The best-known bodies associated with theistic or "spiritual" Satanism include the Temple of Set, which reveres Set as a real deity and pursues self-deification, and the Order of Nine Angles, a secretive and highly controversial network. Theistic Satanism differs fundamentally from the atheistic Satanism of the Church of Satan and The Satanic Temple, which reject belief in any such being. Some theistic Satanist currents, notably the Order of Nine Angles, have drawn wide condemnation for extremist and criminal associations; those specific concerns are noted in the entries on those groups.
Scholars researching the Order of Nine Angles, including the researcher Jacob Christiansen Senholt, have documented significant uncertainty over the group's actual origins, noting that its purported founder, using the name Anton Long, has never been conclusively and publicly identified, though researchers have connected the pseudonym to the writer David Myatt, a claim Myatt himself has denied. The group's extremist and, in some documented instances, criminal associations have drawn sustained attention from researchers of religious extremism and from law enforcement in several countries, and this entry describes the group's self-presentation without endorsing any of its claims, consistent with how the atlas treats other theistic Satanist groups.