The scriptures of religions all over the world recognize the
existence of demonic beings. Some, including Christianity, Islam, and
Zoroastrianism, regard the force of evil entities to be real and perceive them
as opponent to the dominance of God. Others, such as Buddhism, consider them to
be manifestations of ignorance and illusion. Those religions that testify to
demonic powers also acknowledge that these negative beings are focus to the
commands of a leader, known by numerous names:
Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Iblis, Mara, and Angra Mainyu, among others.
In the
1980s and 1990s, a widespread fear swept across the United States that there were dozens
of secret satanic cults involved in satanic ritual abuse and sacrificing
hundreds of babies, children, and adults. Television and radio talk shows
featured people who claimed to be former members of such demonic cults and
those who had allegedly recovered memories of satanic abuse. For a time,
certain communities developed a near-hysteria and a fear of Satanists that
recalled the time of the Salemwitchcraft trials. Even at its most alarming peak of irrational belief
in such murderous cults, however, few accused such religious Satanists as Anton
LaVey (1930–1997) and his Church of Satan in San Francisco as condoning ritual human
sacrifices. After exhaustive police investigations on both local and national
levels failed to produce any hard evidence to support such frightening
accounts, allegations of satanic ritual abuse faded to the status of a kind of
Christian urban legend.
There
are many kinds of free-form Satanism, ranging from that which is merely
symptomatic of sexual unrest and moral rebellion among young people to those
mentally unbalanced serial killers who murder and sacrifice their victims to
their own perverse concept of satanic evil. Teenagers and young adults may be mistaken
for Satanists, because they dress in dark gothic clothes, read occult literature,
or play with a ouija board with friends—but most of them are merely
role-playing and quietly protesting the conformity they wish to resist. Other
young people are drawn into a transient attraction toward Satanism by a number
of heavy-metal bands who merely pretend to be practicing Satanists to shock
parents and to provoke publicity in the highly competitive field of
contemporary music.
Each year,
hundreds of homicides are thought to have been satanically or ritually inspired.
However, federal, state, and local law enforcement has never proven the
existence of an organized satanic movement that has been responsible for these
deaths, or that those murderers who were apprehended for the homicides were
members of any satanic religious group. Some serial killers have claimed to be
Satanists, but in each of these cases, police investigations have revealed that
the murderers were not actually members of any of the satanic religious groups.
Even such a high-profile “devil-worshipper” as Richard Ramirez (1960– ), the
infamous “Night Stalker” of Los
Angeles, who committed a series of brutal night-time
killings, robberies, and sexual attacks, was never found to be a member of any
formal satanic group. Although Ramirez scrawled an inverted pentagram (a symbol
traditionally associated with satanic rituals) in the homes of some of his victims
and shouted, “Hail, Satan!” as he was being arraigned on charges of having
murdered 14 people, he was strictly a lone-wolf worshipper of evil. Individuals,
primarily teenagers and young adults, may for a time dabble in the occult,
ceremonial magick, and other freelance rituals and declare themselves as
Satanists. Their numbers are difficult to assess with any degree of accuracy, for
they are essentially faddists, generally inspired by a current motion picture
or television series that popularizes Satanism or witchcraft, and their
interest in Satanism is shortlived. Some of these satanic dabblers may go so far
as to sacrifice a small animal and spray-paint satanic symbols on houses and
sidewalks, but their commitment to a lifestyle dominated by dedication to Satan
soon dissipates. Although Satanism and witchcraft have become synonymous
in the popular mind for many centuries, they constitute two vastly divergent
philosophies and metaphysical systems. Generally speaking, witchcraft, the Old Religion,
has its origins in primitive nature worship and has no devil or Satan in its
cosmology. While some traditional witches seek to control the forces of nature
and elemental forces in both the seen and unseen worlds, others are contented
to work with herbs and healing. In essence, what many have described as the “power”
of witchcraft throughout the ages may be the effective exercise of mind over matter,
those abilities in the transcendent level of mind that today we term psychic or
mental phenomena. True Satanism—although manifesting in a multitude of forms
and expressions and having also originated in an ancient worship of a
pre-Judeo-Christian god—is today essentially a corruption of both the nature
worship of witchcraft and the formal Christian church service, especially the rites
of the Roman Catholic Church. Some scholars argue that in a real sense, the
Christian Church itself “created” the kind of Satanism it fears most through
the excesses of the Inquisition, which made an industry out of hunting,
persecuting, torturing, and killing those men and women accused of being
doctrinal heretics and those practitioners of the Old Religion who were condemned
for worshipping the devil through the practice of witchcraft. Then, in the
sixteenth century, a jaded and decadent aristocracy, weary of the severity of
conventional morality legislated by the church, perversely began to convert the
primitive belief structures of serf and peasant into an obscene rendering of
the rites of traditional paganism with the ritualistic aspects of Christian
worship. In contemporary times, many of those who openly claim to be Satanists
and to belong to organized satanic groups insist that they do not worship the
image of the devil condemned by Christian and other religions because the word “Satan”
does not specify a being, but rather a movement or a state of mind. What
Satanists do worship, these individuals explain, is a spirit being commonly
known as Sathan in English and Sathanas in Latin. They do not believe
Satan to
be the Supreme God, but they believe him to be the messenger of God in that he brought
to Eve the knowledge of God. Satanists believe that there is a God above and beyond
the “god” that created the cosmos. The most high God takes no part in the
affairs ofthe world; thus Satanists believe their faith to be the only true
religion, insofar as revealed religion to mortals can be understood.
The
following signs and symbols are among the most common expressions of Satanism, both
among individual Satanists and those self-proclaimed “high-priests and
priestesses” who have established small covens of 13 or fewer members:
The Pentagram:The traditional five-pointed star,
most often shown within a circle.
Goat’s Head within a Pentagram:The sigil of
Baphomet, the symbol for Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan.
Number 666:The number of the beast in the Book of Revelation,
considered by many Christians to represent Satan.
Upside-Down Cross:A mockery of Jesus’ death on the cross. Sometimes
the cross is shown with broken “arms.”
Upside-Down Cross Incorporating an
Inverted Question Mark:The
cross of confusion,questioning the authority and power of Jesus.
Quarter Moon and Star:Represents the Moon Goddess Diana and Lucifer, the “Morning
Star.” When the moon is reversed, it is usually satanic.
Classic
Peace Symbol of the 1960s: The sign of peace carried by protestors of the Vietnam War in
the 1960s has allegedly been appropriated by Satanists who now use it to denote
an upside-down cross with broken arms, thus signifying the defeat of
Christianity.
Inverted Swastika:The swastika is another once-honorable
symbol that simply represented the perpetual progression of the four seasons, the
four winds, the four elements, and so forth. Already perverted when the Nazis claimed
it as their symbol, Satanists are said to invert it to show the elements of
nature turned against themselves and out of harmony with God’s divine plan of
balance.
Ritual Calendar:Satanism adopted the traditional calendar of
witchcraft and celebrates eight major festivals, known as Sabbats:
