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

178 Moloch
image of Satan—which in turn seeded the larger
society with the notion. Then the same factors
responsible for making cult mind control a public
issue came into play, namely an irresponsible mass
media and a new industry with a vested interested in
promoting the notion of Satanic programming. In
the case of Satanic ritual abuse, however, the entrepreneurs
were not deprogrammers, but were, rather,
repressed memory therapists and certain “victims”
of ritual abuse who made a living telling their tales
of woe to a variety of paying audiences.
Although understood as a variant on cult mind
control, Satanic mind control was originally
invoked for a completely different reason: Cult
mind control explained why someone’s adult child
could join a self-evidently crazy religious group.
Satanic programming, on the other hand,
explained how a hypothetical network of Satanic
cult groups could manage to control both their
victims and their members so that no one would
spill the beans about their existence. It also
provided a theoretical background for understanding
how recovered memory therapy worked and
why it was necessary. One factor that eventually
contributed to the demise of widespread public
concern about Satanic ritual abuse was the rejection
of RMT as bad science. It became clear to the relevant
professions that the “memories”of ritual abuse
recovered by RMT were false memories, unintentionally
implanted by therapists with a predisposition
to believe in the existence of such abuse.
See also Anticult Movement; Satanic Ritual Abuse
For Further Reading:
Bromley, David G., and Anson D. Shupe. Strange
Gods: The Great American Cult Scare. Boston:
Beacon, 1981.
Lewis, James R. Cults in America. Santa Barbara,
CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998.
Los Angeles County Commission for Women, The
Ritual Abuse Task Force. Ritual Abuse. Los
Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County, 1991.
Sakheim, David D., and Susan E. Devine. Out of
Darkness: Exploring Satanism and Ritual Abuse.
New York: Lexington Books, 1992.
Moloch
Moloch refers to a near eastern deity to whom children
were sacrificed as burnt offerings. Although
this practice, even among the Hebrews, considerably
antedated the emergence of a concept of an
evil antidivinity, later generations read a diabolical
identity back into the Bible’s Moloch passages,
transforming Moloch into a demon or, sometimes,
Satan himself. Because a significant aspect of the
“Satanic panic” of the latter decades of the twentieth
century involved cults that sacrificed children
to Satan, biblical passages about Moloch were
sometimes cited as a template through which to
interpret this alleged activity.
Comparatively little is known about Moloch
beyond a few biblical references. Although the
modern world has difficulty imagining that
people could take the lives of their own offspring,
child sacrifice was widespread among ancient
Canaanite peoples. The basic idea underlying
such practices was that, as the most precious of
possessions, the sacrifice of one’s own offspring
was especially powerful for evoking the favor of
the divinity.
The Hebrew term Molek (Moloch) occurs
eight times in Hebrew scripture (Lev. 18:21; 20:2,
3, 4, 5; 1 Kings 1:7; 2 Kings 23:10; Jer. 32:35) and
once in the New Testament (Acts 7:43). The debate
over the meaning and etymology of this term has
consumed considerable scholarly ink. It has, for
instance, been variously suggested that Molek
derives from the name of a Near Eastern chthonic
deity, the Semitic word for “king,” a term for sacrifice,
and so forth.
Despite some attempts to place other kinds of
interpretations on the Bible’s Moloch passages, it is
almost certain that the ancient Israelites engaged in
such practices, particularly at a ritual site immediately
south of Jerusalem known as Tophet. Scholars
have speculated that giving Moloch (or even
Yahweh) children as burnt offerings did not finally
stop until after the Babylonian conquest. The practice
was condemned in no uncertain terms as early
as the Book of Leviticus; for example:
Say to the people of Israel, Any man of the
people of Israel, or of the strangers that
sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his
children to Molech shall be put to death; the
people of the land shall stone him with
stones. I myself will set my face against that