SATANIC CULTS

The scriptures of all religions acknowledge the existence of demonic beings. Some, including Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism, regard the power of evil entities to be real and perceive them as rivals to the dominion of God. Others, such as Buddhism, consider them to be manifestations of ignorance and illusion. Those religions that testify to demonic powers also recognize that these negative beings are subject to the commands of a leader, known by various names: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Iblis, Mara, and Angra Mainyu, among others.

While rationalists in the present age of science and technology find it difficult to accept the concept of demons tempting men and women to commit acts of wickedness under the direction of a central embodiment of evil, such as Satan, other serious-minded philosophers and theologians call attention to the diverse horrors of the twentieth century and the seemingly endless capabilities of humans to inflict evil upon their fellow beings in the beginning of the twenty-first century and argue that such perversities transcend the bounds of reason. The Qur’an warns that “whoever follows the steps of Satan will assuredly be bid to indecency and dishonor.” The prophet Zoroaster (c. 628 B.C.E.–c. 551 B.C.E.) blamed the Evil One for spoiling the plan of life and depriving humans of the “exalted goal of Good Thought.” Hinduism envisions the gods and the demons as cosmic rivals for humankind. The demons are self-centered and interested in their own gain while the gods are generous and willing to share their bounty with others. The epistle writer Paul (d. 62–68 C.E.) informs Christians in Ephesians 6:12 that they are not fighting against creatures of flesh and blood, “but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

While it is one thing to recognize the human capacity for inflicting acts of incredible evil upon their fellow men and women, it is quite another to fear rumors of organized cults of thousands of Satan worshippers who allegedly plot horrid deeds against the members of other religions in the name of their cloven-hoofed and horned god. Contrary to the beliefs of certain conservative Christians, Satanism as an actual religion is composed of a few small groups, which according to census figures in the United States and Canada probably number less than 10,000 members. Such religious cults as Santeria,Wicca, voodoo, and various neopagan groups are regularly and incorrectly identified as satanic, and it has been suggested by some that the statistics often quoted by certain Christian evangelists, warning of millions of Satan worshippers, quite likely consider all non-Christian religions as satanic, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.

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 Salem witchcraft 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 of the world; thus Satanists believe their faith to be the only true religion, insofar as revealed religion to mortals can be understood.

Satanism, according to certain of its exponents, is the oldest of all world religions, and it is the only one that by doctrine lays claim to having its origin in the Garden of Eden. Adam’s firstborn son, Cain, is thought to have celebrated the first Satanic Mass, and today, any lone Satanist can celebrate a valid Mass if the occasion arises. In the case of established covens, an ordained priest performs the office of the liturgy. Satanism, they maintain, is also the oldest form of worship according to discoveries made by archaeologists, who have discovered drawings of the Horned God (Sathan) in caves of Europe dating to prehistoric times.

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:
• February 1 Candelmas
• March 21 Spring Equinox
• April 30 Walpurgisnacht
• May 1 Beltane
• June 21 Summer Solstice
• August 1 Lammas
• September 23 Fall Euinox
• October 31 Samhain
• December 21 Winter Solstice

Contemporary Satanism is said to have experienced its rebirth on Walpurgisnacht (May 1), 1966, when Anton Szandor LaVey brought into being San Francisco’s Church of Satan. The kinds of Satanism in vogue at various times in the centuries before LaVey’s revival expressed itself in many ways—some reflected the Dark Gods of antiquity, but most mirrored the dark side of the human imagination. Generally speaking, the kind of Satanism championed by LaVey and others preaches indulgence in personal pleasure, and it has never pretended to be other than a counterculture alternative to the civil and religious establishments and a relentless foe of conventional morality. But none of the satanic cults, such as the Church of Satan or the Temple of Set, have many points in common with the conservative Christian concept of Satan. They do not worship a Satan that commands demons and seduces human souls into hell. To most of the satanic cultists, Satan represents a force of nature that inspires their own individual expressions of virility and sexuality.

The Rise of Satanism in the Middle Ages

For the common folk of Europe, the Middle Ages (c. 500–c. 1500) were a time of fear, oppression, and despair, thus providing fertile soil for the seeds of the old pagan practices to take root and flourish anew. The ancient rituals and nature rites that were practiced with joy and abandon by the peasants came to be feared by the Medieval Church as demonic witchcraft that worshipped Satan and sought to destroy Christendom, which was at that time the official religion of all European countries. According to a number of scholars, the Church itself may have been greatly responsible for the revival of the Old Religion by its having increasingly exercised extremely repressive regulations upon the private lives of the common people. Then, once excessive doctrines and dogmas had provoked a rebirth of paganism, the Church saw the nature-worshipping rituals of the common people as a threat to its authority and condemned these men and women as being practitioners of an organized satanic religion that never really existed.

An analysis of the Medieval Church’s sexual code reveals that its basic law was that the act of sexual intercourse was to be performed as seldom as possible. Stern-faced Church authorities encouraged their flocks to avoid cohabitation completely, even if married. In the eyes of the Church there was no love, only desire. To have feelings toward a member of the opposite sex, even though no actual physical intimacy took place, was inherently sinful. And the holy state of matrimony provided no sanctuary for love. To love, or desire, one’s lawful marriage partner was considered sinful. One of the Church’s defenders stated that if a man loved his wife too passionately, he had committed a sin worse than adultery.

In his 'Sex in History' (1954), G. Rattray Taylor summarized the strict system of Church morality as it was set forward in a series of penitential books. Every imaginable misdeed and every conceivable misdemeanor is discussed and analyzed at great length and appropriate penalties are set forth for each sexual misstep. Taylor explains that the basic code of the Church was composed of three main propositions:

1. All who could were urged to accept the ideal of complete celibacy;

2. An absolute ban was placed on all forms of sexual expression other than intercourse between married persons, and prohibitions were drawn up to thwart an exhaustive list of sexual activity, the violation of which resulted in terrible penitential acts;

3. The days per year upon which even married couples might consummate the sex act were decreased in number.

The frustrated populace were left with the equivalent of about two months of the year during which they might, for the purpose of procreation alone and without invoking any sensations of pleasure, engage in sexual connection. If a child had been born to them and had been delivered at a particular time of the year which would fit in a certain manner in the Church calendar, the anxious parents might be prevented by their faith from having intercourse for a year or more.

The penitential books developed the mystical concept that all virgins were the brides of Jesus Christ (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.). Therefore, any man who seduced a virgin was not only committing fornication, but, at the same time, the more serious sexual crime of adultery. Christ was cast into the role of the indignant and outraged husband, and Mother Church, as his earthly representative, was thereby empowered to exact the terrible penance which the angered deity demanded. The maiden, unless she had been forcibly raped, was also held to be in mortal sin, for she had committed adultery against her husband, Christ.

Chastity was honored as the Church’s sexual ideal and the virtuous wife was the one who would deny herself to her husband. It was not only the sexual act for which the penitentials prescribed prohibitions and penance. Kissing and fondling also brought down severe penalties.

It was, according to Taylor, in a spirit of desperation to save the souls of weaker brethren that the Church passed such ruthless codes of personal behavior and repeatedly distorted and falsified the pronouncement of biblical texts in order to obtain justification for its laws. Such an extreme asceticism was certainly not preached by Christ, and such a sexual code is supported by neither the Old nor New Testaments.

The Middle Ages had become a time of intolerable sexual frustration and sexual obsession. In its attempt to eradicate sin by means of enforced sexual repression, the Church inadvertently created fertile ground for the rebirth of the dormant Old Religion. With the sanctioned state of Holy Matrimony open to only a few, the stories of the old ways, the old customs, and the old mysteries with their emphasis on fertility and communal sex rites became appealing to the common folk.

In the early days of Christianity, the Church Fathers permitted women to preach, cure, exorcise, and baptize. By the Middle Ages, women had lost all vestiges of any legal rights whatsoever, and the Church regarded them as responsible for all sexual guilt. It was woman who had precipitated the Fall by tempting man, who would otherwise have surely remained pure. Women were considered a necessary evil. In the Old Religion, she would once again be elevated to the status of priestess, healer, and a respected symbol of fertility.

The loss of civil rights, the tyranny of the feudal lords, and the imposition of sexual repression by the Church provided the fresh fuel for the smoldering sparks of the Old Religion among the common people. But the Church and the feudal establishment would soon move to combat the “evil” influence of the resurrected Pan, god of fertility, nature, and freedom. Church scholars would soon consult the ancient manuscripts to determine how best to deal with the formidable adversary who had returned from the past. The feudal lords would soon lose all patience with the rebellious serfs and set about to slay them as methodically as a farmer sets out to remove noxious weeds from his fields of grain, and the Church would ignite a flame which would eventually destroy thousands of innocents in the Inquisition. Pan, the horned and goat-hoofed god of the ancient mystery rites, had been transformed into Satan, the enemy of the Church, Christ, and all good.

In 'The History of Magic', (1948), Kurt Seligmann offered what seems to be an astute analysis of the situation: “…the ancient survivals, the amusements of serfs, the most innocent stories, were henceforth Satanic, and the women who knew about the old legends and magic traditions were transformed into witches.…the traditional gatherings, the Druid’s Festival on the eve of May Day, the Bacchanals, the Diana feasts, became the witches’ sabbath…the broom, symbol of the sacred hearth…became an evil tool. The sexual rites of old, destined to stimulate the fertility of nature, were now the manifestations of a forbidden carnal lust. Mating at random, a survival of communal customs…now [were] an infringement of the most sacred laws.” To the Church, the devils solidified into one—Satan, enemy of Christ’s work here on Earth. To the people, who could not really care about the philosophical dualism of an evil adversary for the Christ of the Feudal Lords and the Church, the Old Religion offered release from oppression and unrelenting drudgery.

According to Seligmann, the peasants of the Middle Ages did not view their Old Religion as a perversion, but as “…primitive and innocent customs. At the sabbat [the peasant] was free to do as he pleased. He was feared also; and in his lifelong oppression, this gave him some dignity, some sense of freedom.”

It was in his enjoyment of the excitement and vigor of the Old Religion that the peasant could allow himself the luxury of experiencing pleasure without the interference of Mother Church, which sought to control and repress even human emotions. But it was in rebellion against church and state that provoked the feudal and church establishments to denounce the Old Religion as satanic and to declare its practitioners witches, Satan’s willing servants. And it was in that same time of unrest, despair, and fear of demons that “woman” and “witch” became largely synonymous. St. Augustine (d.604) had declared that humankind had been sent to destruction through one woman (Eve) and had had salvation restored to it through another woman (Mary). But, as many writers have since commented, woman had, to the medieval and Renaissance man, become almost completely dualistic.

Black Mass

In 1966, when Anton Szandor LaVey (1930–1997), high priest of the Satanic Church of America, joined socialite Judith Case and freelance writer John Raymond in the bonds of matrimony, he performed the rites over the naked body of Lois Murgenstrumm, who served as the living altar. Later, when LaVey explained the ritual significance of the living altar to reporters, he remarked that an altar shouldn’t be a cold, unyielding slab of sterile stone or wood. It should be a symbol of unrestrained lust and indulgence.

All in all, it was quite a wedding for the first public marriage ceremony ever held in the United States by a devil-worshipping cult. The bride shunned the traditional white gown to appear in a bright red dress. The groom wore a black turtleneck sweater and coat. The satanic high priest stole the show, however, in a black cape lined with scarlet silk and a close-fitting blood-red hood from which two white horns protruded.

The cynical might point out that LaVey’s San Francisco-based church headquarters was once a brothel; the purists among the Satanists might grumble about how LaVey’s showbiz approach has demeaned the esoteric allure of their secret rituals; but it is difficult to be dogmatic about the precise rites and liturgies of the Black Mass.

Most authorities agree that the early Sabbats were held well away from the cities and villages on large areas of flat ground. Many covens preferred hilly ground, even mountainsides; but wherever the rituals were held, it was essential that one end of the worship area be wooded. This grove, according to tradition, served as the choir and sanctuary. The open area served as the equivalent of the nave in an orthodox church. At the far end of the wooded grove, the worshippers erected an altar of stones. Upon the altar was placed a large, wooden image of Satan, which many contemporary scholars agree was quite likely intended to be a representation of the nature god Pan, rather than the Prince of Darkness.

Even in its most polished form, this effigy did not resemble the sleek, mustachioed popular conception of a long-tailed devil in red tights. The idol’s torso was human, but its bottom half was that of a goat. Its head, too, was more often goat-like than that of a clearly discernible human physiognomy. The entire image was stained black, and in some locales, bore a small torch between its horns. The central feature of all such idols was said to be a prominent penis of exaggerated proportions, emphasizing the rites of fertility in which the ancient rituals originated.

The tortures of the Inquisition brought forth all manner of obscene versions of the Black Sabbat, and perhaps the great majority of such testimony is suspect. It must be pointed out that descriptions of the Black Mass were derived from confessions achieved by torture, as well as from accounts of medieval Christians who observed pagan celebrations of the solstices, midsummer, and so forth and who collectively designated the participants as “satan-worshippers.” However, numerous scholars of witchcraft, sorcery, and Satanism generally agree on the following order of service for the observance.

The Sabbat began with the ceremonial entrance of the participants, led by the high priest or high priestess of the coven. (A coven is traditionally comprised of no more than 12 members.) Christian observers of the Sabbat were quick to compare this ceremonial entrance to the orthodox introit, but there is no evidence that the witches referred to the procession by this name or even intended a comparison to the Christian order of service. According to contemporary reports of Sabbat gatherings in the Middle Ages (c. 500–c. 1500), several hundred, and in some cases, several thousand, people attended the ritual observances.

The chief officiant was called “The Ancient One,” a purely symbolic title, as in many Sabbats, the priestess might be an adolescent girl. At the priestess’ signal, the celebrants touched their torches to the flame burning between the dark image’s horns and received the transference of Lucifer’s light. The office was opened with the priestess chanting: “I will come to the altar. Save me my Holy Lord Satan from the treacherous and the violent.” The ceremonial procession and opening prayer completed, the priestess next delivered the ceremonial kiss to the hindquarters of the image.

The only real steadfast rule of the Sabbat was that there must be an equal number of both sexes. Each participant must have a mate. Under torture, many witches told their confessors that Satan would conjure up demons to take the place of either sex if human company should run short.

Each initiate and each member in attendance was required to bring food and drink for the banquet. In the state of poverty and deprivation in which so many peasants lived, it is easy to see why they looked forward to these smorgasbords during the Sabbats. Wine, beer, and cider were all known by the twelfth century, and attendees were encouraged to drink as well as eat their fill.

It seems, in the opinion of many scholars, that the celebrants may have sprinkled liberal dosages of trance-inducing herbs into the communal brew. Undoubtedly, such an action was designed to break down the last vestiges of inhibitions that some newcomers might maintain. It was most important that everyone be congenial by the hour when it was time for the Sabbat Dance, or, as it is commonly known, the Witches’ Round.

The round was performed with the dancers in a back-to-back position with their hands clasped and their heads turned so that they might see each other. A lively dance such as this, which was essentially circular in movement, would need little help from drugged drinks to bring about a condition of vertigo in the most hearty of dancers. In his The Satanic Mass (1965), H. T. F. Rhodes writes: “The result of the dance was an ecstatic condition wherein, as the movement progressed, officiants and congregation were united as if in one body.”

In the sixteenth century, Florin de Raemond described the rites of the Sabbat then extant (translation from Rhodes, The Satanic Mass): “The presiding deity is a black goat with two horns. A man dressed as a priest is attended by two women servers. A young initiate is presented to the goat who makes the sign of the cross with the left hand and commands those present to salute him with…the kiss upon the hind-quarters. Between his horns the creature carries a black lighted candle from which the worshippers’ tapers are lighted. As each one adores the goat, money is dropped into a silver dish.” De Raemond goes on to state that the new witch is initiated by giving Satan a lock of her hair, and by “going apart with him into a wood.” Then, according to de Raemond, “The Sabbat dance follows in the familiar back-to-back positions and the Mass proper then begins. A plain black cape is worn by the celebrant. A segment of turnip, dyed black, is used in place of the Host for the elevation. On seeing it above the priest’s head, the congregation cry, ‘Master, save us!’ Water replaces wine in the chalice. Offensive material is used as a substitute for holy water.”

The simplest ring dance practiced by witches is that of a plain circle with men and women alternating with joined hands. Sometimes the men face in and the women face out. In certain cases, upright poles may be placed on the perimeter of the dance circle so that the dancers might weave their way
through the staves. As the witches become more accomplished, the dance patterns may become more sophisticated, but most authorities feel that nearly all of the dances may be traced from ancient designs, such as the swastika, which represents the horns of four beasts turning a mill or a wheel.

Perhaps the climax of the traditional Witches Round came with the priestess becoming the living altar and lying there, naked, to receive the material offerings of the group. Token gifts of wheat, fruit, and in some cases, small animals, may have been offered on the human altar. This part of the Sabbat seems to have been a most important facet of the fertility rites, which, in primitive times, was probably the primary motivation for the observance.

By the time of the Middle Ages with its grim repression of pleasure and sex, it appears to be a point of general agreement that a mass sexual communion was followed by wild and ecstatic dancing. Such accounts must always be evaluated by considering the source: women and men under torture and death at the stake. It seems certain from the perspective in the twenty-first century, that the old mystery religions took on a completely different interpretation when observed by Christian witnesses.

It was during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the mold became set for the ritual patterns which many today commonly think of as Satanism. It was then that the practitioners of the Old Religion went completely underground with their worship ceremonies while the decadent aristocracy seized upon the Black Mass as a kind of hedonistic parlor game in which one might express his sexual fantasies on living altars and cavort about in the nude. Unrestrained immorality was the order of the day as Parisians followed the example of their Sun King, Louis XIV (1638–1715). Satanism was perhaps developed to its highest estate, as the jaded aristocrats began to adapt the witchcraft rituals to suit their own sexual fantasies. The enlightened sophisticate’s mockery of the primitive customs had been converted to a serious interest by the tension and insecurity of the times. Although the Inquisition still consumed its quota of witches, the France of King Louis XIV was a high-living, low-principled era, and lords and ladies began to pray in earnest to Satan to grant them high office and wealth. Whether or not their wishes for elevation in the society of their day was granted, it would seem that the majority of these high-born Satanists paid cursory homage to the Horned God only as a means of indulging their baser passions.

Catherine Montvoisin

At her trial in Paris in 1680, Catherine Deshayes, “La Voisin” (c. 1640–1680), boastfully stated that she had sacrificed more than 2,500 children who had their throats slit at her Black Sabbats. She also claimed that her poisonous potions brought about the deaths of many more jealous husbands, unfaithful wives, and unwanted parents than all the other professional poisoners of Paris combined.

In 1647, the little girl who would become one of history’s most infamous Satanists was just another barefooted beggar who had been sent out into the streets to tell fortunes for a few coins from the passersby. By coincidence, many of the waif’s “predictions” came true, and she cultivated a clientele who swore by her “God-given powers.” But the appealing little prophetess with the smudged nose soon discovered that Satan’s wages were much higher than the ones offered by the angry wives who suspected their husbands of infidelity or the frustrated young women who wanted to know when they would get a husband.

When she was 20, Catherine married Antoine Montvoisin, who, as far as can be determined, never contributed any money toward her well-being. Innately resourceful, she had soon established herself as a midwife, a beautician, and an herbalist, and was supporting both Antoine and his daughter by a
former marriage in handsome style.

It was when the enterprising La Voisin included palmistry, prophecy, and astrology among her stock-in-trade that she incurred the wrath of the established Church. Instead of being flayed alive by a grand inquisitor, the young woman convinced a learned tribunal composed of the vicars general and several doctors of theology from the Sorbonne that her approach to astrology was completely acceptable to the Church.

The effect that her release had upon her already flourishing trade as an herbalist and her ever-increasing reputation as a seer was remarkable. People reasoned that La Voisin had secured the Church’s blessing on her magic. She was soon surrounded by many wealthy clients.

La Voisin received her supplicants in a darkened chamber wherein she appeared in an ermine-lined robe emblazoned with two hundred eagles embroidered in gold thread on purple velvet. For the right price, the high priestess would officiate at a special Black Mass for a troubled seeker of satanic solace. If the supplicant were female, then the client herself, regardless of how high-born she might be, would serve as the Black Mass’s living altar.

The high priestess kept a secret list of more than 50 Roman Catholic priests who would celebrate the Black Mass at her bidding. Her great favorite was Abbe Guilborg (d. 1680), who, in spite of the fact that he held a number of public and private ecclesiastical offices, was always in need of extra money to maintain his mistresses he kept closeted about Paris. His skill as a chemist was also put to good use by La Voisin for her clients who wished effective poisons, and Guilborg managed to cut down on housekeeping expenses with his mistresses by selling his many illegitimate children to La Voisin for use as satanic sacrifices during her Black Masses.

Babies for sacrifice cost the high priestess a good deal of money, but she had learned to economize in the Paris streets. She established a home for unwed mothers, which saw the girls through their pregnancies and relieved them of the responsibility of caring for an unwanted child. Girls without financial means were provided for at no charge. The bills presented to the women of the aristocracy were large enough to cover the operating expenses for the entire home. The young pampered aristocrats, who inconveniently found themselves in a family way, were, however, offered the bonus of having a punitive potion secretly administered to the rogue who had been so careless in his seduction. With moral laxity the order of the day in Louis XIV’s (1638–1715) France, the shrewd La Voisin’s home for unwed mothers always managed to provide her with a stockpile of sacrificial infants.

The Black Mass was held deep in the bowels of La Voisin’s high-walled house in the region lying south of St. Denis, which, in seventeenth-century Paris, was called Villeneuve. The supplicant approached the altar in complete nudity and lay upon its black surface. A black-robed acolyte stepped forward to place a flickering black candle in each of her upturned palms. At this point, Abbe Guilborg (d. 1680) appeared and positioned himself at the living altar. He wore vestments of an orthodox shape made of white linen. The chasuble (outer vestment worn by celebrant at Mass) and the alb were embroidered with black pine cones, the ancient Greek symbol of fertility. The priest placed the chalice upon the supplicant’s stomach, kissed her body, and officiated the ceremony. The prayer book was bound in human skin; the holy water was urine; and the host was usually a toad, a turnip, or on occasion, true host stolen from a church and desecrated with filth.

The rituals completed, it was time for the offering. Abbe Guilborg stretched out his arms to receive the infant delivered there by the black-robed acolyte, intoning the dark entities Astaroth and Asmodeus to accept the sacrifice of the child so the supplicants at the Black Mass might receive the things that they asked. The child was raised aloft and the priest deftly slashed its throat.

Marguerite, La Voisin’s stepdaughter, often assisted at the Black Mass in the capacity of clerk to the celebrating priest. When Marguerite happened to find herself with child as the result of a flirtation with a married neighbor, she became alarmed when she found her stepmother casting appraising eyes at the bulge of her pregnancy. When the child was born, Marguerite, in spite of herself, found that a maternal instinct existed within her. Since she was quite aware that La Voisin had no interest in becoming a grandmother, Marguerite had sent her child away to be brought up in the country.

While she was becoming wealthy from her performance of the satanic rites, La Voisin was unaware that a police official named Desgrez, a detective who had arrested Madame de Brinvilliers (1630–1676), an aristocratic Satanist who specialized in poisons, was closing in on her Black Sabbats. When his men reported the number of the high-ranking and the high-born who were frequenting the Satanist’s subterranean chambers, Desgrez found himself faced with quite a decision. It would not benefit him to anger so many important people by suggesting that the activities in which they were engaging were wrong. If he arrested La Voisin, he would, at least indirectly, be criticizing the members of the aristocracy who regularly attended her Sabbats and who relied upon her talents as a seeress and a priestess.

As Desgrez struggled with this dilemma, one of his officers came to him trembling with fear. He had recognized the crest on one of the coaches waiting before La Voisin’s walls as belonging to none other than Madame de Montespan (1641–1707), the mistress of King Louis XIV. The officer told him that the royal mistress had served as the naked, living altar at one of La Voisin’s Sabbats.

Desgrez brought his evidence and the list of names to his superior, La Reynie, head of the Chambre Ardente. King Louis had pledged himself to support the Chambre, but the rank of the names on the list, including that of his own mistress, placed him in a politically explosive situation. His advisors cautioned him that a hasty exposure of the decadence of court life would lead to a revolution or encourage England to launch an invasion against a morally corrupt and internally torn France.

After the arrest of La Voisin, several planted rumors caused some of the court favorites involved to flee the country on extended trips abroad. After they were safely out of the country, the king saw to it that evidence against highborn court figures, including his indiscreet mistress, was suppressed. La Voisin herself was treated to a rather pleasant stay in jail, until King Louis had seen to it that all those of high position had been protected. Then La Voisin was delivered to the grand inquisitor.

Catherine Montvoisin endured four six-hour ordeals in the torture chamber before she was brought to the stake on February 23, 1680. By the king’s order, only testimony concerning those Satanists who had already been condemned was allowed to be recorded. The former fortune-teller from the streets of Paris went to her death singing offensive songs and cursing the priests who sought her final confession.

Gilles de Rais (1404–1440)

In 1415, as a boy of 11, Gilles de Rais became heir to the greatest fortune in France. At 16, he increased his net worth by marrying the extremely wealthy Catherine de Thouars. Although he was known as a devout Christian with a mystical turn of mind, and is described by his contemporaries as a man of rare elegance and almost angelic beauty, he was far from an ascetic. He was highly skilled in the arts of warfare, and when he had barely turned 20 he rode by the side of Joan of Arc (c.1412–1441) and served as her chief lieutenant, fighting with such fierce merit that King Charles VII (1403–1431) later awarded de Rais the title of Marshal of France.

Gilles de Rais was a man so noted for his devotion to duty and his personal piety that he came to be regarded as a latter-day Lancelot. But, like Lancelot, de Rais entered into an ill-fated love affair that destroyed him. Although it was undoubtedly an affair that was conducted entirely on a spiritual plane, de Rais became the platonic lover of Joan of Arc, the strange young mystic whose “voices” dictated that she save France. He became her guardian and protector, but when Joan was captured and burned at the stake, de Rais felt as though his years of serving God and the good had been for naught. After the maid of Orleans was betrayed by the Church, he became transformed into a satanic fiend of such hellish and unholy proportions that his like may be unequaled in the annals of perverse crimes against society. Many scholars who have examined the life of this pietist turned monster in depth have agreed that de Rais’s crimes and acts of sacrilege were quite likely inspired by what he considered God’s betrayal of God’s good and faithful servant, Joan of Arc.

Although she had given him a child, Gilles de Rais left his wife, vowed never to have sexual intercourse with another woman, and secreted himself in his castle at Tiffauges. The young man who had once surrounded himself with priests and supported dozens of chapels throughout France, now welcomed profligates, broken-down courtiers, sycophants, and wastrels to his castle, and his family gold supported several rounds of lavish orgies. At last, even the vast wealth of the de Rais was depleted, and Gilles decided to try his hand at alchemy, the dream of transmuting base metals into gold, as a means of replenishing his fortune.

Within a short time, he had converted an entire wing of his castle into a series of extensive alchemical laboratories. Alchemists and sorcerers from all over Europe flocked to Tiffauges. Some came to freeload on the feasts and to fleece the young nobleman out of a few bags of gold. Others came to seek final answers and resolution to the persistent, haunting quest of the alchemist. Although de Rais himself joined the alchemists and magicians in work sessions that went nearly around the clock all of their experiments counted for naught.

It was the Italian alchemist/sorcerer Antonio Francisco Prelati, a former priest, who told him that a mortal cannot hope to achieve the transmutation of base metals into gold without the help of Satan. And the only way that an alchemist or a sorcerer could hope to arouse Satan’s interest in his work was by dedicating the most abominable crimes to his name.

Under Prelati’s direction, de Rais set about to commit his first abominable crime. He lured a young peasant boy into the castle and into the chambers that he provided for Prelati. Under the alchemist’s instruction, de Rais brutally killed the boy and used his blood for writing of evocations and formulas. Satan did not appear and no base metals were transmuted into gold, but Gilles de Rais no longer cared. He had discovered an enterprise far more satisfying than the alchemist’s quest. He had discovered sadistic satisfaction and pleasure in the torture and murder of children.

On September 13, 1440, Jean the Bishop of Nantes signed the legal citation which would bring the Baron Gilles de Rais to trial. Among the charges levied on him were the killing, strangling, and massacring of innocent children. In addition to such horrors, he was also charged with evoking demons, making pacts with them, and sacrificing children to them.

Etienne Corillaut, one of de Raises’s personal servants, later testified at his master’s trial when the Marshal of France was accused of having slain as many as 800 children.

Rather than be put to the question by the court, de Rais chose to confess every sordid and gory deed. Such a confession would spare him the ordeals by torture awaiting those who protested their innocence. Because of his high position in the court of France, Gilles de Rais was granted the mercy of being strangled before being burned. The tribunal conveniently looked the other way after his execution, however, and the de Rais family was permitted to remove his corpse after it had been given only a cursory singeing. The mass murderer of hundreds of innocent children was interred in a Catholic ceremony in a Carmelite churchyard. Antonio Francisco Prelati and the other professing Satanists were given, at most, a few months in prison for their part in the murders.

“It is thought likely by some historians that this was their reward for testifying against their master,” Masters and Lea reflect, “and that both ecclesiastical and civil authorities were far more interested in obtaining Gilles’ money and properties, which were still considerable, than in punishing him for his crimes.”

Anton LaVey’s First Church of Satan 

On Walpurgisnacht, April 30, 1966, Anton Szandor LaVey (1930–1997) of San Francisco shaved his head, donned clerical clothing, complete with white collar, and proclaimed himself Satan’s high priest. Concurrently, LaVey announced the establishment of the First Church of Satan in America. A short time later, LaVey published The Satanic Bible (1969), affirming in bold language the teachings of the Church of Satan and proclaiming that Satan ruled the earth. This was the dawn of the Age of Satan, he announced—the morning of magic and undefiled wisdom.

Worship of the Prince of Darkness is at least as old as the Judeo-Christian tradition, and there was nothing new about a belief in magical powers. What was new was LaVey’s use of the term “church” as part of his organization’s title. While some accused him of blasphemy, he pointed out that the word itself came from the Greek and applied to any group that feels it has been “called out” of society’s rank-and-file for a special purpose. And there seemed little question that LaVey seriously considered his church to be quite special. In addition to ceremonies and rituals devoted to the Prince of Darkness, there were weddings, funerals, and children baptized in the name of Satan.

LaVey’s The Satanic Bible listed nine declarations that defined Satanism for a new age:

1. indulgence, instead of abstinence;
2. vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams;
3. undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit;
4. kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates;
5. vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek;
6. responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires;
7. man as just another animal…more often worse than those that walk on all fours, who because of his divine spiritual and intellectual development, has become the most vicious animal of all;
8. all of the so-called sins, as they lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification;
9. Satan is the best friend the Church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years.

In The Satanic Bible, LaVey revealed and explained the credos of Satanism as proclaimed by the Church of Satan. In his introduction to the work, he described Satanism as being “dedicated to the dark, hidden force in nature responsible for the workings of earthly affairs for which science and religion had no explanation.” He explained that he was moved to establish the Church of Satan when he saw the need for a church that would “recapture man’s body and carnal desires as objects of celebration.” The Church of Satan preaches a religious system that endeavors to overcome the repressions and inhibitions of human instinctual behavior it believes has been fostered by the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The First Church of Satan does not recognize the existence of Satan as an actual being, but as a symbol representing materialism. The church emphasizes that the figure of Satan stands for an inner attitude, and it is never to be regarded as an object onto which human powers are projected in order to worship what is only human in an externalized form. In The Satanic Bible, Satanists are charged to Asay unto thine own heart, ‘I am my own redeemer.’” (Book IV, line 3.)

The Satanic Bible is divided into four sections, or books, each corresponding to one of the four hermetic elements of fire, air, earth, and water. The first section is entitled The Book of Satan, and its introduction advises the reader that the “ponderous rule books of hypocrisy are no longer needed,” it is time to relearn the Law of the Jungle. The second section, The Book of Lucifer, explains how the Roman god Lucifer, the light bearer, the spirit of enlightenment, was made synonymous with evil through Christian teachings. The Book of Belial, the third section, is a basic text on materialistic magic, a book of ritual and ceremonial magic expressed in satanic terms. The fourth section, The Book of Leviathan, stresses the importance to successful magic of the spoken word.

The Satanist doctrine celebrates man the animal. It exalts sexual lust above spiritual love, claiming that the latter is but a sham and a cover-up. Satanism declares that violence must be met with violence and that to love one’s neighbor is a utopian unreality. “Hate your enemies with a whole heart,” The Satanic Bible advises. “And if a man smite you on one cheek, smash him on the other! Smite him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law!” (Section III, paragraph 7).

Satanists condemn prayer and confession as vain, futile gestures, believing that the way to achieve what one wants is through magic and aggressive effort—and that the best method of ridding oneself of guilt is not to assume it in the first place. If Satanists make a mistake, they recognize sincerely that to err is human; and instead of involving themselves in efforts to cleanse themselves, they examine the situation in order to determine exactly what happened and how to prevent its happening again.

Satanists regard the Christian preoccupations with otherworldliness as subterfuge, with self-denial as depravity, and with piety as a sign of weakness. To Satanists, the Christian way of life is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless encounter with stagnation and boredom. Worshippers of Satan believe that the way to greater levels of personal perfection and an exploration of the deeper mysteries of life is through study and the performance of rituals emphasizing the sensual nature of humankind and directing this power toward the release of psychic or emotional energy.

Because Christian churches, especially the Roman Catholic, are considered anathema to the Prince of Darkness, Satanists use parodied versions of their rituals and symbols in their ceremonies. The cross is used, but it is worn or displayed with the long beam pointing downward. Satanists may on occasion use the pentagram or five-pointed star, traditionally used by the practitioners of Wicca or witchcraft, but as with the cross, it is inverted, resting upon a single point, rather than two. Satanists insist that their parodying and inversion of other religions’ rites and symbols are not done strictly for purposes of blasphemy. It is their belief, they maintain, that such use appropriates the power inherent in the rite or symbol and inverts it for Satan’s purposes.

Satanists believe their doctrine and belief system is of the here and now. Acting on that premise, they look for their rewards in their present life and in this world. “Life is the great indulgence—death the great abstinence. Therefore, make the most of life here and now!” (Book IV, line 1.)

As a supplement to The Satanic Bible, LaVey published The Satanic Rituals (1972), in which he explained the Church of Satan’s rituals and ceremonies in greater detail. Rituals includes the actual text of the Black Mass and the ritual for the satanic baptism of adults and children.

Anton LaVey, the founder of the First Church of Satan in San Francisco, ran away from home at the age of 17 to work as a cage boy for the circus lion tamer Clyde Beatty. Later, LaVey became a carnival mentalist and hypnotist, then an organ player for the dancers and strippers in the sideshows. On Sunday mornings he had an extra job playing the organ for an evangelist who conducted revival meetings in a large tent on the neighboring lot.

In the 1950s, LaVey became a San Francisco Police Department crime scene photographer, but he maintained the same fascination for magic that had driven him to perform as a stage mentalist, hypnotist, and magician in the carnivals and circuses of his youth, and he soon included a widening circle of devotees in his Magic Circle discussion group. In the late 1960s, when he founded the First Church of Satan, LaVey became immediately popular in the media, often allowing reporters to attend certain rituals that he conducted over the living altar of a woman’s naked body in his church, the famous “Black House,” said to have been a brothel. Then in a sudden rush came the books, the attention from movie stars, the position as technical advisor to such motion pictures as Rosemary’s Baby, (1968), and the hostility of millions of devout Christians, who saw LaVey as a kind of antichrist. By the 1970s, the death threats and the harassment had become oppressive, and LaVey went underground, ceased all public ceremonies, and recast his church as a secret society.

In February 23, 1986, The Washington Post Magazine carried Walt Harrington’s account of a visit with LaVey in which the journalist noted that the satanic high priest, like anyone else, loved his friends, wife, and children, but there was a venom that went beyond his claim that Satanism was a parody of Christianity: “Anton LaVey is not a cartoon Satan,” Harrington wrote. “He’s far less frightening than you would imagine, because he is admittedly a carnival hustler. Yet he is still terrifying, because he touches, if not the mystical darkness, then the psychological darkness—the hate and fear—in us all.”

In 1991, LaVey lost ownership of the “Black House” when a judge ordered him to sell the satanic temple, along with such mementos as a shrunken head and a stuffed wolf, and split the proceeds with his estranged wife, Diane Hagerty.

Anton Szandor LaVey died on October 30, 1997, the day before Halloween, and soon after his death, what remained of his estate became the object of a legal struggle between his oldest daughter Karla and Blanche Barton, his longtime consort and the mother of his son Xerxes. At the same time, LaVey’s younger daughter Zeena, who renounced the Church of Satan in 1990 and became a priest in the Temple of Set, began proclaiming what she claimed was the truth about the Church of Satan, listing, among other charges, that it had never been intended to be a spiritual movement, but was created solely as a money-making venture. Such denouncements are unlikely to damage severely the reputation of the First Church of Satan, which continues today under the direction of the High Priestess Blanche Barton and the Magister Peter H. Gilmore.

Temple of Set

The ancient Egyptians were perhaps the first to personify evil as a distinct force in the universe, but they retained a concept of unity by representing the evil god Set as a brother of Horus, prince of light and goodness. Although Set was actually the younger brother of Osiris—who, with Isis, his wife, and Horus, his son, comprised the Egyptian trinity—he was represented as Horus’s brother, because Set stood for the opposing forces of evil and darkness. Set was jealous of Osiris’s power and sought to seize the throne from him. In ensuing struggle, Osiris was dismembered, leaving Horus to oppose his evil brother/uncle. In the war between the two that ensued, Horus and the forces of good prevailed. In the story of Set’s insurrection can be seen a parallel with the Hebrew tradition of Lucifer’s rebellion, his defeat by Michael and the angels, and his subsequent expulsion from heaven. Set, therefore, is clearly an early forerunner of Christianity’s and Islam’s irreconcilably and absolutely evil Satan.

The Temple of Set maintains, however, that regardless of how evil Set may be portrayed, his “essential function” of “expanding the borders of existence and then returning that Chaotic energy to the center” has continued to the present day. In the temple’s cosmology, Set stands separate and apart from the forces of the natural universe.

In 1975, Michael Aquino (1946– ), one of Anton LaVey’s followers, left the Church of Satan after a disagreement and organized the Temple of Set in San Francisco. Aquino had been the editor of the Church of Satan newsletter, and when it appeared to him that LaVey was merely “selling” priesthoods, he lodged a firm protest with the Black Pope. In Aquino’s view, priesthoods in satanic orders should be conferred solely on the basis of magical achievement. Unimpressed with Aquino’s argument, LaVey dismissed the matter by explaining that he considered the degrees he issued as merely symbolic of the member’s status in the outside world. In protest, Aquino resigned his priesthood in the Church of Satan and with Lilith Sinclair, head of the New York Lilith Grotto, formed the Temple of Set.

Aquino, a former lieutenant in Army Intelligence, specializing in psychological warfare, had joined the Church of Satan together with his first wife in 1968. An enthusiastic member of the church, he was ordained a satanic priest after he had returned from serving in Vietnam in 1970; and he envisioned his mission in life as one of destroying the influence of conventional religion in human affairs. Filled with missionary zeal, Aquino made it clear that he did not wish to convert everyone to Satanism, but he did wish to remove the shadow of fear and superstition that he believed had been perpetuated by organized religion.

On the eve of the summer solstice on June 21, 1975, after his split with LaVey, Aquino performed a magical ritual and sought to summon Satan to appear to him to advise him how best to proceed in his earthly mission. According to Aquino, the Prince of Darkness appeared to him in the image of Set and declared to his disciple the dawning of the Aeon of Set. It was revealed that Set appeared to Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) in Cairo in 1904 in the image of Crowley’s guardian angel, Aiwass. At this time, Crowley was declared the herald for the advent of the Aeon of Horus and assumed the title of “The Beast.” In 1966, Anton LaVey had ushered in the Aeon of Satan, an intermediary stage that was designed to prepare the way for the Aeon of Set, an age that would bring forth enlightenment. Aquino was delighted and honored to assume the mantle of “The Second Beast,” and he even had “666,” the number of the Beast in the book of Revelation tattooed on his scalp. At the same time, he also assumed Crowley’s Golden Dawn degree of Ipsissimus as his own.

In Aquino’s view, the Temple of Set offers its followers an opportunity to raise their consciousness and to apprehend what exists in each individual to make him or her unique. Such awareness, according to the precepts of the Temple of Set, will permit its members to use this gift of expanded consciousness to make themselves stronger in all facets of their being. To accomplish this, they state, they “perserve and improve the tradition of spiritual distinction from the natural universe, which in the Judeo/Christian West has been called Satanism,” but they choose to call “the Left-Hand Path.” To follow such a path, they promise, is to enter a process that will create “an individual, powerful essence that exists above and beyond animal life. It is thus the true vehicle for personal immortality.”

The Temple of Set emphasizes the employment of black magic of a sort that focuses on “self-determined goals.” While this form of magic may be utilized to accomplish everything from healing one’s ill friends or relatives to obtaining a better paying position, the temple stresses that the practitioner must first learn to develop a system of ethics and discernment before putting such power to use. Using magic for “impulsive, trivial, or egoistic desires” is not considered to be Setian. Black magic is the means by which Setian initiates “experience being gods, rather than praying to imaginary images of gods.”

The Temple of Set does not tolerate congregations of docile Setians. Those who attend must be considered “cooperative philosophers and magicians.” According to their general information distributed to those who inquire about the temple, executive authority is held by the Council of Nine, which is responsible for appointing both the high priest and the executive director. There are six degrees of initiates: Setian 1, Adept II, Priest/Priestess of Set III, Magister/ Magistra Templi IV, Magus/Maga V, and Ipsissimus/Ipissima VI. To be recognized as an Adept II, one must demonstrate that he or she has successfully mastered and applied the essential principles of black magic. Reading materials available to the initiates include the newsletter Scroll of Set and the encyclopedias entitled the Jeweled Tablets of Set.

The Temple of Set emphasizes that the black arts may be as dangerous to the newcomer as volatile chemicals may become to the inexperienced lab technician. It cautions that the practice of magic is not for unstable, immature, or emotionally weak-minded individuals. And it also stresses that the process offers to those who seek their “evolutionary product of human experience” is the kind of activity that no enlightened, mature intellect would regard as “undignified, sadistic, criminal, or depraved.”

Written by Brad E. Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger in "The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Explained" volume 1, Thomson/Gale, USA, excerpts pp.288-304. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.