, Saturn, Saturn”.
[00:05:26.935] Kent Bye: Yeah, watching this film was definitely an experiential film, and it's very sparse in terms of its more explicit narrative or diegetic elements. I mean, a lot of the stuff that you're listening to is listening to people in the midst of their rituals, their satanic rituals that they're going into. And it's really going into this 9th House domain of the rituals that they're following. They just showed people going through these rituals and repeating these chants, and you kind of get a cross-section, like it's a sampling of all these different Satanists. However, there are some people in the credits that had a little asterisk that said, not a Satanist. It's hard to know who those people who were not a part of the practice of Satanism were, but there was this kind of intimate profile across these different contextual domains, whether it was their home - there was a magician that was being shown, there was people who were being creative and making these different artifacts. I found myself trying to just track and decode what the narrative was, because a lot of times with these Next films, you get really unorthodox ways of telling these narratives. And so for me, there's a primary sense of, yes, there is a saturnine aspect, but aside from the saturnine aspects, there's also a lot of Venus. There's a lot of really beautifully designed costumes and homes that we're going to see, like the 4th House getting into the exquisitely designed interior decoration of these satanists. It feels like you're walking into some sort of theatrical play or immersive theater place rather than someone's home. Everything was just incredibly gorgeous and well considered. And then you have people who are, like, walking around with clown makeup and more of a, I'd say, a trickster energy. So there's this mercurial nature of the trickster that is throughout the Church of Satan. And I also want to say that there's actually two primary satanic organizations. There's the Church of Satan, and then there's The Satanic Temple. So I think the previous documentaries that I've seen have been diving into The Satanic Temple, which is often out there in the news doing things like using abortion rituals to claim religious liberty against the Texas heartbeat bill. So they'll kind of use Satanism as a provocation against Christianity to counteract some of the religious freedom organizations. When I go to the Church of Satan on Wikipedia it says, members do not believe that Satan literally exists and do not worship him. Instead, Satan is viewed as a positive archetype embracing the Hebrew root of the word Satan as adversary who represents pride, carnality, and enlightenment, humanity's natural instincts, which Abrahamic faiths have wrongly suppressed. So the Church of Satan has origins back in Anton LaVey. There's actually a comparison between The Satanic Temple and the Church of Satan, which helps to elaborate more about the nuances between them. So The Satanic Temple is actually an officially recognized tax-exempt church by the IRS. But the Church of Satan, which is being featured in this film, is not IRS-recognized. They both have a checkmark for being taken seriously by credible religious scholars as a manifestation of the modern Satanism, and neither one of them believe in actual Satan. And then the next one is belief in magick with a K, and The Satanic Temple does not, but the Church of Satan does. So they have this kind of belief as this pagan ritualistic system. Political views of The Satanic Temple is a non-theistic movement aligned with liberty, equality, and revolution. So you see them doing a lot of political activism. So you see them in the news around civil liberties campaigns, litigation, and public events, whereas the Church of Satan is not doing that type of political activism as much. They're more of this private organization that isn't even necessarily recognized as an official church. And they're not out on the front lines trying to fight for secularism. They're not fighting for reproductive rights. They don't have a physical headquarters. They don't have local chapters. I'm actually reading this from The Satanic Temple. So this is their comparison and contrast to the Church of Satan that we're experiencing in this film. And then I'd say the center of gravity is that it kept coming back to the different ritual practices that people were doing. Which as I was watching it, I actually didn't know. I was like, I was confusing it with this other thing that I've watched and wasn't familiar with. And so they felt like they were actually doing these as a religious practice. But in the moment as I was watching it, and my mind has been confusing it with this whole other thing that I just tried to elaborate here a little bit. So that was a part of my experience that I'm just now resolving.
[00:10:05.831] Wonder Bright: I'm really happy to have you resolve it here in real time because that was really interesting. I also conflated the two, did not know that there were two, had not remembered that from watching that documentary, which by the way, really great. Definitely thumbs up. Watch it. And I didn't necessarily find it asynchronous that you could do both. I just completely believed everybody, especially that sequence where we watched Satanists from around the globe performing this sacred ritual where they say this prayer that each person or group of people are intoning the same liturgy as they stand in front of their altar and recite this prayer. That was one of my favorite sequences because you just have this sense of the devout nature that people are partaking in in terms of their devotion and their practice. But with any sort of occult practice or something that is taboo in mainstream culture, there is this experience of something a bit illicit watching behind the scenes footage. And there's this one sequence where they're filming a guy outside of the temple, and there was a statement inscribed above the door of the temple. And it said something like, “for the uninvited, there is much to fear”. I just thought that was such an interesting thing to give us in the film because implicit in that is that we have been invited. So we don't need to be afraid. We have been invited into these people's homes to watch them from all around the globe enacting this sacred ritual and they're showing their faces on screen and they're showing their homes on screen. It's a very private moment. And the prayer itself was quite interesting. You know, I mean, I think prayers are always inherently interesting, how we speak to our gods and what it is that we're asking for or being grateful for. And one of the markers of this film, in keeping with what you were saying earlier about the way that people were really interested in creating something beautiful in their home and in their environments, is the fact that I think it's a hallmark of Satanism, and we certainly saw it in this film, that we're going to enjoy our earthly pleasures. We're going to relish our sexual desire. We're going to enjoy material possessions. there's a whole sequence at the very beginning of the film where this Satanist is lovingly polishing his black sports car outside the front door of this extremely Gothic multi-story stone dwelling. And this is a very expensive car and he's dressed in black and red and he's just kind of, like, lovingly polishing this car. And it goes on for quite some time. And then we actually see the car reappear throughout the film thematically. And it's going really, really fast. So we have this experience of, this is a vehicle that is something like the Batmobile or something, you know, but that it's really cared for. It's a treasured possession. There's so much strong imagery that's just so beautifully shot. I do not know how Scott Cummings got this particular one. It had to, it must have been CGI of some kind, but it was - it was obviously CGI as I say that out loud, of course it was, but like, it was really well done - and I believed it - where that black car is zooming across this vista… it comes out between these two mountaintops and it scorches across the tarmac in front of us. Then it passes, and, as it passes, the sun is out, and everything goes into shade as if the sun has gone behind the clouds as the car passes. And it's just such a beautifully fun, evocative image. So there's this experience of the invitation to darkness and darkness is actually being something that we can take comfort in, and that owning things and wanting things and desiring things is how we could please our divinity, and that that's how we could actually know ourselves better. So this is obviously a complete reversal of how we think of Christian faith, generally speaking, which is really concerned with deprivation of not experiencing our physical bodies or our desires. And so there's this exaltation in doing it differently that we really see on display in this film. It's really honestly quite delightful because the way that it's depicted is with humor and with a lot of fun and also such sincerity. It's really refreshing.
[00:15:12.257] Kent Bye: Yeah. When I think about the primary significations of this piece, we've already talked about the saturnine nature and Venus, but I think that if I were to pick one signification, I would pick the earth element. And I feel like that would be probably unique into a lot of the other films, just because when I think about the earth element, I think about embodiment and I think about the environmental context of these different spaces that were being shown. So I feel like this is, of all the different pieces we've seen, the one film that would be, like, the best transition into being turned into a complete 360 degree documentary or 180 video. Like, it's really trying to immerse you into these people's worlds and we're seeing it through a 2D frame, but it still has this immersive quality that is trying to really focus on this subtle nuances of the sensory experience of how the story is being told. I say that just because you're just overhearing people in the middle of this practice. There's certainly a lot of 9th House themes and significations throughout the entirety of this piece, but when I think about the thing that I'm really taking away from the experience, it's this earth element, this experiential dimension of this embodied experience. I'm not actually embodied into the film, but I feel like this is the closest type of film that is trying to replicate all the subtle nuances of the sensory experience with the sounds and just even how it begins with this goat being born and feel transported into another place. And I feel like that is a modality of filmmaking that is trying to borrow some of these other aspects of what I see with immersive storytelling. We're trying to really take you to another place. So because of that, I feel like there's this way that the story is being told that is juxtaposing these spaces together in a way that you kind of have to use the symbolic logic to suss out what is the deeper message of what's being said because it's all about the juxtaposition of these spatial contexts that are being put up against each other with these protagonists of Satanism who are going about their day or practicing their rituals or creating something creative or doing magic tricks or whatever it is that they're doing. You get a sense of them in these different spaces. Yeah, so I'd say the earth element was the thing that I'm really taking away from this piece.
[00:17:25.859] Wonder Bright: Yeah, especially because they're delighting in the material realm. So it's not just the way the film is shot, but it's actually the subject matter that we should exalt in our material manifestations and glory it. So yeah, I think that's a really savvy take. I'm actually going to go back to Saturn and mine it for more gold because one of the phrases that came to my mind as I was watching this film is the title of a book that the modern astrologer, Liz Greene, wrote, which is called Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil. Because Saturn for millennia has had this very dark and cold aspect to it that traditionally was seen as the greater malefic, meaning that it’s, like, the Big Bad of astrology land - until we discovered the outer planets, of course - there’s just this idea with Saturn that it's dangerous and it's cold and it's dark and it's frightening. And saturnine subject matter is fairly brutal. It makes sailors, and people who swear, and dark swarthy types and all kinds of things that we classically typify as being something that we don't want. And that it is something we might revile, difficult experiences, hardship, isolation, all these kinds of things. And so there was a movement that was spearheaded in modernity to kind of reclaim Saturn as being something else altogether. And so hence Liz Greene's book title, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil. And I kind of feel like this film is doing something similar. Now of course, if you look at the tradition, there's actually a whole wealth of information about Saturn where, like all things, nothing is all bad or all good. I think about Rob Hand talking about Saturn as having this experience of contemplation. So the very thing around the isolation that we associate with Saturn, that's exactly the kind of thing that a monk might need if he's going to go away and he's going to study his literature. He's going to be a scribe who copies a Bible, like that capacity for being alone and to really contemplate things is a saturnine aspect. And I think we have room for that in this film that is asking us to look and then look again. And did you really get it? Because I'm going to show you this kind of image again. And I want you to think about what you're actually looking at and your relationship to it. There’s - one of the people that is shown praying to Satan is standing in a secondary room, and we're looking at him praying in profile through the doorway of the room that the camera is positioned in, and on the wall of the room that the camera is facing is a famous Diane Arbus photograph of two twin girls, and I believe that they're Siamese twins. Susan Sontag really took Diane Arbus to task because she believed that Diane Arbus was photographing circus freaks and people who were on the outside of culture because she was making fun of them. But in fact, Diane Arbus would go and live with people for really long stretches of time and, like, immerse herself in their lives and become really quite close to the people that she photographed. In much the same way that I think Scott Cummings has done in his work. So you could look at the photograph, as Sontag did, and think that these people are objects of ridicule. Or you might suspect, as I do, that in fact it was Sontag who was uncomfortable with the image of people that are so different from how we think people are supposed to be. And that you could find beauty and real humanity in an image of somebody who doesn't look the way that we're, quote, “supposed to look” in this world. And I think that's what Diane Arbus, personally, that's what I see when I look at Diane Arbus's photography is that she's asking us to look at people that are outcasts or misfits or do not belong or not like the others. And I feel like this is something of what this film is doing is that it's actually just patiently observing. It's just looking at and seeing. And what we see when we look at what this film is looking at might be something different than what we're actually being asked to see. So I think that the duality of Saturn and its many permutations is on display. So this is not a film to just think that you understand it just because you've seen the image. There is an experience and a journey that Scott Cummings is taking us on. And he's asking us to engage with all of our senses as we do so, and to really observe.
[00:22:35.654] Kent Bye: So what would you prescribe The Realm of Satan for?
[00:22:39.921] Wonder Bright: Yeah, for me, it's just gonna keep coming back to Saturn, the Saturn symbology with the goat, and the black, and the taboo energy around things. I wouldn't say that this is for anyone who has Saturn stuff. It's definitely not for somebody who doesn't want to be invited into this realm of Saturn. But I would say that it is for people who are interested in a new look at an old devil and who are willing to sit with their discomfort or maybe even eager to sit with their discomfort or the discomfort of others, and to experience an opportunity to contemplate, perhaps without understanding, and to recognize that that is also Saturn's job, that we are often confronted with difficult fates as represented by a Saturn transit or a natal Saturn placement. And oftentimes the best way of working with Saturn is to stop projecting difficult Saturnine experiences onto someone else, like, “this shouldn't be happening to me". The best thing with Saturn is to say, "this definitely needs to happen to me”. In a recent episode, we talked about the experience of fear. And as one of my heroes, Karla McLaren, says about fear, “fear is there to get us to be alert and to pay attention”. And part of being alert and paying attention is to actually just observe and to contemplate. And so I think this film offers us an opportunity to observe maybe without understanding because that's the first step of being able to process something that is difficult and perhaps unwelcome. So that's the energy of Saturn, I think, that this film offers and that I would prescribe for anyone who is going through difficulty and they don't understand it. And they want to be able to sit with something that might be difficult and be on the edge of their understanding. This is a good film for experiencing that.
[00:24:53.653] Kent Bye: And this is the sixth of six, and so the last of the series of looking at the theme that you had called Faith and Ritual. And I think this is probably one of the most clear examples of a film that is much more on the ritual side. But I'd love to hear some of your comments on how the Realm of Satan is tying back into this deeper theme of Faith and Rituals.
[00:25:14.068] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I had two things that I knew that I wanted to look up that I wrote down as notes as I was watching it. One was what do goats symbolize in Satanism? And the other was what does an inverted cross symbolize in Satanism? Because both of those symbols were on display many times in the film. And I did not find anything that helped me trace the path of what I was supposed to be thinking as I watched this film. And for me, ultimately, that actually ends up being the core experience that I take away, which is mystery and how to actually just be with things, even if they don't necessarily make sense. And that you don't necessarily have to have an answer every single time, and sometimes a goat is just a goat for crying out loud. Two of the most confounding images for me in the film take place at the beginning and at the very end. At the beginning, after we see the goat being born, we see the goat being suckled by a human woman who is cloaked with her head covered and she is breastfeeding this baby goat that's just been born. And it's such a startling image. I don't know that I need it to make sense. Like, whatever I see when I look at it is for me, you know, which is similar to the difference between me looking at a Diane Arbus photograph and Susan Sontag looking at a Diane Arbus photograph. It's the same photograph, but we're having a completely different experience of it. And I think ultimately that Faith and Ritual are as diverse as there are humans on the planet. And the most important thing that we can do is engage with our own faith in a really meaningful way and to find our own practices. The other image that is deeply confounding to me in this film is the image of this man who has lost the use of his legs, who invites us into his home. Again, invitation is key here. And we feel invited because we see him outside of his apartment, which has a wheelchair access ramp. He's sitting in his wheelchair in the parking lot, and then he wheels himself up the ramp and we follow him. And then later in the film, in a couple of different sequences, we see him inside his house and we're just observing him in his home, which we know is his home because it has metal frames around the corners of his walls, presumably to prevent damage from the wheelchair. And eventually in one of these scenes he wheels himself into his bedroom and he gets himself out of the wheelchair and lies in bed as if to go to sleep. And then the closing sequence of the movie has him turning off the lights and then, as a being of light, his spirit presumably, perhaps, leaves his body - sits up, stands up, and walks into the darkness and becomes an inverted glowing cross to these, like, symphonic orchestral sounds. And I genuinely don't know what this image means. This is where I was like, okay, I have to look up what an inverted cross means. But the thing that I was really left with is, like, in that knowing to just experience the imagery as something that is pointing me to: you don't know, and you don't know that you don't know. And to just be with that experience, which ultimately I think any expression of faith is going to take, is to not know, and to celebrate humanity in all of its diverse forms and to appreciate things as they are, not as we think they ought to be.
[00:29:13.550] Kent Bye: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, there's certainly that type of symbolic logic and mystery that's involved with this piece. And like I said, it's like a real experiential film that you're being exposed to these things and you're left to be confronted with the taboo nature. But when I think about the things that I'm bearing witness to in this piece, I'm really observing the spectacle of what they're creating, all the beautifully designed spaces that I'm being taken into, but also the Saturnine dimension of the dry humor, but also these significations of Saturn that you're really explicating. And yeah, very provocative and evocative aspects of how this is almost a deliberately confronting organization, to the point where they're showing that they suffered an arsonist who burned down one of their homes and had a reward of $6,666 for anybody that had information around who burnt down their house. So there's, again, this kind of trickster mercurial element that's in there as well that I also wanted to just call out and bear witness to.
[00:30:19.448] Wonder Bright: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really canny insight. I want to bear witness to Scott Cummings delightful, light, but earnest hand at the helm of this really evocative series of images and rabbit hole of a culture that I have no exposure to really. And for the Church of Satan who invited us in to witness their ceremonies and their rituals, and their rites, and their humor, and their love of living, and yeah, for inviting us in.
[00:30:57.882] Kent Bye: So yeah, that's all that we have for today. And we just want to thank you for joining us here on the story all the way down podcast. If you enjoy the podcast then, please do, spread the word, tell your friends and consider going to our website and signing up for our newsletter to keep track with what we're up to. So yeah. Thanks for joining us. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
