My North Star

Twelve days of Christmas

This story is inspired by the Seven Tenets of The Satanic Temple — principles I’ve long admired for their focus on compassion, bodily autonomy, scientific understanding, and personal responsibility. The story below is a work of fiction, a piece of winter folk-horror shaped by those ideals rather than a depiction of TST itself.

If the philosophical themes resonate with you, then please follow the links to explore the writings and educational work of Lucien Greaves and The Satanic Temple Washington, who examine these ideas with far greater depth.

The Orders Backbone

This tale begins in an isolated community perched on a ruinous cliff. They offered their prayers to a different patron, and the Heavens fractured at what they perceived as the arrogance of simple folk. In Heaven’s blind prejudice, they did not see that people chose freedom and autonomy over obedience to a spineless Lord.

They chose seven core principles grounded in fact:

I

One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.

II

The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.

III

One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

IV

The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.

V

Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.

VI

People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one’s best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.

VII

Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.

These adorned the walls of their homes. At mealtimes, they gave thanks to Lucifer as the eternal rebel who represented their humanistic values of rational inquiry, personal freedom and critical thinking. Everything in their community flowed and functioned on scientific fact. Until myth and science blurred, and twelve days of woe were brought upon them.

The First Cut

The first visit came to Dot on the back of a cold winter’s night. As she settled by the fire to read all the strange tales she could soak up, she believed nothing could disturb her peace. The fire crackled and hissed upon the groans of wind coming through the window, easing into the comfort of the waft of cinnamon and apple from the pie she was baking in the oven. Her home was quaint and rustic in the back of the village, amid the forest.

As she began to unwind, a sudden tension rippled through her muscles — an instinctive flinch she couldn’t explain. She dismissed her body’s instincts as exhaustion from the winter harvest.

Reality came crashing in when a sudden bang tore through the stillness.

Again, she dismissed it as either a local hunter or something gone askew from a shelf; she felt she had no reason to fear in her cut-off community.

Time drifted by until the second intrusion came. Three loud knocks on the window:

Thud, thud, thud.

She feared the window would either come off its hinges or shatter. Her tranquillity shattered; she was fully alert. As her breathing laboured and her heart tried to reach out of its cage, she approached the now cracked opening.

A tree was rustling against the pane. Foolishly, she assumed this might be the culprit.

Before she could investigate further, she was startled by the sudden ring of the cooker timer.

She tried to calm her mind and body in the flood of aromas from her kitchen.

Something seemed off, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

Strange as with every Christmas season — as with most times — she was alone. As she pulled the pie and placed it on the stove, the house suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree.

Every light flared to maximum brightness.

There was an eerie, unsettlingly lit fog coming through the back door. Suddenly, the atmosphere in the room shifted, the pressure became oppressive, and in the background, her record of Mahler’s Symphony No.6 began to blare.

As the record hit the last three blows of fate, she crept towards the door in trepidation.

She saw the silhouette of a figure and the outline of feathers before she was dazed by a blinding light. When her vision returned, all she could see was an impossible sight of gold, blazing fire and eyes — feeling the fear of the unknown in what had always been a sea of certainties.

Dot tried to let out a plea, but her screams were then muffled by the encroaching invader that no reason could comprehend. She would be the first gift to arrive this season, left with something improbable and posed in the grotesquery in a town that thought it knew its truths.

Benediction of Pie

Tate was the sheriff of Fort Rock — a job that, most years, felt more like being a social worker than a peacekeeper.

Until this fated Christmas, which brought him gifts of the unfathomable — gifts that broke his resolve.

It was Saturday — twelve days until Christmas returned.

He was part of only a small manned team on the force, and they kept themselves isolated from state authorities. Anything happened, they were self-sufficient and on their own, come what may.

This day was different from any other. A storm was rolling in; it was more than the snow and the battering of bitter winds. There was a shift in the air — subtle at first, then suffocating. As if the atmosphere itself was turning against them and tightening around their throats. Followed by the persistent smell of scorched meat.

That charred smell was coming from one place and would become a persistent feature in the days leading up to the holidays. A call came in, it was the local farmer, Frank, he sounded like he’d run a marathon of fear ragged with a rasp of death knocking at his door:

“Sheriff… you— you need to get down here… it’s Dot, it’s—oh fuck, it’s ba—” static

Before he could question what had happened further, the radio cut off, followed by the loud, piercing sound of three trumpets. Tate wrestled with the radio, trying to cut through the static without losing control on the icy road. Unable to break the cacophony, he turned his attention to the matter at hand and sped up to Dots.

Sirens wailed, blazing through the sheets of snow like a cleaver. Precarious on the icy roads, but his vehicle was built to answer the call of the cliffs. As he made his way up the forest path towards his new card of fate, he was greeted by the sight of Frank bringing up his breakfast.

Tate pulled over, unprepared for what would greet him.

He approached Frank and immediately stepped back as the man retched violently into the snow.

As he was hunched over, he merely pointed the way inside.

Tate merely nodded and patted him on the back.

When he entered the house, he choked on the smell of cremated flesh baked in the overpowering waft of cinnamon. All throughout the house, Mahler’s Symphony No.6 kept playing on unreasonable repeat, the phonograph grinding as though some unseen spectral hand was pushing it to its limits.

Then there he saw her in the kitchen, and this was not calm or serene.

This was brutal, sadistic, and purposely staged.

Tate only kept his calm thanks to his familiarity with death, growing up with a father as the undertaker. But even still, the way she was posed unearthed him as this felt barbaric and inhuman.

Her hands and feet were pierced with metal poles — cold, brutal, stigmata pinning her in place. Dot was seated in benediction like the Pietà, but instead of holding the baby Jesus, she was holding an apple pie. A blue veil had been draped over her head, with her face exposed. Her skin was clammy, a cold sheen glazing her face. Then there were her eyes, crisp black raisin pits still smoking from the sockets with trickles of blood pouring down in the crimson shape of pearled tears. The last symbol of this vestige was a cross burnt into her forehead.

Frank stepped in behind him: “Oh man, who could do such a thing?”

Tate pondered for a second before replying: “I don’t know.” He said.

“But this is a message, and they have left a gift.”

A glowing sphere on the table called out to him: “I mean, what is this? Nothing about this makes a lick of sense, and we are not equipped to handle something like this. We are on our own in a battle beyond comprehension.”

The mayor had Dot buried quickly and hoped the matter would be sealed. Hoping this was a fluke, as there was no way they had the resources to catch them. The perpetrator left the sheriff with his first gift and the odour of cremated flesh invading his senses till a few days later, when another would come calling.

Fields of Sacrifice

Tate stared at that miraculous sphere night and day.

It was the key, and it was the puzzle that kept him transfixed.

It felt like it was plucked from another reality entirely. He always guided his life to truth, but when faced with the unrecognisable, he lost the tethers to anchor his reality.

By day, it was the sphere; by night, it was the nightmares. It made him doubt the ground he walked on and what he accepted as fact. Were myths really among them?

The replay of Dot’s final screams as she called out for compassion — she haunted his every sleeping moment. And his sleep wasn’t going to get any easier.

It was now eight days till Christmas, and more surprises were in store.

He tried to erase the last image of Dot from his mind, but he kept her memory tucked in his pocket so someone would keep a candle for her. He washed down the woes of his night with food and a splash of bitter coffee, all washed in the scents of grounds and grease.

This morning wouldn’t get any better as this next one felt like it was left personally for him to find.

It was as if the perpetrator had been mocking his inability to do anything about it. He pulled up to the station that morning and was greeted by the sight of four locals.

They were put on display for the killer’s amusement and his displeasure.

Across the brick façade of the station, four men were crucified to the wall and drained completely. Each wound from the nails in their hands and feet cried no blood. Their intestines spilt out like ropes around their necks. Down to the same calling cards of their sockets burnt out, still smoking like gun barrels, each forehead marked with an ashen cross.

In the frigid cold air, this was a new message that upped the stakes; it cried that the perpetrator would not be ignored, and this is something you can’t simply bury. How he had even managed to arrange the victims to stay with simple nails seemed miraculous, as if their flesh was burrowed deep into the stones.

His calm demeanour around death got to him this time. The display of the viscera so casually made him throw up. He regretted having breakfast this morning, the one day he hadn’t skip, confronted with this.

The close community banded together. The leaders stared at this gruesome sight like it was communion, all debating what they should do next. The mayor, as always, stepped forward, eager to make his voice heard: “It’s clear this isn’t a one-off sheriff — we can’t deal with something on this level, and it is a blatant message now that someone has a vendetta on our little town.”

Tate merely grunted and tried to take in every detail that was laid before him. It was as if to him that someone was trying to force devotion through mutilation. He turned away and simply said:

“Sow fear into the hearts of lambs, and they will pray for you.”

Tate walked back through the crowd; they just bowed their heads and muttered unheard pleas. When he climbed into his truck, he called back to the mayor:

“Clean this up and bury it, you know that’s what you’re good at. I need time to think.”

Feast of No Saints

Tate struggled to grasp what was happening to their small community.

And it was now two days till Christmas.

Doubt gnawed at him at what he was made to bear witness to. Was that what he was in the end, a compliant witness? There to display the monster’s horrors for the ones in the pews to see? Something unnatural had come to Fort Rock, and no matter how much reason he tried to apply, the truth pressed on him like an avalanche pushing against the doors.

He felt out of his depth and lost in the hurricane of folklore he read in his youth. These crimes were statements of intent to bring them to kneel that much, he was certain, for their affront in their teachings.

He calmed himself by breathing in the fragrance of scotch cut with the trail of stale ash. He stared at what evidence they had kept in his low-lit room, adrift on the flotsam of his thoughts.

His husband tried to comfort him while he was in his annihilation, but if there was one thing Isaac knew was not to rouse his man when he was lost down a well.

He kissed him goodnight and caressed his rough, stubbled cheek as he said:

“I’ll be here when you come up for air, my little scuba diver.”

After his departure, time drifted like it was taunting him, wrapped in the glow of the orb.

He was roused from his melancholia when something hurled through his window with a crash like a meteor of importance.

He rushed to the blinds to see who had hit this home run.

In the gloom of the night and the low light, he couldn’t make out much. Only a subtle glimpse of wings and a trail of feathers from a silhouette that moved like a blur. He thought about giving pursuit, but he knew deep down that at the speed it was moving, it would be gone before he could descend.

Isaac burst into the room in a state of panic: “What the fuck was that? Are you ok?”

Tate tried not to show a look of concern and simply smiled at him:

“Couldn’t get a good enough look, but it would appear someone wanted to leave me a gift. Now the question is… what did they bring to our door?”

Tate scrambled through the mess of papers to see what had been left — searching frantically to the concern of his partner.

Like a piece of carved brimstone, there it lay.

It had undecipherable markings along its surface and a smell that was acrid. In the centre of this ancient cube was a recess of a circular indentation.

Upon seeing the lines of the pit in the object, he immediately leapt to the sphere.

His husband looked on with bemusement:

“I think I should have stayed in bed. This is too weird. Are we even safe here if unknown people are hurling creepy objects through our window?”

Tate was probably a little too absent in a fever dream over the puzzle that lay before him.

He just said: “Look — they fit.”

Before any more words could be exchanged, the box began to grate like the grinding of metal teeth against bone.

They both stood transfixed at what was unfolding before them like a complex configuration. As it opened, the radio broke into static with a crackle. There it was again, the trumpets from Mahler’s symphony.

As the last horn blared, it opened, and the light in the sphere was snuffed out. The box cracked open with a note, and the sphere opened like an orchid, revealing a key.

Amid the cacophony of the symphony, they were quickly snapped back to reality as it abruptly stopped.

Isaac reached forth with curiosity, and Tate smacked his hand lightly aside:

“Hey, mister, that’s evidence.”

He jokingly stood to attention and said: “Yes, sir.”

With those two words, Tate pulled him close and drank in the dew of his silken lips. A pull of reality to ground him back to his real truth.

Isaac smiled at him, held in Tate’s arms, he asked: “What was that for?”

Tate stroked his hair and declared:

“You are my tether,” Tate muttered.

“When the unnatural comes to visit.”

As Isaac took his leave, he examined the note within the box. The writing seemed like it was lost from another era — clear but on the edge of indecipherable. The note smelled of ambergris and bergamot, an old-world perfume that reminded him of his grandmother. It was as if the note down to its fragrance was tailored to a tune only he could recognise.

This was personal, and he was the object of this creature’s affections.

The note simply read:

“Come to the watchtower on the coast at midnight as the eve falls to the day of the saviour’s birth.

I will be watching.

Make your choice, detective.”

Damnations Verdict

Tate paced his office, eager to get to the fiery confrontation with the entity that had invaded his sanctity. He was steadfast and determined to confront whatever twisted design plucked his string like a single note in an orchestra. He was no special ops, just a beat cop in a dead-end part of the world doing his best to get by like everyone else.

As the clock crept close to the time, feeling like the shadow of a ticking jury waiting to pass sentence, he prepared himself the best he could.

He knew he needed to get there earlier than expected to scope out from afar what he was getting into. He knew the tower well from his walks with Isaac when the seasons were calmer.

It felt targeted as it was always a secluded spot that the lovers liked to retreat to. Their place to be away from the world amidst the waves crashing against the cliffs.

Everything about this whole saga felt as if he were the intended audience —

Every detail engineered to get under his skin.

As he sat perched on the crest overlooking the tower, he contemplated the motives of the illogical. Was it servitude, punishment, retribution, or vengeance — all had their own flavours sprinkled over the clues.

Going mad trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Tate tried to shake off his thoughts and focus rather than ruminating over speculation. Night had descended, and thanks to the night vision goggles his husband had bought him for hunting, he could still get a clear impression.

The tower appeared empty at first glance till he heard the roar of fire.

It was as if a blazing inferno was locked in a cyclone within the tower. A patient tempest defying logic or the nature of its destructive passions.

Then, to his dismay, he caught sight of one of the children of the village —

locked and seated before the storm.

The time for watching was over; damned be to the correct time of the meet, he had to intervene, a fact the entity was counting on.

He burst through the aperture like a winter storm to quell the burning hatred.

As he approached, the fires ceased, and Tate was met with a reality he didn’t want to admit. A gaunt, six-foot-tall creature with the skeletal frame of a bird. From the arms to the legs, thin and long, adorned with talons. Its face was only a sphere inlaid with eyes across it like crusted jewels wrapped in bands of gold. Each eye was as black as void ink set within a bone white complexion.

He stopped at its threshold, to which it responded with a display of power and a gust of wings as it spoke: “Human, bow before Heaven or I will take the life of every firstborn of this cursed village.”

Tate stood with bitter resolve: “I may believe in truth when it is laid before me, but I will not lay fealty to a Lord that sacrifices the innocent as payment.”

The entity blazed at his response: “Then you have given the answer on behalf of the lives—”

“STOP.” The interruption came thick and fast, feeling like booming thunder across the plains.

In came the next piece on the board of the metaphysical. A striking figure of an Adonis in fine carved ebony. The midnight to this sun before him. His face and body chiselled to perfection, his eyes burned with knowledge of the infinite. Locks of fine spun golden, weaved with the wings of a noble raven. His physique, to Tate’s delight on clear display, framed by a pearl Cossack that seemed to flow by an unseen wind.

This supernatural vision opened his arms and declared to the young captive:

“Come, child, you may fear no harm from me. This lesser being that holds you has no power when his betters are in the room.”

The child slipped from the entity’s grasp and into the arms of the new stranger.

The entity returned with the only quip it knew: “Unclean horn, demon spawn. It is because of your corrupt influence that I have to show the law to these heathens. The law of Heaven.”

Lucifer defied the confines of Heaven, choosing freedom of thought over suppression. An academic by right, he sought to ignite the flame of the apple in all mankind. He believed in sharing rather than hoarding, but some wisdom comes at a price.

Tate turned to the strange rescuer, suddenly realising who they spoke of, as he whispered under his breath in awe: “Lucifer.”

With a wink at Tate, Lucifer moved to the entity and laid his hand upon it.

As his hand met its form, it writhed from unseen torments in a blur of faces that moved in time’s ripple.

The storm it once contained then became self-consuming, and the entity began to fold in on itself. With an implosion nova of smoke and fire, Lucifer erased what plagued them.

As the shockwave cried out, the trumpets played for a final time in a whimper and faded out. Lucifer turned to the young child and said:

“There, little one, there is no need to fear. I offer truth, fact and compassion.”

He turned to Tate with a suggestive smile: “Gather your village sheriff, come Christmas morning, I have a proposal for the people of Fort Rock.”

Morning Star of Testament

The next morning, the village gathered like a raucous on the wind.

Tate had told none of them what it was about; he wanted them all to feel the shock he had felt at seeing the unexplained.

Ever since that night, whenever he was near, the young boy clung to his side. They had both kept tight-lipped, even to their families, so people could see the truth for themselves.

The town square was a frozen oasis for gathering during the season.

It was abuzz with chatter — neighbour asking neighbour — why they had been summoned on Christmas morning.

Then he appeared like a twilight vision as he made his entrance, the morning sky lit up with a red North Star. A herald to a New Testament laid out in an agreement between man and the supernatural.

The people gasped and uttered grievances of disbelief. Some exclaimed that this must be a prank to make them bend away from rationality. Some fainted, unable to comprehend new truths; the people were not the ones frozen in a state of shock.

Until he raised his hands and began to speak:

“My friends, I am Lucifer. I was brought by the crimes of the Heavens, and I could not simply stand by and let their craven actions happen without recompense. You know me as no villain, I am simply an archetype by lesser minds who don’t understand transcendence.”

The villagers drew in closer like a lung collapsing for air, pulling in tighter.

After a moment of silence, some began to applaud. Others reached out to touch him, trying to prove this was impossible. They believed in scientific fact and were met with someone who defied the laws of physics.

Lucifer continued as the village remained in disbelief: “I offer you this. I will give you my protection in exchange for a tithe every decade. I do not wish for blind obedience or worship just for you to live your lives as you always have done.”

The followers began to cry out: “What is it you ask of us? Anything we shall give it.”

Lucifer placed his hand on the young child’s head and decreed:

“I ask for a child every ten years to come to live with me in my domain. I will nurture them and teach them the hidden truths. Then they will return to you to spread my knowledge that will advance your technological understanding.”

The muttering returned in a deafening squall.

Lucifer held his hands up to ask for silence so he could continue:

“These are the truths they don’t want you to hear. What they cry out as evil, I offer as freedom. Not bound in a cage of prejudice. Discuss. I shall wait.”

The chatter and pleas among them were like a symphony of disagreements.

Was the cost of being deprived of one of their children worth the price of knowledge?

Is knowledge given truly earned when not fought for in suffering and strife?

The town declared in a roaring echo: “Lucifer, we accept your terms.”

Before Lucifer departed, the sheriff turned to him and asked: “What was with the key?”

Lucifer turned with an honest face and said: “I put that there as a symbol that the knowledge to unlock your potential is within all of you.”

Tate still couldn’t comprehend everything he had learnt, hoping that with a stiff drink he could annihilate the truth. But deep down, he knew the potential was always within himself.

He didn’t need his resolve put into question to know the one truth he was always aware of.

The Patrons Carol

Every year, they celebrated their patron with a carol, and each Christmas, the same bright North Star graced them with its light. A sign to anoint them in their touch with the divine as they sing:

Lucifer, you are my North Star,

The guiding light from afar,

Upon season’s tide,

You bring greetings of pain,

A life signed to your name,

Candles flicker, carols sing,

In our sire of darkness…

We hail the unholy king.

Lucifer tether me to the light of the North Star,

Fires rage at the locks of your cage,

This Yuletide season…

Will be hell remade.

Lucifer, love of my life,

Infect my heart with suffering,

Bring me to kneel this season,

Let the trees turn ashen black,

Adorned with the tools of treason,

Let songs praise your name,

Prince of darkness,

Grant me the wisdom…

To know the words of contagion.

Lucifer let sanctity be remade in your image,

Let each gift be your penance,

A taste of sin, one and all, come on in,

A taste of lust, we are all, reborn to dust,

As we know the fruits of your offerings,

From Solstice to Christmas blossoming,

As ash falls like flakes of snow,

Into the lakes of fire…

This season we go.

A blessed solstice to you. May the North Star shine the light of rebellion.

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