DELAWARE COUNTY, PA — Delaware County’s Satanists have once again honored local students who embody the positive aspects of being an outsider.
Satanic Delco recently awarded two high schoolers with their Outsider Achievement Award.
Lucas Sampson from Penncrest High School Lisa Travis from Ridley High School are this year’s recipients of $666 scholarships from the group.
They also got certificate complete with Satanic Delco wax seals.
Sampson and Travis were selected based on their embracing individualism, empathy, free-thought, and skepticism.
“High School is a critical, formative part of life for most teenagers,” the scholarship website reads. “Countless factors converge to define how that experience impacts each young individual. For some students, things like sports, academics, and groupthink come naturally. But in the shadows of the Homecoming royalty, football star, and Most Likely To Succeed, lies the outsider.”
Scholarship applicants can submit an essay, poem, film, song, illustration, or other creative medium to be considered.
Awardees are chosen based on honest expression and emotional impact above all else.
“Spill your guts, kids,” the page reads.
For the unfamiliar, Satanic Delco is not actually a group of Satan’s worshipers and is an independent congregation that is unaffiliated with any other Satanic groups.
They follow seven tenets commonly followed among larger groups of Satanists.
Those tenets are:
- One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
- The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
- One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
The group has donated about $2,800 worth of items to the Domestic Abuse Project of Delaware County and also spent a day handing out homelessness survival kits in Philadelphia. They even pushed to change the dress code at Penncrest High School.
Satanic Delco founder Joseph Rose said two other students were selected for the scholarships, but have not yet presented them with the award and funds.
The scholarship process is documented on Rose’s podcast, Hail Satan Podcast, which is available on all podcast platforms.