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

170 McMartin Ritual Abuse Case
and participating in the Masonic Society and the
Rosicrucian Society in Anglia, until 1885. At that
time he moved to London and joined the
Theosophical Society. In 1887 he published The
Kabbalah Unveiled, establishing himself as an
occult scholar. During this time he met with Wynn
Westcott and others to decode and rework a
number of magical manuscripts. These became
the basis of the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn (HOGD), founded in 1888. Westcott soon
left the group and Mathers gained complete
control. In 1890 he married Mina (later changed
to Moira) Bergson, the daughter of famous
philosopher Henri Bergson.
In 1891 or 1892 he moved to Paris and established
a temple of the OGD, adding it to the temples
in London, Edinburgh, Weston-super-Mare, and
Bradford. The organizing idea of the OGD was the
Hermetic principle of correspondence between the
microcosm (human being) and the macrocosm (the
universe). Through the proper magical procedures,
a person can access or make manifest any powers or
characteristics present in the macrocosm.
In 1903 Mathers overrode the objections of the
London officers and initiated Aleister Crowley
into the higher levels of the OGD, an act that
caused a split among the British adherents. More
importantly, although Crowley soon left the OGD,
he kept and used what he had learned in the OGD,
a significant factor in Crowley’s stimulation of
what became the twentieth century revival of
magic. After Mathers’s death, his widow moved to
London and led a temple herself, but the OGD
eventually became defunct. The ceremonial magic
tradition tapped by later Satanists such as Anton
LaVey has its roots in the OGD.
See also Crowley, Aleister; Levi, Eliphas; Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn; Magic and Magical
Groups; Ordo Templi Orientis
For Further Reading:
Flowers, Stephen E. Lords of the Left Hand Path.
Smithville, TX: Runa-Raven Press, 1997.
Green, Marian. The Elements of Ritual Magic.
Longmead, Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK: Element,
1990.
Knight, Gareth. Magic and the Western Mind. St.
Paul: Llewellyn, 1991.
LaVey, Anton Szandor. The Satanic Bible. New York:
Avon, 1969.
McMartin Ritual Abuse Case
The McMartin case was the first high-profile case
involving charges of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) at a
day-care center. In the wake of an initial spate of
publicity in the early 1980s, there was a rash of SRA
cases at other day-care centers until it had become
a national phenomenon. By the beginning of the
1990s, over a hundred investigations of day-care
cases had taken place on the basis of SRA-type
accusations, despite the fact that most of what was
alleged to have taken place in these day-care centers
sounded more like the components of a very bad
B-grade movie than real crimes. As summarized in
Robert Hicks’s In Pursuit of Satan,
an inventory of abusive acts and odd elements
in day-care cases nationwide, beginning with
and including the McMartin case, reads like
the special effects in a collective nightmare:
the appearance of strange men and women
with only one arm, some limping and some
with tattooed bodies; Devil worship; secret
subterranean tunnels; burned or cooked and
eaten babies; murdered and mutilated babies;
ceremonies and other activities held in
basements; physical abuse, including beatings,
slapping, and assaults, particularly during
naptime or in the restroom; mock marriages;
nude photography; molesters of different
races; Christmas-tree lights; children
handcuffed or tied with rope; various objects
ranging from screwdrivers to crayons inserted
in rectums or vaginas; drowned people or
animals; clandestine visits to cemeteries,
homes, and mortuaries; oral sex on virtually
anyone and even on animals; drug-taking;
blood drunk or used in ceremonies;
pornographic films; burial of children;
transportation out of day-care centers in vans
or airplanes to go to secret sites; urination and
defecation; strangers appearing to molest
children; and so on. (182)
In addition to being the most famous case of
its type, it also has the distinction of being the
longest-running criminal trial in U.S. history
as well as the most expensive, costing over $15
million.