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

Buddhism 33
complex system of signs and symbols characterizes
the work, rendering the medieval concept of
the Devil’s omnipresence in human life in every
kind of form. The allusion to demonology in
Bosch’s art reflects the common wisdom of his
time, when belief in the Devil was fundamental to
proper religious devotion.
See also Demons; Hell and Heaven
For Further Reading:
Beagle, Peter S., The Garden of Earthly Delights.
London: Pan Books, 1982.
Cavendish, Richard, ed. Man, Myth & Magic. The
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion
and the Unknown. 1983. Reprint, New York:
Marshall Cavendish, 1995.
Encyclopedia of World Art. London: McGraw-Hill,
1960.
Linfert, Carl, Hieronymus Bosch. New York: Harry
N. Abrams, 1989.
The Brotherhood of Satan
A diabolical coven takes over a small town in this
1971 film. The elderly Satan worshipers plan to
conduct a ritual for the purpose of transferring
themselves into the bodies of kidnapped children
and continuing their infernal lifestyle into a new
generation.
Brotherhood of the Ram
The Brotherhood of the Ram, founded by Don
Blythe in the 1960s, was a Satanist organization
that operated in southern California from the
early 1960s into the 1970s. The name Brotherhood
of the Ram appears to have been taken from a
fictional Satanist group in Dennis Wheatley’s
novel, The Satanist. The group opened a bookstore
in Los Angeles, California, which was closed in the
1980s, when the brotherhood disbanded. The
group also ran a disco, “Satan’s A Go-Go.”
Members of this group considered Satan a god of
joy and pleasure, and accepted such traditional
practices of Satanism as the “pact,” through which
they renounced all other devotion and their
Christian baptism. According to Michael
Newton’s account of a brotherhood ritual in
Raising Hell, participants opened their meeting
with a reading of Baudelaire’s “Litanies of Satan”
and an invocation of Lucifer before new recruits
“pricked a finger and smeared blood on a scrap of
paper bearing his or her signature.”
See also Baudelaire, Charles ; Wheatley, Dennis
For Further Reading:
Newton, Michael. Raising Hell: An Encyclopedia of
Devil Worship and Satanic Crime. New York:
Avon, 1993.
Wheatley, Dennis. The Satanist. 1960. London:
Arrow Books, 1974.
The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov (1880) is a classic novel
by the famed Russian author Theodor Dostoevsky
that attempts to come to grips with good and evil.
He examines the human situation by focusing on
the complexities of the Karamazov family, whose
characters are constantly struggling with the issue
of life’s meaning and purpose. A priest warns the
brothers that because God is love itself, the real
meaning of hell is being unable to give and receive
love. The real locus of evil is humanity itself—
human greed, avarice, and inability to love one
another. Despite all the horrors he experiences,
Ivan, one of the brothers, is still able to see beauty
in life and choose love, knowing it is greater than
any other power in the world. Those who are not
aware of this are the ones damned to hell—a place
to which one does not actually journey, because
hell is located within oneself.
—Evelyn Oliver
Buddhism
Buddhism is a major world religion that was
founded by Siddhartha Gautama in the Indian
subcontinent around 600 B.C.E. Buddhism is
clearly in the same religious family as Buddhism’s
parent religious tradition, Hinduism. However, to
be considered within the Hindu fold, one must
nominally acknowledge the authority of the four
Vedas, Hinduism’s most ancient religious texts.
Buddha rejected the authority of the Vedas, and
hence, despite its close relationship with
Hinduism, Buddhism is technically non-Hindu.
Unlike almost all other religions, Buddhism is
not focused on deities. Gods and goddesses are