BELIEFS FOUND IN THE MEDIA AND IN BOOKS

A problem with religious terminology:
Within the dominant religion in North America, Christianity, there is a wide range of belief systems. Individual Christian faith groups use common English words like God, Heaven, salvation, redemption, sanctification, saved, tongues, etc. However, they often assign different meanings to these words. The result is that dialogue within a given congregation can be difficult. Discussions among representatives of different Christian faith groups are even more challenging. Inter-faith dialogue sometimes experiences major barriers and can be impossible.

The terms "Satanism" and "Satanist" two of these religious words which have multiple meanings. Many very different beliefs concerning Satanism have circulated in North America.

Some refer to religious Satanists -- normally adults who follow Satanism as a religion.
Others refer to teenage "dabblers," many of whom have formed an eclectic belief system derived from many sources.
Still others refer to Gothic Satanism as it was believed to exist centuries ago.
Many people consider religious Satanism and Wicca (a.k.a. Witchcraft) as being related or even identical. In reality, the two religions are quite different and frequently hold opposite beliefs.

Many of these beliefs do not correspond to actual religious Satanist belief and practice.

This lack of agreement about "Satanism" and "Satanists" is reflected in the media and in religious and inspirational books, sermons, articles, etc. over the past centuries. This diversity continues today on the Internet.

Historical beliefs about Gothic Satanism:
The public's beliefs in past centuries about Satanism were largely based on religious propaganda. Both the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in Western Europe and North America created an imaginary religion that has been called "Gothic Satanism." This belief system was originally circulated centuries ago during the "Burning Times" in order to justify the churches' extermination of what were believed to be Satan worshiping "Witches" and other heretics. The churches taught that Witches:

Worship Satan.
Enter into a personal contract with the Christian devil.
Committed their lives to performing evil deeds, continuously.
Flew through the air on broomsticks.
Held secret midnight Witches Sabbats in the forest.
Cursed animals and humans, causing them to sicken, have miscarriages, or die.
Generated storms, hail and other weather disturbances to destroy crops.
Could shape-shift -- change their physical appearance at will from human to animal and back again.
Boiled babies down into a magical soup and used the victim's bones as ritual tools.
Organized in covens of exactly 13 people.
Were a massive danger to society, and had to be exterminated.

These ideas were widely accepted among the public, starting circa 1450 CE. Some investigators believe that these beliefs about Satan worshipers in the late Middle Ages developed from theological debates about theodicy -- the philosophical and religious discussion of how evil can exist in a universe created and controlled by an omnipotent and omnibeneficient God. Others believe that the church wanted to exterminate any residual minority belief systems still in existence, and have exclusive control of the religious live of western Europe.

The beliefs in the existence of profoundly evil Satan worshipers with magical powers had largely dissipated by 1792, when the last victim was executed in Western Europe. However, the concept of the evil Witch as a worshiper of Satan had entered into religious legends, fairy tales, children's stories, and more recently into Hollywood horror movies. A few of these beliefs were still regarded as accurate by a significant percentage of the public as late as 1995.

The text of two books from the Burning Times are still easily obtained today in:

Montague Summers, "The Malleus Maleficarum of Kramer and Sprenger." 1
Francesco Maria Guazzo, "Compendium Maleficarum," 2

They are fascinating to read. They tell us little about the reality of Satan worship during the Renaissance. However, they do give evidence of the sexual dysfunction of the original authors.

In reality, there is no evidence that Gothic Satanism actually existed centuries ago. It does not exist now -- except perhaps among a very few, isolated psychotic individuals who might regard themselves as Gothic Satanists.

The Satanic Panic (circa 1980 to 1995):
A book "Michelle Remembers" was published in 1980. 3 It was presented as an account of recovered memories restored by Michelle Smith during therapy with her psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Pazder (1936 - 2004) -- the person whom she was later to marry. It allegedly documents horrendous ritual abuse suffered by Michelle during her childhood at the hands of a Satanic cult in Canada. The book described that a main motivation for the abuse was appeasement of the Christian devil, Satan.

Although there were a few isolated, false stories of Satanic Ritual Abuse prior to Michelle being published, this book gave the "Satanic panic" in North America a major boost. 4 It was at least partly responsible for the initial formation of the belief in widespread Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) in the early 1980's. The book was followed by others on the same theme. Three of the most popular were:

Lauren Stratford (aka Willson), "Satan's Underground." 5
Mike Warnke, "The Satan Seller." 6
Dr. Rebecca Brown, "He Came to Set the Captives Free." 7

Although some of these books are out of print, most are available from Amazon.com as inexpensive used books.

Between 1980 and the mid-1990s, there was a widespread belief among some law enforcement officers, some feminists, some Christians, and others that:

Satanists and Wiccans held essentially identical beliefs and engaged in similar horrendous practices.
Both Satanists and Wiccans engaged in extensive Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA).
On the order of 50,000 infants and children were sacrificed yearly. Some were eaten by Satanists.
Satanism was a type of mirror image of Christianity. Its followers conducted inverted Christian rituals, like Black Masses, as a means of ridiculing and denigrating Christianity.

By 1995, fifteen years of dedicated investigation had turned up no concrete evidence of SRA. Belief in the reality of religiously-inspired ritual abuse began to dissipate. Ritual abuse does continue today, largely in the form of physical beatings during Christian exorcisms. Fortunately, it is rare. About one victim a years dies in North America during such exorcisms.

Therapists generally recognize now that adults' recovered memories of childhood SRA were false. They were unrelated to actual events early in life. The false memories were traceable to dangerous therapeutic techniques like Recovered Memory Therapy. Memories of ritual abuse were also implanted in young children's minds by the dangerous and suggestive interrogation techniques where were then accepted as state-of-the-art.

Essays on this website describe Satanic Ritual Abuse cases among adults and Multi-Victim, Multi-Offender (MVMO) panics among children in pre-schools and day care centers. Most of the adults who were falsely convicted of abuse have had their cases reviewed and have been released from jail. Gerald Amirault continues to rot in jail for a crime that never happened in Malden MA. Three young adults, the "West Memphis Three," were convicted of ritual murders of three boys in Robin Hood Hills, West Memphis, AR. They remain incarcerated, one in death row, even though there is hard evidence that they are innocent and that the actual perpetrator(s) went free.

merged: 03-30-2007 ~ 01:20pm
Satanism on the Internet

The terms "Satanism" and "Satanist" have very definite meanings to followers of that religion. However, non-Satanists often assign very different definitions to these terms.

Many Internet web sites created by non-Satanists describe contemporary religious Satanism in unusual ways:

A growing number of information sources describe religious Satanists as Satanists understand themselves: persons -- typically adults -- who follow Satanism as a religion that is unrelated to other faith traditions. It is not a Christian heresy or a form of inverted Christianity. Non-Satanic authors are increasingly accepting this viewpoint. They are now frequently basing their essays on primary information sources -- material that was actually written by Satanists.
Some believe that Satanists are criminals who engage in horrendous activities involving Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). This includes sexual molestation, physical maltreatment, rape, murder, and even cannibalism. Their writing is based on the widespread popular beliefs about secret, underground, multi-generational Satanic cults which became popular during the Satanic Panic of 1980 to 1995. These beliefs turned out to be without foundation. They have since been discredited and largely abandoned.
Some define all persons who are not Christians or Jews as Satanists, and lump together the followers of many benign religions, from Asatru to Zoroastrianism, as worshipers of Satan. Satanism then becomes a synonym for "non-Judeo-Christian."
When some discuss Satanists, they are actually referring to teenage Satanic "dabblers." The latter are often youth who have pieced together an eclectic belief system derived from multiple sources. Some dabblers engage in mild vandalism.
Still others refer to Gothic Satanism, an imaginary religion which was believed to exist centuries ago during the Burning Times when the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant churches exterminated heretics. Gothic Satanism didn't exist then and doesn't exist now. But some beliefs about Satan worshipers from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance have become embedded in our culture and are still accepted today.
Many people consider religious Satanism and Wicca (a.k.a. Witchcraft) as being related or even identical.
Some describe Satanism as representing the core of the Occult. Other unrelated pastimes, religions and activities like Wicca, other Neopagan religions, the Masonic Order, Tarot cards, tea leaf reading, horoscopes, Ouija boards, heavy metal rock music, role playing games, etc. are basically considered to be recruiting mechanisms to lure unsuspecting people into the Occult and entrap them into Satanism.

With so many meanings attributed to only two words -- "Satanist" and "Satanism" -- it is important for reporters, webmasters, authors and others to define precisely what they mean by these terms in advance, before discussing Satanism. Unfortunately, this is rarely done. Quite often, an article or essay will intermix information on religious Satanism, Gothic Satanism, Satanic dabbling, Wicca, and other Occultic activities.

What level of accurate knowledge should we expect about Satanism?
There is a wide variation among the North American public concerning Satanism:

On Satanic Ritual Abuse (a.k.a. SRA): A 1992 public opinion survey conducted by the Deseret News in Utah showed that 90% of adults in that state believed that secret groups -- presumably Satanists -- engaged in ritualistic child sexual abuse. One reason for this high percentage may be the religious affiliation of Utah citizens: over 70% are believed to be members or adherents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). Like most conservative Christian denominations, Satan plays a major and profoundly evil role in that church's belief system. One would expect similar results if a poll were taken in a Southern state in the U.S. or Alberta in Canada where a large percentage of the population is affiliated with a Fundamentalist and other Evangelical Christian faith group.
Yet, almost all police officers and other investigators who have spent over a decade searching for some evidence of SRA have concluded that it does not exist.

On the theology of Satanism: We would estimate that in excess of 90% of North American adults believe that religious Satanists worship the Christian devil, Satan.
Almost all academics who study new religious movements realize that most Satanists are unconvinced whether one or more Supreme Beings exist. That is, they are Agnostics. When Satanists discuss Satan, they are not referring to the Christian devil -- a living entity with finite supernatural powers. They are referring to a pre-Christian concept representing pleasure, virility, strength, enthusiasm for life, etc.

As of late 2003, sixty million Internet sites contain the word "God." Nineteen million sites contain the word "Christ." From these numbers, we can surmise that there are probably many millions of religious web sites on the Internet. All writers for the Internet have a responsibility to thoroughly investigate their topic in advance, in order to avoid misinforming the public. One might wish that the non-Satanic webmasters who discuss Satanism would have thoroughly studied that religion. However, this appears to not be true. From the massive amount of misinformation about Satanism on the Internet, it is probable that non-Satanic webmasters are basing their writing on their denomination's teaching, rather than on primary information sources from Satanists themselves.

A sampling of non-Satanic web sites which describe Satanism:
The Christadelphian Magazine and Publishing Association Ltd (UK): Their pamphlet "Satanism or Christianity" is reproduced on the Christadelphia World Wide web site. 1 Some excerpts: "Satanism is a more specific definition, and is used to refer to the worship of Satan, who is alleged to be the supreme evil spirit." [Note: This is incorrect. Religious Satanists do not recognize or worship Satan as a living being or spirit]
"The worship of the Devil by Satanists has therefore been likened to the worship of God..." [Note: See above]
"Many believers in the occult hold services where real blood is offered and drunk as a mark of the 'fellowship' existing between the congregation and the ungodly powers, the blood having first been taken from a 'living sacrifice'." [This is incorrect. Religious Satanists neither use living sacrifices nor drink blood.]
"The fear engendered by occult and satanist groups is known to hold many people in a trap of terror." [This is incorrect, and appears to have its source in Middle Age beliefs about Satan worshipers who were believed to have sold their soul to Satan. A Satanist is free to change their religion at any time.]

Christianity Today published an article about The Godless Americans March on Washington, held on 2002-nov-2. 4 American Atheists organized the march and invited "all groups and individuals who sincerely declare themselves to be 'Godless Americans' " to be listed as endorsers of the march. Ed Buckner, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, reportedly complained about the presence of two groups of Satanists: The Order of Perdition and the United Satanic Convenire. He said: "This is supposed to be a march of those without religion. We don't believe there is Satan or any other god." Ellen Johnson, the president of American Atheists, allegedly said that: "we're disappointed that the Council for Secular Humanism has decided to go public with this non-issue." She wanted "all of the endorsers to work together and to strive toward unity in this march." 5 [Note: Buckner apparently misunderstands the theological beliefs of religious Satanists. The latter are Agnostics and do not worship Satan, the Christian God or any other supreme being or quasi-deity.]

Wow, you've REALLY researched this. I didn't know Satanist were akin to athiests.

they are kind of weird,they hate and despise every human beign that is not a devil worshiper.
at least that's how are they suposed to act acordin to their master's teaching and lectures.