Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

Introduction
xiii
imagery was also utilized by other romantic
writers. More recent literary figures like the French
poet Charles Baudelaire made use of the same
inversion. For example, in his poem “The
Possessed,” Baudelaire exclaimed, “There is no
fiber in my trembling body that does not cry,‘Dear
Beelzebub, I adore you!’”
The conflicting images of the Devil we have
inherited from the past have become yet more
ambiguous in the present because the segment of
the population that accepts the real existence of
an evil Prince of Darkness is in the minority and
steadily diminishing. This does not mean that the
traditional image of Satan has been completely
eclipsed. Although Christianity no longer exercises
hegemony over the thought world of the
industrialized nations of the West, conservative
Christians still constitute a significant subpopulation.
The strength of this constituency is evident
in many ways, from the effectiveness of Christian
efforts to thwart the legalization of gay marriage
to the powerful challenge Christians have been
able to mount against abortion. Whether we
applaud or deplore these efforts, the conservative
Christian community from which they draw their
power shows no signs of disappearing in the foreseeable
future.
This reference work proposes to survey
contemporary images of the Devil. Although I
have cast a wide net, the diabolical is far too
pervasive in our cultural tradition for any single
volume to even begin to encompass everything. I
have thus been forced to make choices about what
was and what was not incorporated into the
following pages. My overarching criterion was
whether or not particular phenomena were part
of popular culture.
At the same time, I made a number of important
exceptions to this rule. For instance, out of a
desire to include a multicultural/cross-cultural
component, I included entries on the devils and
hells found in world religious traditions.
(Christianity was not given a separate entry
because the great bulk of the information
contained in these pages derives directly or indirectly
from the Christian tradition.) I also
included brief entries on a significant number of
fallen angels—a kind of who’s who in hell—as
well as entries on certain topics from older
Western folklore about Satan and witches.
With the exception of a few older theologians
like Aquinas, I have largely ignored formal theology.
The reader will also find treatments of a
handful of traditional literary figures who have
helped shape our images of the Prince of
Darkness, such as Milton and Dante. And because
of their influence on modern, religious Satanism,
I included material on Romantic writers like Blake
and other literary figures like Baudelaire.
Beginning in 1966, religious Satanism emerged
out of the occult subculture with the formation of
the Church of Satan. Anton LaVey, founder of the
Church, was indebted to a number of different
sources for his synthesis. Especially important were:
1. Traditional folklore about the Devil and
various adversarial figures in world
mythology.
2. Certain Romantic poets who, as a literary
device, created a noble, Promethean Satan
at odds with the dehumanizing aspects of
modern society and traditional religiosity.
3. The ritual magic tradition, particularly as
that tradition was interpreted by the
occultist Aleister Crowley.
4. And a wide variety of popular culture
sources—literature, film and music about
the Devil.
Despite the fact that religious Satanism has
always been a tiny movement, a significant
number of entries provide information about this
phenomenon and its background traditions
because of the disproportionate public interest in
“real” Satanism. During the course of compiling
this encyclopedia, I also gathered demographic
data on contemporary practicing Satanists. The
report of my findings from this research is
included in Appendix 3.
Anton LaVey was and is a controversial figure,
and to judge from some of the material one finds
on the Internet, his memory and his organization
are often attacked by other Satanists. In the course
of my research, I found myself unwittingly stepping
into this arena of contention. Perhaps as a
consequence of this conflict, some of my contacts