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Kerk van Satan
The Kerk van Satan, also known as the Magistralis
Grotto of the Church of Satan, was founded by
Martin Lamers in 1972 as a Dutch affiliate of
Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. Lamers was an
actor who, after reading The Satanic Bible, became
an enthusiast. He soon met LaVey, who gave him
the title Magister and a charter to form the first
European grotto. Lamers returned home and
bought two buildings in Amsterdam’s red light
district. One became the headquarters of the Kerk
van Satan. The other, designated Walburga Abbey,
became a club in which women wearing nuns’
habits sans underwear performed various sex acts.
Lamers claimed that he ran a religious organization,
which should therefore be tax exempt. Dutch
authorities did not, however, agree, and persecuted
the Kerk van Satan until Lamers lost a tax
evasion case in 1987. Lamers closed down his
operation and went into the international
communications business.
See also Church of Satan
For Further Reading:
Baddeley, Gavin. Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship
and Rock’n’Roll. London: Plexus, 1999.
Newton, Michael. Raising Hell: An Encyclopedia of
Devil Worship and Satanic Crime. New York:
Avon, 1993.
Kiss of Shame
The kiss of shame, or oscularum infame in Latin, is
commonly associated with popular notions of
devil worship. During such infernal rites as Black
Masses and witch sabbats, participants were said to
kiss Satan’s posterior. The tradition of this degrading
act of obeisance is the source of the contemporary
expression referring to people who slavishly
complement another person purely for the sake of
personal gain. It also seems to be the source of the
familiar expression “brown-nosing.”
In addition to witches, who regularly confessed
to having committed the act under torture, the kiss
of shame was attributed to heretics such as the
Cathars and the Waldenses. The accusation of the
oscularum infame was also leveled against the
Knights Templar, who were said to require new initiates
to kiss the anus—as well as certain other parts
of the anatomy—of their superiors. Both the
Templars and the Cathars were accused of kissing
Satan, in the form of a black cat, underneath the tail.
The British novelist Dennis Wheatley, who
wrote a series of “black magic” novels, includes a
description of the kiss of shame in his novel, The
Devil Rides Out. After Satan has manifested in the
form of the Goat of Mendes during a sabbat, the
gathered devil-worshipers line up:
The goat rose, towing above the puny figures
of its unhallowed priests, and turned its back
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