The group, Satanickindred.org has written an article, called the ‘History of Satanism’. Let me say at first, that the article itself has no references or source material with it, so I have to approach their writing largely as a matter of opinion instead of fact. What I do not accept is the history that they claim is real, and this history does quite a disservice to what Satanism really is, and what it was in the past.
What was most striking to me in this essay, was that the people who wrote it seemed to agree with the Christian notion of blood-cult sacrificing Satanists! I know many Satanists who personally would have nothing to do with anything like this, and it is my feeling that the author (Rev. R. Fairhall ? ) agrees with the ideas of the subversion ideology of Christianity.
This essay will be reproduced in part, as a means of analysis. Under the copyright law, essays and texts are legal to reproduce for the means of education or analysis or for the purpose of criticism. The original text will be in italics, along with my replies below the text, along with credit and a link to the original article.
Replying to this essay is important to me, and it should be important to other Satanists as well. The main goal of this analysis is to expose the common misconceptions that even some Satanists believe about their own religion.
Original article can be read here, found at the Wayback Machine:
Satanic Kindred, History of Satanism
Author: Rev. R. Fairhall (?)
The worship of Satan, or the devil, the god of evil in christianity, during the renaissance, witches, along with heretics, were accused of worshiping the devil.
The Christians do not hold the belief that Satan is a god. Not only that, the witch-hunts began as early as the 1400’s and continued until the 1950’s when the witchcraft law was finally repealed in England.
Many confessed to it, probably coerced by torture. In popular lore, witches are still believed to have worshiped the devil. (In modern neo-paganism and witchcraft, or wicca, as it is often called, there is no belief nor worship of the devil.)
There is no ‘probably’ about it. The people who died were innocent, and most who were killed were eliminated so that the church could take their money and property. Along with this the Jewish people suffered as well, many of them being branded as ‘evil’. This was where the Jewish caricature of Satan was developed (having a long nose, being greedy etc.), and Christians claimed that the Jewish attended ‘sabbats’ with the devil. We can read about this in the Malleus Mallefacarum, a text that was used as a manual for the persecution of so-called witches.
Satanism has been far less common throughout history than many would believe. The Inquisitors and witch hunters of earlier centuries tried to persuade the populace that devil worshipers were everywhere and posed a serious threat to their well being. For about 250 years, from the mid-15th century to the early 18th century, the height of the witch hunts, that argument worked. It is possible that some devil worship may have actually existed in those times, as an act of defiance among those who opposed the authority of the Christian church.
The writer fails to take into account that there were NO satanists of the time, because the ruling class was Christian. There is absolutely no evidence of their existence, outside of Christian scare stories and witch trial material. Not only that, since the accusations were false, then why would the author agree with the Christians in believing that the people were so-called ‘witches’?
Satanism as an organized activity did not exist much before the 17th century. As early as the 17th century, however, the catholic church was condemning priests who subverted the magical powers of the holy mass for evil purposes. The Grimoire of Honorious, a magical textbook first printed in the 17th century (but perhaps older), gave instructions for saying masses to conjour demons.
The grimorie of Honorious was written by a Christian, for use in Christian ritual magic. If the author bothered to read the book, or if the author had any knowledge of Grimoires, they would have known that ritual magic that was used by the Christians was developed from the church’s need to use magic, and much of it was developed from Judaism, hence the Christian manuals of magic available from the 15th ct. onward. And, since the Grimoire of Honorious was written by a Christian, it is not satanic, nor was it ever intended to be used in a so-called satanic context.
In the 17th century, satanic activities were conducted by christians who indulged in the magical/sexual rites of the black mass, presided over by defrocked or unscrupulous priests. The most notorious of these escapades took place in France during the reign of Louis XIV, engineered by the kings mistress, Madamme de Montespan, and led by an occultist named La Voisin and a 67 year old libertine priest, the Abbé Guiborg.
The author once again (without clear references) chooses to believe Christian subversion as fact. This story was a fiction designed to sensationalize the church at the time, and it had nothing to do with satanism. It is a Christian fiction.
There is no reliable evidence of satanic activity in the 18th century. In England, the Hellfire club, a society founded by Sir Francis Dashwood (1708-1781), has often been described as satanic, but in actuality it was little more than a club for adolescent-like men to indulge in drinking, sexual play with woman called “nuns” and outrageous behavior. The Hellfire club, or the “Medmenham monks” as they called themselves, met regularly between 1750 and 1762 in Dashwood’s home, Medmenham Abbey. The members were said to conduct black masses, but it is doubtful that these were serious satanic activities. Similar groups were the brimstone boys and blue blazers of Ireland.
These so called Satanic cults were little more than a social gathering of men who decided to enjoy their lives through drunkenness and revelry. They did it in secret because they could not enjoy these things within their repressed society. There is no written materials or records of rituals from them, nor is there any proof that they claimed to be Satanists.
Perhaps the most famous Satanist in the 19th century was the Abbé Boullan of France, who became the head of an offshoot of the church of Carmel and allegedly practiced black magic and infant sacrifice. The church of Carmel was formed by Eugene Vintras, the foreman of a cardboard box factory Tillysur-Seulles. In 1839 Vintras said he received a letter from the archangel Michael, followed by visions, of the archangel, the holy ghost, St.Joseph and the virgin Mary. He was informed that he was the reincarnated prophet Elijah, and he was to found a new religious order and proclaim the coming of the age of the holy ghost. The true king of France, he was told, was one Charles Naundorf. Vintras went about the countryside preaching this news and acquiring followers, including priests. Masses were celebrated that included visions of empty chalices filled with blood stains on the Eucharist. By 1848 the church of Carmel, as the movement was known, was condemned by the pope. In 1851 Vintras was accused by a former disciple of conducting black masses in the nude, homosexuality and masturbating while praying at the alter. Shortly before his death in 1875, Vintras befriended Boullan, who formed a splinter group of the church of Carmel upon Vintras death. He ran the group for 18 years, until his death, outwardly maintaining pious practices but secretly conducting satanic rituals. Boullan seems to have been obsessed with Satanism and evel since the age of 29, when he took a nun named Adele Chevalier as his mistress. Chevalier left her convent, bore two bastard children and founded with Boullan The Society for the Reparation of Souls. Boullan specialized in exorcising demons by unconventional means, such as feeding possessed victims a mixture of human excrement and the Eucharist. He also performed black masses. On January 8, 1860, he had Chevalier reportedly conducted a black mass in which they sacrificed one of their children…..Boullan’s group was infiltrated by two Rosicrucians, Oswald Wirth and Stanislasde Guaita, who wrote an exposé, The Temple of Satan. Boullan and de Guaita supposedly engaged in magical warfare. Boullan and his friend, the novelist J.K. Huysmans, claimed to be attacked by demons. When Boullan collapsed and died of a heart attack on January 3, 1893, Huysmans believed it was due to an evil spell cast by de Guaita, and said so in print. De Guaita challenged him to a duel, but Huysmans declined and apologized.
Once again, the author decides to take Christian conspiracy theories and weave them into the fake history that he purports is true. There is no evidence of these things happening historically, and to find reference to them outside of Christian literature is difficult if not impossible. This tells me that it is little more than a Christian tale, meant to slander the name of a man who did not fit the church’s idyllic views of what a Christian should be, and at worst, it is only a fiction meant to entertain the morbid curiosity of a repressed culture. This tactic has been used for centuries, beginning with the gnostics who were labeled as heretics.
In his novel, La-bas, Huysmans included a black mass, which he said was based on his observations of one conducted by a satanic group in Paris, operating in the late 19th century. He said the mass was recited backwards, the crucifix was upside down, the Eucharist was defiled and the rite ended in a sexual orgy.
I find it humorous that this author believes the words of a man who openly admitted in his life that the story of LaBas was nothing but a fiction. It is sad, sad indeed when Satanists accept the Christian views and stories, and try to claim them as their own history, especially when the stories are nothing more than slander and propaganda.
By the early 20th century, Aleister Crowley (known as the black pope) was linked to Satanism. Although he called himself “the beast”, used the words “life” “love” and “light” to describe Satan and once baptized and crucified a toad as Jesus, he was not a Satanist but a magician and occultist.
Crowley did not take the title of Satanist but there were plenty of so-called Satanic elements in his work. He lived in a repressed Victorian society and his hatred towards Christianity fueled much of his work. I would label him as a de-facto Satanist with Thelemic interests, instead. Also, Crowley never labeled himself as the ‘black pope’. He called himself ‘the great beast’ after the stories of revelation from the bible.
The author then skips ahead many, many years later, until he reaches the era of LaVey, in the 1960s. He quotes a few things from LaVey’s checkered past, which I find to be humorous, because LaVey embellished many of his life stories in order to seem more important and relevant. Regardless of the supposed history (That is clearly uncovered at the COS website), Satanism had no history until the advent of the Church of Satan. It began as one of many social and religious movements in the era. To me, it makes sense, as there was a revival of the occult during this time.
Film director Roman Polanski hired LaVey for his film version of Ira Levin’s Devil-worshipers, Rosemary’s baby, released in 1968. LaVey portrayed Satan and advised Polanski on Satanic ritual details.
A friend of mine, (nagasiva, satanservice.org) brought to light the truth about this. Nowhere in the credits of this film is LaVey to be found, and I do not believe that he had anything to do with this film. His involvement was a lie, like many other things in his life that he lied about to take advantage of the gullibility of the members of his org. LaVey never worked for the circus, nor did he work as a crime scene photographer. His family knows the truth, and it is printed at the Church of Satan website.
A number of other Satanic groups formed in the united states in the 1970’s were defunct by the 1980’s. Nevertheless, Satanic activities remain widespread on both sides of the Atlantic; some experts say they were on the rise as of the 1980’s. The extent of Satanism is impossible to gauge, because of the great secrecy of many orgonizations (sic).
The spelling in this essay is…. Also, these are very vague comments that do not prove anything about the existence or the history of Satanism. It would have been nice if the author did some research to show what organizations did exist during those decades, and why they were important to Satanism. The ‘secrecy’ and size of Satanic organizations, as written by this author, reminds me of some of the Christian material from the Panic era, where Christian writers attempted to scare their readers into believing that Satanists were around every corner waiting to prey on innocent people.
There is evidence of small “family traditions” of Satanism, passed down from one generation to another. Some Satanists are associated with Neo-Nazi organizations or sex magic orders. Some Satanic cults are alleged to be involved in drug, prostitution and pornography trade and to have real estate holdings. Members are said to include white-collar professionals. These do not pertain to the modern day Satanists(LaVeyan)
I would ask, ‘what evidence’? but I know that there isn’t any. This material here seems to be the typical bs, that is spouted by the new-world order conspiracy theorists, who’s Christian aim is to show, to prove that there are Satanists doing illegal activities all around the world for centuries, and also, who have their hands in the government. Again, I would ask for proof, but, alas, there is none to be found, except in the imaginations of paranoid conspiracy theorists. Whether the author agrees with these conspiracy theories is very unclear to me.
Michelle Remembers (1980), by Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, M.D., recounts the terrors Smith experienced as a child of five in Satanic rituals in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1954-55. She said her mother yielded her to devil worshipers, who used her as a living pointer in rituals. She witnessed the ritual killings of animals and infants and was shut in coffins that were put into graves and into which were thrown dead animals. She also watched the cult members attempt to bring life to a white statue of a man with horns. She said she was tricked into defacating (sic) on the cross and was asked to renounce the christian god. Smith descibes (sic) instances in which during the rituals, she witnessed the devil emerge from the fire, a man animal with a whipping, snake-like tail that struck her on the neck and seared her flesh. Fire shot from his finger tips and filled his mouth. He had clawlike hands, steaming nostrils and odd toenails. His shape constantly changed, and he appeared to be apart of the fire. Smith was able to purge her memories in psychiatric therapy at age 28.
The author never takes into account that the story created by Michelle was later recanted as false, and that ‘recovered memory syndrome’ was the real issue at stake here. Recovered memory syndrome is a psychological impairment caused through hypnosis, most often through the use of suggestive counseling. She had a relationship with her counselor and they co-conspired to make a lot of money from the book sales that ensued. By the time she re-canted it was too late, as the ‘Satanic Panic’ had already fallen out of the limelight.
It disturbs me that the author here believes Michelle’s false and misleading story to be true. It sets the tone for the rest of the essay..
Perhaps most dangerous of all are small cults whose members call themselves Satanists and practise (sic) ritual murder and animal mutilation. Such groups are said to kidnap runaway children and the homeless and use them as sacrificial victims, this is known as devil worship by LaVeyan followers. Ex-Satanic cult members have reported gruesome rituals in which hearts are cut out of living victims. Others report that victims are sexually abused before being killed; then their blood is drunk and their flesh is eaten. Women “breeders” produce babies for the “ultimate” and “ideal” human sacrifice. Former breeders report witnessing their babies being skinned alive, eaten, burned, poured in concrete and cut up and thrown in the ocean. Ritual tools are made from their bones.
Where this author gets his information I would like to know. Maybe I already do know. It was from Satanic Panic material. Just like his belief in the supposed witches and his agreement with Christians on the persecution of witches, he also (sadly) believes the stories of the Christians in this modern era – who would try to paint Satan and Satanism as the enemy, even when there is not one shred of evidence to ever be found. Since there is no evidence that has ever been brought to trial, I wonder why this author thinks that it is valid and useful.
That is the thing with moral panics, they are incited by the hyper-religious who feel that there is some invisible forces in this world that use people as their puppets. It is truly sad when even Satanists, such as this author, believe these lies.
In 1985 a ten year old boy in Bakersfield, Califonia (sic), said that he and about two dozen other children were taken to a bad church by some 40 adults, who took off their clothes while chanting prayers to Satan. The children were forced to throw knives at a living baby, which was killed and dissmembered (sic). The children were then forced to drink its blood. Then the boy said that the adults molested the children. Similar cases were reported throughout California, but the authorities found little evidence to support the claims. In 1987 a report issued by the Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted Police suggested that Satanism might be related to unsolved cases of missing children. Satanists where also believed to be responsable (sic) for some grave desecrations (sic) and robbings (sic).
More Satanic panic material, ripped from the headlines of Christian right wing material, all of it lies.. The money that the Christians made from the panic was unbelievable, and the number of innocent people who were sent to jail and had their reputations ruined for the rest of their lives is unforgivable.
Many of the people who accused the innocent were untrained investigators, and they had a moralistic christian agenda, and many innocent people were put on trial for crimes that they did not commit. In trials, they pushed for conviction by coaching the children on what to say after they yanked them from their parent’s arms.
Some people spent years behind bars, awaiting their cases to be brought to trial in kangaroo courts. A kangaroo court is a colloquial term for court proceedings that deny due process to those convicted in the name of expediency. Much of the innocent party’s information was dismissed in court, while the judge and jury depended solely on the testimony of children who were coerced to saying what the prosecutors wanted to hear. The same thing happened in medieval times, during the witchcraft trials, where children made up testimonies and innocent people were burned alive (to save their souls, of course).
Satanism has been linked to certain oppresive (sic) heavy matal (sic) rock bands and teenage suicides and murders. Some troubled teens apparently turn to Satanism when they feel powerless and abandoned by thier (sic) families, the world and the christian god. They join cults that encourage, or require, them to carry out acts of violence to prove thier (sic) homage to Satan. Drug abuse is common. The ritual violence gives them a sence (sic) of power.
The accusation of heavy metal and Satanism was another thing that gave the religionists a weapon to use in society, as they claimed that music, movies and comic books were poisoning the mind of the youth. Why this author agrees with this nonsense and tripe is beyond my understanding.
Author Maury Terry, in the Ultimate Evil (1987), asserts that David Berkowitz, the convicted “Son of Sam” killer who terrorized New York neighborhoods in the late 1970’s, was a member of a Satanic cult that operates in Westchester County and planned the Son of Sam murders. Terry states the cult is linked to a network of cults across the country, with a primary headquarters near Los Angeles, and that Charles Manson may have been involved with it. The cult is reportedly an offshoot of a Satanic group in England.
Maury Terry is a conspiracy theorist, not a historian, and not an investigator. Things that are written to sensationalize, accuse, and marginalize often sell, and its unfortunate that the public would rather consume these stories than to hear the truth. The truth is, Berkowitz was criminally insane, and judging him, or anyone else on the basis of religious belief is archaic at best, and at its worst, a shame on society and justice.
LaVeyan Satanists, Neo-pagan Witches and neo-pagans are wrongly blamed for devil worship activities. Several organizations carry on public relations and education programs for the media and members of the law-enforcement community to counteract such accusations
Unfortunately these lies are still believed to this day, even by some Satanists such as this author. This author’s research was very poor, full of conjecture and assumption, and does nothing to reveal the real history behind satanism and its impact on society.
Satanic religious organizations, such as the Church of Satan and Temple of Set, DO NOT condone the violent blood sacfifices (sic) of the cults and are not associated with them in any way. According to Aquino, the Temple of Set emphasizes “rational self interest” and taking responsibility for one’s own intellectual and ethical decisions.
I would like to know if the author includes his OWN org into this definition? He seems to have left that out, and you would think that he would not want his own org. confused with this panic-material and falsehoods that he holds as the truth, as the history of Satanism.
This article was depressing, maddening. It upset me because I didn’t understand how a satanists would be so willing to accept the false accusations and ideas of Christians. I do not think that Christians have the right to tell us what our history was, nor should we accept their witch hunting materials either from the past or here in the present as some sort of history of Satanism. I also have the feeling that the author skimmed through wikipedia to write this article.
I hope that my article has come to shed some light on a very dark subject.
Read the original page here, found through the Wayback Machine
Also, feel free to read a later post by Diane Vera where she points out how Christians eventually got a hold of this article from Satanic Kindred, and used it as their own propaganda! It was just a matter of time..
So many letters over the years were sent to me by people from all over the world asking if Satan can make them rich, or popular or famous.
