Satanism | Wikipedia audio article
Satanism is a group of ideological and philosophical beliefs based on Satan. The contemporary religious practice of Satanism began with the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966, although a few historical precedents exist Before the public practice, Satanism existed primarily as an accusation by various Christian groups toward perceived ideological opponents rather than a self-identity, Satanism and the Concept of Satan has also been used by artists and entertainers for symbolic expression, Accusations that various groups have been practicing.
Satanism has been made throughout much of Christian history.
During the Middle Ages, the Inquisition attached to the Roman Catholic Church alleged that various heretical Christian sects and groups, such as the Knights Templar and the Cathars performed secret Satanic rituals In the subsequent Early Modern period.
Belief in a widespread Satanic conspiracy of witches resulted in mass trials of alleged witches across Europe and the North American colonies.
Accusations that Satanic conspiracies were active and behind events such as Protestantism and, conversely, the Protestant claim that the Pope was the Antichrist and the French Revolution.
Continued to be made in Christendom during the eighteenth to the twentieth century.
The idea of a vast Satanic conspiracy reached new heights with the influential Taxil hoax of France in the 1890s, which claimed that Freemasonry worshiped Satan, Lucifer, and Baphomet in their rituals.
In the 1980s and 1990s.
The Satanic ritual abuse hysteria spread through the United States and the United Kingdom amid fears that groups of Satanists were regularly sexually abusing and murdering children in their rites.
In most of these cases, there is no corroborating evidence that any of those accused of Satanism were practitioners of a Satanic religion or guilty of the allegations leveled at them. Since the 19th century, various small religious groups have emerged that identify as Satanists or use Satanic, iconography, Satanist groups that appeared after the 1960s are widely diverse.
But two major trends are theistic Satanism and atheistic Satanism, Theistic Satanists venerate Satan as a supernatural deity.
Viewing him not as omnipotent, but rather as a patriarch, In contrast, atheistic Satanists regard Satan as merely a symbol of certain human traits.
Contemporary religious Satanism is predominantly an American phenomenon, the ideas spreading elsewhere with the effects of globalization and the Internet.
The Internet spreads awareness of other Satanists and is also the main battleground for Satanist disputes.
Satanism started to reach Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s in time with the fall of the Soviet Union and most noticeably in Poland and Lithuania, predominantly Roman Catholic countries, Definition In their study of Satanism, the religious studies, scholars, Asbj, rn, Dyrendal, James R, Lewis, and Jesper Aa Petersen stated that the term Satanism has a history of being a designation made by people against those whom they dislike.
It is a term used for othering 39.
The concept of Satanism is an invention of Christianity, for it relies upon the figure of Satan a character deriving from Christian mythology.
Elsewhere Petersen noted that Satanism as something others do is very different from Satanism.
As a self-designation, Eugene Gallagher noted that, as commonly used, Satanism was usually a polemical, not a descriptive term Etymology. The word Satan was not originally a proper name, but rather an ordinary noun meaning the adversary.
In this context, it appears at several points in the Old Testament, For instance, in the Book of Samuel David is presented as satan’s adversary of the Philistines.
While in the Book of Numbers, the term appears as a verb, when God sent an angel to satan, to oppose Balaam Before the composition of the New Testament, the idea developed within Jewish communities, that Satan was the name of an angel who had rebelled against God.
And had been cast out of Heaven, along with his followers, this account would be incorporated into contemporary texts like the Book of Enoch.
This Satan was then featured in parts of the New Testament where he was presented as a figure who tempted humans to sin.
In the Book of Matthew and the Book of Luke, he attempted to tempt Jesus of Nazareth as the latter fasted in the wilderness.
The word Satanism was adopted into English from the French satanisme.
The terms Satanism and Satanist are first recorded as appearing in the English and French languages during the sixteenth century when they were used by Christian groups to attack other rival Christian groups In a Roman Catholic tract of 1565.
The author condemns the heresies, blasphemies and satanism sic of the Protestants In an Anglican work of 1559 Anabaptists and other Protestant sects are condemned as swarms of Satanists sic As used in this manner.
The term Satanism was not used to claim that people worshipped Satan, but rather presented the view that, through deviating from what the speaker or writer regarded as the true variant of Christianity, they were regarded as being essentially in league with the Devil During the nineteenth century. The term Satanism began to be used to describe those considered to lead a broadly immoral lifestyle, and it was only in the late nineteenth century that it came to be applied in English, to individuals who were believed to consciously and deliberately venerate Satan.
This latter meaning had appeared earlier in the Swedish language.
The Lutheran Bishop, Laurentius Paulinus Gothic, had described devil-worshipping sorcerers as Sathanister in his Ethica Christiana produced between 1615 and 1630.
Antagonism towards Satanism, Historical and anthropological research suggests that nearly all societies have developed.
The idea of a sinister and anti-human force that can hide within society.
This commonly involves a belief in witches, a group of individuals who invert the norms of their society and seek to harm their community, for instance by engaging in incest, murder, and cannibalism.
Allegations of witchcraft may have different causes and serve different functions within a society.
For instance, they may serve to uphold social norms, heighten the tension in existing conflicts between individuals or scapegoat certain individuals for various social problems.
Another contributing factor to the idea of Satanism is the concept that there is an agent of misfortune and evil who operates on a cosmic scale, something usually associated with a strong form of ethical dualism that divides the world, clearly into forces of good and forces of evil.
The earliest such entity known, is Angra Mainyu, a figure that appears in the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. This concept was also embraced by Judaism and early Christianity, and although it was soon marginalized within Jewish thought, it gained increasing importance within early Christian understandings of the cosmos.
While the early Christian idea of the Devil was not well developed, it gradually adapted and expanded through the creation of folklore, art, theological, treatises, and morality, tales, thus providing the character with a range of extra-Biblical associations Medieval and Early Modern, Christendom As Christianity expanded throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, it came into contact with a variety of other religions, which it regarded as pagan.
Christian theologians claimed that the gods and goddesses venerated by these pagans were not genuine divinities, but were demons.
However, they did not believe that pagans were deliberately devil worshippers instead, claiming that they were simply misguided In Christian iconography, the Devil and demons were given the physical traits of figures from Classical mythology such as the god Pan, fauns, and satyrs.
Those Christian groups regarded as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church were treated differently by theologians, arguing that they were deliberately worshipping the Devil.
This was accompanied by claims that such individuals engaged in incestuous sexual orgies, murdered infants, and committed acts of cannibalism, all stock accusations that had previously been leveled at Christians themselves in the Roman Empire.
The first recorded example of such an accusation being made within Western Christianity, took place in Toulouse in 1022, when two clerics were tried for allegedly venerating a demon Throughout the middle ages.
This accusation would be applied to a wide range of Christian heretical groups, including the Paulicians Bogomils Cathars Waldensians, and Hussites.
The Knights Templar were accused of worshipping an idol known as Baphomet with Lucifer, having appeared at their meetings in the form of a cat As well as these Christian groups.
These claims were also made about Europe’s, Jewish community. In the thirteenth century, there were also references made to a group of Luciferians led by a woman named Lucardis who hoped to see Satan rule in Heaven.
References to this group continued into the fourteenth century.
Although historians studying the allegations concur that these Luciferians were likely a fictitious invention Within Christian thought, the idea developed that certain individuals could make a pact with Satan.
This may have emerged after observing that pacts with gods and goddesses played a role in various pre-Christian belief systems, or that such pacts were also made as part of the Christian cult of saints.
Another possibility is that it derives from a misunderstanding of Augustine of Hippo’s, condemnation of augury in his On the Christian Doctrine written in the late fourth century.
Here he stated that people who consulted augurs were entering quasi pacts covenants with demons.
The idea of the diabolical pact made with demons was popularised across Europe in the story of Faust likely based in part on the real-life of Johann, Georg Faust, As the late medieval gave way to the early modern period.
European Christendom experienced a schism between the established Roman Catholic Church and the breakaway Protestant movement In the ensuing Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Both Catholics and Protestants accused each other of deliberately being in league with Satan.
It was in this context that the terms Satanist and Satanism emerged. The early modern period also saw the fear of Satanists reach its historical apogee in the form of the witch trials of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
This came about as the accusations which had been leveled at medieval heretics, among them, that of devil worship were applied to the pre-existing idea of the witch or practitioner of malevolent magic.
The idea of a conspiracy of Satanic witches was developed by educated elites.
Although the concept of malevolent witchcraft was a widespread part of popular belief and folkloric ideas about the night witch, the wild hunt and the dance of the fairies were incorporated into it.
The earliest trials took place in Northern Italy and France before spreading out to other areas of Europe and Britain’s, North American colonies being carried out by the legal authorities in both Catholic and Protestant regions.
Between 30 000 and 50, 000 individuals were executed.
As accused, Satanic witches, Most historians agree that the majority of those persecuted in these witch trials were innocent of any involvement in Devil worship.
However, in their summary of the evidence for the trials, the historians Geoffrey Scarre and John Callow thought it without a doubt that some of those accused in the trials had been guilty of employing magic in an attempt to harm their enemies and were thus genuinely guilty of witchcraft.
In seventeenth-century Sweden, several highway robbers and other outlaws living in the forests informed judges that they venerated Satan because he provided more practical assistance than God.
The historian of religion, Massimo Introvigne, regarded these practices as folkloric Satanism, 18th to 20th century Christendom. During the eighteenth century gentleman’s, social clubs became increasingly prominent in Britain and Ireland, among the most secretive of which were the Hellfire Clubs, which were first reported in the 1720s.
The most famous of these groups was the Order of the Knights of Saints Francis, which was founded circa 1750 by the aristocrat Sir Francis Dashwood, and which assembled first at his estate at West Wycombe and later in Medmenham Abbey.
Several contemporary press sources portrayed these.
As gatherings of atheist rakes, where Christianity was mocked and toasts were made to the Devil Beyond these sensationalist accounts, which may not be accurate, portrayals of actual events, little is known about the activities of the Hellfire Clubs.
Introvigne suggested that they may have engaged in a form of playful Satanism, in which Satan was invoked to show a daring contempt for conventional morality by individuals who neither believed in his literal existence nor wanted to pay homage to him.
The French Revolution of 1789 dealt a blow to the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church in parts of Europe, and soon several Catholic authors began making claims that it had been masterminded by a conspiratorial group of Satanists Among the first to do so.
Was French Catholic priest Jean Baptiste Fiard, who publicly claimed that a wide range of individuals from the Jacobins to tarot card readers were part of a Satanic conspiracy? Ford’s.
Ideas were furthered by Alexis Vincent Charles Berbiguier, who devoted a lengthy book to this conspiracy theory.
He claimed that Satanists had supernatural powers, allowing them to curse people and to shapeshift into both cats and fleas, Although most of his contemporaries regarded Berbiguier as mad.
His ideas gained credence among many occultists, including Stanislas de Guaita, a Cabalist who used them for the basis of his book, The Temple of Satan. In the early 20th century, the British novelist Dennis Wheatley produced a range of influential novels in which his protagonists battled Satanic groups.
At the same time, nonfiction – authors like Montague Summers and Rollo Ahmed published books claiming that Satanic groups practicing black magic were still active across the world, although they provided no evidence that this was the case During the 1950s.
Various British tabloid newspapers repeated such claims largely basing their accounts on the allegations of one woman.
Sarah Jackson, claimed to have been a member of such a group.
In 1973, the British Christian Doreen Irvine, published From Witchcraft to Christ, in which she claimed to have been a member of a Satanic group that gave her supernatural powers, such as the ability to levitate before she escaped and embraced Christianity In the United States during the 1960s And 1970s various Christian preachers, the most famous being Mike Warnke in his 1972 book, The Satan Seller claimed that they had been members of Satanic groups who carried out sex rituals and animal sacrifices before discovering Christianity According to Gareth Medway.
In his historical examination of Satanism.
These stories were a series of inventions by insecure people and hack writers, each one based on a previous story exaggerated a little more each time.
Other publications made allegations of Satanism against historical figures.
The 1970s saw the publication of the Romanian Protestant preacher Richard Wurmbrand’s book, in which he argued without corroborating evidence that the socio-political theorist Karl Marx had been a Satanist, Satanic ritual abuse hysteria At the end of the twentieth century.
A moral panic developed around claims regarding a Devil worshipping cult that made use of sexual abuse, murder, and cannibalism in its rituals, with children being among its victims. Initially, the alleged perpetrators of such crimes were labeled witches.
Although the term Satanist was soon adopted as a favored alternative and the phenomenon itself came to be called, the Satanism Scare Promoters of the claims alleged that there was a conspiracy of organized Satanists who occupied prominent positions throughout society from the police to politicians and that they Had been powerful enough to cover up their crimes, One of the primary sources for the scare was Michelle, Remembers a 1980 book by the Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, in which he detailed what he claimed were repressed.
Memories of his patient and wife, Michelle Smith Smith, had claimed that as a child, she had been abused by her family in Satanic rituals, in which babies were sacrificed and Satan himself appeared In 1983.
Allegations were made that the McMartin family owners of a preschool in California were guilty of sexually abusing the children in their care during Satanic rituals.
The allegations resulted in a lengthy and expensive trial, in which all of the accused would eventually be cleared.
The publicity generated by the case resulted in similar allegations being made in various other parts of the United States.
A prominent aspect of the Satanic Scare was the claim by those in the developing anti-Satanism movement that any child’s claim about.
Satanic ritual abuse must be true because children would not lie.
Although some involved in the anti-Satanism movement were from Jewish and secular backgrounds, a central part was played by fundamentalist and evangelical forms of Christianity, in particular, Pentecostalism with Christian groups holding conferences and producing books and videotapes, to promote belief in the conspiracy Various figures in law Enforcement also came to be promoters of the conspiracy theory, with such cult cops holding various conferences to promote it.
The scare was later imported to the United Kingdom through visiting evangelicals and became popular among some of the country.’s social workers resulting in a range of accusations and trials across Britain, The Satanic ritual abuse hysteria died down between 1990 and 1994 In the late 1980s. The Satanic Scare had lost its impetus following increasing skepticism about such allegations, and a number of those who had been convicted of perpetrating Satanic ritual abuse saw their convictions overturned In 1990, an agent of the.
U S Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ken Lanning revealed that he had investigated 300 allegations of Satanic ritual abuse and found no evidence of Satanism or ritualistic activity in any of them.
In the UK, the Department of Health commissioned the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine, to examine the allegations of SRA.
She noted that, while approximately half did reveal evidence of genuine sexual abuse of children, none revealed any evidence that Satanist groups had been involved or that any murders had taken place.
She noted three examples in which lone individuals engaged in child molestation had created a ritual performance to facilitate their sexual acts, with the intent of frightening their victims and justifying their actions, but that none of these child molesters were involved in wider Satanist groups By the 21st Century hysteria about Satanism has waned in most Western countries.
Although allegations of Satanic ritual abuse continued to surface in parts of continental Europe and Latin America, Artistic Satanism, and Literary Satanism From the late seventeenth through to the nineteenth century, the character of Satan was increasingly rendered unimportant in Western philosophy and ignored in Christian theology, while in folklore He came to be seen as a foolish rather than a menacing figure.
The development of new values in the Age of Enlightenment, in particular those of reason and individualism, contributed to a shift in how many Europeans viewed Satan.
In this context, several individuals took Satan out of the traditional Christian narrative and reread and reinterpreted him in light of their own time and their interests, in turn, generating new and different portraits of Satan.
The shifting view of Satan owes many of its origins to John Milton.
Epic poem Paradise Lost 1667, in which Satan features as the protagonist Milton was a Puritan and had never intended for his depiction of Satan to be a sympathetic one. However, in portraying Satan as a victim of his pride, who rebelled against God, he humanized him and also allowed him to be interpreted as a rebel against tyranny.
This was how Milton’s Satan was understood later.
Readers like the publisher, Joseph Johnson, and the anarchist philosopher, William Godwin, who reflected it in his 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.
Paradise Lost gained a wide readership in the eighteenth century, both in Britain and in continental Europe, where it had been translated into French by Voltaire.
Milton thus became a central character in rewriting Satanism and would be viewed by many later religious Satanists as a de facto Satanist.
The nineteenth century saw the emergence of what has been termed literary Satanism or romantic Satanism According to Van Luijk.
This cannot be seen as a coherent movement with a single voice, but rather as a post, factum-identified a group of sometimes widely divergent authors, among whom a similar theme is found For the literary Satanists Satan was depicted as a benevolent and sometimes heroic figure.
With these more sympathetic, portrayals proliferating in the art and poetry of many romanticist and decadent figures For these individuals, Satanism was not a religious belief or ritual activity, but rather a strategic use of a symbol and a character as part of artistic and political expression Among the Romanticist poets, to adopt this view of Satan was the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had been influenced by Milton In his poem Laon and Cythna Shelley praised the Serpent, a reference to Satan as a force for good in the universe.
Another was Shelley’s.
Fellow British poet, Lord Byron, included Satanic themes in his 1821 play Cain, which was a dramatization of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. These more positive, portrayals, also developed in France.
One example was the 1823 work Eloa by Alfred de Vigny.
Satan was also adopted by the French poet Victor Hugo, who made the character’s fall from Heaven, a central aspect of his La Fin de Satan, in which he outlined his cosmogony.
Although the likes of Shelley and Byron promoted a positive image of Satan in their work, there is no evidence that any of them performed religious rites to venerate him, and thus it is problematic to regard them as religious Satanists.
Radical left-wing political ideas had been spread by the American Revolution of 1765 83 and the French Revolution of 1789 99, and the figure of Satan who was interpreted as having rebelled against the tyranny imposed by God was an appealing one for many of the radical leftists Of the period For them, Satan was a symbol for the struggle against tyranny, injustice, and oppression, a mythical figure of rebellion for an age of revolutions, a larger than life individual for an age of individualism.
A free thinker in an age struggling for free thought.
The French anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who was a staunch critic of Christianity, embraced Satan as a symbol of liberty in several of his writings, Another prominent 19th-century anarchist.
The Russian Mikhail Bakunin similarly described the figure of Satan as the eternal rebel, the first freethinker, and the emancipator of worlds in his book, God and the State.
These ideas likely inspired the American feminist activist, Moses, Harman, to name his anarchist periodical Lucifer, the Lightbearer.
The idea of this Leftist Satan declined during the twentieth century, although it was used on occasion by authorities within the Soviet Union who portrayed Satan as a symbol of freedom and equality Rock music During the 1960s and 1970s, several rock bands, namely the American Coven and the British Black Widow employed the imagery of Satanism and witchcraft in their work. References to Satan also appeared in the work of those rock bands which were pioneering the heavy metal genre in Britain during the 1970s.
Black Sabbath, for instance, made mention of Satan in their lyrics.
Although several of the band’s members were practicing, Christians and other lyrics affirmed the power of the Christian God over Satan.
In the 1980s, greater use of Satanic imagery was made by heavy metal bands like Slayer Kreator, Sodom, and Destruction.
Bands active in the subgenre of death, metal among them, Deicide, Morbid Angel, and Entombed, also adopted Satanic imagery, combining it with other morbid and dark imagery, such as that of zombies and serial killers.
Satanism would come to be more closely associated with the subgenre of black metal.
In which it was foregrounded over the other themes that had been used in death metal, Several black metal performers incorporated self-injury into their act.
Framing this as a manifestation of Satanic devotion, The first black metal band Venom proclaimed themselves to be Satanists, although this was more an act of provocation than an expression of genuine devotion to the Devil.
Satanic themes were also used by the black metal bands, Bathory and Hellhammer.
However, the first black metal act to more seriously adopt Satanism was Mercyful Fate whose vocalist King Diamond joined the Church of Satan. More often than not, musicians associating themselves with black metal say they do not believe in legitimate Satanic ideology and often profess to be atheists, agnostics, or religious skeptics.
In contrast to King Diamond’s various black metal, Satanists sought to distance themselves from LaVeyan Satanism, for instance by referring to their beliefs as devil worship.
These individuals regarded Satan as a literal entity and, in contrast to LaVey’s, views they associated Satanism with criminality, suicide, and terror.
For them, Christianity was regarded as a plague that required eradication.
Many of these individuals, such as Varg, Vikernes, and Euronymous, were Norwegian and influenced by the strong anti-Christian views of this milieu.
Between 1992 and 1996, around fifty Norwegian churches were destroyed in arson attacks Within the black metal scene.
Several musicians later replaced Satanic themes with those deriving from Heathenry, a form of modern Paganism and Religious Satanism.
Rather than being one single form of religious Satanism.
There are instead, multiple different religious Satanisms, each with different ideas about what being a Satanist entails.
The historian of religion, Ruben van Luijk, used a working definition in which Satanism was regarded as the intentional, religiously motivated veneration of Satan, Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen believed that it was not a single movement, but rather a milieu. They and others have nevertheless referred to it.
As a new religious movement, They believed that there was a family resemblance that united all of the varying groups in this milieu and that most of them were self religions.
They argued that there were a set of features that were common to the groups in this Satanic milieu.
These were the positive use of the term Satanist as a designation, an emphasis on individualism, a genealogy that connects them to other Satanic groups, and a transgressive and antinomian stance.
A self-perception as an elite and an embrace of values such as pride self-reliance and productive, nonconformity, Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen argued that the groups within the Satanic milieu could be divided into three groups: reactive Satanists, rationalists, Satanists, and esoteric Satanists.
They saw reactive Satanism as encompassing popular Satanism, inverted Christianity, and symbolic rebellion, and noted that it situates itself in opposition to society while at the same time, conforming to society’s perspective of evil.
Rationalist Satanism is used to describe the trend in the Satanic milieu, which is atheistic, skeptical, materialistic, and epicurean Esoteric.
Satanism instead applied to those forms which are theistic and draw upon ideas from other forms of Western esotericism, Modern Paganism Buddhism, and Hinduism Forerunners and early forms.
The first person to promote a Satanic philosophy was the Pole, Stanislaw Przybyszewski, who promoted a Social Darwinian ideology.
The use of the term Lucifer was also taken up by the French ceremonial magician Eliphas Levi, who has been described as a Romantic Satanist During his younger days. Levi used Lucifer in much the same manner as the literary romantics As he moved toward a more politically conservative outlook in later life.
He retained the use of the term but instead applied it to what he believed was a morally neutral facet of the Absolute In his book Dogma and Ritual of High Magic published in two volumes between 1854 and 1856 Levi offered the symbol of Baphomet.
He claimed that this was a figure who had been worshipped by the Knights Templar.
According to Introvigne, this image gave the Satanists their most popular symbol.
Ever Levi was not the only occultist who wanted to use the term Lucifer without similarly adopting the term Satan.
The early Theosophical Society held to the view that Lucifer was a force that aided humanity,’s awakening to its spiritual nature.
In keeping with this view, the Society began production of a journal, titled Lucifer Satan was also used within the esoteric system propounded by the Danish occultist Carl, William Hansen, who used the pen name.
Ben Kadosh Hansen was involved in a variety of esoteric groups, including Martinism Freemasonry and the Ordo Templi Orientis, drawing on ideas from various groups to establish his philosophy.
In one pamphlet, he provided a Luciferian interpretation of Freemasonry.
Kadosh’s. Work left little influence outside of Denmark, Both during his life and after it, the British occultist Aleister Crowley has been widely described as a Satanist, usually, by detractors Crowley stated he did not consider himself a Satanist, nor did he worship Satan, as he did not accept the Christian world view in which Satan was believed to exist.
He nevertheless used imagery considered satanic, for instance, by describing himself as the Beast 666 and referring to the Whore of Babylon in his work, while in later life, he sent Antichristmas cards to his friends.
Grendel Lewis and Petersen noted that, even though Crowley was not a Satanist, he in many ways embodies the pre, Satanist esoteric discourse on Satan and Satanism through his lifestyle and his philosophy, with his image and thought becoming an important influence on the later development of Religious Satanism In 1928, the Fraternitas Saturni FS was established in Germany, its founder Eugen, Grosche, published Satanische Magie, Satanic Magic that same year, The group connected Satan to Saturn, claiming that the planet related to the Sun in the same manner that Lucifer relates to the human world.
In 1932, an esoteric group known as the Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow was established in Paris, France, by Maria de Naglowska, a Russian occultist who had fled to France following the Russian Revolution.
She promoted a theology centered on what she called the Third Term of the Trinity, consisting of Father, Son, and Sex, the latter of which she deemed to be most important.
Her early disciples who underwent what she called Satanic Initiations included models and art students recruited from bohemian circles, The Golden Arrow disbanded after Naglowska, abandoned it in 1936.
According to Introvigne, hers was a quite complicated Satanism built on a complex philosophical vision of the world, of which little would survive its initiator.
In 1969, a Satanic group based in Toledo, Ohio, part of the United States, came to public attention Called the Our Lady of Endor Coven.
It was led by a man named Herbert Sloane, who described his Satanic tradition as the Ophite Cultus Sathanas and alleged that it had been established in the 1940s.
The group offered a Gnostic interpretation of the world in which the creator, God was regarded as evil, and the Biblical Serpent was presented as a force for good who had delivered salvation to humanity in the Garden of Eden. Sloane’s claims that his group had a 1940s origin remain unproven.
It may be that he falsely claimed older origins for his group to make it appear older than Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, which had been established in 1966.
None of these groups had any real impact on the emergence of the later Satanic milieu in the 1960s Rationalistic Satanism, LaVeyan Satanism and the Church of Satan Anton LaVey, who has been referred to as The Father of Satanism synthesized his religion through the establishment of the Church Of Satan in 1966 and the publication of The Satanic Bible in 1969, LaVey’s teachings promoted indulgence, vital existence, undefiled wisdom, kindness to those who deserve it, responsibility to the responsible and an eye for an eye code of ethics, while shunning abstinence based on guilt, spirituality, Unconditional love, pacifism, equality, herd mentality and scapegoating In LaVey’s view.
The Satanist is a carnal physical and pragmatic, being, and enjoyment of physical existence and an undiluted view of this worldly truth is promoted as the core values of Satanism propagating a naturalistic worldview that sees mankind as animals existing in an amoral universe.
Lavey believed that the ideal Satanist should be individualistic and nonconformist, rejecting what he called the colorless existence that mainstream society sought to impose on those living within it.
He praised the human ego for encouraging an individual’s, pride, self, respect, and self-realization and accordingly believed in satisfying the ego’s desires.
He expressed the view that self-indulgence was a desirable trait and that hate and aggression were not wrong or undesirable emotions, but they were necessary and advantageous for survival.
Accordingly, he praised the seven deadly sins as virtues that were beneficial for the individual.
The anthropologist Jean La Fontaine highlighted an article that appeared in The Black Flame, in which one writer described a true Satanic society, as one in which the population consists of free-spirited, well-armed, fully conscious self-disciplined individuals who will neither need nor tolerate any external entity.
39, protecting them or telling them what they can and cannot do. The sociologist James R Lewis noted that LaVey was directly responsible for the genesis of Satanism as a serious religion, as opposed to a purely literary movement.
Scholars agree that there is no reliably documented case of Satanic continuity before the founding of the Church of Satan.
It was the first organized church in modern times to be devoted to the figure of Satan and according to Faxneld and Petersen, the Church represented the first public, highly visible, and long-lasting organization which propounded a coherent, satanic discourse.
Lavey’s book.
The Satanic Bible has been described as the most important document to influence contemporary Satanism.
The book contains the core principles of Satanism and is considered the foundation of its philosophy and dogma Petersen noted that it is in many ways the central text of the Satanic milieu with Lap similarly testifying to its dominant position within the wider Satanic movement.
David G Bromley calls it iconoclastic and the best known and most influential statement of Satanic theology, Eugene V Gallagher says that Satanists use LaVey’s writings as lenses through which they view themselves their group, and the cosmos.
He also states With a clear-eyed appreciation of true human nature, a love of ritual and pageantry, and a flair for mockery.
Lavey’s, Satanic Bible promulgated, a gospel of self-indulgence that he argued anyone who dispassionately considered the facts would embrace Several religious studies.
Scholars have described LaVey’s, Satanism as a form of self-religion or self-spirituality, with religious studies, scholar, Amina Olander Lap, arguing that it should be seen as being both parts of the prosperity wing of the self-spirituality, New Age movement and a form of the Human Potential Movement, The anthropologist Jean La Fontaine, described it as having both elitist and anarchist elements, also citing one occult bookshop owner who referred to the Church’s approach as anarchistic hedonism In The Invention of Satanism, Dyrendal and Petersen theorized that LaVey viewed his religion as An antinomian self religion for productive misfits with a cynically carnivalesque take on life and no supernaturalism The sociologist of religion, James R Lewis, even described LaVeyan Satanism as a blend of Epicureanism and Ayn Rand’s philosophy, flavored, with a pinch of ritual magic. The historian of religion, Mattias Gardell, described LaVey’s as a rational ideology of egoistic hedonism and self-preservation, while Nevill Drury characterized LaVeyan Satanism as a religion of self-indulgence.
It has also been described as an institutionalism of Machiavellian self-interest.
Prominent Church leader Blanche, Barton described Satanism as an alignment, a lifestyle LaVey and the Church espoused the view that Satanists are born not made that they are outsiders by their nature, living as they see fit.
Who are self-realized in a religion which appeals to the would-be Satanist’s, nature leading them to realize they are Satanists through finding a belief system that is in line with their perspective and lifestyle Adherents to the philosophy have described Satanism as a non-Spiritual religion of the flesh or the worlds.
First carnal religion, LaVey, used Christianity as a negative mirror for his new faith, with LaVeyan Satanism, rejecting the basic principles and theology of Christian belief.
It views Christianity alongside other major religions, and philosophies such as humanism and liberal democracy, as a largely negative force on humanity.
LaVeyan Satanists perceive Christianity as a lie that promotes idealism: self-denigration herd, behavior, and irrationality LaVeyans view their religion as a force for redressing this balance.
By encouraging materialism, egoism, stratification, carnality, atheism, and social Darwinism, LaVey’s, Satanism was particularly critical of what it understands as Christianity,’s, denial of humanity,’s, and animal nature, and it instead calls for the celebration of and indulgence in these desires.
In doing so, it emphasizes the carnal rather than the spiritual Practitioners do not believe that Satan exists and do not worship him.
Instead, Satan is viewed as a positive archetype, embracing the Hebrew root of the word Satan as an adversary, who represents pride, carnality, and enlightenment, and of a cosmos which Satanists perceive to be motivated by a dark, evolutionary force of entropy that permeates all of nature and provides the Drive for survival and propagation inherent in all living things, The Devil is embraced as a symbol of defiance against the Abrahamic faiths which LaVey criticized for what he saw as the suppression of humanity.’s instincts. Moreover, Satan also serves as a metaphorical external projection of the individual.
Godhood LaVey espoused the view that god is a creation of man rather than man being a creation of god.
In his book, The Satanic Bible, the Satanist’s, view of god – is described as the Satanist’s, true self, a projection of his or her personality, not an external deity.
Satan is used as a representation of personal liberty and individualism.
Lavey explained that the gods worshiped by other religions are also projections of man.’s, true self.
He argues that man’s unwillingness to accept.
His ego has caused him to externalize these gods to avoid the feeling of narcissism that would accompany self-worship.
The current High Priest of the Church of Satan, Peter H, Gilmore further expounds that Satan is a symbol of Man living as his prideful carnal nature dictates.
Satan is not a conscious entity to be worshiped, but rather a reservoir of power inside each human to be tapped at will.
The Church of Satan has chosen Satan as its primary symbol because in Hebrew it means adversary, opposer one to accuse or question. We see ourselves as being these Satans, the adversaries, opposers, and accusers of all spiritual belief systems that would try to hamper the enjoyment of our life as human beings.
The term Theistic Satanism has been described as oxymoronic by the church and its High Priest.
The Church of Satan rejects the legitimacy of any other organizations who claim to be Satanists dubbing them reverse Christians, pseudo-Satanists or Devil, worshipers, atheistic or otherwise, and maintains a purist approach to Satanism, as expounded by LaVey, First Satanic Church After LaVey died in 1997.
The Church of Satan was taken over by a new administration, and its headquarters were moved to New York.
Lavey’s daughter, the High Priestess Karla LaVey, felt this to be a disservice to her father’s legacy.
The First Satanic Church was, founded on October 31, 1999, by Karla LaVey, to carry on the legacy of her father.
She continues to run it out of San Francisco, California, The Satanic Temple.
The Satanic Temple is an American, religious, and political activist organization based in Salem Massachusetts.
The organization actively participates in public affairs that have manifested in several public political actions and efforts at lobbying, with a focus on the separation of church and state and using satire against Christian groups that it believes, interfere with personal freedom.
According to Dyrendal Lewis and Petersen, the group was rationalist political pranksters. Their pranks are designed to highlight religious hypocrisy and advance the cause of secularism In one of their actions.
They performed a Pink Mass over the grave of the mother of the evangelical Christian and prominent anti-LGBT preacher Fred Phelps.
The Temple claimed that the mass converted, the spirit of Phelps’mother into a lesbian, The Satanic Temple, does not believe in a supernatural Satan as they believe that this encourages superstition.
That would keep them from being malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world.
The Temple uses the literary Satan as a metaphor to construct a cultural narrative that promotes pragmatic, skepticism, rational reciprocity, personal autonomy, and curiosity.
Satan is thus used as a symbol representing the eternal rebel against arbitrary authority and social norms.
Theistic Satanism, Theistic Satanism, also known as traditional Satanism, Spiritual Satanism, or Devil worship, is a form of Satanism, with the primary belief that Satan is an actual deity or force to revere or worship.
Other characteristics of theistic Satanism may include a belief in magic which is manipulated through ritual, although that is not a defining criterion and theistic Satanists may focus solely on devotion.
Luciferianism can be understood best as a belief system or intellectual creed that venerates the essential and inherent characteristics that are affixed and commonly given to Lucifer.
Luciferianism is often identified as an auxiliary creed or movement of Satanism due to the common identification of Lucifer with Satan. Some Luciferians accept this identification and or consider Lucifer as the light bearer and illuminated aspect of Satan, giving them the name of Satanists and the right to bear the title.
Others reject it, giving the argument that Lucifer is a more positive and easygoing ideal than Satan.
They are inspired by the ancient myths of Egypt, Rome, and Greece Gnosticism, and traditional Western occultism Order of Nine Angles.
According to the group’s claims, the Order of Nine Angles was established in Shropshire Western England during the late 1960s, when a Grand Mistress, united, several ancient pagan groups active in the area, This account states that, when the Order’s Grand Mistress Migrated to Australia, a man known as Anton Long took over as the new Grand Master From 1976 onward.
He authored an array of texts for the tradition codifying and extending its teachings mythos and structure.
Various academics have argued that Long is the pseudonym of British neo-Nazi activist David Myatt, an allegation that Myatt has denied The ONA arose to public attention in the early 1980s spreading its message through magazine articles over the following two decades.
In 2000, it established a presence on the internet later adopting social media to promote its message.
The ONA is a secretive organization and lacks any central administration instead of operating as a network of allied Satanic practitioners, which it terms the collective.
It consists largely of autonomous cells, known as nexions.
The majority of these are located in Britain, Ireland, and Germany, although others are located elsewhere in Europe and Russia, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and the United States. The ONA describe their occultism as Traditional Satanism, The ONA’s writings encourage human sacrifice referring to their victims as offers.
According to the Order’s teachings, such offers must demonstrate character, and faults that mark them out as being worthy of death, and accordingly, the ONA insists that children must never be victims.
No ONA cell has admitted to carrying out a sacrifice in a ritualized manner, but rather Order members have joined the police and military to carry out such killings.
Faxed described the Order as a dangerous and extreme form of Satanism, while religious studies, scholar, Graham Harvey, claimed that the ONA fit the stereotype of the Satanist better than other groups by embracing deeply shocking and illegal acts.
Temple of Set The Temple of Set is an initiatory occult society claiming to be the world’s leading left-hand path, religious organization.
It was established in 1975 by Michael, A Aquino, and certain members of the priesthood of the Church of Satan who left because of administrative and philosophical disagreements.
To deliberately self differentiates from CoS in several ways most significantly in theology and sociology, The philosophy of the Temple of Set may be summed up as enlightened individualism, enhancement, and improvement of oneself by personal education, experiment, and initiation.
This process is necessarily different and distinctive for each individual.
The members do not agree on whether Set is real or not, and they’re not expected to The Temple, presents the view that the name Satan was originally a corruption of the name Set.
The Temple teaches that the Set is a real entity. The only real god in existence with all others, created by the human imagination Set is described as having given humanity through the means of non-natural evolution, the Black Flame or the Gift of Set, a questioning intellect that sets the species apart from other animals.
While Setians are expected to revere Set, they do not worship him Central to Setian philosophy is the human individual, with self-deification presented as the ultimate goal In 2005 Petersen noted that academic estimates for the Temple’s, membership varied from between 300 and 500 and Granholm Suggested that in 2007 the Temple contained circa 200 members, Reactive Satanism, Dyrendal Lewis, and Petersen used the term reactive Satanism to describe one form of modern religious Satanism.
They described this as an adolescent and anti-social means of rebelling in a Christian society by which an individual transgresses cultural boundaries.
They believed that there were two tendencies within reactive Satanism.
One Satanic tourism was characterized by the brief period in which an individual was involved, while the other Satanic quest was typified by a longer and deeper involvement.
The researcher Gareth Medway noted that in 1995 he encountered a British woman who stated that she had been a practicing Satanist during her teenage years.
She had grown up in a small mining village and had come to believe that she had psychic powers After hearing about Satanism.
In some library books, she declared herself a Satanist and formulated a belief that Satan was the true god.
After her teenage years, she abandoned Satanism and became a chaos magician.
Some reactive Satanists are teenagers or mentally disturbed individuals who have engaged in criminal activities. During the 1980s and 1990s, several groups of teenagers were apprehended after sacrificing animals and vandalizing.
Both churches and graveyards, with Satanic imagery Introvigne, expressed the view that these incidents were more a product of juvenile deviance and marginalization than Satanism.
In a few cases, the crimes of these reactive Satanists have included murder.
In 1970, two separate groups of teenagers, one led by Stanley Baker in Big Sur and the other by Steven Hurd, in Los Angeles, killed a total of three people and consumed parts of their corpses in what they later claimed were sacrifices devoted to Satan In 1984? A? U S: a group called the Knights of the Black Circle killed one of its members, Gary Lauwers, over a disagreement regarding the group’s illegal drug dealing group members later related that Lauwers’death was a sacrifice to Satan The American serial killer, Richard Ramirez, for instance, claimed that he was a Satanist during his 1980s killing spree.
He left an inverted pentagram at the scene of each murder and his trial called out, Hail Satan.
Demographics Dyrendal Lewis and Petersen observed that from surveys of Satanists conducted in the early 21st century, it was clear that the Satanic milieu was heavily dominated by young males.
They nevertheless noted that census data from New Zealand suggested that there may be a growing proportion of women becoming Satanists In comprising more men than women.
Satanism differs from most other religious communities, including most new religious communities.
Most Satanists came to their religion through reading, either online or in books, rather than through being introduced to it through personal contacts.
Many practitioners do not claim that they converted to Satanism, but rather state that they were born that way, and only later in life, confirmed that Satanism served as an appropriate label for their pre-existing worldviews. Others have stated that they had experiences with supernatural phenomena that led them to embrace Satanism.
A number reported feelings of anger at the hypocrisy of many practicing Christians and expressed the view that the monotheistic Gods of Christianity and other religions are unethical, citing issues such as the problem of evil.
For some practitioners, Satanism gave a sense of hope, including for those who had been physically and sexually abused.
The surveys revealed that atheistic Satanists appeared to be in the majority.
Although the numbers of theistic Satanists appeared to grow over time, Beliefs in the afterlife varied, although the most popular afterlife views were reincarnation and the idea that consciousness survives bodily death, The surveys also demonstrated that most recorded Satanists practiced magic.
Although there were differing opinions as to whether magical acts operated according to etheric laws or whether the effect of magic was purely psychological, A number described performing cursing in most cases as a form of vigilante justice.
Most practitioners conduct their religious observances in a solitary manner and never or rarely meet fellow Satanists for rituals.
Rather, the primary interaction that takes place between Satanists is online on websites or via email From their survey.
Data Dyrendal Lewis and Petersen noted that the average length of involvement in the Satanic milieu was seven years A Satanist’s.
Involvement in the movement tends to peak in the early twenties and drops off sharply in their thirties. A small proportion retains their allegiance to the religion into their elder years.
When asked about their political views, the largest proportion of Satanists identified as apolitical or nonaligned, while only a small percentage identified as conservative.
Despite the conservative views of prominent Satanists like LaVey and Marilyn Manson, A small minority of Satanists expressed support for the far right.
Conversely, over two-thirds expressed negative or extremely negative views about Nazism and neo-Nazism Legal recognition In 2004.
It was claimed that Satanism was allowed in the Royal Navy of the British Armed Forces, despite opposition from Christians In 2016.
Under a Freedom of Information request, the Navy Command Headquarters stated that we do not recognize satanism as a formal religion and will not grant facilities or make specific time available for individual worship.
39.
In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States debated in the case of Cutter v Wilkinson over protecting the minority religious rights of prison inmates.
After a lawsuit challenging the issue was filed against them.
The court ruled that facilities that accept federal funds cannot deny prisoners, accommodations that are necessary to engage in activities for the practice of their own religious beliefs, See also Contemporary Religious Satanism, Demonology Devil in popular culture, Satanic, ritual abuse, References Footnotes, Sources, External links, Religious Tolerance, page On Satanism, Satanism at Curlie.
