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

30 Bless the Child
own designs for The Book of Job, and for the
astrologer John Varley, Blake drew many
“Visionary Heads,” portraits of imaginary visitors,
usually historical characters. Among these was the
celebrated “Ghost of a Flea.” He also worked on
one hundred illustrations for Dante’s Divine
Comedy. The Bible was his favorite source for
subjects, and when illustrating the poets he would
choose semireligious themes such as Milton or
Bunyan. He died peacefully in London in 1827.
A great deal of Blake’s imagery and symbolism
are adopted from both Boehme and Swedenborg,
both of whom deviated from prevailing theological
opinion. Boehme was a mystical and theosophical
writer, whereas Swedenborg was a scientist
who devoted himself to studies arising out of
what he claimed to be persistent communications
from angels and other agencies in a spiritual
world. For example, he was influenced by
Boehme’s idea that there are three principles—
heaven, hell, and our own world—and that every
spirit is confined in its own principle, the evil
angels in hell and the good in heaven.
In the frontispiece of The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell, Blake shows each kind of spirit in its own
dwelling, which can be of fire or of light. In the
drawing entitled “Good and Evil Angels,” he represents
the Devil as blind and thus unable to see the
Good Angel, whom he is trying to approach but
cannot, since neither can perceive the other, being
one bathed in the light of God, and the other
covered by blackness and encompassed by
burning fire.
Blake was a Platonist very familiar with reincarnation
and the karmic principle. He saw angels,
good and evil, as the real forces behind the weaknesses
and the triumphs of mortal men and
women. Blake’s entire scheme is based upon a
view that has its roots in Plato and that extends to
a philosophical tradition pointing to a spiritual
reality in which forces higher than ourselves are
constantly at work. Blake insisted that eternity was
complete harmony, and that therefore angels and
spirits were androgynous, with no separate principles
of male and female, but only the one of
Humanity.
Blake often used infernal imagery to represent
aspects of the human being such as sensuality that
he placed a positive valuation on but that the
Christian tradition labeled evil. This tendency to
invert traditional imagery, which was also utilized
by other romantic writers, was one of the touchstones
of later Satanists such as Anton LaVey.
See also LaVey, Anton
For Further Reading:
Blier, John. Blake’s Visionary Universe. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1969.
MacGregor, Geddes. Angels. Ministers of Grace. New
York: Paragon House Publishers, 1988.
Schorer, Mark. William Blake. The Politics of Vision.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1946.
Bless the Child
Produced by Mace Neufeld, who made The Omen,
and directed by Chuck Russell, this 2000 film stars
Kim Bassinger as the fragile, inept Aunt Maggie.
The story is about a child, Cody (Holliston
Coleman), whose special psychic gifts need to be
protected from the evil minions of Satan. Maggie
has inherited baby Cody from her drug addict
sister. When the child reaches six, all hell breaks
loose as her psychic gifts begin to emerge.
Throughout the movie Maggie blunders pathetically
in her efforts to protect Cody. The movie
contains exaggeratedly creepy scenes of malice
and mayhem when Cody gets involved with a
serial murderer. Additionally, Maggie’s spineless
incompetence gets very old very quickly, making
the entire movie come across as terrifyingly
foolish and ridiculous.
The Blood on Satan’s Claw
A 1971 Satanic cult movie, with the twist that the
Devil-worshipers are teenaged girls and the setting
is a seventeenth-century English village.
Bogeyman
Our term bogeyman derives from the term boggart
or bogy, a type of fairy related to brownies. Some
accounts portray them as a kind of goblin, an
unpleasant but not necessarily evil creature.
However, whereas a brownie would adopt a house
in order to help the inhabitants, a boggart would
adopt a home in order to torment and generally