New Yorker publishes “satire” article about Satan worship

Hello, all,

Thank you so much for bearing with us as we try to navigate this scary and confusing time. In order to insure the safety and health of our coven, the Siren Sisters of Bramble Grove will now be holding our monthly ritual Satan worship and spell-casting meeting over the video-conferencing platform Zoom. I know you all likely have questions and concerns, many of which I will try to address here.

On Tuesday, you will be visited by Galgar, cursed raven of the north. Galgar will fly to your window to deliver a scroll containing a nine-digit meeting I.D. and a six-digit passcode, which you can use to log in. A reminder that Galgar is not an I.T. specialist, he is just a bewitched anthropomorphic bird doing his best. We all must go easy on Galgar as he adapts to his new role.

Once you have logged in to the meeting, make sure that your camera and audio are turned on. If your audio is off and our voices are not in synch, the spells will not work. Please do not pretend that you don’t know how to turn the audio on to avoid participating in the spells. I know we will all be in separate places, but we still need to put in a hundred-per-cent effort, as we would if we were meeting at our rock pentagram in the Hell cave.

Side note—if you left something in the Hell cave, DO NOT go back to retrieve it. You were given explicit instructions not to leave anything behind in the Hell cave. You will have to wait to retrieve your items until the Hell cave has been sanitized and commuting to the Hell cave is safe again.

Since we cannot gather around our large communal cauldron, we will have to plug our smaller, at-home cauldrons into our computers. If your miniature cauldron is new, you will be able to use wireless Bluetooth connection. I recently realized that my new cauldron also synchs with Spotify!

Some of you have expressed qualms about the digitization of cauldrons and potion making. Of course I would love to feel the hemlock in my hands instead of just typing “hemlock.” On the bright side, the new technology is able to project the screams of the damned at an even higher volume. Plus, you can decorate your digital potion with fun little gifs of fire and brimstone and people’s skin melting off their face on a loop, which I think is a fun and creative touch.

Obviously, we are going to try our best to get Satan on the call, but please don’t be too disappointed if he is unable to join. As you know, he is very old and has trouble operating newer technology. (To be fair, Hell only recently upgraded to iOS 10.)

I know you were all looking forward to drinking goat’s bile together. Maybe it could be fun to each pour individual cups of goat’s bile at home and drink them on camera? We can clink our glasses against the screen as if we were at a real goat’s bile happy hour. That could be really cute.

Stay well!

Allegra the Infernal

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/owing-to-coronavirus-concerns-we-will-now-be-holding-our-coven-meeting-on-zoom