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

Satanic Ritual Abuse 241
people so deeply committed to this religious
view can hardly be counted upon to render
skeptical and well-reasoned critiques about
the dangers of Satanism or occultism in
American society.
Even though this evaluation is partially accurate,
it ignores the roles that a number of other
parties played in the promotion and dissemination
of SRA ideology.
Although the threshold event kicking off the
SRA hoax was the 1980 publication of Michelle
Remembers—a book in which a young woman
“remembers” previously repressed memories of
ritual abuse—the foundational ideology for the
Satanic panic dates back to the Middle Ages.
During this period, it was believed that a vast,
secret network of devil-worshiping witches existed
who periodically gathered together to celebrate
the Black Mass, a blasphemous parody of the
Catholic Mass that was thought to be the central
rite of Satanism. The “Black Sabbath” described in
a contemporary account from He Came to Set the
Captives Free includes two components central to
the medieval conception of Black Masses, namely
the presence of the Devil and copulation between
humans and demons:
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. (73–74)
This excerpt from He Came to Set the Captives
Free (1986) claimed to present a true account of
the life of “Elaine,” a former Satanic high priestess.
Both the author (a conservative Christian medical
doctor) and the pseudonymous Elaine were
apparently taken seriously enough to be featured
on a Geraldo Rivera special in 1988.
Additionally, witches were thought to delight
in the murder of children. Thus in a “confession”
cited in the Malleus Maleficarum, a well-known
fifteenth-century witch-hunter’s manual, an
accused witch is quoted as saying that, “with our
spells we kill them in their cradles or even when
they are sleeping by their parents’ side, in such a
way that they afterwards are thought to have been
overlain or to have died some other natural death.
Then we secretly take them from their graves, and
cook them in a cauldron, until the whole flesh
comes away from the bones to make a soup which
may easily be drunk.” Despite the widely accepted
belief in such practices, it is highly unlikely that
(with one or two possible exceptions) Satanic
rituals were anything more than literary inventions
of Church authorities. It is easy to perceive
the parallels between these items of medieval folklore
and contemporary SRA folklore.
The serious resurrection of medieval notions
about diabolical conspiracies began during the
counterculture of the 1960s. During that decade,
traditional, conservative Christians became
concerned about what they perceived as the breakdown
of tradition and the accompanying rise of
Satanism. Phenomena like the popular movie
Rosemary’s Baby and the formation of Anton
LaVey’s Church of Satan appeared to provide
concrete evidence for the growth of the Prince of
Darkness’s earthly kingdom. Although LaVey was
clear that Satan was no more than an iconoclastic
symbol for a basically secular philosophy promoting
self-seeking individualism, Christians
assumed that LaVey actually worshiped the fallen
angel Lucifer. (By the time of the full-blown SRA
scare, LaVey-type Satanism would be supplanted
by heavy metal music as the focus of conservative
Christian concern over Satanic influences.)
Another important phenomenon was the
Manson Family, which had several tenuous
connections with Satanism. By identifying
Manson as a Satanist, certain Christian writers
were able to claim that real Satanic groups existed
that were involved in ritualistic murder. Manson’s
priority of place would hold until the Matamoros