Joie de Satan

Joy of Satan Ministries, also referred to as Joy of Satan (JoS), is a website and western esoteric occult organization founded in 2002 by Andrea M. Dietrich ( Maxine Dietrich). Joy of Satan Ministries advocates "Spiritual Satanism", an ideology that presents a synthesis of Theistic Satanism, Nazism, Gnostic Paganism, Western esotericism, UFO conspiracy theories and extraterrestrial beliefs similar to those popularized by Zecharia Sitchin and David Icke. Members believe Satan to be "The true father and creator God of humanity", whose desire was for his creations, humanity, to elevate themselves through knowledge and understanding. They have been the topic of significant controversy for their antisemitic beliefs and a connection to a former chairman of the National Socialist Movement, an American Neo-Nazi organization. The orientation of the Joy of Satan Ministries – "Spiritual Satanism" – is generally acknowledged by scholars as a form of western esotericism, which embraces LaVeyan Satanism with an esoteric perception contrasting the materialist and carnal inceptions idealized by Anton LaVey. Their relation between Satan is also described by professor of religious studies, Christopher Partridge, as "the core of an esoteric project of transformation, based on a personal or mystical relationship". In the early 2000s, Maxine Dietrich began the creation of Joy of Satan Ministries. Maxine Dietrich established a Satanic ideology that would present itself as an esoteric form of LaVeyan Satanism, but would espouse a "traditional Satanism" by establishing its satanic fundamentals from ancient Middle East, Far-Eastern and Western teachings, and only acknowledging Judaic/Abrahamic concepts of Satan as a reaction. From the research of Zechariah Sitchin, Maxine Dietrich derived the theory of an ancient conflict between advanced extraterrestrial races (see #Origins of humanity, below) and incorporated these theories into her ideology; she concluded that Jews and the Abrahamic religions were the products of a hostile alien race responsible for the deposition of pagan religions and their pagan gods (who the JoS identify as demons).