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

The United Kingdom, Ritual Abuse in 267
either as a valley (thought to be located near
Jerusalem) or in other sources believed to be
underneath the earth, and reserved for sinners.
The Essene sect reinforced the dualism between
evil and good, believing that the righteous would
be freed from suffering whereas sinners would be
eternally damned to pain.
The Christian idea of an infernal underworld
was very much influenced by the Jewish Gehenna,
viewed as a pit where sinners were amassed. In
Christianity the distinction between blessed and
damned became sharper, while the concept of
righteousness (that deserved blessedness) came to
signify joining the Christian faith. Through the
Book of Revelation it was also believed that the
reign of a thousand years will be followed by the
resurrection of the saints, and subsequently by a
cosmic conflict that will put an end to Satan’s
power. Those who were damned are believed to be
damned forever. Augustine (342–430) and
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) reinforced the idea
of hell as a place of eternal damnation, which
became the object of Dante’s poetry in the Inferno,
the first part of the Divina Commedia (Divine
Comedy). His Inferno (hell) combined Christian
theological elements with mythological elements
from classical, pre-Christian culture. Hell itself
was viewed as a cone that penetrated the earth; at
the extreme point of the cone, which corresponds
to the center of the globe, the farthest point from
God, resides Satan.
In Islam, the underworld was subdivided in
seven layers that corresponded to the seven celestial
layers. The tree of Zaqqum is believed to stand
between paradise and hell, the only point where
both heaven and hell can be seen. The first layer
under the earth, Gehenna, is connected to the
surface of the globe through a bridge that all souls
cross. This first layer is depicted as a terrifying
beast, and is also called the fire of hell. The
damned are distributed through the layers hierarchically:
the deeper the layer, the greater the
punishment. The fire, common to all layers,
differed in quality, depending on the degree of
punishment to be inflicted in each layer. The pain
inflicted through fire is worsened by the continuous
regeneration of the damned, who thus burn
eternally. In general, the worst sin in Islam was
considered to be an unbeliever in God and his
prophet Muhammad. Other sins were related to
moral social rules. In the Hindu tradition, one also
finds an idea of the underworld. It is sometimes
conceived as a dark bottomless chasm from where
there is no return: in the deepest part resides the
cosmic serpent Vrtra, which has remained there
since it was slain by Indra. It is a realm of silence
and death, populated by those who consciously
committed evil, mythical characters included. The
idea of hell subsequently developed as a philosophical
concept of total annihilation that
contrasts with the limitless sense of being.
Although a number of mythical stories depict
hells as places of suffering and pain, in general the
Hindu religion places more emphasis on the cycle
of reincarnation: Thus hell did not develop into a
place of eternal damnation for the sinners as it did
in the Western world.
In the contemporary world, the underworld
has come to be viewed psychologically rather than
literally, as a symbol for the subconscious.
Particularly among thinkers influenced by Jung
and by the Jungian tradition, various portrayals of
the underworld have come to be interpreted as
reflecting the subconscious of a society.
See also Hades; Hell and Heaven; Satan; Sheol
For Further Reading:
Eliade, Mircea, ed. Encyclopedia of Religion. New
York: Macmillan, 1987.
Turner, Alice K. The History of Hell. New York:
Harcourt Brace & Co., 1993.
The United Kingdom, Ritual Abuse in
The satanic ritual abuse (SRA) scare began in the
United States in the early 1980s. Observers have
identified the publication of Michelle Remembers
in 1980 as the threshold event that set the scare in
motion, although the first major ritual abuse case
at the McMartin Preschool did not take place
until 1983. Peaking in the late 1980s/early 1990s,
the scare received a fatal blow in 1992 with the
issuing of an important FBI report (see Appendix
2) that dismissed SRA as a hoax. Although SRA
agitation continued, the issue was essentially
dead as a serious law enforcement concern by the
mid-1990s.