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

54 The Craft
Jungian perspective. Thanks to their work,
mythology, in the sense of sacred stories, is now
viewed as something worthwhile, and even necessary
for human beings. Campbell’s views were
popularized through a series of TV interviews
with Bill Moyers.
Jung’s ideas have sometimes been invoked to
explain certain experiences or certain culturalhistorical
facts that seem to indicate the existence
of a spiritual dimension and spiritual beings, such
as devils. Thus the fact that people report similar
experiences during demonic encounters can be
explained in terms of universal symbols from the
collective unconscious. Similarly, the fact that
different cultures at different periods of time all
report similar beings can merely indicate that such
phenomena reflect archetypal patterns in the
human mind rather than that demonic spirits
actually exist.
See also Demons
For Further Reading:
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949.
Samuels, Andrew, Bani Shorter, and Fred Plaut. A
Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.
The Craft
In this 1996 film, a young girl moves to Los
Angeles and finds that she doesn’t fit in anywhere
in the cliquish St. Benedict’s Academy. She then
finds friends in three other outcast girls. Together
they create their own coven and stumble onto real
supernatural power.
The Craze
Jack Palance plays the owner of a London antique
store in this 1973 film. In his spare time, he leads a
Satanic cult that ritually sacrifices beautiful
women. The police keep finding the bodies of the
group’s victims scattered around the countryside.
Crime
Satanic crime, more frequently referred to as occult
crime, became a topic of popular interest among
law enforcement officials during the heyday of the
Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) scare of the 1980s and
1990s. The category of occult crime was the
successor to earlier concerns about ritual murder
by magical cults, such as secretive voodoo groups.
Ritual murder mythology was explored and
amplified by authors of popular horror stories.
The SRA scare was the end product of several
distinct influences:
1. Fictional portrayals of diabolical
conspiracies, especially in box office movies
(e.g., Rosemary’s Baby).
2. Public concern over dangerous cults,
particularly certain pseudoreligious groups
that seemed to have a diabolical dimension,
such as the Manson Family. The priority of
Manson would later be supplanted by the
drug smugglers associated with the
Matamoros murders.
3. Concerns (some analysts would say social
guilt) over emerging problems in the
childcare industry, which became the focal
point of SRA hysteria.
4. The belief in the reality of a widespread
underground Satanic conspiracy, a belief that
had been cultivated among certain segments
of the conservative Christian subculture.
Police officers and social workers with
conservative religious leanings spearheaded
the SRA scare.
5. And, finally, because of its sensationalistic
appeal, once the SRA panic got underway it was
picked up and promoted by an irresponsible
mass media, particularly talk shows.
It was not until the late 1990s that the notion
of a widespread conspiracy by child-abusing
Satanists had been thoroughly discredited.
Beyond SRA cases, other kinds of occult crime
are similarly suspect. The occasional group of
adolescents who “sacrifice” household pets and
vandals who sometimes leave behind Satanic
symbols hardly constitute a serious phenomenon.
The difficulty with constructing occult crime as a
major social threat is reflected in the 1993 mass
market paperback, Raising Hell: An Encyclopedia of
Devil Worship and Satanic Crime. In addition to