Origins & history

The Temple’s founders had all held senior priestly office in the Church of Satan in the early 1970s. Aquino himself had been initiated in 1969, rose rapidly, and by the mid-1970s held the rank of Priest of Mendes and edited the Church’s internal publication. In June 1975 he and a substantial portion of the Church’s working priesthood resigned in protest at LaVey’s decision to begin offering priesthood degrees in exchange for monetary contribution rather than ritual achievement. Aquino regarded this as a terminal corruption of the Church’s initiatory structure.

Within weeks Aquino conducted a working which he interpreted as receiving an “infernal mandate” — a direct address from Set authorising the constitution of a new order to continue the work the Church of Satan had, in his account, abandoned. The Temple was formally constituted later that year. The published documentary record of the schism is unusually full for an esoteric organisation: Aquino’s subsequent memoir The Church of Satan (2013) reproduces correspondence and internal documents from both sides at length.

The Temple has operated continuously since 1975 and is internationally distributed, with local working groups (called Pylons) on several continents. After Aquino stepped down as Magus in 1996, Don Webb held the position until 2002; subsequent Magi have served shorter terms, in a pattern the Temple regards as appropriate to its initiatic structure.