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

Sacrifice 233
with their backs turned to the inside of the
ring, began a wild dance around it anticlockwise
towards the Devil’s left. In a few
moments the whole company had stripped off
their dominoes and joined in the dance,
tumbling and clawing at one another before
the throne.
This ancient folklore also survives in some of
the more recent literature on modern Satanism
composed by literalist Christians. For example,
the following description of a modern sabbat
comes from the 1986 book, He Came to Set the
Captives Free:
Satan appeared in human form as usual,
dressed completely in shining white. But his
eyes glowed red as a flame and he threw his
head back and gave a howl and a scream and
a hideous laugh of victory as the high priest
drove a long spike through the man’s head,
pinning it to the cross, killing him. The crowd
went crazy, screaming and shouting and
dancing in crazed ecstasy at the “victory.”
They loudly proclaimed all victory and power
and honor to their father Satan. Satan
vanished shortly after that to go on to the
next Black Sabbath sacrifice. At his departure
the meeting turned into a sex orgy. Human
with human, and demon with human.
(Brown 1986, 73–74)
This excerpt from He Came to Set the Captives
Free claimed to present a true account of an incident
from the life of a former Satanic high priestess.
The debt this description owes to traditional
folklore is obvious.
See also Black Mass
For Further Reading:
Brown, Rebecca. He Came to Set the Captives Free.
Chino, CA: Chick Publications, 1986.
Cavendish, Richard. The Black Arts. New York:
Capricorn Books, 1967.
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. The Encyclopedia of Witches
and Witchcraft. New York: Facts on File, 1989.
Lea, Henry Charles. Materials Toward a History of
Witchcraft. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1957.
Passantino, Bob, and Gretchen Passantino. “Satanic
Ritual Abuse in Popular Christian Literature,
Why Christians Fall for a Lie Searching for the
Truth.” Journal of Psychology and Theology 20,
no. 3 (1992).
Richardson, James, Joel Best, and David G. Bromley.
The Satanism Scare. New York: Aldine de
Gruyter, 1991.
Wheatley, Dennis. The Devil Rides Out. 1935.
London: Hutchinson, 1963.
Sacrifice
The blood is the Life. When it is shed,
energy—animal or human as the case may
be—is released into the atmosphere. If it is
shed within a specially prepared circle, that
energy can be caught and stored or redirected
in precisely the same way as electric energy is
caught and utilized by our modern scientists.
(Wheatley 1963)
In this passage from The Devil Rides Out, the
popular midcentury novelist Dennis Wheatley
presents the rationale for Satanic sacrifice. In fact,
a significant aspect of the traditional stereotype of
Satanism is that Satanism always involves some
kind of blood sacrifice—often animal, but also
human. Most modern Satanists, however, are
completely opposed to such acts. In the influential
Satanic Bible, for example, Anton LaVey describes
this stereotype and rejects it as part of Satanism:
Under NO circumstances would a Satanist
sacrifice any animal or baby! For centuries,
propagandists of the right-hand path have
been prattling over the supposed sacrifices of
small children and voluptuous maidens at
the hands of diabolists. It would be thought
that anyone reading or hearing of these
heinous accounts would immediately
question their authenticity, taking into
consideration the biased sources of the
stories. On the contrary, as with all “holy”
lies which are accepted without reservation,
this assumed modus operandi of the
Satanists persists to this day! (89)
The word sacrifice derives from the Latin sacrificium,
denoting a victim killed and consumed on