The Satanic Temple does not charge money or require you to purchase any “ritual items” to become a member. If anyone tells you that you must send them money to become a member, they are not affiliated with The Satanic Temple. If anyone tells you that you must purchase items in order to become a member, they are not affiliated with The Satanic Temple. They are scammers.

Although there are several variations on this scam, this is how it most often works:

The scammer will send private messages to the people who follow The Satanic Temple or one of its Congregations or Campaigns on some social media platform. They might make demands or offers right away, claiming to offer membership or a higher or secret “level” of membership in return for receiving payment. Slightly less blatant versions of the scam may inform you that you have been selected to become a member, but that you need to purchase some ritual items to go through the initiation ritual. (They will then direct you to a page that they control where you supposedly make this purchase.) In rare cases, the scammer may even take some time making conversation, both to try to put you at ease and to trick you giving them any information they can use to make their own story sounds more believable. Eventually, however, the conversation always ends up in the same spot: you are asked to either send money or make a purchase as a precondition for being granted membership.

If anyone tries this scam on you, please report it directly to the platform where the conversation is happening. Don’t engage them in conversation, because if they are clever they will try to use that conversation to get you to unintentionally reveal true information about either your own experiences or how The Satanic Temple works, which they can then use in their future attempts to scam people in order to sound more believable.

For more tips on responding to false claims, read: How should I respond to false claims on social media?

For tips on how to get accurate information about TST, read: How do I find accurate information about The Satanic Temple?

To learn how to become a member of TST, read: How do I become a member of The Satanic Temple?