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The post Episode 218: Reliving the Absolute Stupidest Parts of “Michelle Remembers” appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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• ILLUMINATED BREW WORKS
• From The Birthplace of the Illuminati, Matthew Vickery, BBC, 2017: It was on 1 May 1776 that Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt, founded the Order of the Illuminati, a secret organisation formed to oppose religious influence on society and the abuse of power by the state by fostering a safe space for critique, debate and free speech. Inspired by the Freemasons and French Enlightenment philosophers, Weishaupt believed that society should no longer be dictated by religious virtues; instead he wanted to create a state of liberty and moral equality where knowledge was not restricted by religious prejudices. However religious and political conservatism ruled in Ingolstadt at that time, and subject matter taught at the Jesuit-controlled university where Weishaupt lectured was strictly monitored. After initially handpicking his five most talented law students to join, the network rapidly expanded, its members disseminating Weishaupt’s goals of enlightenment with radical teachings, while at the same time creating an elaborate network of informants who reported on the behaviour of state and religious figures in an effort to build up a wealth of information that the Illuminati could potentially exploit in their teachings. With the help of prominent German diplomat Baron Adolf Franz Friedrich, Freiherr von Knigge – who helped recruit Freemason lodges to the Illuminati cause – the clandestine group grew to more than 2,000 members throughout Bavaria, France, Hungary, Italy and Poland, among other places.“Weishaupt was in many ways a revolutionary,” journalist Michael Klarner continued. “He liked the idea of teaching people to be better human beings. He wanted to change society, he was dreaming of a better world, of a better government. He started the Illuminati with the idea that everything known to human kind should be taught – something that was not allowed here at the university.” The organisation didn’t evade the establishment for long, however. Just a decade after its creation, the secret society was infiltrated by Bavarian authorities after its radical anti-state writings were intercepted by government authorities. The Illuminati was shut down and Weishaupt was banished from Ingolstadt to live the rest of his life in the German city of Gotha, 300km to the north. Yet the idea of a secret society revolting against the state has captured imaginations ever since, encapsulated in conspiracy theories cooked up by those who believe the Illuminati was never actually disbanded – a claim that has been widely debunked by historians. Even still, conspiracy theorists say that the organisation has been covertly working behind the scenes to subvert authority. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20171127-the-birthplace-of-the-illuminati 

• From On Materialism And Idealism: Collected Works of Adam Weishaupt:  All other things being equal, I am inclined to prefer a system that presents god and Nature as greater and more wonderful. This system assumes that species, classes, and natural kingdoms are real and have their basis in Nature herself. And yet I believe that, as such, there are only individuals, and not species, genera or classes, which are only the creations of man’s inability to think of everything individually, which has forced him to take certain matching characteristics in objects and then to divide and classify them accordingly. Thus, if a hierarchy (which has been invented) were to arise from this explanation then every being would have to run through and become not the classes but all the individual instances then I should have to become everything, and everyone else would have to too! What confusion, what a useless and never-ending repetition of the same old thing! Should we have to go round and round forever in an eternal circle? I too postulate a hierarchy in Nature: the law of continuity demands it. However, I believe it manifests differently. I believe that every being walks its own individual path and develops in its own way according to the circumstances in which it finds itself and which are unique to it alone. This development of each individual being then takes hold as a part of the development of the whole. It is only the law by which this happens that has yet to be discovered. This progression of entities is a more wonderful and diverse idea than we find in the system discussed above, where everything stays within the general region of those forms that we already know: no other, more far-reaching and better ones are surmised. I have proved above that all these configurations and forms of things, even these classes in the realm of Nature, are only for these senses. We continuously carry over this transitory world-form to another entirely different one. In our thoughts we dwell unceasingly among these configurations. In this system Nature seems too poor, too uniform, and yet her law is the greatest diversity in the greatest possible unity. The more a system expresses and demonstrates this property of Nature, the closer it comes to the truth. It is precisely this stronger impression of the new life that enables us to understand why at present we can no longer remember anything about the state preceding our present human life, even if we have gained so much precisely through this prior state that, through the use of our faculty of understanding (perhaps acquired for the first time during this stage) and through the ability there acquired to draw analogical conclusions, we can make very confident inferences about this previous state, even if its type and mode, along with its precise nature, are obscured by the more powerful effect

• From Freemasonry in Colonial America, Mark Tabbert, George Washington’s Mt Vernon, 2020: Freemasonry was a phenomenon that was growing in the 1680s through 1720s. The fraternity early on attracted high aristocracy and even members of the royal family, so that just attracted more and more men who might want to join. For somebody like Washington, who is on the edge of the frontier but comes from a well to do family, this is one more means for him to gain entrance into society. When he joined when he was 19 years old,  he presumed at some point in his life he would go to England, socialize in London, and potentially be received in court. The first Masonic book published in the colonies was Benjamin Franklin’s reprint of Anderson’s Mason’s constitution in 1733, and Franklin sent copies of that book to Boston where his family is from and also down to the Carolinas for sale. We also know there were Masonic orations and sermons being published in the colonies in the 1740s and 50s, and the secret work of Freemasonry, the rituals, were being exposed in the 1720s in newspapers. We don’t know exactly what ritual Washington received when he joined in 1752, but there were exposures of rituals in 1760 that were probably very close. The men who supported Freemasonry tended to believe in self-determination, freedom of the press, freedom of religion–very radical ideas in continental Europe. And then the French Revolution, of course, went from relatively peaceful into the Reign of Terror, the rise of Napoleon, and the destruction of the Catholic Church in France, the destruction of monasteries and the slaughter which horrifies Europe to this day. One book by a Scotsman called John Robinson called The Proof of Conspiracies in 1797 allays all these shocking revolutionary things at the feet of the Illuminati, which had attempted to infiltrate Freemasonry. Umberto Eco wrote that  in the absence of a supreme being that you believe is governing the universe and has a plan, when something strange happens human beings chalk it up to some sort of conspiracy, be it a revolution or an assassination or a stock market crash–you name it, we find a conspiracy, and in America because of this history the conspiracies are usually the Illuminati or the Freemasons. https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/freemasonry/freemasonry-in-colonial-america 

• From Darkness Over All: John Robison and the Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy, Mike Jay, Public Domain Review, 2014: John Robison was a man with a solid and long-established reputation in the British scientific establishment, a Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University for over twenty years, an authority on mathematics and optics and a senior scientific contributor on the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which he would contribute over a thousand pages of articles. Yet by the end of the year his professional reputation had been eclipsed by a sensationalist book that vastly outsold anything he had previously written: Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, which launched the enduring theory that a vast conspiracy masterminded by a covert Masonic cell known as the Illuminati was subverting all the cherished institutions of the civilised world. The first edition of Proofs of a Conspiracy sold out within days; Robison had hit a nerve by offering an answer to the great questions of the day: what had caused the French Revolution, and what had driven its bloody and tumultuous progress? The power of Robison’s revelation was that it identified within the buzzing confusion of conspiracies a single antagonist and epic struggle between good and evil. The Illuminati became a lightning-rod for the deep anxieties of church and monarchy. 

• Politics had also thrown a long shadow across Robison’s professional life: The physical sciences were in the grip of another evolution after Antoine Lavoisier’s discovery of oxygen, from which he had been able to establish new theories of combustion and to begin the process of reducing all material substances to a basic table of elements. Lavoisier split British chemistry: some recognised that his brilliant experiments had transformed the science of matter, but for others his new and foreign terminology was an arrogant attempt to wipe away the accumulated wisdom of the ages and to eliminate the role of god. Robison had never accepted the French theories, and by 1797 had worked the new chemistry deep into his Illuminati plot. For him, Lavoisier was a master Illuminist, working in concert with Masonic lodges to spread the doctrine of materialism and the new atheist world order where occult priestesses ritually burned the texts of the old chemistry. 

• In an overheated political milieu where accusations of treason were hurled from both sides, Proofs of a Conspiracy was seized on eagerly by the Federalists as evidence of the hidden agenda that lurked behind fine-sounding slogans such as democracy, the abolition of slavery, and the rights of man, and Jefferson was publicly accused of being a secret member of Weishaupt’s Order. But such charges were never substantiated; the ‘Illuminati Scare’ petered out and the Federalists lost power, never to regain it. Yet the episode had touched a nerve deep within the American political mindset; the doyenne of modern conspiracy theory, 20th century British author Nesta Webster, swallowed this theory whole, but then came to believe the Illuminati were a smokescreen: the true conspirators were the ‘Jewish peril’ whose agenda had, she believed, been accurately exposed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/darkness-over-all-john-robison-and-the-birth-of-the-illuminati-conspiracy/ 

• From Conspiracy, Pornography, Democracy: The Recurrent Aesthetics of the American Illuminati, Gordon Fraser, Journal of American Studies, 2018: United States democracy has long been characterized by fantasies of totalizing, all-powerful enemies, of sexual subjection, and of inescapable racial violence. The particular politics of such fantasies are historically specific, and yet their aesthetics are surprisingly recurrent. In the 1790s, as anti-Illuminati writers began to feel increasing pressure to substantiate their claims, they more fully articulated the specific racial dangers faced by the new United States. During this period, countersubversive writers speculated about whether the “sooty sons of Africa” would collaborate with foreign subversives against the United States. That a conspiracy theory in the United States quickly transformed into a narrative of racial paranoia should be relatively unsurprising: The crisis emerged, after all, in a representational economy already structured by the subjection of black people. When William Brown suggested that French revolutionaries would join self-emancipated black men in “the impure and shocking death-dance of Africa,” he was (perhaps inadvertently) calling attention to an economy in which white men operated at the center of power and discourse; Brown’s promise that the prerogatives of white American men would be upended in favor of black men and foreigners traded in fear, just like Brown’s promise that black men would let loose their “demonic lust” upon white “virgins” likewise allowed readers and listeners to indulge in a fantasy of racial humiliation. 

• The fantasies of racial subjection enabled by the Illuminati crisis in the United States were unlike anything seen during the same paranoid crisis in Europe. The sexuality of black men would be instrumental to the desires of foreign revolutionaries, they imagined, just as the sexual subjection of black women [by whites] would prefigure the sexual subjection of white women. For these counterconspiratorial fantasists at the intersections of whiteness and masculinity, the sadomasochistic fantasies of racialization provided critical aesthetic terrain upon which to organize themselves in relation with the larger world. The Illuminati, recall, were of a piece with the Enlightenment-era project that produced US democracy in the first place. Adam Weishaupt’s intellectual society embodied the “Spirit of 76 ” just as readily as did the Sons of Liberty. To these writers, black and foreign bodies were at once an ongoing threat to political cohesion and an object of aesthetic desire that could be consumed. While many of the counterconspiratorial writers of the Illuminati crisis favored the abolition of slavery, they were nonetheless implicated in an economy that trafficked in the subjection of black bodies.

• • From Raising the Devil, Bill Ellis, 2000: Anti-Semitism did not strike as deeply into American culture as it did in Europe. Likewise, anti-Masonic rumors were not especially prevalent or influential during the early part of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, scattered allusions to the Illuminati myth appeared with the American Communist Scare. In 1953, at the depth of the McCarthy investigations, government agencies such as the California State Senate Committee on Education were learning that “So-called modern communism is apparently the same hypocritical and deadly world conspiracy to destroy civilization that was founded by the secret order of the Illuminati in Bavaria on May 1, 1776,” according to a presentation by conspiracy writer Jordan Maxwell. The most influential source in creating the American Illuminati demonology was Canadian William Guy Carr. Like his predecessors, Carr argued that the Illuminati were only the most recent agents in a cosmic struggle originating with Satan’s rebellion. Jesus Christ was incarnated, according to Carr’s theological vision, to denounce the money-lenders and false priests as the Illuminati. In a remarkable argumentative twist, he argues that the Illuminati managed Jesus’ execution so that the Jewish people would appear to have been responsible for his death. This led to persecution, which in turn allowed the Illuminati to “use the hate, engendered amongst the Jewish people as the result of persecution to further their secret totalitarian ambitions.” According to Carr’s scenario, the Illuminati were founded not by Weishaupt but by a group of rabbis and high priests according to “inspirations given by Lucifer.” The conspiracy thus founded was controlled by a “Supreme Council” of specialists in Jewish doctrine, rites, and ceremony. Asked how he came to know such secrets, Carr explained that much of this information was included in documents being carried by an IIluminati courier in 1785. A bolt of lightning, directed by God Himself, struck the courier dead, and the documents he carried fell into the hands of the Bavarian government. Many of these developed Carr’s Anglophile distrust of United States politics, which he saw as irretrievably contaminated by Illuminati influences. Abraham Lincoln, for example, was assassinated to prevent financial reforms he had planned, and while John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger, the Rothschilds had given the orders. 

• LaVey called his Church of Satan operation mainly “showmanship .. . nine parts outrage and one part social respectability” that allowed participants to channel their “demons” into “a ritualized hatred that finally absorbs the hate itself, rather than turning it loose in such meaningless, antisocial outbursts as the Tate massacre.” As for his religion, he called it “just Ayn Rand’s philosophy, with ceremony and ritual added,” and he actually looked forward to the arrival of a “benign police state.” But the sex-and-ritual-murder pattern had now been set in the California media after the Mansion Family killings, and it would henceforth be difficult for any non-standard religion to detach itself from that reputation. Other conspiracy elements were quickly added on. The September 1970 issue of American Opinion, the publication of the right-wing John Birch Society, featured a lengthy article referencing Crowley, Manson, LaVey, Roman Polanski, all demonstrating that Satanism, “next to Communism, has become the fastest growing criminal menace of our time.” The article, using a variety of popular sources, traces occult movements through Weishaupt’s Bavarian Illuminati, the members of which, he claims on the strength of 1790s pamphlets, drank human blood, worshipped Satan, and conducted the Black Mass on an altar of human skeletons. The article concluded with an interview with an unusually cooperative “radical socialist” LaVey, who was happy to inscribe a copy of The Satanic Bible for a member of the John Birch Society and show him his extensive library of titles by “identified Communists.” Yes, Weishaupt was indeed “a practicing Satanist,’ LaVey proudly confirmed, and the Illuminati were “quite a powerful force for evil.”

• • From The Illuminatus Saga Stumbles Along, Robert Anton Wilson, 2007: Bob Shea and I began the Illuminatus series in 1969, inspired directly by our work as co-editors of The Playboy Fo­rum. The Forum deals with civil liberties, the rights of the individual, and abuses of government power. Natu­rally, in addition to a great many intelli­gent letters from people justifiably indignant about real cases of unconstitu­tional behavior by judges and legisla­tors, the Forum – especially in those days – received a lot of paranoid rantings from people imagining baroque conspiracies. One day, either Shea or I­ – we don’t remember which-asked whimsically, “Suppose all these nuts are right, and every single conspiracy they complain about really exists?” Thus, the Illuminatus saga was born. The idea was simple-a novel, perched midway between satire and melodrama, and also delicately balancing between “proving” the case for multiple con­spiracies and undermining the “proof.” Of course, if Shea andI  had any real sense of the market we would have real­ized that such a deliberately ambiguous work was not going to have immediate commercial appeal. But once we got started, the writing was so much fun we simply forgot about it. We had created an unsolved (perhaps unsolvable) mystery that was not merely puzzling like Agatha Christie but dumb­founding, flabbergasting, and more than a bit unnerving. The commercial results were not quite as bad as you might expect. It took over five years to get such a weird book pub­lished, true-and the refrain “I can’t understand that dammed thing” was heard from Senior Editors, but when it finally got into print, in 1975, the tril­ogy received almost uniformly good re­views everywhere. We even earned fairly decent royalties the first year In-jokes referring to the trilogy creep into other novels, movies and music videos. We have created some kind of “underground classic.” We were writing for neo-pagans, witches, Futurists, space colony advo­cates, longevity and vitamin freaks, and a lot of psy­chologists, psychiatrists, radical M.D.s, and other professionals concerned with the illnesses of our nation. There are also a lot of people who don’t want the Feds taking their dope away, and an assort­ment of anti-IRS cranks. As far as I can make out, the one bond uniting all these diverse groups-and separating them from others with simi­lar convictions-is a deep conviction that the government lies a lot, combined with a refusal to buy into any orthodox school of radical analysis. That is, they believe that any Ideology which claims to explain “what is really going on behind the lies” is just guess-work, and they feel that the jokes, insane exag­gerations and surrealistic twists of Illuminatus are about as plausible, and about as implausible, as the sober, seri­ous, and totally humorless critiques of the New Left, the New Age or any other organized Counter-Culture. I don’t know that this is the best path for a writer, but it seems to be the only possible path for me. The books have a sales chart that goes up, and goes down, and goes up and down, but eventually finds a loyal audience.

• From How Did He Get So Famous? Illuminati and the Pop Star, ELISSA R. HENKEN, University of Georgia, 2013: In Spring of 2012, two UCLA students of film and design told me that, according to at least one of their friends and to lots of messages on electronic media, the singer/actress Jennifer Hudson had made a deal with the Illuminati, including the 2008 murder of her family, in exchange for fame and weight loss. Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Eminem, Lady Gaga, and many, many others all reportedly joined the Illuminati, and the signs are to be found in their gestures, their lyrics, and their clothing as well as in their rapid rise to fame. Uncertain how much their location in Los Angeles and their interest in film and music (one is a deejay) might have affected their awareness of these legends, I asked my own students in Georgia what they had heard. Perhaps a quarter of each class had learned about it aurally; far more had seen something about it on the internet. The Illuminati are popularly understood in this context to be a secret society engaged in a conspiracy to control world affairs and create the New World Order, which itself is understood to entail replacing the established Christian order of Western nations with “an atheistic, socialist, global government.” Most of the related folklore takes the form of rumors—simply stating that some particular star is a member of the Illuminati. One claim making the electronic rounds is that Whitney Houston had to die in order that Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughter Blue Ivy, a true Illuminata, might live. Most people with whom I have discussed this intersection of the Illuminati and pop stars have immediately made a connection to Robert Johnson and his Faustian bargain with the devil at the crossroads. The preponderance of black artists said to owe their success to the Illuminati suggests some doubt that black artists—men or women— could achieve such success on their own, but there is not enough demographic material on those who either purvey or respond to that material to make any definitive or overarching statements about the racial undertones of these legends. Marc Lamont Hill, a journalist and scholar of African American studies, with a particular interest in hip-hop culture, points out that, “By accepting conspiracy theories as true, we can make sense of other people’s success without having to accept our own shortcomings.” Lack of talent, no matter the artist’s or the narrator’s race, is certainly one of a variety of themes behind these rumors. One white student reported that when she first noticed Justin Bieber—she kept hearing one song over and over—she asked classmates about him and was told that he was Illuminati.

• • From Cultivating Ethical Gameplay Through Illuminati, Rebekah Shultz Colby & Steve Holmes, Journal of Computers & Compositions, 2022:  The card game we examine in this article, Illuminati, constructs a satire of conspiracy theories with its artwork and procedural rules as players are meant to socially form alliances or cabals (some secret) and then ruthlessly break them. While few players take the game’s satirical conspiracy ideology seriously, the rules and mechanics offer a productive case for studying player’s material ethical habits. To procedurally simulate the paranoia of conspiracy theories, the game rules have unbalanced player role mechanics that make it much easier for some players to win over others and encourage players to cheat to compensate. In our study, we interviewed players before and after a play session of Illuminati, asking the same questions for each player. Ideologically, players either did not take the game’s parody of conspiracy theories seriously or implicitly agreed with the ideology behind the parody so unproblematically that they did not reflect on the game’s ideology in the meaningful way. For instance, the player who chose to play as the Discordian Society did not take the game seriously enough to see this as an ideologically motivated decision. As Jesper Juul argues in the paper “Half-Real”, digital and non-digital games exist on a continuum between being rule-bound systems comprised of rules and game mechanics and representing a fictional world through graphics, music, and narrative. Consequently, Sicart argues that games exist in a dialectical tension between being purely rule-based systems and, because of their narrative worlds, also representing a real ideological system and interpellate players by positioning them as a particular type of subject within an ideology. Our study illustrates that the players’ process is much more complicated than the process Sicart defines and will always change depending on different play contexts, especially as they are driven by attractors such as rules or gameplay. Nevertheless, this case study of Illuminati shows how material attractors form a space for certain dispositions which over time construct ethos. Even when the rules allowing cheating for instance, players can still resist these actions, choosing actions that construct dispositions they’re more inclined toward.

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• • From The Satanic Bible etc etc you know the rest:  Remain in the area of the altar unless imagery is more easily obtained in another spot, such as in the vicinity of the victim. Producing the image of the victim, proceed to inflict the destruction upon the effigy in the manner of your choice. This can be done in the following ways: the sticking of pins or nails into a doll representing your victim; the doll may be cloth, wax, wood, vegetable matter, etc. The creation of graphic imagery depicting the method of your victim’s destruction; drawings, paintings, etc.. The creation of a vivid literary description of your victim’s ultimate end. A detailed soliloquy directed at the intended victim, describing his torments and annihilation.mutilation, injury, infliction of pain or illness by proxy using any other means or devices desired. Intense, calculated hatred and disdain should accompany this step of the ceremony, and no attempt should be made to stop this step until the expended energy results in a state of relative exhaustion on the part of the magician. If requests are written, they are now read aloud by the priest and then burned in the flames of the appropriate candle. “Shemhamforash!” and “Hail Satan!” is said after each request. If requests are given verbally, participants (one at a time) now tell them to the priest. He then repeats in his own words (those which are most emotionally stimulating to him) the request. “Shemhamforash!” and “Hail Satan!” is said after each request. Appropriate Enochian Key is now read by the priest, as evidence of the participants’ allegiance to the Powers of Darkness. Then the words “SO IT IS DONE” are spoken by the priest. Black candles are used for power and success for the participants of the ritual, and are used to consume the parchments on which blessings requested by the ritual participants are written. The white candle is used for destruction of enemies. Parchments upon which curses are written are burned in the flame of the white candle.
  • • From Satanic Scriptures, Peter Gilmore, 2007: Our rituals are not “spells” which guarantee that some actual change will occur in the real world. Since we are skeptical atheists, we do not believe in anything supernatural. However, there are many aspects of the human experience. ESP suggests that there may be a gateway through the most primitive part of the brain by which thoughts and imagery might be broadcast to other minds when fueled by extreme emotional experiences. We see this as a possible means for magic to impact the world outside of the ritual chamber. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has documented phenomena of the “extended mind” such as people’s pets sensing from a distance the time their owners are deciding to return home, as well as the “feeling” that you are being stared at by someone else, even when you don’t see the person doing the staring. These could be supernatural abilities. Perhaps only a small percentage of our population has these intuitive capabilities. Thus we leave this as an open question that each must answer for himself—does ritual do more than simply give emotional relief? Only you can answer it, based on your personally chosen criteria for validity. The format for our traditional ritual was created as a guideline that may be amended by Satanists to suit their own needs. We’re often asked by interested parties if they must use black candles, or absolutely must have all of the devices for ritual described in The Satanic Bible. The answer is that you really don’t need any of the suggested implements, since the most important tool for ritual is your own imagination. The original prescribed practice was to use at least one black candle on the left and one white candle on the right of your altar. That was dropped fairly quickly; any color candles will do, so long as they “feel proper” to you. 
    • From The Problem With Rupert Sheldrake, Sam Woolfe, 2013: Rupert Sheldrake is an English author and parapsychologist credited with the hypothesis of “morphic resonance” who has argued that dogs have the power of telepathy. The problem with Sheldrake is that his ideas do not really survive critical investigation and remain within the realm of pseudoscience. Despite having a PhD in Biochemistry, Sheldrake has received a great deal of criticism from the scientific community for his work on telepathy. He views this attack as a refusal to look at the evidence he has collected; however, none of his experiments has ever been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, suggesting that there is no compelling evidence in the first place. In his book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, Sheldrake describes how he videotapes the behaviour of dogs and concluded that they knew when their owners set off to home; dogs would apparently wait by the doorway before they could hear the noise of their car approaching, for example. The psychologist Richard Wiseman attempted to duplicate Sheldrake’s experiment using the same ‘psychic’ pet that Sheldrake had used in his own experiments, a dog named Jaytee. Jaytee would wait on the porch for longer periods of time when the owner was closer to arriving home, a phenomenon consistent with Sheldrake’s own results. But Wiseman is not convinced. He argues that the observed patterns could easily be explained by natural waiting behaviour: A dog is more likely to wait on the porch for longer the longer their owner is away. So it should not be surprising that Jaytee is on the porch before the owner comes home. This is evidence of a dog anticipating the arrival of their owner, instead of knowing it through psychic abilities. Another idea that has characterised Sheldrake’s career has been ‘morphic resonance’ and the ‘morphogenetic field’, “the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species.” Through morphic resonance each member of a species draws on a collective memory. Morphogenetic fields are located invisibly in and around organisms, and may account for such hitherto unexplainable phenomena as the regeneration of severed limbs by worms and salamanders, phantom limbs, the holographic properties of memory, telepathy, and the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them. That the morphogenetic field is invisible leads sceptics to argue that the concept is magical and untestable. Supporters could reply by saying that the quantum world is invisible to us, yet that does not mean it is unreal. That’s true, however, evidence points to a quantum world; Sheldrake’s obsession with telepathy does not necessarily point to a world full of invisible fields. https://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/07/the-problem-with-rupert-sheldrake.html 
    • From Devil Worshiper Hell-Bent on Controversy, ABC News, 2014: In a small, darkened room, Adam Daniels, the self-proclaimed head of his own satanic church, spat and stomped on the symbolic body of Christ in a ritual devoted to Satan. The smells of incense and smoky dry ice vapors wafted over his small band of followers, who watched him and others perform the so-called “black mass” and destroy bread that was meant to symbolize the Eucharistic. Only about 40 or so people attended Daniels’ demonic service, which was held in the basement of an Oklahoma City civic center in September, but it was enough to draw nearly 2,000 Christians from all over the region, some of which drove in from out of state, for a massive protest against it. Daniels is the co-founder of Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, a dark religion that worships demons, He has written his own “bible” and calls himself  high priest. Daniels has a real day job — he works as a restaurant cook — but he insists he has supernatural powers that are so strong he claims he can give someone a death sentence. “For example, we had an opponent whose mother was dying of cancer and when the destruction ritual was done on him, it put his mother out,” Daniels said. He’s also a man with a dark past — Daniels is a registered sex offender, but he doesn’t believe that conviction interferes with performing his duties. Daniels has 14 believers who worship regularly at his church, which is a converted storage room in his house. They garnered almost no public notice at all until they threatened to desecrate the Holy Sacrament of the Catholic Church, the communion wafer, during a satanic ceremony. The archbishop of Oklahoma City was outraged. “There’s a real danger involved,” said Archbishop Paul Coakley. “Danger, because of the powers that they are invoking are real. This isn’t entertainment. This isn’t a horror movie. This is real. These people are serious. They are invoking satanic powers. The archbishop even went as far as to say the satanic mass was an assault on the soul of humanity. ’The Exorcist’ [the movie] is based upon a true story. Satanic influences are real.” The news of these devil-worshipers’ ceremony spread quickly online, and 100,000 people signed a petition to block it. 
    • From Satanic Bay Area’s Lupercalia Destruction Ritual, Tabitha Slander and Daniel Walker, 2025: If a man can show his hands and prove that they are clean, no wrath of ours shall lurk for him–unscathed he walks through this lifetime. But one like this man, with bloodstained and hidden hands, shall find us there beside him as witness of the truth, and we rise up against him to the last. Hear me, mother Night, who gave birth to us to avenge                                               the living and the dead: This man of false piety dishonours us: Let this song of ours fall upon our victim’s head, our sacrifice, our curse of madness to weigh always on his mind. Remorseless Fate gave us this work to carry on, a destiny spun out to attach ourselves to those haughty with corrupt and foolish power until they go beneath the ground. These rights are ours by birth, even gods may not divert us. We share no feasts with them, no fellowship: their pure white robes are no part of our destiny. We Sing now this enchantment, A song without music, a clamor of furies, A sword in the senses, A storm in the heart, a fire in the brain, a drought in the soul. This task we take, ministers of overthrow, brewing strife for the one who threatens what we hold dear. We are here now, eager to contest the charges and challenges of other god. . There will be no prayers— for their gods despise us, consider us unworthy, refuse to converse with us, and so instead we deal in blood. Those proud opinions people have, who raise themselves so high above us, will melt away when we, in our black robes, beat out our vengeful dance. Dark clouds of defilement hover all around this man. Murky shadows fall, enveloping his home and Rumour spreads a tale of all his sorrow. We have our powers to fulfill, keeping human evil in our minds, and we cannot be appeased by men like this. Dishonoured and despised, we see to our revenge split off from gods, with no light from the sun. We take the path more arduous, and seek always what is ours. What man is not in awe and stands there unafraid to hear me state my rights, those powers allowed by Fate and ratified by all my words, mine to hold forever? No god is enraged on my behalf: So wake, you powers of the underworld, and let my reproaches prick the heart of justice, a spur for those who act with righteousness. Blow your blood-filled breath all over him; let those fires in your bodies shrivel his, and drive him to a fresh pursuit. For happiness will never fall upon this man who cheats justice, this reckless man who goes too far, who piles up riches for himself in any way he can and disregards all justice—I tell you this— In time storming torments will break his ship. He screams for help, but no one listens. In the middle of the seas he fights—but all in vain. Hail Satan.
    • • From How To Perform a Destruction Ritual, Ali Kellogg, Medium, 2017: Rituals are repeated human actions to fulfill, reinforce and maintain a part of the human function and experience. The Destruction Ritual was born from a tradition I have done for many years with friends and loved ones on New Year’s Eve. We would gather around a fire with some scraps of paper, pens, and a few bottles of liquor. We would take turns writing things down, reading them aloud, throwing them into the fire and then taking a shot. As the night progressed, we found ourselves sobbing, hugging, and getting some really sticky shit off our chests. Then one year, we started bringing physical objects to destroy. Things that bore some kind of sentimental value we hung onto, but in reality just sat in a box in a closet somewhere and caused us negative emotions when we remembered they were there. By hanging onto these objects, we were holding onto the hope of a failed relationship or the improvement of someone’s character, or a good memory we would cling to like this object was a life raft. My friend had a box of these creepy ceramic dogs her abusive grandfather gave her every year for her birthday. Another friend had an engagement ring from his ex fiancée. I had an antique children’s tambourine my ex gave me that I couldn’t let go of for some reason. We took turns smashing our objects and throwing the pieces into the fire. Afterwards, I felt a sense of empowerment I had never felt before, and an epiphany. The relationship was done, but I had let it still continue to hurt me; I allowed the toxicity to seep into my every day. We all cried, hugged, and stood around the fire silently watching the shards of our bad memories burn in the fire. The Destruction Ritual serves this very purpose — destroying objects that we have given the power to hurt us. It’s a form of self love, as you are trusting that by destroying these stupid things, you will be stronger and lighter, so to speak, after doing it.
        • The Incantation: These were things that I held in my hands. These were things that belonged to me. These were things that I held in my heart. These were things that have meaning to me. These things are not dead, because they never carried life. But I gave these things life, because they have carried me. I gave these things my memories. My fear. My secrets My tears My blood My devotion My hate My forgiveness My pain My pleasure My love My disdain. I am the creator of life in these things, for without me, they would not be, and people would seek to profit off what I give with no mutual heart given back to me .We emancipate ourselves from this; we liberate ourselves from this endless cycle of voids filled with unnecessary greed. I fill my void with the beauty that surrounds me. Together we raise our arms and unshackle ourselves from the control these things have over us. Together we raise our hammers and daggers, and with them pierce the heart of that control, a power driven by addiction, attachment, consumption, and by a relentless hunger for excess. I do not belong to these things: These things belong to me. Hail Satan.  Have at it, and be well. https://medium.com/@allthebigtrees/how-to-perform-a-satanic-destruction-ritual-4c76baf0ea30 
      • From Satanic Bay Area’s Candlemas Ritual, Tabitha Slander & Daniel Walker, 2024: Some religions are obsessed with destruction. You know the type: “The end is near,” “Rapture incoming,” lots of talk about the Hidden Imam, that kind of thing. In 1988, NASA engineer and Bible kook Edgar Whisehant sold 4.5 million copies of his book, “88 Reasons why the Rapture will happen in 1988”; as you can imagine, sales dipped in 1989. But Edgar kept it up, he wrote another book, explaining that the end would actually come in 1989; then 1993; then again in 1994. Among his original 88 reasons was, and this is true–I mean, it’s not true, but it’s true that he wrote it–since the world was supposedly in the midst of “a population explosion,” Edgar projected that human consumption would render the earth uninhabitable in just a few years, and since “god wants his glory,” god would have to intervene and destroy the world before humans did. I remind you, this man worked at NASA. Edgar of course was not the only one, if you lived in the Bay Area for a long time you probably remember Oakland minister Harold Camping spent $5 million on billboards predicting global destruction in 2011; he died in 2013, so, in a certain sense, perhaps he was only a few years off. By comparison, our deployment of the virtues of destruction is on a decidedly more human scale. The late Christopher Hitchens–whom I will say I was not always the biggest fan of but whom I do have to concede articulated this particular point with sobering clarity–observed that “a large part of modern religion quite clearly wants us all to die, it wants this world to come to an end, you can tell the yearning for things to be over, whenever you read any of its text, or listen to its authentic spokesmen. The eschatological element that is inseparable from Christianity, if you don’t believe there will be a final separation of the sheep and the goats, then you’re not really a Believer. They cannot wait for death and destruction to overtake and overwhelm the World, a hateful idea very much opposed to our daily lives.” And he was right, that is a troubling norm. Instead, we are here tonight to embrace the beauty of flames that are not everlasting but which we mean to last only as long as they have to, and to witness not the destruction of all things but only of these things, and to hope not for End Times, but just for the end of a time in our lives–and that, we think, is a much healthier kind of eschatology. This ritual has also included some quotations from late Satanist poet Baron Jacque Fersen; when Fersen wrote about Satanism he was actually writing about the scandal around his own swinging sex-positive queer lifestyle; he did write because he seemingly wanted to get something off of their chests, but he did not want to confess in the conventional meaning of that word. Confession is bad for the soul; it appropriates the right you have to assess your own life and embezzles it into the account of some god–-we know not who. When we unburden ourselves, it should be with ourselves. Gods do not write the endings of our stories, our lives, or our worlds–that is the privilege that we resolve for our own persons. Hail Satan.
    • From Canyon River Pride Interfaith Service, Satanic Idaho, 2025: Destruction rituals. far from being acts of violence, are deeply symbolic practices that signify transformation, renewal, and the cyclical nature of existence. Destruction rituals are intentional acts of breaking down or dismantling objects, symbols, or even structures. They are not about chaos for its own sake but are deliberate expressions of letting go, clearing the old to make way for the new. These rituals are prevalent across various cultures and religions, each with its unique significance and purpose. It’s roots trace back to the dawn of civilization. Before human kind could farm, we knew we wanted to shed ourselves of trauma and grief. Honored guests, seekers of transformation, and guardians of the sacred flame, Today, we gather not to celebrate creation, but to honor the power inherent in endings, the force that clears the path for new beginnings. We stand on the threshold of a ritual as ancient as time itself, the Rite of Destruction. This is not an act of mindless violence, but a deliberate, sacred process of severance. It is the sacred act of severing ties with that which no longer serves us—be it a toxic relationship, a destructive habit, or an unhealed wound. Through this rite, we reclaim our agency, our sovereignty, and our future. In the ancient world, destruction rituals were performed to obliterate the influence of enemies and to purify the land. The Egyptians crafted execration texts, inscribed curses upon figurines or clay tablets which were then smashed and buried to symbolically annihilate their foes. Similarly, in parts of Asia, statues or objects were submerged in water along with deceased loved ones. They were profound statements of intent, of closure, and of transformation. Today, we invoke this tradition with reverence. We do not seek to harm others, but to liberate ourselves from the chains of the past. We gather our intentions, our will, and our focus, and we channel them into this sacred act. This ritual is consent based. If you do not feel comfortable in participating, there is no requirement or pressure to do anything you do not wish to participate in. What we faith leaders are asking you, to do is step forward and write a name, a phrase, a memory, or an experience that you wish to no longer to carry with you, on one of these pieces of paper. And release it into this bowl of water. This is a space for reflection and for honoring thyself. This moment is yours. Afterwards, myself and other faith leaders will be at the front of the stage and would love to hear your stories if you are in a place of sharing. The hugs are free and so is your future. A future you choose to create on your terms.
    • From A New Rage Room Is Ready For You, Leslie Bridgers, Portland Press Herald, 2025: There’s no question people are worked up about all sorts of things these days, and while some are channeling their anger by gathering in protest or on social media, a new business is offering another option: breaking stuff. The Wreck Room opened in January and every month since, demand has multiplied for its ax throwing, paint splatter, air-gun range and most of all, its rage rooms. Aside from breakups, the current political climate is the most common reason people come in, said owner Brent Gumbs. But despite his impeccable timing, that’s not why he started the business. Growing up in New Hampshire, Gumbs said he saw too many of his peers turn to drugs and “wanted to try to counteract that” by offering less self-destructive activities in the Midcoast, where he had noted a similar lack of things to do, especially in bad weather. The rage rooms are the main attraction, offering a private space for customers to unleash their anger by taking a bat or a hammer to various breakable objects including vases, Mason jars and, for an additional cost, appliances like TVs, toasters and crockpots. Although rage rooms have been around for more than a decade, there aren’t many in Maine, and none in the southern part of the state. Perhaps we had been too peaceable a lot until now. I’ll admit, I wasn’t feeling particularly ragey when I decided to head up to Topsham to give it a try but pretty quickly things got serious. First, there was the waiver, releasing The Wreck Room of any responsibility for whatever I did to myself in there. Then I was given a plastic face shield and what looked like gardening gloves to protect me from the objects I was about to break and those in the pile of previously smashed material on the floor. There was a plastic tub holding 10 items: a pint glass, some Mason jars and vases, a ceramic mug, a pail and a cooking pot lid. There was also an old water heater lying on its side that Gumbs said was for people to beat on or to prop up the items before hitting them into the wall, like some sort of very impractical softball tee. In the corner were several baseball bats, a hammer and a pickax. Truthfully, I didn’t give my inner rage much of a chance. Though I’m no physicist, it seemed that the harder I hit these things, the faster the shards flew back at me. So, rather than swinging for the fences, I went for more of a slap hit followed by a flinch and duck. Although I never fully unleashed my anger, you don’t have to be bitter to enjoy The Wreck Room. You can shoot at glass bottles from a much more comfortable distance in the air-gun range or put on a full-body suit and take spray guns to the walls of the paint splatter room. There’s also a bar serving f specialty cocktails, as well as snacks, with plans to add more food. Gumbs has other ambitions, too. He’s getting a glass pulverizer to turn the broken objects into sand that he wants to donate to help restore the coastline. The day after I was there, he held his first trivia night and later that week, an ax-throwing competition. Those sound like good activities to do any day, but I’ll wait to revisit the rage room. https://www.pressherald.com/2025/04/21/feeling-angry-a-new-rage-room-in-topsham-is-ready-for-you/ 

The post Episode 202: Satanic Destruction Rituals appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• • • TWITCH: @EnvyTheNB
    • From Origin & History of Envy, Etymology Online, 2001: Late 13th century, from the Old French word for jealousy or rivalry, itself from the tenth century Latin word “invidia,” meaning “jealousy” and invidus” meaning “having hatred or ill-will,” invidere “to hate, to look at (with malice), or to cast the evil eye upon.” The root “in” means “upon” while “videre” is “to see,” [so the word grows from the concept of casting glances.] Jealousy is the malign feeling which is often had toward a rival or possible rival for a thing which we greatly desire, as in love or ambition; envy is a similar feeling toward one who already possesses a thing greatly or which we come to desire. Jealousy is prompted by fear or anxiety; envy is prompted by covetousness. Rancor is defined as “a nourished envy, bitterness, hatred, or malice.” Jaundice means “feeling in which views are colored or distorted,” stemming from yellow’s association with bitterness and envy; green has also been symbolic of envy and jealousy since Middle English. Most of the words for envy had from the beginning a sense of hostile force, based on looking at a thing with malice as opposed to with love, as can be the case for jealousy. “Gall” literally means bile but can mean resentment from a deep sense of injury, especially when directed at the author of the affront, since the 1610s. https://www.etymonline.com/word/envy 
    • From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Vatican Council, 1992: Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice opposed to god, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil,” and it was through the devil’s envy that death entered the world. In the account of Abel’s murder by his brother Cain, Scripture reveals the presence of anger and envy in man, consequences of original sin. Envy is sadness at the sight of another’s goods and the immoderate desire to have them for oneself: It is a capital sin.The tenth commandment requires that envy be banished from the human heart. When the prophet Nathan wanted to spur King David to repentance, he told him the story about the poor man who had only one lamb that he treated like his own daughter and the rich man who, despite the great number of his flocks, envied the poor man his lamb.  Envy can lead to the worst crimes: We fight one another, and envy arms us against one another. Augustine saw envy as “the diabolical sin”: “From envy are born hatred, detraction, calumny, joy caused by the misfortune of a neighbor, and displeasure caused by his prosperity.” Envy represents a form of sadness and therefore a refusal of charity; the baptized person should struggle against it by exercising good will. Envy often comes from pride; the baptized person should train himself to live in humility: Would you like to see god glorified by you? Then rejoice in your brother’s progress and you will immediately give glory to god. 
    • From Later Genesis, Anonymous, 10th Century: God had established these angels so blessedly— but one among them he had made so strong, so mighty in his mind, and God allowed him to wield such power, highest after himself in heavens, and he had shaped this one so splendidly— so beautiful was his flowering form in the heavens that he was like the stars gleaming. Praises of the lord he should have wrought, but this one turned himself away unto worse affairs. He thought to heave up struggle against the highest, the Sovereign of Heaven aseat upon the holy throne. Beloved was he to our Lord—this angel overly proud, heaving himself against his Master. Seeking hateful words and boasting speech against him, he wished to serve god no longer. He said that he was light and brilliant, beautiful and hue-bright, and he could not find it in his heart to serve. It seemed to this one that he possessed greater power and craft than Holy God. He spoke many words, that angel over-proud. He pondered through his own skill how he might create a stronger throne for himself, higher in the heavens. “Why must I toil,” he asked. “There is no need at all for me to have a master. I can mold many wondrous things with my own hands. I have great enough power to make ready a godly throne — to be master in heaven. Why must I scrape after his favor, bowing to him in such vassalage? I can be a god just like him, to rule this realm. And so it does not seem to me right that I should need to flatter him at all, a god after any god. Then the Mighty grew anger-swollen, the Highest Wielder of Heaven, and threw that one from the high throne and cast him into hell, where he changed into a devil, the enemy, with all his allies. Then spoke the haughty king, brightest of angels before, thenceforth called Satan, and hot was the bitter torment from within his heart: “This place is much unlike heaven’s kingdom, which my Master had imparted to me, though we were not permitted to keep it. He has determined that it shall be settled by this ‘mankind, and That is of most sorrow to me— that Adam, who was shaped from dirt, shall possess my throne. If we could further our vengeance upon Adam and his heirs, I could rest more easily in these chains.
    • The devil cast himself into the likeness of a snake and wound himself all around the Tree of Death through devil’s craft. Then he began to ask the first man, with lying words: “Do you ever long at all, Adam, upwards to god? I am on his errand here and have traveled from afar— it has not been long since I sat with him. He ordered that you should eat of this fruit, that your spirit and strength and your intellect would become greater, and your body more beautiful. Adam spoke where he stood upon the earth, the free-willed man: “When I heard the Victory-Lord, Mighty god speak with a strong voice, and he ordered me to abide here, to hold his commandments, and he gave me this woman, and he ordered me to be watchful so that I should not be cast down by the Tree of Death, seduced too strongly. He said that dark Hell must be kept for him who by his heart has produced something hateful. I don’t know whether you come with falsehoods through secrecy or you are really the lord’s messenger from heaven, and I am not able to understand one whit of your intentions. You are not like any of his angels that I have ever seen before. Therefore I can not heed you.” Wrath-minded, Satan, turned himself to where he saw the woman, and he spoke: “If you wish to heed my words, lusty woman, then consider what you can do to ward yourselves from punishment, as I direct you. Eat these fruits! Then your eyes will become so bright that you can see across the whole world, and the throne of your Master itself, and ever have his grace. You could lead Adam and entice him eagerly so that he carries out your precept. If you would perform this deed, best of all women, I will cover up the many harms Adam spoke.” He led her with such lying words and with skillful enticings that she allowed her heart to be stirred by that instruction and took the disastrous fruit from the Tree of Death. And the devil spoke: “Now you can see for yourself bright light from heaven. Now you can touch it— Tell Adam what power of sight you now possess by my arrival. If he obeys my precept, I shall give him as good as I have prepared for you.”
    • From Entertaining Satan, John Demos, 2004: Elizabeth Godman was (described as) “a malicious one”; Elizabeth Morse had acted out of “the malice and envy of her heart”; Mary Hale yielded frequently to “discontent” and so on. In one way or another, suspected witches revealed the angry center of their characters. Moreover, charges against particular witches invariably stemmed from specific episodes of controversy: The victim and the accused had squared off as antagonists, words passed, threats were made or imagined, etc. To seem unduly angry was to invite suspicion, and, once formed, such suspicion prompted the inference of further resentment. Anger vs “peace” was a critical dimension of character dividing witches from honorable Christian folk. The Rev. Deodat Lawson urged, in a famous sermon, that his auditors be especially vigilant against “giving way unto sinful and unruly passions such as envy, malice, or hatred of our neighbors and brethren. These Devil-like passions do endanger the letting in of Satan and his temptations, yea, he generally comes into the soul at these doors, to captivate any person to the horrid sin of covenanting with him.’ Cotton Mather analyzed the famous outbreak at Salem as follows: “It is not irrational to ascribe the late stupendous growth of witches among us partly to the bitter discontents which affliction and poverty has filled us with; it is inconceivable what advantage the Devil gains over men by [material] discontent. Have not many of us been Devils unto one another for slanderings, for backbitings, for animosities?” Closely associated with anger in prompting the witch’s attack was a deep and uncompromising envy. Indeed, the two motives formed a kind of tandem—“malice and envy,” in the common phrase of the time. The witch’s characteristic “discontent” is but the outward manifestation of a vast and invisible system of diabolical influence.In part, the witch was so angry because she was so envious; she could not prevent herself from coveting the possessions and advantages of others. Envy, like “discontent,” was directly associated with the process of becoming a witch, and potential recruits were plied with “fine promises”
    • From Changing perceptions of anaemia in Malawian (Muh-La-Wee-In) children, Sarah Svege, Plos One Journal, 2021: If illness strikes suddenly and occurs repeatedly, community members may suspect the sufferer to be a victim of witchcraft. Caregivers claim that a child who becomes mysteriously and rapidly ill with no apparent reason may be struck by dark magic. Recurring anaemia, particularly if anaemia recurs after a blood transfusion, Evil actions are often driven by ‘jealous witches’ who envy the wealth, success or material possessions of their victims. Even though the jealousy is mostly triggered by material goods, some participants also shared how healthy and well-fed babies may cause jealousy among witches. Several participants stated that bewitchment of children is often performed to punish the parents. While witchcraft [belief] has existed for centuries, a ‘new’ supernatural or religious force, labelled Satanism, has reportedly emerged in Malawian communities, described as a modern, ‘Western’ form of witchcraft that, contrary to ‘ordinary’ witchcraft, employs tricks of technology and the power of the devil to perform evil deeds: Witchcraft is done out of jealousy, while the satanists will just torment someone or they may just kill someone mysteriously. Participants explained how the ‘Western mindset’ among Satanists is related to their wish for materialistic wealth. Witchcraft and Satanism share similarities in the sense that the source of all mischief is in essence supernatural, and the evil acts are performed through magical means. Some participants referred to Satanism as the younger but stronger ‘sibling’ of witchcraft. In their opinion, Satanism holds a markedly greater power than the ‘old’ witchcraft, and Satanists are supposedly members of a group that is working ‘against god’s will’ by causing road accidents and bridge collapses. Members of this group are on a relentless vampire-like quest for blood with the goal of gathering bodily and spiritual strength through human sacrifice. Youth are at a higher risk because they want to get rich fast. Satanists hate prayer and they hate someone who loves to pray. It is also said that their desire is to destroy the belief in god. Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, and health facilities are seriously under-resourced in terms of staff, equipment and drugs. It is therefore likely that health workers fail to diagnose correctly, or that the child is not given optimal medication. This would not only contribute to morbidity, but also diminish trust towards formal healthcare and enhance the caregivers’ reliance on traditional and complementary beliefs. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8087048/ 
    • From Envy : a theory of social behavior, Helmut Schoeck, 1970: A certain predisposition to envy is part of man’s physical and social equipment, the lack of which would, in many situations, simply result in his being trampled down by others. We use our latent sense of envy when, for instance, we examine social systems for their efficiency: before joining an association or firm we try to discern whether it has any intrinsic structure which might arouse strong envy in ourselves or in others. If so, it is probably an organization which is not very well adapted to particular functions. In the recent past a few American colleges and universities have tried to attract able academic celebrities as professors by offering salaries perhaps twice as high as those earned by the standard full pro¬ fessor. I know of several cases of a man being unable to bring himself to accept the offer because, as he told me, he could not bear the thought of being the object of so much envy in the faculty. Further, potential envy is an essential part of man’s equipment if he is to be able to test the justice and fairness of the solutions to the many prob¬ lems which occur in his life. Very few of us, when dealing with employees, colleagues, etc., are able to take a position which consciously ignores the existence of envy, such as that adopted by the master in the Biblical parable of the toilers in the vineyard. No matter how mature, how immune from envy a personnel manager or plant manager may himself be, when he has to deal with the taboo subject of wages or staff regulations he must be able to sense exactly what sort of measures are tolerable, given the general tendency to mutual envy. Envy is a fundamental psychological process which of necessity presupposes a social context: the co-existence of two or more individuals. Few concepts are so intrinsic a part of social reality. An exhaustive study of envy in its active and passive roles in social history is important not only because this emotion and motivational syndrome are crucial in individual human life; it is also relevant to politics, since the right or wrong assessment of the phenomenon of envy, the under or over-estimation of its effects, and above all the unfounded hope that we can so order our social existence as to create people or societies devoid of envy, are all considerations of immediate political significance, particularly where economic and social policies are concerned. The kind of maturity achieved by an individual which enables him to conquer his own envy does not seem to be a universally attainable attribute. We must somehow make use of ideologies which will tend to reduce the power of envy and thus allow daily life to proceed with a minimum of friction and conflict.
    • From Envy, Natalie Wynn, Contrapoints, 2021: You might think that envy is simply the product of inequality and that societies that have more inequality have more envy. I used to assume that too, but the more I think about it the more I realize that might not be true. Envy is a basic part of human nature, in all societies and all economic systems, and it begins any time two or more people start comparing themselves. You’re probably familiar with the concept of “the evil eye”: People all over the world today understand the evil eye as  a kind of curse cast by the malignant gaze of an envious person. You might be thinking that sounds superstitious, but I actually think the concept of the evil eye reveals a more sophisticated awareness of envy and of the social danger that it poses. There’s advertisements that literally promise if you buy this exclusive luxury you’ll be the envy of all your friends, as if it’s a good thing to be envied. Being envied is basically the opposite of being loved, so why would anyone want to be envied? Well, it’s human nature. We need to be loved but then there’s this other drive in us, this Homeric striving for fame and glory. In a past gilded age there were stories like “Citizen Kane” and “Sunset Boulevard”, which warned what a sad and lonely thing success can become. In ancient Athens there was a practice called “Ostrakismos” where whoever got the most votes would simply be banished for 10 years, no questions asked. Most cultures understand that being envied is a massive social liability, so it’s best not to draw too much attention to yourself. The fear of envy is a major inhibiting force in many societies. In Haiti, GE Simpson found that a peasant will seek to disguise his true economic position by purchasing several smaller fields rather than one larger piece of land. For the same reason he will not wear good clothes, to protect himself against the envious black magic of his neighbors. 
    • This kind of thing is not unheard of in America: People from wealthy families move to the city and dress like gutter punks. But in general, Americans don’t openly acknowledge fear of envy in the way many other cultures do, but it’s definitely there even if it’s repressed: We could call it the Squidward personality, perfectionistic and orderly, but reserved, priggish, stiff, and then there’s the Spongebob personality, intuitive, chaotic, ecstatic. Squidward is fundamentally a figure of envy, stemming from failed ambition.So maybe fear of envy can serve a softly regulatory function by motivating charity and generosity. But in general I’m suspicious of envy as a motivation for politics.  Cause remember, the basic logic of envy is “if I can’t have it, no one can” which is a purely negative, destructive style of thinking. Like in this debate about forgiving student loan debt, you often hear people say: “I had to pay my student loans, so they should too. Debt forgiveness is not fair!” The logic here is “since I didn’t get my debt forgiven, no one should, it’s not fair that kids these days don’t have to suffer like I suffered”. Or think about the concept of a “welfare queen”, which openly reeks of envy and white resentment, or the way conservatives talk about immigration, it’s all this envious suspicion about immigrants getting government handouts. The Jewish radical feminist Andrea Dworkin made an argument that both anti-Semitism and misogyny are partly rooted in envy. Dworkin explains: “The woman appears to control access to sex, and the man feels rage at her perceived power over him,” power that some men envy. It doesn’t matter to the misogynist that women objectively have less power in society, he envies women anyway. Likewise, it didn’t matter to antisemites that Jewish people were a marginalized minority: Antisemitism is rooted in an envious obsession with [the myth of] the disproportionate influence and affluence of Jewish people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&t=1s&v=aPhrTOg1RUk 
    • From The Church of Satan, Michael Aquino, 2013: I had no idea what kind of future might now lie ahead. I knew only that I could not walk a single step further with a Church of Satan that had become a mockery of its name. Even if Satan were to abandon his church as I failed and premature experiment, still I’d have to make a final statement on its behalf, for the sake of his honor. I suddenly found myself being looked at expectantly by a large number of Satanists, Witches, Warlocks, Priests, and Priestesses: Was this the end, or could we somehow try to carry on? A second Church of Satan? Perhaps so. When it became evident to me that the Church of Satan was to be destroyed, I sought an explanation by serial invocation and consultation of the Book of Thoth. Because of the strength intrinsic in the Church of Satan, it seemed illogical to me that it could cease to exist so suddenly. The actions of LaVey seemed out of character to the point of complete inconsistency. And there had been no manifestation or action evident by the principle entity, the Prince of Darkness himself. It is the right of a Magister to evoke the Prince of Darkness if it is his will to do so. Therefore I addressed such an evocation by means of the Enochian Keys: The evocation was effective and an answer was received. The Prince of Darkness transferred his sanction from the Church of Satan to what now would be called the Temple of set. The passage of time since the 1975 crisis did not serve to soften Anton’s bitterness toward the Temple of set and myself, a mixture of hatred and envy not unlike that which Mr Hyde presumably felt for Dr Jekyll. Ironically, the Temple of Set preserved and has gone on to strengthen the very things about the Church of Satan which had most inspired Anton himself. Similarly, it has rejected the schadenfreude characteristic of the Church. It acknowledges the Prince of Darkness without qualification and affirms the Black Arts is a means to triumph, not as an excuse for failure. If the Temple of Set became an agonizing wound in the side of Anton, it was one which would never could never heal: It is the Grail of the Church of Satan, that which the Church worked so hard to attain during those memorable years from 1966 to 1975.
    • From I Went To a Rational Satanic Ritual, Investigating Rational Satanism Blog, Sam Pegg, 2015:, Rational Satanism is built upon a 90/10 philosophy, for which 90 percent is applying logic to your everyday life, but the 10 percent covers ritualistic magic and other personal practices. I wanted to see if a satanic ritual would actually work. For the purposes of the ritual I had to come with something I wanted to change in my life. The change I came up with was envy. I’ve started to become rather envious of my brother: After leaving university he instantly got a full-time finance job in London on a hefty salary, owning a superb flat and having a lovely girlfriend. I too wanted this success, yet I also wanted these envious emotions banished. After meeting with the Rational Satanism members at the ritual location, I was pretty damn nervous. The altar consisted of several candles, a blank black picture frame, incense, a small clear glass ball, and images that inspired feeling of personal success. I had to dress in a full robe with a hood, which considering I was wearing glasses at the time made me look remarkably like Harry Potter. I was then told by the ritual host to rub mandrake root into my wrists, which contains hallucinogens to make the psychological impact of the ritual more intense. Dark drone music was booming in the background. I was told to focus all my attention towards the picture of my brother which would bring envy emotions to the surface. I then moved my eyes to the black picture frame looking at my own reflection. I felt my hands scorch under the heat of the candle, supposedly ridding the envy from my body. I was then told to pull my shoulders back and sit up straight. Focusing [on] how my face looked inside the picture frame, I had a deep look into my reflection, looking at the achievements I’ve already made. I had to sit up and say something which I felt inspired success: “Some opportunities knock but most present themselves when you beat down the door.”  According to the host, whenever envious emotions towards my brother surface, I should be able to replace them with positive, successful thoughts. Did it work? Time will tell. https://investigatingrationalsatanism.wordpress.com/ 

The post Episode 197: Satanic Envy appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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  • From Anthropology & Sacrifice, Phillips Stevens Jr, Diversity of Sacrifice, 2016: Perhaps the oldest interpretation of sacrifice is as economic exchange, modeled directly on human society; just as human social relationships are both established and maintained by economic means, so too are human-supernatural relationships, and EB Tylor explained religious sacrifice in terms of economic motives. From classical times to the present, the economic cost of sacrifice has been an issue; it would seem that the wealthy have an edge on supernatural favor. Hesiod had stated that “one must sacrifice according to one’s means,” and this issue leads to discussions on sacred morality and the tolerance of the gods for substitutes and their appreciation of intention over substance, etc. Frazer’s fanciful theory of sacrifice posited that the earliest sacrifices were human beings, specifically priests, because they were closest to the gods; then animals replaced people, and as agriculture spread, plant products became the dominant sacrificial material. These observations were topics of discussion among several of the twentieth-century European scholars. Many supernatural beings are conceptualized as either kin or broadly ancestral to the people, and the most important of all kinship obligations, sharing, may be a primary motive for sacrifice. Perhaps the most common explanation is atonement for some transgression; this explanation is widely applicable, as many supernatural recipients of offerings are regarded as supervisors and monitors of human social behavior. The sacrifice is often something of which the recipient is known to be particularly fond, and sometimes, through the magical principle of similarity, it is meant to link directly to some aspect of the nature of its recipient—ie, a black bull for the god of night or the underworld. The concentration of power at the exact point of sacrifice on the altar is like that experienced by Moses after his personal meeting with God, and around the world people construct shrine objects imbued with power the sole purpose to enhance the power of the altar. Burkert had famously said that sacrifice “is the basic experience of the sacred,” and that experience happens on an altar. 
  • No matter what it is, the fullest meaning of the sacrifice is symboli,  and there is nothing more deeply symbolic than blood. We cannot overstate the universal power and ritual significance of blood as the essence of life. A full appreciation of the cross-cultural meaning of blood is essential for the fullest understanding of sacrifice; blood is often regarded as the property of the divine, whereas flesh is shared among the supplicants Blood is the all-purpose sacrificial liquid, satisfying to all supernatural agencies in all imaginable occasions, and it is readily available to individuals in all situations. This is a good place to confront the gorilla in the room, what jumps to most minds when the word “sacrifice” is heard: The sacrifice of a human being represents the ultimate offering to the supernatural, and the idea of it is very probably universal. It dominated early scholarship. Frazer fostered the assumptions of a wide distribution of human sacrifice in the early world; ethnological research, however, has revealed that, like cannibalism, human sacrifice existed mostly as allegation and was far less common than assumed, [although] much has been made of the Aztec case. The fact of sacrifice has been used by itself as diagnostic of many things, especially as part of a European understanding of “savagery” among “primitive” peoples—but really, it is meaningful only within its broader ritual context. It is always part of something much larger, and mustn’t be separated from that whole. Sacrifice represents the human effort to keep the natural cycle going, sending a rush of life energy into the cosmos. Whatever else it is, sacrifice is always a return of life to its source and the resultant regeneration of that source.
  • From When Abraham Murdered Isaac, Haviv Gur, Times of Israel, 2012: When he first came to believe he had discovered how the Biblical forefather Isaac died, Bible scholar Tzemah Yoreh says he went into mourning. “I literally sat shiva for him, for the forefather I had lost,” said Yoreh, who was then just 21. The Biblical story we have inherited is not the original story, Yoreh believes. Using a variation of a well-known approach to Biblical scholarship, he sees hints of a bloodier version of Isaac’s binding that he finds too convincing to ignore. In the earliest layer of the Biblical text, Yoreh believes, Isaac was not rescued by an angel at the last moment, but was in fact murdered by his father, Abraham, as a sacrifice to God. One eye-opening hint at what he believes is the original story lies in Genesis 22:22. Previously, in verse 8, Abraham and Isaac had walked up the mountain together. But in verse 22, only Abraham returns. That strange contradiction, Yoreh says, may be why a few ancient midrash also assumed Isaac had been killed. In one homily quoted by a revered 11th-century French rabbi and commentator, “Isaac’s ashes are said to be suitable for repentance, just like the ashes of an [animal] sacrifice.” “That’s a very weird midrash,” Yoreh says, “since Isaac is clearly alive in the next chapter. But that’s the way midrash works. It analyzes episodes without larger context. That’s why you can have midrash about Isaac dying, because it doesn’t have to notice that he’s alive in the next chapter.” In verse 12, after staying Abraham’s knife-wielding hand in mid-air, the angel of god says, “I now know you fear god because you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” That phrase, “have not withheld your son,” could indicate Abraham was merely willing to sacrifice his son, OR that he actually did so, Yoreh says. One hint that it may have been the latter is contained in the names for god used in the story. The Biblical text calls the god who instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son “Elohim.” Only when the “angel ofgGod” leaps to Isaac’s rescue does God’s name suddenly change to the four-letter YHWH, a name Jews traditionally do not speak out loud. Elohim commands the sacrifice; YHWH stops it. But it is once again Elohim who approves of Abraham for having “not withheld your son from me.” These sorts of variations, rampant throughout the Bible, have led scholars to conclude that different names for god are used by different editors. Indeed, Isaac is never again mentioned in an Elohim verse. If you only read the parts that use the name Elohim, you don’t have to be a Bible scholar to see the story as one in which Isaac is killed in the sacrifice and disappears completely from the story. “Not that the YHWH portions make much of an effort to bring him back either,” Yoreh notes. Indeed, Isaac seems to fade into the background, with his life story recycled from Abraham’s life. In the earliest Biblical narrative, Yoreh believes Isaac died on the mountain. Far from setting an example in which god intervenes to end human sacrifice, Abraham is revealed as a man who can walk his own son to the altar and even wield the blade himself. 
  • From The Devil & The Jews, Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg, 1943: What would seem to be the earliest instances of the blood libel charge occurs in a story that in 1096, a monk was abducted from a monastery and sold to jews who “crucified him in celebration of the Passover.” However, this report comes from a 13th century account. The first “ritual murder” [myths] had nothing to do with Passover, or indeed with any Jewish festival. Let us listen to a contemporary chronicler describing the fate of the very first boy martyr, William of Norwich, who disappeared in 1144: “The Jews of Norwich bought a Christian child before Easter and tortured him with all the tortures wherewith our lord was tortured, and on Long Friday hanged him on a rood in hatred of our lord, and afterwards buried him.” Not a very plausible story, but it was based on the statement of a Jewish convert, one Theobald of Canterbury, who obligingly came forward with the explanation that the Jews were required to sacrifice a Christian child annually at Easter; the choice of place was made, according to him, by a yearly conference of rabbis. His tale evidently did not command much credence at the time, for no Jews were tried or punished for the alleged crime, and indeed, there was no evidence that a murder had been committed. Yet the mere statement of this convert led to the bringing of identical charges in 1168; and similar charges were made at Blois in 1171, at Bury St. Edmonds in 1181, at Saragossa in 1182, and at Winchester in 1192. Theobald’s fable of the Easter sacrifice did not hold up for long, but his story of the annual rabbinical conference enjoyed a much hardier career. It struck a responsive chord in the public fancy, for it spread rapidly through Europe and was often repeated in connection with supposed Jewish crimes of this sort. In time it was expanded to make room for a secret Jewish society whose function it was to kidnap and kill Christian children and distribute the blood to the major Jewish communities, at the bidding of the Council, whose permanent meeting place was ultimately fixed in Spain. All sorts of traitorous criminal acts were laid at the door of this mythical body. 
  • Sixteenth-century sources preserve a quite different plot based on the blood motif. “Nowadays,” runs the statement, “when the Jews, for fear of Christian justice, can no longer sacrifice humans, they have nevertheless found another way of offering up human blood, which they secure from surgeons; when they have put this in a glass vessel, and set it on burning coals, they conjure up by means of it demons, who do their bidding and answer all questions that are put to them, so long as the blood is kept boiling.” This became a typical bit of witch lore, and a woodcut published in 1575 depicts a Jew producing the devil from a vessel of blood obtained from a crucified child’s body. Sacrilegious usages were laid at the door of Jewish sorcerers as well as of heretics at the moment when the medieval heresies made their first open bid for popular support, and still more evidence of the similarity between the “demonic” Jew and the sorcerer/heretic/witch might be offered that in virtually every respect the “demonic” Jew whom we have in this book described was hardly distinguishable in the medieval mind from these Satanic and heretical enemies of Christendom; they are creatures of the devil, with whom they conclude secret pacts and whom they worship with obscene rites; offer sacrifices to demons; conduct secret meetings where they plot foul deeds against Christian society; and practice blasphemous ceremonies; they mock and despise the Christian faith and profane its sacred objects; they often wear a goat’s beard, and at their conventicles disguise themselves with goats’ head masks; their heads are adorned with horns, and their wives trail tails behind them; they suffer from secret ailments and deformities; they are cruel and rapacious; they buy or kidnap children and slaughter them in homage to Satan; they consume human flesh and blood; and they believe that the sacrifice of an innocent life will prolong their own lives.
  • From BLACK RELIGION AND `BLACK MAGIC’: PREJUDICE AND PROJECTION IN IMAGES OF AFRICAN-DERIVED RELIGIONS, Joseph M. Murphy, Journal of Religion, 1990: Writers and filmmakers who have little direct experience of black religions have portrayed them as `black magic’, wild and violent expressions of human malevolence. The very name `voodoo’ in the popular mind is a kind of generic term for `black magic’ and all of us in the field wage a barely successful struggle for our students to see voodoo as religion. Nearly every description of `savage’ communities encountered by Europeans into the nineteenth century included reports of incest, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. I do not mean to say that these things never happen but rather ask why people wish to see these acts as characteristic only of other “kinds” of people? These elements of `voodoography’ are crystallized nearly one hundred years later in the work of English diplomat Spenser St John, who in 1889 devoted over 70 pages of his 390-page portrait of Haiti to the subject of ‘Voodoo Worship and Cannibalism.’ . He writes of the adoration of serpents, and details a story told by a French priest at a dinner party in which the priest attended a ceremony with a sacrifice of a “goat without horns.” This is a human sacrifice, and St John divides the voodoo community into those who are satisfied with only the flesh and blood of animals and those that require the offering of the human “scapegoat.” To corroborate the French priest’s account, St John relies on an anonymous American journalist who also witnessed “hideous practices” and human sacrifice: Terrified, they fled from the scene, alive to tell their account in the New York World. The 1987 film The Believers  represents Voodoo and Santeria as an African cult of human sacrifice secretly permeating New York City, which has just imported the most potent high priest directly from Africa to empower its schemes. “Good” santeros practice what the movie portrays as well-meaning but ineffectual rites of protection. In movies like “Angel Heart,” black magic triumphs, while in films like “The Believers” the struggle must go on; in each case the hero is white and his security and very self-identity are threatened by black religion, black magic, and black identity.
  • From Red Nails, Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales, 1936: Conan glared down at the man on the iron rack. “What the devil are you doing on that thing?” Incoherent sounds issued from behind the gag and Conan tore it away, evoking a bellow of fear from the captive; “Be careful, for Set’s sake!” begged Olmec. “What for?” demanded Conan. “Do you think I care what happens to you? But I’m in a hurry. Where’s Valeria?” “Loose me!” urged Olmec, “I will tell you all! Tascela took her from me. I’ve never been anything but a puppet in Tascela’s hands. It’s worse than you think. Tascela is old—centuries old. She renews her life and her youth by the sacrifice of beautiful young women. That’s one thing that has reduced the clan to its present state. She will draw the essence of Valeria’s life into her own body, and bloom with fresh vigor and beauty.” “Are the doors locked?” asked Conan, thumbing his sword edge. “Aye! But I know a way to get in. Only Tascela and I know, and she thinks me helpless and you slain. Free me and I swear I will help you rescue Valeria. Without my help you cannot win. But when we have slain that witch, you and Valeria shall go free without harm.” Conan stooped and cut the ropes that held the prince, and Olmec rose, shaking his head like a bull and muttering imprecations. Standing shoulder to shoulder the two men presented a formidable picture of primitive power. “Lead on,” demanded Conan. “And keep ahead of me. I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw a bull by the tail.” Olmec hurried down one of the several stairs that wound down from the tower, and when they had descended a few feet, this stair changed into a narrow corridor that wound on for some distance. It ceased at a steep flight of steps leading downward. There Olmec paused. Up from below, muffled, but unmistakable, welled a woman’s scream, edged with fright, fury and shame. And Conan recognized Valeria’s voice!
  • […] Conan rose, blinking blood and dust out of his eyes. He was in the great throne room. A curious black altar stood before the throne-dais. Ranged about it, seven black candles sent up oozing spirals of thick green smoke, disturbingly scented. On the altar lay Valeria, stark naked, her white flesh gleaming in shocking contrast to the glistening ebon stone. She lay at full length, her arms stretched out above her head to their fullest extent. On the ivory throne, Tascela lolled. Bronze bowls of incense rolled their spirals about her; the wisps of smoke curled about her naked limbs. All eyes were glued on the altar and the white figure there; the crash of a thunderbolt could hardly have broken the spell, yet it was only a low cry that shattered the fixity of the scene and brought all whirling about—a low cry, yet one to make the hair stand up stiffly on the scalp. Framed in the door was a man with a tangle of white hair and a matted white beard. His skin was not like that of a normal human: There was a suggestion of scaliness about it, as if the owner had dwelt long under conditions almost antithetical to those under which human life ordinarily thrives. And there was nothing at all human about the eyes that blazed from the tangle of white hair. “Tolkemec!” whispered Tascela, livid, while the others crouched in speechless horror. “No myth, then! You have dwelt for twelve years in darkness among the bones of the dead! I see now why [the others] did not return from the catacombs—and never will return. But why have you waited so long to strike? Were you seeking something in the pits? Some secret weapon you knew was hidden there? And have you found it at last?” Hideous laughter was Tolkemec’s only reply, as he bounded into the room, for in the lean hand of Tolkemec now waved a curious jade-hued wand, on the end of which glowed a knob of crimson shaped like a pomegranate, and a beam of crimson fire lanced from it. Valeria rolled from the altar on the other side and started for the opposite wall on all fours, for hell had burst loose in the throneroom. Tolkemec was coming forward, his weird eyes ablaze, but he hesitated at the gleam of the knife in Conan’s hand. Back and forth they weaved, and the red flames leaped, searing Conan’s flank even as he hurled the knife. Old Tolkemec went down, truly slain at last. Tascela sprang—not toward Conan, but toward the wand where it shimmered like a live thing on the floor. But as she leaped, so did Valeria, with a dagger snatched from a dead man, and the blade impaled the princess between her breasts. Tascela screamed once and fell dead, and Valeria spurned the body with her heel as it fell. “I had to do that much, for my own self-respect!” panted Valeria.
  • From Human Sacrifice and Propaganda in Popular Media: Jason Tatlock, Journal of Popular Culture & Pedagogy, 2019: Human sacrifice has long fascinated audiences and spectators, many of whom have been enticed by morbid curiosity to become peripheral participants. A pro-colonial and pro-Christian view is propagated by Mel Gibson’s film Apocalypto, in which the main character, Jaguar Paw, is captured early in the film and taken to a Mayan city where a sacrificial scene occurs that is very reminiscent of the Aztec human sacrifices performed to rejuvenate the sun. Jaguar Paw escapes the sacrificial and blood-thirsty Mayans and is pursued back to his home, where his salvation comes at a beach upon which Europeans are coming ashore and the Mayans are too shocked to continue pursuing their prey. So because of the interference of the Europeans. The film represents Mayan culture as particularly bloodthirsty, with the implication that such brutality was a significant factor leading to the civilization’s end. In The Wicker Man, a police officer named Sergeant Howie has a faith infused with colonial aspirations for the Scottish island to which he is assigned to fall under mainland authority. When Howie is sacrificed by the islanders, he spends his final moments preaching, singing, and praying The victim’s adherence to a high-church-like Christianity can be regarded as strengthening the view that the film purposefully presents parallels between the islanders’ mystical understanding of Howie’s body and blood as a sacrifice on their behalf, and his faith in Jesus’ atoning death”. 2013’s The Purge demonstrates cultural divides and propagandistic aims reflected in popular expressions of human sacrifice, but in ways dissimilar to the other films, a story about maintaining law and order through social hostilities. Sacrificial imagery is steeped in ethnocentric conceptualizations that characterize the “other” as complicit in immoral, irreligious, or brutal, and for imperialistic enterprises, human sacrifice inhabits the category of practices that deserve foreign intervention and validate conquest. From the standpoint of propaganda, human sacrifice can be used to advance political goals, as well as to promote ethnocentric ideals and to further religious agendas.
  •  From Satanic Panic, Jeffrey Victor, 1993: In the spring of 1988, rumors about a dangerous Satanic cult spread throughout the rural areas of western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio. The rumor stories made claims about secret ritual meetings, the killing of cats, dogs, and other animals, and the drinking of animal blood, and they predicted the imminent kidnapping and sacrifice of a blond, blue-eyed virgin. The stories focussed upon specific, local circumstances from town to town, yet they carried remarkably similar symbolic content. Many parents held their children home from school out of fear that they might be kidnapped by “‘the cult,” as they called the threat. Absences from elementary school were three to four times greater than average, according to school attendance records. Over one hundred cars showed up at a wooded park, rumored to be a Satanic cult ritual meeting site, where they were stopped by police barricades awaiting them. Some of the cars had weapons in them, such as guns, knives, and clubs. At another location rumored to be a “cult” meeting site, an unused factory warehouse, about $4,000 damage was done to the musical equipment belonging to bands which practiced there and to the interior walls of the building. Several teenagers rumored to be members of the supposed “cult,” perhaps because of their countercultural appearance, were victims of anonymous death threats and other types of telephone harassment. Groups with baseball bats were seen wandering around in the downtown area during the evening hours. 
  • Many of the kidnapping stories take the form of predictions, but others claim that such crimes have already taken place secretly and have been concealed from public knowledge by the police and newspapers. Interestingly, about 40 percent of these kidnapping stories specifically mention blond, blue-eyed children or virgins. Why do these particular kidnapping stories feature a blond, blue-eyed virgin, rather than, for example, a dark-haired, dark-eyed victim, or perhaps a sexually promiscuous girl? The answer lies in the symbolism: In European cultures, the blond virgin has been a symbol of innocence, purity, and rare beauty in folklore stories and in folk ballads. At a deeper level, the blond virgin is a symbol for people’s cherished ideals. Stories about the kidnapping and murder of a blond virgin are metaphors for attacks upon our most cherished traditional values. Such attacks arise only from the opposite of innocence and purity, from that which is most “‘evil.”’ These rumors are parables about evil forces in our society. The rumor metaphor bespeaks this collective complaint: “Our most cherished values are in danger from mysterious forces of evil.” Now it can be understood why the Satanic cult rumors were meaningful and relevant to so many people. Their hidden meaning coveys the complaint that the moral order of our society is being threatened, and we are losing faith in our institutions and authorities to deal with the threat. it seems to me that these stories about Satanism, which circulate in rumors, claims, and allegations, are no trivial matter. I believe that they are “omens” of deep-seated problems in American society. Much like nightmares, they have something important to tell us.
  • From The Church of Satan, Michael Aquino, 2013: Satanists of the Dennis Wheatley type are presumed to have a penchant for Human Sacrifice, so Anton addressed the notion of sacrifice in general and of human sacrifice in particular. At its most elemental level, sacrifice implies the giving up of something precious to oneself in return for some other benefit. Humans being selfish creatures, it’s always been preferable to give something precious to others in order to obtain the expected benefit instead. In the past this may have taken the form of ritual murder, but civilization has succeeded in refining it to the scale of modern international wars with little trouble. And so Anton’s first prescription was simply that one should not destroy an animal or human being to avenge or appease self-generated insecurities. If a sacrifice is deemed necessary for a magical ritual, sacrifice should be a true one involving the magician himself. Less to be thought that he was advocating suicide, anton Houston to point out that a true Satanist, no subconscious hatred toward himself, would have no reason to seek self-destruction. What about the destruction of others, per the law of the Jungle? After all, the Satanic Bible seems to say that Vengeance was not only acceptable but admirable. For the fledgling Satanist, he recommended a ritual exercise in the passing of divine judgment by the symbolic destruction of individuals determined to deserve it. The idea was that the magician, forced to confront a mock reality of his wishes, would become increasingly more objective and attain a truly Divine perspective of judging the conduct of others. Again and again a Satanist begins their magical careers reciting long lists of curse victims but gradually decides they were being rather excessive in their condemnations. Finally they would become extremely discriminating in wishing any harm at all on others, realizing that clashes between human beings occur for many reasons besides unwarranted personal hatred. The most advanced Satanist included almost no curses at all. This is a law of the Jungle in its higher sense, as perhaps Kipling meant to express when he wrote his Jungle Books.
  • From Satanic Temple threatens to sue Netflix over goat god statue, CBC Radio, 2018: The Satanic Temple is threatening legal action against Netflix for the use of a Baphomet statue strikingly similar to theirs in the new series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The Temple’s co-founder and spokesperson Lucien Greaves tweeted Sunday that their monument design is copyrighted and that the show “appropriated” it. The new show, which premiered this month and stars Kiernan Shipka as a young Sabrina the Teenage Witch, has been well-received by audiences and critics so far, beyond this dispute. When a Twitter user suggested that the show’s use of the icon could be considered free publicity, Greaves replied, “Having one’s central icon associated with human sacrifice in an evil patriarchal cult is hardly good exposure and hardly a frivolous complaint. The show’s creators did not utilize a generic Sabbatic goat that is commonly used in many occult circles, such as the image created by Eliphas Levi, but instead created one easily identifiable with  TST’s statue,” Greaves tells Rolling Stone. Given the show’s utilization of the Baphomet statue to represent an evil cannibalistic cult, TST would have denied its use to the show creators, he says. The Satanic Temple has been at the center of high profile legal battles and controversies in the past, such as creating After School Satan Clubs to protest the presence of Evangelical afterschool programs at public schools. The Satanic Temple is not to be confused with the Church of Satan, founded in 1966; the two organizations have publicly feuded and denounced each other. Sources at Netflix declined to comment on their use of the Baphomet image, noting that no official claim has been filed as of this time. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/satanic-temple-suing-netflix-sabrina-statue-design-750868/ 
  • From Rosemary’s Baby: The Satanic Temple and Abortion, Heidi Beedle, Colorado Times Recorder, 2023: While conservative Christians have been quick to label many things “Satanic” or “demonic” — LGBTQ people, furries, rock and roll music, dungeons and dragons — they have consistently accused abortion advocates of working under the influence of the devil. For example, during his run for the Republican nomination for a Colorado congressional seat last year, Tim Reichert came under scrutiny for his past statements comparing abortion to human sacrifice. “Every abortion is a human sacrifice,” Reichert said in a 2021 acceptance speech for an award from Catholic Charities of Denver. “Every abortion feeds the demonic and thereby contributes directly to the demise of the church, the demise of America, and the demise of the West.” During a 2022, presentation at Colorado Christian University, anti-abortion activist Seth Gruber invoked the story Moloch, a Canaanite deity associated in biblical sources with the practice of child sacrifice, during a presentation that also compared transgender people to the Christian heresy of gnosticism. Last Thursday, the Satanic Temple announced the launch of a Satanic Abortion Clinic to provide medical abortion medication through the mail. The conservative response has been predictable: “The fact that the Satanic Temple plans to set up a n abortion clinic in New Mexico speaks volumes about who is really behind the abortion agenda,” Elisa Martinez, founder of New Mexico Alliance for Life, told LifeNews, an anti-abortion news blog. “Their willingness to flaunt the practice of ending innocent human life as a ritualistic sacrifice shows how New Mexico public officials have cooperated with this evil. Former members of TST’s St. Louis congregation note TST’s legal advocacy is not always effective, and others have criticized TST’s fundraising around abortion-related causes, especially in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. Despite the controversy, TST will continue to engage in advocacy. “All we can really do is affirm who we are and who we aren’t,” says spokesperson Chalice Blythe. “Our actions are a reflection of our deeply held values. Those values do not include things like child sacrifice or anything like that. We understand people’s fears, but that fear and that discomfort cannot stop us from seeking justice.” https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/02/rosemarys-baby-the-satanic-temple-and-abortion/51771/ 

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The post Episode 195 – Satanic Sacrifices appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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• Queenofheartsdesserts.com: I’m a Bay Area born & raised pastry chef who’s been working in bakeries, fine dining, and catering for over 20 years. I attended California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, and have had the privilege of working in some of the Bay’s finest eateries, in both sweet & savory capacities and cuisines of all types. Food has been my passion from a very young age, along with guiding principles of ecological sustainability & social justice – that is why Queen of Hearts is committed to using organic & local ingredients whenever possible, supporting our regional grain economy, turning no one away for lack of funds, and sharing my favorite flavors from around the world.
• From Matthew 26, King James Version: Now on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover? And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at thy house with my disciples.  And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the passover. Now when the evening was come, he sat down with the twelve. And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I? And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born. Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.
• From Bible Reference, Anonymous, 2002: Why did Judas ask Jesus if he was the traitor? Perhaps he was trying to cover his guilt by joining in with the others. Perhaps he wanted to see if Jesus already knew he was the guilty one. Or this might be a sarcastic or resigned statement of someone who knows he’s caught. In either case, Jesus acknowledges that He knows the truth. John adds details to the story: Jesus gives a morsel of bread to Judas after dipping it in the bowl that He has mentioned. At that moment, Satan enters fully into Judas. Jesus tells him to do what he is going to do quickly. Judas immediately leaves. The other disciples think Jesus has sent him on an errand, not realizing Judas is the betrayer. In the middle of the meal, Jesus picks up a loaf or cake of bread. He blesses it: This might have been the customary prayer of thanks for bread. Next, Jesus breaks the bread, also according to the custom of the day. Jesus then gives a command to eat, noting that the bread is His body. The disciples likely had no idea what Jesus meant by this statement. It would only become clear after His death. The requirements for the Passover meal included drinking four cups of wine: Jesus was using this moment in the Passover meal to introduce something new to the disciples and, through them, to the church that would soon be born. Jesus associates that cup, representing god’s gift to Israel, with his own blood. He commands the disciples to drink it, with that specific command in mind. The Passover meal was observed by nearly every Jewish person as a way of remembering and celebrating god’s rescue of Israel through the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. Jesus’ words have a connection to a powerful moment between god and the people of Israel, when the blood of animal sacrifices was used to seal an agreement between god and the people. The disciples, then, would have grown up knowing that a covenant between God and His people was sealed with the blood of a sacrifice. 
  • From Summary of Theology, Thomas Aquinas, 13th Century: I answer that, The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine authority. It was necessary that the consummation New Law instituted by Christ should contain Christ Himself crucified, not merely in signification or figure, but also in very truth. This belongs to Christ’s love, because he promises us his bodily [company] and does not deprive us of his bodily presence but unites us with himself, saying “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him.” Since faith is of things unseen, Christ shows us his [godliness] invisibly, so also in this sacrament He shows us his flesh in an invisible manner. Some men accordingly, not paying heed to these things, have contended that Christ’s body and blood are not in this sacrament except as [a metaphor], but this is to be rejected as heretical. Christ’s body is not in this sacrament in the same way as a body is in a place, but in a special manner which is proper to this sacrament. Hence we say that Christ’s body is upon many altars. And this is done by Divine power in this sacrament; for the whole substance of the bread is changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of Christ’s blood. Hence this is not a natural [change] but, with a name of its own, it can be called “transubstantiation.”
  • From Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church on the body, blood of Christ, Gregory A. Smith, Pew Research, 2019:  Transubstantiation – the idea that during Mass, the bread and wine used for Communion become the body and blood of Jesus Christ – is central to the Catholic faith. But a new Pew Research Center survey finds that most self-described Catholics don’t believe this core teaching. In fact, nearly seven-in-ten Catholics (69%) say they personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Communion “are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” Just one-third of U.S. Catholics (31%) say they believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.” Most Catholics who believe that the bread and wine are symbolic do not know that the church holds that transubstantiation occurs. Overall, 43% of Catholics believe that the bread and wine are symbolic AND that this reflects the position of the church, while one-in-five Catholics (22%) reject the idea of transubstantiation,even though they know it’s the church’s teaching. A small share of Catholics (3%) profess to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist despite not knowing the church’s teaching on transubstantiation. The survey also finds that belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is most common among older Catholics, though majorities in every age group (including 61% of those age 60 and over) believe that the bread and wine are symbols, not the actual body and blood of Christ. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/05/transubstantiation-eucharist-u-s-catholics/ 
  • • From The Black Arts, Richard Cavendish, 1967: As early as the second century A.D., St. Irenaeus accused the Gnostic teacher Marcus of perversions of the Mass, pretending to consecrate cups of wine. In 1307 the Order of Knights Templar were tried on charges of worshipping the Devil in the form of a cat, and it was also said that they did not believe in the Eucharist and that the Order’s priests omitted the phrase “’This is my body” from the Mass. Early in the following century it was said that Bohemia was infested with thousands of Luciferianss who abused the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and took the Devil as their lord. Later descriptions of the witch’s sabbath in confessions tell of the meeting by night, the Devil’s appearance as man, cat, dog or goat, the obscene kiss, the renunciation of Christianity, and the witches also shared with the earlier sects a particular hatred for the Eucharist, which was originally rooted in a denial of the Church’s claim to be the channel between man and God. The words spoken by the priest in the Mass transformed the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and in eating the body the worshipper became one with Christ, but heretics believed themselves to be in direct touch with God, without needing the intervention of the Church, the priest and the consecrated host. Disrespect for the Eucharist – expressed, for example, by heretics who said that the host tasted to them like dung – turned in Satanism to positive hatred for the body and blood of the detested Christian Saviour. At Easter they would go to Mass, keep the consecrated hosts in their mouths and spit them out into a cesspool to show their contempt for Christ. There were tales of Masses said with black hosts and black chalices, of mocking screams of ‘Beelzebub!’ at the consecration; the host was triangular or hexagonal, generally black but sometimes blood-red. Hosts were burned and the consecrated wine poured contemptuously on the floor. A small crucifix was brought in at one meeting, hosts were nailed to the figure of Christ and the congregation stabbed at the hosts with knives.
    • From the Devil and the Jews, Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg, 1943: A strange case is that of a converted Jew executed in 1514 or 1515, reported to have confessed stealing an “imprisoned devil” from a priest with which he performed much magic before he finally sold it. He had also gone in for poisoning on a large scale, stole several consecrated hosts, and kidnapped two children. A Jewish surgeon there [supposedly] revealed that several Jews in a town in the south of France had compounded a poison out of Christians’ hearts, spiders, frogs, lizards, human flesh, and sacred hosts, and had distributed the resultant powder to be deposited in wells and streams which supplied Christians with water. This tale, in one form or other, spread on the heels of the plague and was eagerly seized upon by the terror-stricken populace. The Jews, as suppose master magicians, could not but have been suspected of desiring to utilize the wafer in their own infamous sorceries. True, there is no direct charge to this effect but it is implicit in the background of the entire host-desecration complex. “It may well be,” remarks Schudt, after describing several unorthodox uses to which the host was put by Christians, “that the Jews at times intended to misuse such hosts for their base magic,” a suspicion which must have occurred to many more than himself and which occasionally did find a measure of expression. We have already noted the alleged Jewish inclusion of “the body of Jesus Christ” in a poison calculated to spread death over a continent. From Mainz comes another significant piece of evidence: Some time between 1384 and 1387, while Peter of Luxembourg occupied the bishopric, the servants of a rich widow reported that they had heard the sound of a child’s crying coming from a box and upon opening the box had discovered there a toad, and a host bleeding profusely from the toad’s bites. He immediately ordered an investigation, which produced this story: the widow owned a large stock of grain, and to make sure of getting a good price for it she went to a Jew for help. The Jew instructed her to get him a host, which she did on the pretext that she was ill and required the last sacrament. He placed the host and toad in the box, with the promise that this would bring her the profit she desired. The significant feature of the story is the toad, which, as everyone knew, represented the devil. To offer a host to the devil was the blackest sort of black, [albeit] of a peculiarly Christian variety.
  • From COTTON MATHER’S COSMOLOGY AND THE 1692 SALEM WITCH TRIALS, DAVID WAYNE PRICE, University of North London, 2001: The Devil’s sabbath would also include two important sacraments: baptism and the eucharist. For the Puritan clergy, these imitations of Baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the Book of Life were the tangible and devilish counterparts to the Covenant of salvation. In 1694, Massachusetts’ minister Joshua Scotto  identified the second of these counterfeit sacraments, the Devil’s eucharist, describing it as `A Damned Crew of Devils feasting on Red Bread and Wine, in derision of our Lord’s Body and Blood’. Scottow’s disgust for this inversion of the eucharist was well founded in the 1692 Salem witch examinations. Abigail Williams testified against Sarah Cloyce that not only had some forty Salem witches met in the woods near Samuel Parris’s house, but that `Goody Cloyse and Goody Good were their Deacons ‘. In terms reflecting Roman Catholic transubstantiation, another witness to this witch’s meeting stated that the Devil’s priest `administered the sacrament unto them … with Red Bread, and Red Wine like Blood’. With respect to this testimony Gildrie comments, `Among the orthodox, and particularly in the preaching of Samuel Parris, the Salem village pastor, Catholic ritual was a form of witchcraft in any case’.The imitations of the Lord’s Supper and the Book of Life were the tangible and horrible counterparts to the Covenant of salvation so ardently believed in by the Puritans. In the mind of Cotton Mather and the rest of the New England clergy, this was the ultimate expression of sin. Nothing could be more treacherous, for the witch shunned God’s grace and mocked the covenant, In the framework of Puritan theology, it was the equivalent of committing treason.”
  • • From La-Bas, JK Huysman, 1891: At the end of the fifteenth century Satanism had assumed the proportions that you know. One case is not too well known for me to cite here: that of the priest Benedictus who cohabited with a she-devil and consecrated the hosts holding them upside down. For twenty-five years, at Agen, a Satanistic association regularly celebrated black masses and committed murder and polluted three thousand three hundred and twenty hosts! And the Bishop, who was a good and ardent prelate, never dared deny the monstrosities committed in his diocese. These priests, in their baseness, often go so far as to celebrate the mass with great hosts which then they cut through the middle and afterwards glue to a parchment, similarly cloven, and use abominably to satisfy their passions in an act of divine sodomy, you might say. A canon here in Paris keeps white mice in cages, and he takes them along when he travel: He feeds them on consecrated hosts and on pastes impregnated with poisons skilfully dosed. When these unhappy beasts are saturated, he takes them, holds them over a chalice, and with a very sharp instrument he pricks them here and there. The blood flows into the vase and he uses it, in a way which I shall explain in a moment, to strike his enemies with death.
  • The canon rose, and erect, with arms outstretched, vociferated in a ringing voice of hate: “And thou, thou whom, in my quality of priest, I force, whether thou wilt or no, to descend into this host, to incarnate thyself in this bread, Jesus, Artisan of Hoaxes, Bandit of Homage, Robber of Affection, hear! Since the day when thou didst issue from the complaisant bowels of a Virgin, thou hast failed all thine engagements, belied all thy promises. Thou hast forgotten the poverty thou didst preach, enamoured vassal of Banks! Thou hast seen the weak crushed beneath the press of profit; thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, and thou hast caused thy Popes to answer by excuses and evasive promises, sacred shyster, huckster god! We would drive deeper the nails into thy hands, press down the crown of thorns upon thy brow, and that we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!” “Amen!” trilled the soprano voices of the choir boys. Durtal listened in amazement to this torrent of blasphemies and insults. The foulness of the priest stupefied him. The women fell to the carpet and writhed. The canon made a few passes and the host sailed, tainted and soiled, over the steps and women rushed upon the Eucharist and, grovelling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread while the canon, frothing with rage, was chewing up sacramental wafers, taking them out of his mouth, wiping himself with them, and distributing them to the women, who ground them underfoot, howling, or fell over each other struggling to get violate them. 
  • From Satanic Rituals, Anton LaVey, 1972: History has produced entire sects and monastic orders that fell into iconoclasm. Think about it; you personally may have known of a priest or minister who wasn’t quite what he should have been! The seventeenth century priests who celebrated the Black Mass need not have been intrinsically evil: heretical, most certainly; perverse, definitely; but harmfully evil, probably not. The exploits of La Voisin, which have been recounted in such a sensational manner, if simplified reveal her as a beautician, midwife, lady pharmacist, abortionist, who had a flair for theatrics. Nevertheless, La Voisin gave the Church what it needed: a real honest-to-Satan Black Mass. She put the Black Mass on the map. Depending on individual predilection, those who received inspiration from the likes of La Voisin could either effect a therapeutically valid form of rebellion or fill the ranks of the “Christian Satanists” -miscreants who adopt Christian standards of Satanism. The Black Mass which follows is the version performed by the Society of Luciferians in late nineteenth and early twentieth century France. Obviously taken from prior Black Masses, it also derives from the texts of the Holy Bible, the work of Charles Baudelaire and Huysmans. It is the most consistently Satanic version this author has encountered. While it maintains the degree of blasphemy necessary to make it effective psychodrama, it does not dwell on inversion purely for the sake of blasphemy, but elevates the concepts of Satanism to a noble and rational degree. Perhaps the most potent sentence in the entire mass follows the desecration of the Host: “Vanish into the void of thy empty Heaven, for thou wert never, nor shall thou ever be.” 
  • All implements standard to Satanic ritual are employed: bell, chalice, phallus, sword, etc.  The chalice containing wine or liquor is placed between the altar’s thighs, and on it is a paten holding a round wafer of turnip or of coarse black bread. The chalice and paten should be shrouded with a square black veil. The chalice and paten, on which rests the wafer of turnip or coarse black bread, are uncovered by the celebrant. He takes the paten into both hands, and raises it to about breast level in an attitude of offering, and recites: “Come, O Mighty Lord of Darkness, and look favorably on this sacrifice which we have prepared in thy name. And this we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, profaner of the ample vices, abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, impotent king, fugitive god! Behold, great Satan, this symbol of the flesh of him who would purge the Earth of pleasure and who, in the name of Christian justice has caused the death of millions. We curse him and defile his name. O Infernal Majesty, condemn him to the Pit, evermore to suffer in perpetual anguish. Bring Thy wrath upon him, O Prince of Darkness, and rend him that he may know the extent of Thy anger. Call forth Thy legions that they may witness what we do in Thy name. Send forth thy messengers to proclaim this deed, and send the Christian minions staggering to their doom. Smite him anew, O Lord of Light, that his angels, cherubim, and seraphim may cower and tremble with fear, prostrating themselves before Thee in respect of Thy power. Send crashing down the gates of Heaven, that the murders of our ancestors may be avenged!” Then he raises the thurible three times to the Baphomet or to the inverted cross and bows again, and the celebrant inserts the wafer into the vagina of the altar.
  • • From Oklahoma Catholics Drop Lawsuit After Satanists Return Wafer, Denver Nicks, Time Magazine, 2014: The Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City has dropped a lawsuit against a Satanic group after it agreed to turn over a communion wafer it hoped to use in a “Black Mass” scheduled to take place in September. “I am relieved that we have been able to secure the return of the sacred Host, and that we have prevented its desecration as part of a planned satanic ritual,” Coakley said in a statement issued by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Coakley sued the Satanic group, the Church of Ahriman, on the grounds that it stole the communion wafer, which Catholics hold to be a sacred part of the Mass ritual. “I remain concerned about the dark powers that this satanic worship invites into our community and the spiritual danger that this poses to all who are involved in it, directly or indirectly,” Coakley said in a statement. Adam Daniel, the Satan worshipper set to lead next month’s Black Mass, said fighting the lawsuit wasn’t worth the trouble. “I don’t feel like wasting thousands of dollars over a cookie,” he said. https://time.com/3160504/oklahoma-catholics-satan-wafer/ 
      • From Oklahoma Christians counter Satanic mockery of Virgin Mary, Catholic News Agency, 2018: Another planned black mass and an additional satanic ritual in Oklahoma City is timed to desecrate an image of the Virgin Mary. In reaction, the local Catholic archbishop and Christians from all backgrounds will join in prayer. Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City explained the need for prayer and called on Catholics to join the Unity Prayer Service “in response to this blasphemous event, and the many other acts of hatred and violence happening in our world in recent weeks. I also ask that we pray for the conversion of this man and for all who have not yet come to know the lord of life. As the local government has refused to interfere with this abhorrent blasphemous worship that is being publicly sanctioned in our community, we will reaffirm commitment to protect the religious liberty of Christians and other believers as well,” Archbishop Coakley said. A group called the Church of Ahriman has scheduled a ticketed event at the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall, which is run by the city government. The event involves the attempted corruption of a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary using sulfur, menstrual blood, and the ashes of desecrated and burned pages of the Koran. It involves the consumption of a pig’s heart and the “entrapment” of the Virgin Mary in a ritual triangle, in an attempted parody of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The statue will be smashed. “ “We’re trying to show people how chaotic we are in nature and how chaotic our religion is. It’s all based on chaos,” Adam Daniels, a leader in the group, told the Oklahoma Gazette. Daniels said the abuse of the Virgin Mary statue aims to illustrate black magic and his religion’s teachings. The Black Mass often involves the desecration of the Eucharist, generally by stealing a consecrated host from a Catholic Church and using it in a profane sexual ritual. Daniels said that the event is legal. “We’re not doing anything against the law,” Daniels said. “Against canon law, sure. But the United States’ law? No. We’re not doing anything wrong.” Oklahoma City’s News 9, citing court records, in 2010 reported that Daniels was a registered sex offender. Daniels claimed the Catholic Church was attempting to infringe on his religious liberty by blocking his rituals. “They’re the one who started this fight; I’m just bringing it to them,” he told the Gazette. An official with the Oklahoma City music hall told CNA it has a policy of neutrality. “We do not discriminate against any group based on the content of their message as long as it was not hosting something specifically illegal in nature, or that during the production they were taking part in illegal activities.”
  • From Satanic Bible Anniversary Edition, Michael Aquino, 2019: Once the Church of Satan got started Anton LaVey began to be pestered for a YouKnowWhat despite the fact that he didn’t harbor any particular passions against Catholicism. But there was one Satanic Priest who did: Wayne F. West, a defrocked Catholic priest in Detroit. Wayne’s hatred of Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, approached the pathological, and he was only too happy to take the Catholic High Mass and rework it into a version that left la-Bas’ in the dust. The only mishap was my overenthusiastic use of incendiary flashpowder, which set the living altar on fire, eliciting a yowl from her and a burst of laughter from the assemblage. The purpose of any Black Mass is to purge preconditioned superstitions. Within Western cultures, in which Christianity remains the prevalent religious preconditioning, resistance to and rejection of these chains occasionally requires the Black Mass. Once one has seen his sacred cows trampled upon with impunity, he will never again feel the same fear of them, such as in ”1984,” wherein the magician O’Brien forces his subject Winston Smith to “trample upon the sacred cow” of his love for Julia. Although Winston recognizes that unendurable psychological terror was used on him, he nonetheless finds himself unable to recapture his original illusion of self sacrificial love for her. Julia, put through a similar “Black Mass” incorporating differently-personalized elements of emotional impasse, experiences the same disruption of her illusions. Hence a Black Mass for a Mormon would be quite different from that for a Muslim or Buddhist. The Black Mass principle was brought forward into the “mind-control brainwashing” of Cold War conspiracy theory by John Frankenheimer’s “Manchurian Candidate”, in which a Korean War soldier has been “brainwashed” to obey commands upon seeing the Queen of Diamonds playing card until another officer says, “We’ll see what they can do: 52 red queens and I are telling you it’s over. The links, the beautifully conditioned links, are smashed as of now because we say so. We’re busting up the joint, we’re tearing out all the wires. We’re busting it up so good all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men will never put old Raymond back together again. You don’t work any more. That’s an order. Anybody invites you to a game of solitaire, you tell them sorry, buster, the ball game is over.” It is important to note that a Black Mass in no way seeks to re-indoctrinate its subject with any other belief-system; it is a chain-breaking experience only.

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The post Episode 191 – Lucifer’s Library: Weird Reviews appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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• • From The Moral Philosophy of Individualism, Mark D. McCombs, University of Northern Iowa, 1991: Individualism refers to a social theory or ideology assigning a higher moral value to the individual than to the community or society. It consequently advocates leaving individuals free to act as they think most conducive to their self-interest. Society, then, may be defined as an aggregate of autonomous but interacting individuals. This then leads to the idea of the public good, defined by Rousseau as the collected good of all separate individuals. Such being the case, collective interests are considered to be the sum of all individual interests, and the interests of autonomous individuals are recognized. The concept of individualism often carries with it negative connotations. Associated with selfishness and egotism, its principles are seen by many to be in opposition to social stability. However, individualism does not necessarily result in extreme selfishness nor does it always promote competition. One can argue, in fact, that individualism is as much a description of social reality as it is a morality directing the behavior of individuals. These ideas developed in response to previous feudal societies: Medieval societies did not recognize the autonomous individual or an individual’s rights. As Europe progressed out of feudalism, the reconstruction of political authority freed people from the anonymity and insecurities of feudal society, providing the circumstances for a birth of individualism. As a philosophy, full-fledged individualism seems to have emerged first in England. Because England was a relatively less rigid society than the rest of Europe, it was a state in which it was easier for individuals to assert their demands. 
  • The precise term “individualism” arose out of the European reaction to the French Revolution and to its apparent source, the thought of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was characterized by a new spirit of inquiry, of discovery, and of individual self-confidence and assertiveness. This change in attitudes allowed for the onset of individualism, yet at the time of the revolution, conservative thought condemned the interests and rights of the individual. ince individuals pass out of existence, conservatives argued that society requires that the inclinations of its members should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.” The French Revolution was thought to qe proof that the ideas of the individual imperilled the stability of the commonwealth. Scottish economist Adam Smith proposed that individuals pursuing their own self-interest would be a part of a natural system which would ultimately help society. Smith advocated government noninterference in the economy. British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke built upon these ideas when he recognized the system explained by Smith as a natural one. Capitalism was seen as the simple and obvious system for mutual advantage. Burke equated the laws of commerce with the laws of nature and thus, by extension, with the laws of God. Hobbes argued that people were like atoms, each separate and individual, acting in their own self-interest in response to, and as a part of, a larger whole. He envisioned a society in which individuals, acting in their separate self interests, would form a harmony when those interests were considered together. Hobbes was advocating a political structure which would facilitate individualism within society.  Locke argued that the rights of life, liberty, and property were natural rights for all people. These rights came before any idea of an organized society. Thus, society’s role in respect to these rights was to protect them. The views of Locke were powerful support for the establishment of industrial capitalism in which freedom from government restraint was vital. Tttttttthttps://scholarworks.uni.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1120&context=draftings 
  • From On Liberty, John Stuart Mill, 1859: Protection against the magistrate is not enough; there needs to be protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. But though this proposition is not likely to be contested in general terms, the practical question, where to place the limit—how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control—is a subject on which nearly everything remains to be done. All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed. What these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs; but if we except a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which least progress has been made in resolving. People are accustomed to believe that their feelings, on subjects of this nature, are better than reasons, and render reasons unnecessary. The practical principle which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person’s mind that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes, would like them to act. No one acknowledges to himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but an opinion on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons, can only count as one person’s preference. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority. The morality between Spartans and Helots, between planters and negroes, between princes and subjects, between men and women, has been for the most part the creation of these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments thus generated, react in turn upon the moral feelings of the members of the ascendant class, in their relations among themselves.  https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty.html
  • From A history of happiness, Carl Cederström & Sean Illilng, Vox, 2018: Aristotle was one of the first to offer what you might call a philosophy of happiness. For him, happiness consisted of being a good person, of living virtuously and not being a slave to one’s lowest impulses. Happiness was a goal, something at which humans constantly aim but never quite reach. Epicurus believed that happiness was found in the pursuit of simple pleasures. The rise of Christianity upended Greek notions of happiness, and suddenly the good life was all about sacrifice and the postponement of gratification. True happiness was now something to be attained in the afterlife. The Enlightenment and the rise of market capitalism transformed Western culture yet again: Individualism became the dominant ethos, with self-fulfillment and personal authenticity the highest goods. Although Freud didn’t think human beings were especially designed for happiness, there were other figures who emerged from that movement, people like the Austrian psychoanalyst William Reich, who popularized this idea that happiness was connected to free love and free sexuality. These ideas got picked up by the early Bohemians and later countercultural movement. Happiness became increasingly about personal liberation and pursuing an authentic life. So happiness is seen as a uniquely individualist pursuit — it’s all about freedom. By the end of the ‘60s, there’s a feeling that society is not allowing people to be authentic, that corporations are the enemy. People are thirsting for solidarity, and they see corporate life as dead and two-dimensional. And this is very powerful stuff that upends society. But what happens as you move through the ‘70s and into the ‘80s is the advertising industry effectively co-opted these countercultural trends. At the same time, Reagan and Thatcher were advancing a notion of happiness and consumerism. The idea of happiness we now have, this pursuit of authenticity and personal freedom, may have once been a genuinely noble goal, but over time, these values have been co-opted and transformed and used to normalize a deeply unjust and undesirable situation. There really is no way to accurately compare happiness today with happiness 50 or 100 years ago. We’ve looked at ideas of collective happiness as ugly or creepy or totalitarian, but they need not be. I believe we desperately need to reimagine what collective happiness might look like. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/4/17759590/happiness-fantasy-capitalism-culture-carl-cederstrom 
  • From Is Christianity Individualistic or Collectivist? Derek Rismawy, UC Irvine, 2013: People have often wondered whether Christianity was more of an individualistic religion, with an emphasis on the person, or collectivistic, with a emphasis on the whole race or community. At different points in history the church has emphasized one over the other. I offer you Machen’s answer first: “It is true that historic Christianity is in conflict at many points with the collectivism of the present day; it does emphasize, against the claims of society, the worth of the individual soul. It provides for the individual a refuge from all the fluctuating currents of human opinion, a secret place of meditation where a man can come alone into the presence of god. It does give a man courage to stand, if need be, against the world. If a man once comes to believe in a personal god, then the worship of Him will not be regarded as selfish isolation, but as the chief end of man.”  And now C.S. Lewis on the twin errors of Totalitarianism and individualism: “The idea that the whole human race is, in a sense, one thing —one huge organism, like a tree—must not be confused with the idea that individual differences do not matter or that real people are somehow less important than collective things like classes, races, and so forth. My nose and my lungs are very different but they are only alive at all because they are parts of my body and share its common life. Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body—different from one another and each contributing what no other could. When you find yourself wanting to turn your children, or pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember that God probably never meant them to be that. A Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist. I feel a strong desire to say which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us: He always sends errors into the world in pairs, and he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.” So, is Christianity collectivistic or individualistic? Machen and Lewis answer: Yes. https://derekzrishmawy.com/2013/01/03/is-christianity-individualistic-or-collectivist-yes-c-s-lewis-and-j-gresham-machen/ 
  • From Introduction to Romanticism, M.A.R. Habib, Rutgers University, 2025: Romanticism included an intense focus on human subjectivity and its expression, an exaltation of nature which was seen as a vast repository of symbols, of childhood and spontaneity, of primitive forms of society, of human passion and emotion, of the poet, of the sublime, and of imagination as a more comprehensive and inclusive faculty than reason. The most fundamental literary and philosophical disposition of Romanticism has often been seen as irony, an ability to accommodate conflicting perspectives of the world. Romantics often insisted on artistic autonomy and attempted to free art from moralistic and utilitarian constraints, and their worldview spawned various oppositional movements such Socialism, anarchism, cults of irrationalism and revivals of tradition and religion. Romanticism cannot be placed within any set of these movements since it effectively spanned them all. Underlying nearly all Romantic views of literature was an intense individualism based on the authority of experience and, often, a broadly democratic orientation, as well as an optimistic and sometimes utopian belief in progress. 
    • Moreover, the Romantics shared Enlightenment notions of the infinite possibility of human achievement, and of a more optimistic conception of human nature as intrinsically good rather than as fallen and theologically depraved. In all these aspects, there was some continuity between Enlightenment and Romantic thought. However, many of the Romantics, including some of the figures cited above such as Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron, reacted against certain central features of the new bourgeois social and economic order. Appalled by the squalor and the mechanized, competitive routine of the cities, as well as by the moral mediocrity of a bourgeois world given over to what Shelley called the principles of “utility” and “calculation,” they turned for spiritual relief to mysticism, to Nature, to Rousseauistic dreams of a simple, primitive and uncorrupted lifestyle, which they sometimes located in an idealized period of history such as the Middle Ages. In general, the Romantics exalted the status of the poet as a genius whose originality was based on his ability to discern connections among apparently discrepant phenomena and to elevate human perception toward a comprehensive, unifying vision. The most crucial human faculty for such integration was the Imagination, which most Romantics saw as a unifying power, one which could harmonize the other strata of human perception such as sensation and reason. Hence the relation between Romanticism and the mainstreams of bourgeois thought, which had risen to hegemony on the waves of the Enlightenment, the French and Industrial Revolutions, was deeply ambivalent. Our own era is profoundly pervaded by this ambivalent heritage. https://habib.camden.rutgers.edu/introductions/romanticism/ 
  • From What isn’t humanism?, UK Humanists, 2025: Humanism is not Individualism/egoism: humanists believe we should be free to decide how we choose to live; however an excessive individualism or egoism that was overtly self-interested and ignored the consequences of our actions on others would not be compatible with humanism. Humanists do not deny the pursuit of sensory pleasures; however, these are not the only ingredients of a good life. Humanists do not subscribe to the belief that truth and morality are purely a matter of personal preference. Humanism is as opposed to atheist totalitarianism as it is to religious authoritarianism; both typically deny human rights and freedoms and devalue individual human beings in the pursuit of some unquestionable goal. Humanists do not believe we can build a perfect world, but typically believe we can build a better one. While denying the existence of some ‘ultimate’ meaning to the universe, humanists believe we can act to make our own lives meaningful. Nor is humanism the worship of human beings: humanists seek to remove the pedestal on which gods or other idols have been placed rather than place human beings upon it; human beings are to be valued and their positive capacities celebrated, but they are not to be worshipped. Sometimes people will describe themselves as being ‘religious humanists.’ This may be because they feel they belong to a religion in a cultural or familial sense, but they hold humanist beliefs. Some may simply define ‘religion’ in a way that includes all worldviews or approaches to life, and therefore define humanism as a religion. However, some may hold religious beliefs and define ‘humanism’ differently. It is important that students are aware that the word is being used here in a different way. Most modern dictionary definitions of humanism today define humanism as a non-religious worldview. https://understandinghumanism.org.uk/what-is-humanism/what-isnt-humanism/ 
  • From What is Satanism?, David Rutledge, Australian Broadcasting Company, 2022: Anton LaVey established the Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966, and three years later published The Satanic Bible. LaVey was a notorious hippy-baiter — he hated the burgeoning peace and love movement at least as much as he hated the Christian church, if not more. He was also a devout individualist who articulated a philosophy of what today we would call self-empowerment. Says Peter Gilmore, “When it comes to celebrating ego and self-deification, we understand that nature is hierarchical, and that there are always going to be different levels of people. But in being our own gods, we can be beneficent gods, and we can deal with others in a very charitable and loving way. It’s not about crushing other folk, which is how people tend to interpret self-centredness.” This all sounds well and good, but even a quick browse through The Satanic Bible reveals an unnervingly steely kind of social Darwinism. LaVey was an admirer of arch libertarian Ayn Rand and described Satanism as “Ayn Rand’s philosophy with ceremony and ritual added.” It’s an often-noted irony that much of The Satanic Bible anticipates the social and economic doctrines of modern-day Republicans in the USA. He was also a eugenicist, and often advocated in interviews for the establishment of a police state. The Satanic Temple rejects the Church of Satan’s stance according to Stephen Long, a minister of Satan: “During the 1800s, the Romantic poets started to look at Lucifer as a heroic figure. The foundational belief structures of the Western world were being reconfigured, and so during that time he started to be seen as a champion of the outsider.” As a gay former Christian who underwent ex-gay therapy and other attempts at “deliverance” in his teens, Long knows what it’s like to be an outsider. But his perspective on Satan as champion of minority rights also informs his understanding of Satanism as a materialist, carnal religion in interesting ways. “Satanism is a religion of the body, and my concern as a Satanist goes downward, toward the earth,” Long says. “Part of that means material pleasure — but I’m not some kind of libertine, I’m very conservative in how I live my life. As I understand it, the carnality of Satanism also needs to be put in the broader context of material conditions, physical conditions — and that includes people’s physical needs being met. What are the conditions that people are living under, and are those conditions just?” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-06/is-satanism-a-religion-of-social-justice/101591462 
  • From Satanism As Self-Empowerment, Alexandra James, Homegirl Talk, 2018: I don’t feel that I ever “became” a Satanist per se. I feel that my lived experience has shaped my attitudes, and the Satanic philosophy encapsulates my own particular perspective. The appeal to me is that it is a religion and philosophy that places the highest value on the Self, and as such, celebrates every manner of individual. As a Satanist, I believe that my power comes from within, and is attained through my own actions and will. I take all responsibility for my actions; in Satanism there is no “scapegoat” or idea that “the devil made me do it.” Quite the opposite, I believe both the triumphs and the ills of humanity are caused by individual’s actions themselves. Not “bestowed” upon us, or caused by supernatural forces of evil. Satanism values individualism, knowledge and self-empowerment. The beauty is that there’s many avenues for exploration within Satanism; there is no set doctrine or set of rules that “must” be followed. I have always felt that because humans are individuals, there is no one-size-fits-all religion, or set of rules for living. What works for one person might not work for another. Satanism attempts to transcend binary ways of thinking. There is no belief that you must conform to certain moral doctrines or commandments. Or that others must be taught the “one correct” way of living, otherwise they will be spiritually punished. Overall, Satanism is an inclusive philosophy because at its nature it celebrates the individual. I understand not everyone is going to like me, whether I am a Satanist or not. And I don’t feel I should have to apologize or change certain aspects of myself to conform or please others’ moral sensibilities. There are plenty of ways I was and am dragged down and insulted just by being a woman in the public sphere; if it’s not “witch” or “devil worshiper” it’s being judged by my age, appearance, hair, body, etc. Unfortunately, these are the realities of living in a patriarchal society. So I may as well work it in a way that feels self-empowering to myself. In many ways, we’re also playing with people’s phobias of what a stereotypical “Satanist” looks like, or on a larger scale, what a woman looks like. Evil, wicked, in cohorts with the devil, lustful, sinful, drinking blood, murdering babies. Tired narratives cast upon us by patriarchal rule.
  • From Satanism’s Pose of Individualism, Sam Buntz, Athwart, 2021: Mary Harrington recently wrote a lively and provocative piece on how Satanism has become the reigning ideology of the United States. This was daring work, since you naturally ratchet up the stakes in a debate by claiming, “My opponent is siding with Satan.” Harrington defines Satanism as pure, unfettered individualism or egoism, and sees it as the implicit and even in some cases explicit ideology of our time. She points to articles in publications like Salon, which suggest that Satanists are pretty cool, amounting to effective champions of liberalism. The pose of Satanism has been attractive for centuries: From exalted poets like Charles Baudelaire to the guys in Slayer, Satan comes to stand for the ultimate rebel, the person who cannot fit into the established order of things, who seeks to break it and remold it nearer to his heart’s desire. This is an admittedly powerful and romantic point of view, and it is not hard to understand why it has resonated throughout time. But, funnily enough, Satanism does not seem to lead to a state where unique personalities are allowed to flourish: By the time Paradise Lost ends, Milton’s Satan is like Dante’s Satan: boring. He is a snake with nothing to say. It is similar to the pattern presented in Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The White Witch lures you in with the promise of Turkish Delight and indefinite pleasure, only to leave you frozen as a statue in her garden. Baudelaire embraces Satanism in a spirit of authentic Romantic revolt, using a diabolic persona to express a universal sense of outrage at the oppressive weight of the universe; but Baudelaire’s poetic persona are ambivalent creations, more than half-cautionary. A contemporary Satanist, logging on to doomscroll or gaze at pornography, is devoid of this rebellious aura. He or she is simply like every bored teen on planet earth. Atomized Satanic individualism is a sad and numb person opening tabs in Google Chrome and then slamming the laptop shut when Mom unexpectedly walks in the room. I remember attending a Unitarian Universalist Church during a period of religious investigation. The congregation’s guiding mantra was “God is whatever you want God to be.” I reasoned to myself that if God was whatever I wanted God to be then I would, in effect, be God. This struck me as absurd. What Harrington calls Satanism is this very tendency—to deify one’s own will, whim, or power of arbitrary choice. According to this ideology, WHAT one wills does not actually matter; for obvious reasons, this is a recipe for unhappiness and insanity. As I have previously written, there is only one way to combat the hyper-capitalism of consumption and commodification: “You start by giving a gift.” This is how all great saints and statesmen found their virtue. https://www.athwart.org/infernal-bore-satanic-pose-dull-individuality/ 

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The post Episode 190 – Satanic Individualism appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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• From rosemary’s Baby, Film Site, 2018: Rosemary’s Baby is Polish director Roman Polanski’s first American feature film and his second horror film “Repulsion” in 1965, about a mentally-unstable, sexually-terrified woman left alone in her apartment. Polanski served as the scriptwriter and based the darkly atmospheric “Rosemary” upon Ira Levin’s best-selling novel of the same name. The film was produced by Paramount Studios and veteran, low-budget horror film maker William Castle, best known for gimmicky films such as House on Haunted Hill (1959), and Mr. Sardonicus (1961). A young newlywed move into a rambling old apartment building in Central Park West and become friendly with the next-door neighbors, an overly-solicitous and intrusive elderly couple, and soon the struggling husband’s acting career improves. But after a nightmarish dream of making love to a horned Beast, the paranoid, haunted, and hysterical Rosemary believes herself impregnated so that her baby could be used in the elderly New Yorkers’ evil cult rituals. She consults with a longtime friend who sends her a book about witchcraft, with suggestions that their neighbor was the son of a famous witch. After the birth of a baby boy, she ventures into the Castevet’s apartment and observes a coven celebrating the birth of the Antichrist. The creepy film ends with the devil’s flesh-and-blood baby being cared for by the new mother. The big-budget horror film grossed about $33.4 million on a budget of $2.3 million and received an Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Ruth Gordon won the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance as one of the “everyday” NYC neighbors. Quite a few of the smaller supporting roles were played by venerable actors, such as Ralph Bellamy as Rosemary’s doctor, Sidney Blackmer as Roman Castevet, and Tony Curtis, who makes a cameo as only a voice on the phone. It has been said that the film was one of the first horror films to be widely accepted by the public. This critically-acclaimed and commercially successful film was followed by an inferior, made-for-TV movie sequel in 1976 entitled Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, aka Rosemary’s Baby II, with Ruth Gordon reprising her role. https://www.filmsite.org/rosem4.html 

• From Afterword To rosemary’s Baby, Ira Levin, 2003: Having observed that the most suspenseful part of a horror story is before, not after, the horror, I was struck one day by the thought (while not listening to a lecture) that a fetus could be an effective horror if the reader knew it was growing into something malignly different from the baby expected. Nine whole months of anticipation, with the horror inside the heroine! I tried to figure out exactly what that fetus was growing into. I could imagine only two possibilities: my unfortunate heroine had to be impregnated either by an extraterrestrial or the Devil. E.T.s had already fathered children in The Midwich Cuckoos, a novel by John Wyndham, so I was stuck with Satan, in whom I believed not at all. But I had no other intriguing ideas and a family to support. I read up on witchcraft, and late in 1965 set to work. I anchored my unbelievable story in the reality of Manhattan in that season — as much to make myself believe it as to win the belief of readers. I saved the daily newspapers, checking back through them on the transit strike, the incoming shows, the mayoral election, writing always a few months ahead of Rosemary and Guy’s calendar. I wasn’t at all sure how the book would be received: I was well aware that what I was doing was standing the story of Mary and Jesus on its head, and I feared that editors and publishers might run me out of town. When I checked back through the newspapers for the events of the optimal date for the baby’s conception — so he would arrive exactly half the year ’round from Christmas — I found, on October 4, 1965, Pope Paul’s visit to New York City and the Mass he celebrated at Yankee Stadium that night. I took it as a sign — though I don’t, of course, believe in signs — and kept writing. Sure enough my editor loved the new Baby. He suggested that Rosemary might be hit by a taxi on the way to a hospital and the baby disappear somehow, but I didn’t think that was a good idea. The book was favorably reviewed and became a best seller, thanks in large part to a generous quote from Truman Capote which Random House cannily printed on the front. The movie rights had been sold before publication. The result was possibly the most faithful adaptation ever made. It incorporates whole pages of the book’s dialogue and even uses specific colors mentioned. Rosemary’s Baby attracted some of the hostility I had worried about while writing the book: A woman screamed “Blasphemy!” in the lobby after the first New York preview, and I subsequently received scores of reprimanding letters from Catholic schoolgirls, all worded almost identically. The Legion of Decency condemned the film, but when it became a major hit despite or because of its rating the Legion disbanded. Lately I’ve had a new worry: If I hadn’t pursued an idea for a suspense novel almost forty years ago, would there be quite as many religious fundamentalists around today?

• From The Satanic Screen, Nick Schreck, 2001: Strangeness had long been Alfred Hitchcock’s cup of tea. However, the galleys for this unpublished novel were going too far even for the master of suspense. The unshockable Hitchcock had, after all, been brought up as a good Roman Catholic. William Castle had none of Hitch’s moral misgivings: Castle placed his bet on Beelzebub and purchased the film rights for Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin for $100,000. Although it wasn’t a particularly accomplished work in terms of style, Levin’s book resonated with an undetected shadow zone in the 1960s zeitgeist. The tremendous commercial and artistic success of ROSEMARY’S BABY transformed the film into an unprecedented cultural phenomenon. Thanks to Rosemary’s Luciferian labour pains, housewives and harried hubbies were chatting about Devil worship at suburban cocktail parties. Like all media events that touch the collective unconscious, a mythology of its own was generated, which still has a life of its own. One of the most persistent of these romantic concepts is that Roman Polanski is himself a devotee of the Black Arts, and that his film was constructed as a diabolical manifesto. In fact, possessed of a deep European existentialist pessimism, Polanski has never evidenced the least interest in Satanism or witchcraft; it was the story’s themes of alienation, betrayal and isolation that attracted him. It’s interesting to note that many viewers of the film have reported seeing such traditional Satanic features as cloven hoofs and horns in the final shot of the baby despite the fact that nothing of the kind was actually filmed. Occultists and Christians of different stripes have looked in the film for hidden magical messages and authentic Satanic lore. Rumours have spread that the film-maker must have sought technical advice from “real” Satanists to imbue the film with authenticity. When he was interviewed by police after the Manson murders, Polanski speculated: “It could be some kind of witchcraft.” The pregnant woman menaced by supposed devil worshippers was seen by many as an example of life imitating art. That the true motives for the crime had nothing to do with Satanism did not dissuade these wild theories. 

• From Little Book of Satanism, La Carmina, 2022: The dawn of the age of Satan coincided with the rise of diabolical novels and films. Ira Levin wrote his best-selling rosemary’s Baby in 1967. In the story, Rosemary and her actor husband moved into a New York apartment next door to an eccentric old couple; the plot turns to terror as she discovers that her husband is in league with the neighbors to claim her baby as their Antichrist. Rosemary’s Baby introduces audiences to the plausibility of devil worshipers next door, shouting “Hail Satan!” while weaving the plots to snatch your children. Then came The Exorcist, a novel that became one of the most profitable films of all time. Viewers were shocked by the possessed girl’s antics as she yelled blasphemies, spewed green vomit, and spun her head 360°. In 1975, would come The Omen, along with a growing societal paranoia about Satanism. The film focuses on a child who is in fact the Antichrist prophesied by The Book of Revelation. The Omen popularized the idea the Antichrist could be walking among us. Songs about Satan skyrocketed: Parents of course had long labeled teenage music Satanic: Jazz was the devil’s own orchestra in the Roaring Twenties. The following decade, blues guitarist Robert Johnson allegedly met the devil at the crossroads and sold his soul. In the 1950s, the thrusting rock of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis was similarly regarded. In 1966, The Master of Margarita was published for the first time: It followed the devil as he arrived in Moscow with a naked witch and talking black cat and inspired the Rolling Stones’ 1968 song Sympathy for the Devil. Ironically, the fearful public was oblivious to the works actually connected to Satanism: LaVey ​​released several albms and avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger created the erotic and demonically charged “Invocation of my Demon Brother” and “Lucifer rising.” Media succeeded in painting a shocking picture of Satanism that became deeply embedded in popular imagination. Over the following decades, heavy metal horror would inspire and be inspired by the culture of organized Satanism and also feed the anxieties that gave rise to the social chaos of the Satanic Panic.

• From The Church of Satan, Michael Aquino, 1989: Rosemary’s Baby appeared at a time when a new topic of conversation was demanded, and now we encounter the legend that Anton LaVey served as advisor for the film and played the role of the Devil in it. In the early days of the Church of Satan this claim was accepted as fact, and because of the movie’s sensational impact was even paraded as one of Anton’s magical coups. Upon close examination, Rosemary’s Baby Producer William Castle devoted three chapters of his autobiography to the filming of that movie and nowhere is LaVey mentioned. In fact, Castle repeatedly stresses director Polanski’s insistence on filming the novel exactly as it was written by Levin, omitting only any sight of the baby on camera. Nor has any other member of the cast or crew ever mentioned any LaVey involvement. In uncut versions of the movie, two “Devil” eyes momentarily appear that were rumored to be Anton’s. When Rosemary’s Baby  was eventually released as a videocassette, it became possible to freeze those frames and examine the eyes closely. They are clearly artificial cat’s eyes. As for the devil suit, I had an opportunity to examine it closely: because of its small size, the six-foot, 200-pound LaVey could not possibly have worn it. Many years later ,Nikolas and Zeena Schreck chanced to meet the father of the actress who played Mia Farrow’s body-double. He recalled that a young, very slender professional dancer had worn the suit. The Schrecks also met Polanski’s close friend Gene Gutowski, who had worked with Polanski on producing the film. Gutowski confirmed that there was no “technical advisor.” None of the ritual scenes reflects practices of the Church of Satan, and the chanting of the coven is not one of the Enochian Keys. Nevertheless the timing of the story – and its highlighting of 1966 as the “Year One” of the reign of the Antichrist – made a lasting impression upon the Church: Long after the motion picture disappeared from theaters, Christopher Komeda’s famous lullaby, sung on the soundtrack by Mia Farrow, would inspire sentimental emotions in the most worldly of Satanists.

• From Rosemary’s Body, Miranda Corcoran, 2018: Inserted into the Irish Constitution in 1983, the 8th Amendment, which supposedly affords equal protection to the right to life of both the mother and the unborn child, ushered in three decades of callous disregard for the lives of women and all those capable of becoming pregnant, as young girls with crisis pregnancies, rape victims, and couples diagnosed with fatal foetal abnormalities were forced to travel abroad for basic reproductive care. Beyond its inherent cruelty, the Irish prohibition against abortion has always been an intrusion of religious agendas onto the individual body. The invasive power of patriarchal authority and Catholic dogma have inhabited and taken root deep within the bodies of women. There was never safety or comfort, never a place of warmth or retreat, to be found in one’s own body: only shame, alienation and a cold, distant law. I mulled over the shifting Irish attitude towards reproductive rights while re-reading Rosemary’s Baby. I have long felt that Ira Levin infuses his work with an overtly feminist rhetoric that rivals anything produced by more contemporary genre-creators. Indeed, based on their initial reading of Levin’s other major contribution to popular culture, The Stepford Wives, many of my students assume the author must be female. So many of Levin’s male characters start out as loving, supportive husbands before transforming into abusers out of a desire for some signifier of conventional masculine dominance. In The Stepford Wives, Walter is entranced by the archetypal subservient ‘50s housewife; in Rosemary’s Baby, Guy relinquishes his wife’s freedom in exchange for a successful career. Constructing the desire for the accoutrements of hegemonic masculinity as inherently corrupting, Levin’s work repeatedly underscores how the demands of patriarchy, and the attendant requirement that men adhere to dominant notions of masculinity, can damage men and women. Rosemary’s autonomy is gradually undermined and eroded, as it becomes increasingly clear that her body is not her own but rather a vessel to be primed, manipulated and constrained: she is drugged by geriatric Satanist Minnie, and when Rosemary refuses the [suspect] dessert, Guy essentially gaslights her; already Rosemary’s ability to trust her own body is undermined. The trivialisation of sexual assault evidenced here and the flippant suggestion that such a violation is a minor infraction on the part of a husband who is, by default, entitled to access his wife’s body at any time reinforces the notion that Rosemary’s body is not her own, that she does not have the power to prevent the transgression of her corporeal boundaries. When Rosemary becomes pregnant, her capacity to exert any form of control over either her body or her life is radically curtailed. The neighbouring Satanists encourage her to stay at home, and her body is constantly scrutinised. When Rosemary opts to get a stylish Vidal Sassoon haircut, aesthetically removed from the lengthy tresses that are generally held up as feminine beauty, her husband berates her. She is forbidden from reading books about pregnancy or speaking to her friends about their experiences. Levin, who was not Catholic and did not believe in the Devil, crafted a deeply unsettling tale out of the darkest facets of Catholic lore. As an Irish woman reading Rosemary’s Baby in the weeks after the referendum on the 8th Amendment, the novel spoke to me afresh. https://amiddleagedwitch.wordpress.com/2018/06/08/rosemarys-body-reproductive-rights-and-diabolical-deeds-in-ira-levins-rosemarys-baby/ 

• From Rosemary’s Baby Was a Jewish Horror Movie, Nathan Abrams, Forward, 2018: Rosemary’s Baby” is laced with references to Catholicism: its protagonist, Rosemary Woodhouse, is a lapsed Catholic who dreams of nuns; the Pope’s visit to New York in October 1965 is discussed, as is the Kennedy family. But something in it stirs a sense of Jewish cultural identity as well:

•  Polanski adapted [Jewish novelist] Ira Levin’s 1967 novel of the same name.

• The film starred Mia Farrow, whose famous pixie haircut was provided by British Jewish hairdresser, Vidal Sassoon.

• Jewish actor Tony Curtis voiced the actor Donald Baumgart whose sudden blindness allows Guy to replace him in the play that sets him on the path to success. 

• Guy and Rosemary’s friend tells them about the Bramford and how “World War II filled the house up again,” to suggest that émigrés fleeing Nazism had taken over the apartment building. This group, in seeking to procure a child for Satan, echo age-old Judeophobic canards. 

• The overbearing Castevets resemble nebbishy, loud, pushy, New York Jewish stereotypes. Their lack of decorum contrasts with Rosemary’s politeness and acquiescence. 

• Roman is a wanderer, who has been “everywhere.” He has “piercing eyes,” and we learn that he has changed his name to hide his origins. The fact that he and Polanski have the same name seems too significant to avoid mentioning. 

• In the first draft of the screenplay he describes Minnie as “big-nosed, with a sullen fleshy underlip. She wears pink-rimmed eye glasses on a neckchain that dips down from behind plain pearly earrings.” Minnie cooks and kibitzes, browbeating Guy and Rosemary until they cannot refuse. She nags her henpecked husband: “Just watch the carpet.” At one point, she can be heard through the walls of the apartment shouting at Roman.

• Minnie manifests other stereotypical Jewish tics: Rosemary observes, “She’s the nosiest person I’ve ever seen. You know she actually asked the prices of things.”Gordon would go on to play a series of Jewish women, including a demented, overbearing Jewish mother in “Where’s Poppa?” 

• Rosemary’s obstetrician, Dr. Abraham Sapirstein, is more obviously Jewish. In the novel, Minnie describes him as “A Jewish man who delivers all the Society babies,” while Roman says, “He’s a brilliant man with all the sensitivities of his much-tormented race.” When Guy asks Rosemary if Sapirstein is in the coven, she replies, “No, I don’t think he’s one of them, he’s Jewish.” 

• Minnie introduces Rosemary to a “famous dentist” named Dr. Shand at a New Year’s party; Shand has made the chain for the charm that Minnie gave Rosemary earlier in the film. Both dentistry and jewelry were professions in which Jews enjoyed a significant presence. Phil Leeds, a well-known Jewish comedian, plays Shand. 

• Rosemary’s friends, distraught over her appalling physical appearance during pregnancy, compare her to a concentration camp victim. Polanski layered the film with allusions that are hard not to interpret as autobiographical: He had survived the Holocaust by hiding, and the claustrophobia of this traumatic childhood returns in the film’s images of a victimized woman trapped in an apartment, compelled to be quiet out of grave fear of the neighbors, staying alive or being betrayed because of whom she chooses to trust. The image of a pregnant woman being dragged away by muscular male representatives of authority has echoes in the memory of his mother, who was taken to a camp when he was eight. https://forward.com/culture/398478/why-rosemarys-baby-was-really-a-jewish-horror-movie/ 
• From Awakening to Satanic Conspiracy: Rosemary’s Baby and the Cult Next Door David Frankfurter University of New Hampshire, 2008: In the 1960s, before the “cult” scare, at a time when Christian demonology was still quite marginalized, and set in a city where nobody could expect cultural homogeneity anyway, Rosemary’s plight could almost be read as a sendup of the various weird and conflicting encounters pregnant women will have in urban society. By the late 1980s, however, everybody seemed to know what dangers Satanists next door might pose to the innocent and unsuspecting. A cacophony of media revelations, from Geraldo Rivera to the recovered-memory narrative Michelle Remembers, created a mood in which Satanism and Devil worship became a familiar and modern discourse. Satanism had come to serve, on the one hand, as a “symptom” of a culture in decline, and on the other hand as a cluster-point for perennial social anxieties, like child safety, the nature of the family, and the identification of deviance. In this historical context, Levin’s work, especially his evocation of suspicion and intimate Satanic conspiracy, becomes quite prescient and to a limited degree causal. America, we should recognize, has long had an obsession with themes of conspiracy. As organizations flourish and institutions get more powerful, we have kept an eye perpetually cocked for suggestions of suspicion, deceit, and even counter-institutions behind it all. We might recall not only the appeal of movies like The Manchurian Candidate (1962) but also the popularity of stories of international white-slavery rings and the perpetual rumors of Catholic, Masonic, Mormon, Jewish, and even extraterrestrial conspiracy over American history. In the 1960s, when Levin wrote Rosemary’s Baby, it was traditional institutions—communists, Catholics, corporations—that posed the threats. From at least the early Roman period, the epitome of conspiracy and moral subversion lay in illegitimate, subversive rituals especially when they seemed to function cohesively for some alien group. But by the late 1970s, in the face of a great variety of discomfiting events, Americans began to feel an increasing strain: Despite our austere Puritan legacy, social scientific enlightenment would not allow us to cast Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and David Berkowitz out of the realm of moral comprehensibility. We very much craved a discourse of evil to which we could relegate these most extreme figures. Satanism became the perfect conspiracy. Rosemary’s Baby was ahead of its time in offering such a revelation of Satanic conspiracy; many of the ideas it raises were picked up 20 years later. The revelatory experience it offers the audience—that psychological shift from innocence to “cultic” predation—is one that arose time and time again for television viewers, therapists and their patients, and law enforcement specialists over the 1980s and early 1990s. Conspiracy offers not only terror but also the likelihood that there exists something else beneath the experiences and encounters we have, that randomness is not the way things work, but that another, more powerful realm is at work, controlling things. Maybe it’s a positive realm—God and his angels, or aliens, as many believe—or maybe an inverse, evil realm, but [either way] the excitement comes in peering into it.

• From Vidal Sassoon? I did my pixie cut myself, says Mia Farrow DAILY MAIL STAFF,  2013: It is one of the best-known haircuts of all time: In 1968 British stylist Vidal Sassoon was acclaimed for creating the ‘pixie cut’ for actress Mia Farrow in her career defining role in Rosemary’s Baby. The urchin style look became an instant hit and today is still copied, most recently by Emma Watson. When Sassoon died last year at the age of 84 almost all the obituaries mentioned the role in the 1968 horror film. Now after almost 50 years Farrow says she came up with the boyish look and used a pair of nail scissors to cut her own hair: “I intend no disrespect to Mr Sassoon, but he had nothing to do with my haircut.” She said he was only responsible for trimming her hair as part of a publicity stunt for the film, as his name was mentioned in it. (When asked about the cut, Farrow’s character says, ‘It’s Vidal Sassoon. It’s very in.’) The actress set the record straight after the New York Times newspaper carried a recent article about career changing haircuts. It said Farrow had long, blonde hair until Sassoon gave her the pixie cut for the film.  It also said her husband at the time, Frank Sinatra, was so against the boyish look that he divorced her. After Farrow’s daughter-in-law contacted the paper to ask for a correction, editors on the paper reached out to Farrow. She wrote to the paper to set the record straight and they published her reply. Sassoon never said anything to dispel the myth that he had created the pixie cut for Farrow. He said he was invited to Hollywood to give Farrow a new style for the film. Farrow’s two year marriage to Sinatra ended shortly after the film came out, but she says it was unrelated. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2269357/Vidal-Sassoon-I-did-pixie-cut-says-Mia-Farrow-hairdressers-signature-style.html 

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The post Episode 186: Rosemary’s Baby Too appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• “Experimental Doc Reveals The Ugly Truth About Satanism—It’s Corny,” Charles Barfield,” The Playlist, Feb 2024: “Realm of Satan” follows folks who are members of the Church of Satan, who, judging by this film, are more interested in chanting in dark rooms, performing outdoor rituals, and, uh, sleight of hand magic? Through a series of vignettes, we get a static camera shot focused on one (sometimes two or three) members of the Church as they showcase their lives. Scenes include a man putting on corpse paint (what Black Metal bands put on their faces to look like evil dead people), a woman doing a dance in a bar, and various people reciting Satanic prayers/invocations. There’s seemingly no rhyme or reason between what is shown. The film tries really hard to be edgy and shocking, but most of what follows is incredibly dull or laughable. The Church of Satan is not the boogeyman that your parents warned you about, it’s really corny, mostly middle-aged white people living comfortable middle-class existences who like to dress up in black gowns and makeup from time to time and have the random skull in their living room. Perhaps Cummings is here to show that everything is a joke? If that’s the case, then this film is in really bad taste and really is mean-spirited in a way that isn’t fun, and it doesn’t explain the try-hard moments. There is a wide swath of fascinating characters, but we’re only given the most shallow view of their lives. Ultimately, all we learn is that “Realm of Satan,” much like the Satanic Panic of decades past, is all uninteresting bluster with no real substance.

• • • Realm of Satan Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbkKWrkwjro 
  • “Did the satanic panic ever go away?” Amber Rawlings, Hunger Magazine, Feb 2024: Starring Nicholas Cage, Longlegs will mark Oz Perkins’ fourth time in the director’s chair. Someone at a recent test screening of Longlegs described it as “deeply steeped in the satanic panic”. The notion of the satanic panic was formally birthed with the publication of Michelle Remembers in 1980, which launched the notion of devil worship into the zeitgeist and led to over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of cult sexual abuse over a fourteen year period. But that was the “olden days” and things have changed… Right? On the one hand, yes. If the eventual release of the West Memphis Three is anything to go by, it’s that the idea of people killing in the name of Satan lost its potency at some point in the 2000s. Sociologist Jean La Fontaine’s study published in 1994 is widely regarded as being what “dealt the death blow” to satanic panic: it found that there was absolutely no evidence to substantiate the high profile claims about systematic abuse–“no bodies, no bones, no bloodstains, nothing”. However, last year it was the music industry that became the target of Satan discourse: Sam Smith’s GRAMMYs performance of his song “Unholy” earned a slew of criticisms from right-wing commentators, with one positioning it as symptomatic of how Hollywood is “infiltrated by Satanic radicals].”  Doja Cat met a similar fate with the music video for her song “Demons.” From the viral video of the woman who believes Monster energy drinks promote Satan to the pervading sense of hysteria that spread after Jimmy Saville’s historic crimes, Satanic Panic never really left. By taking it to the online sphere the claims can be amplified at an alarming rate. Satanic sex abuse was even weaponised as a political play during the 2022 Utah County attorney race. Essentially, it’s a messy web of not only outlandish claims pertaining to devil worship (which is just, let’s face it, religious fundamentalism in a funky new outfit) but everything that falls under the umbrella of extreme right wing politics. If there has been a moment of respite in a satanic panic that refuses to up and leave, it’s those times that our cultural output has managed to take a stand against the whole thing, like the 1996 documentary “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.” Lately there’s been comedy takes in films like We Summon The Darkness and fiction books like My Best Friend’s Exorcism have shown that written critiques of the phenomenon don’t have to be relegated to the world of true crime. https://hungermag.com/film/the-release-of-longlegs-raises-an-important-question-did-the-satanic-panic-ever-go-away 

• “A closer look at Russia’s modern-day Satanists,” Alexandra Makhacheva, Insider, March 2024: Shortly before launching invasion of Ukraine, Putin claimed that “the hegemony of the West is Satanism. Such a subversion of faith and traditional values and the suppression of freedom takes on the characteristics of religion in reverse – outright Satanism.” Aping Putin, Kremlin propagandists picked up the term: the often-cited talk show host Vladimir Solovyov asserted that the authorities in Ukraine, the U.S., and Western Europe serve the “prince of darkness” and equated negotiating with Ukraine to “bargaining with Satan.” ro-Kremlin media as heroes, with some “patriotic” mouthpieces going so far as to call them “saints,” “heavenly,” and “God’s army.” However, after the late Wagner leader led an abortive armed rebellion against the Russian military command, the Russian Orthodox clergy suddenly discovered that several of the mercenaries had gravitated towards paganism and Satanism. Meanwhile, plagued with personnel shortages, the Russian military command is releasing murderers, cannibals, and rapists from prisons, promising them pardons in exchange for taking up arms. Meanwhile, actual Satanism is a fairly popular subculture in Russia, with thousands of followers and a century-long history: The first Satanist communities emerged in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century in Saint Petersburg. As researchers Konstantin Kislyuk and Oleg Kucher write in “Religious Studies,” the Russian Satanist George Gurdjieff, who was nicknamed the Prophet of Beelzebub, enjoyed the personal patronage of Nicholas II. In the Soviet Union, the earliest Satanist groups appeared in the early 1970s in Moscow, Leningrad, and Odesa. It is difficult to determine the share of Satanists in the count, because many of them hide. It is even harder considering that Satanism is not a single religion but rather an eclectic collection of beliefs. Even the perception of Satan differs from cult to cult: for some, he is a personal deity and guide in the world, while others do not see him as a person but rather a philosophy and style of thinking. Some separate Satan from the devil, while others worship demons and dark pagan gods rather than Lucifer himself. Satanists from all over Russia visit each other, discuss ways to communicate with dark matters, or just go to the bar. For the followers of Thelema, a religious movement developed by Aleister Crowley their main principles are “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and “Love is the law, love under will.” Who are Satanists for the Russian media? Where did the image of Satanists as “enemies of the motherland” come from? Religious scholar Krylov recalls that in the late Soviet Union, the press would also label its domestic opponents “Satanists” in an attempt to stop the spread of Western phenomena — especially when it came to religious movements. Kremlin authorities, along with the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, are actively working to maintain their authority despite having brought the current hard times on the country through their own actions. That is precisely why they are in need of an abstract but very provocative and threatening image of the enemy. If Russia’s Satanists did not exist, the Kremlin’s spin doctors may have had to invent them. https://theins.ru/en/society/269506 

• “Satanists’ prayer at Ottawa County Board meeting may cause stir,” John Tunison, MLive, April 2024: When a member of The Satanic Temple of West Michigan says prayer at an Ottawa County board meeting Tuesday, it’s likely to cause a stir. Opponents are calling for a large turnout and asking the public to “be ready to sing praise and worship at any time.” They hope to pack the board room, the foyer and the public space outside the county building. The door was opened for The Satanic Temple of West Michigan to give the Ottawa County board invocation — a staple for many years — when the commission in January adopted a new policy on who can speak. Commissioners changed the policy after a Grand Haven pastor who supports LGBTQ rights filed a lawsuit. He alleged he asked twice to speak in the mid-part of 2023, but wasn’t selected because of his cultural stance. Ottawa County Board Chair Joe Moss denied the allegation and said it was a simple oversight. The new policy allows pastors to speak on a first-come, first-served basis, so long as they contact their district commissioner to get on a list of speakers. When it was announced in March that The Satanic Temple would be a speaker, Moss made a point to say the group had not specifically been invited. TST West Michigan’s spokesperson said his group wanted the chance to speak “because we are people who are active in the community, so this is just kind of just a way that makes sense for us to do our satanic work and contribute to the community as well.” They advised their supporters to not engage with protesters and “respect the freedoms of others who petition or assemble against us.” Moss, in an email to MLive, said he expects the public will be well-mannered at Tuesday’s meeting. “I expect there will be more people than usual, and that people will be respectful. As always, I look forward to hearing from constituents during public comment,” he said. https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2024/04/satanists-prayer-at-ottawa-county-board-meeting-may-cause-stir-but-should-it.html 

• “Video Wrongly Links Cern to Satanism,” Reuters, April 2024: Old footage of an opening ceremony is being wrongly attributed to CERN to push a groundless conspiracy theory about the European nuclear research centre. Social media posts, shared the video and claimed it demonstrated the particle-physics research centre was linked to Satanism. Longstanding, baseless conspiracy theories have alleged that CERN scientists are trying to “open up a portal to another dimension,” like hell.  But the shared footage is unrelated to CERN, which is situated near Geneva on the French-Swiss border. Instead, it shows the elaborate opening ceremony of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world’s longest railway tunnel when it was inaugurated, on June 1, 2016. The tunnel is around 123 miles from CERN. Footage of the Gotthard ceremony is available on YouTube. CERN is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. It aims to better understand two holy grails of physics – dark matter and dark energy. The video footage is unrelated to CERN. https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/old-video-wrongly-linked-cern-push-satanic-conspiracy-theory-2024-04-10/ 

• Gotthard Tunnel Ceremony:  https://youtu.be/bKQaqml6k?si=ESuWMFPm1HIdhS87&t=155 

• “Sacre del Gottardo” is the title; The French word “sacre” can be translated as “rite” or “consecration.”. The ceremony for the project of the century – the Gotthard Base Tunnel – calls for grand gestures, fulfilling pathos, holy earnestness. The word “sacre” also has other associations, such as “sacrifice” or “sacred”. Tunnels are impressive witnesses of human ingenuity and collective performance, but also of curses and ordeals. The tunnels constructed in the Alps in the 19th century were linked to destruction and human drudgery. Many workers paid with their lives. Today’s tunnels continue to show how dangerous it is for humans to battle with the enormous masses of stone. The tunnel builders know about the unpredictability of nature, and the recklessness of their activity. The artistic staging is based on the two meanings of the world “sacre”. Beside the huge, modern machines that eat away at the rock, the little lamp continues to burn at the feet of the statue of Saint Barbara, patron saint of miners. Among people who live and work in the mountains, tales are told of evil mountain goblins, demons and spooky beings. In the third part, the very first trains are approaching their destinations and the spirits are fading away or becoming comical creatures. https://www.alptransit-portal.ch/Storages/User/Meilensteine/Pin_051/Dokumente_051/Gottardo_2016_Booklet_RZ_GzD_0505_ENG_WEB.pdf 

• Simple reasons, not Satanism, behind the King’s portrait, Colby Cosh, National Post, May 2024:  I must say I enjoyed last week’s social media dialogue over Jonathan Yeo’s chaotic new portrait of our King, which the 53-year-old star painter began before his subject came to the throne in September 2022. What I enjoyed especially about it is that it wasn’t easy to predict anyone’s individual reaction based on their politics. My own feed is naturally full of fellow monarchist weirdos, and many of them seem to have liked that the picture itself — made for the hall of London’s Worshipful Company of Drapers — is impressively weird. Others were suspicious, perhaps half-expecting to hear that the overwhelming stormy redness of the portrait was a coded critique of royalty, or perhaps even that there might be mixed-media shenanigans involving literal blood. Yeo  is not really that sort of artist. He is happy to be a well-paid and, frankly, flattering painter of celebrity faces. Whatever you make of the idea of using a monarch butterfly as a visual symbol in a royal portrait, it’s certainly square on the nose, isn’t it? If we cannot escape thoughts of blood, let it be blood as a token of vitalism and heritage rather than violence. Yeo doesn’t care either way. In talking to The Sunday Times he pours friendly scorn on the teeming millions searching for Satanist codes in his work, and explains that the painting got redder as he went along mostly because the King’s Welsh Guards uniform and his glittering medals were bound to dominate the canvas if he didn’t find a practical solution. Also, he likes red. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-simple-reasons-not-satanism-behind-the-kings-new-all-red-portrait 

• “MSCS to pay Satanic Temple in After School Satan Club suit,” Lydian Coombs, News 5, July 2024: The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has reached a settlement on behalf of The Satanic Temple in a federal lawsuit against Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) over “serious” First Amendment violations. The school board has agreed to pay over $15,000. The board will also pay one dollar for nominal damages. The Satanic Temple claims that the school district issued “discriminatory rental and security fees” for hosting an After School Satan Club at Chimneyrock Elementary School. FFRF alleges that MSCS attempted to thwart The Satanic Temple’s efforts to begin the club rather than allowing it to rent school facilities on the same terms as other nonprofit organizations like the Christian Good News Club. FFRF also claims that the district “refused” to adequately communicate with the Temple, canceled the club’s reservations, and treated members of the club as second-class citizens. MSCS agreed the Temple is subject to the same rules and requirements as other nonprofit organizations seeking to rent or use the school’s facilities and vowed not to hold any more press conferences about the club. FFRF, a national state/church watchdog with 40,000 members, sent three complaint letters to the district in response to the “deeply concerning and discriminatory remarks,” urging the district to abide by the First Amendment and allow the Temple to rent facilities in accordance with the district’s own written policies. In response, FFRF claims the district assessed a “special security fee” of over $2,000 against the group, fees that other organizations meeting regularly at the school were never charged. On January 10, the first After School Satan Club was held at Chimneyrock Elementary. Various district administrators, school board members and members of the clergy stood at the entrance of the building, protesting the club’s launch. “We’re glad the district has mutually resolved this case,” says Patrick Elliott, FFRF’s legal director. “This settlement should send a message to public schools that the First Amendment applies to all, including minority groups.” https://www.actionnews5.com/2024/07/18/mscs-pay-satanic-temple-15k-following-settlement-after-school-satan-club-discrimination-suit/ 

• “Idaho sheriff’s office post about sex offender irks Satanists,” Carolyn Komatsoulis, Idaho Statesman, July 2024: The Valley County Sheriff’s Office included an intriguing detail recently when it announced that a suspect pleaded guilty to possessing or accessing sexually exploitative material of a child; The 22-year-old man was “a member of the Idaho chapter of The Satanic Temple.” Groups such as the Idaho Liberty Dogs and other far-right websites jumped on the tidbit, posting photos of Idaho Satanists on social media. Others questioned whether the mention was necessary or even accurate. The Satanic Temple of Idaho declined to comment other than to say that the man had not requested congregation membership and that many people claim to be members but haven’t taken any steps to do so. Satanic Idaho [a separate organization] co-facilitator Rowan Astra was disappointed with authorities’ decision to post the information. “What is the relevance?” Astra said. “Every major Satanic practice has something in regards to not hurting children.” So why did Valley County include this detail? The McCall man could receive 12 years in prison, according to a plea agreement. Steve Gorski, the detective on the case, said the man had a membership card with his name on it. The membership cards are available for purchase on the Satanic Temple’s website for $35, and the check-out process does not appear to ask the purchaser whether they are actually a member. Gorski said he had not tried to see what it took to get such a card. “I’m kind of taking him at his word.” There is no investigation into the Satanic Temple or that religion, the detective said. Regarding the Sheriff’s Office social media post, Gorski said, “I think it’s a way for groups to internally police themselves. They’re in a unique position to come across troubled individuals before they reach the level where law enforcement gets involved. That goes for just about any group, any religion.” A review of the Valley County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page shows that authorities have not included anyone else’s religion in incident press releases this year. “ https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article289748209.html

• “The LDS Satan just ain’t what he used to be,” Jana Riess, Salt Lake Tribune, July 2024: Mormon Satan used to command worlds and control a third of the host of heaven. Latter-day Saint theology, both official and unofficial, credited him with having power over the water, possessing people’s souls and bodies and marshaling demons and other foul spirits to carry out his will. Now he’s become that voice of chronic self-doubt in your head, telling you that you’re not good enough, and, hey, you really ought to eat that second brownie. Recent emphases from leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints show Satan as the great and terrible spoiler of … self-improvement projects. The adversary now exists to bring individual adversity. In fact, he will tailor-make such adversity for each person. To be fair, there’s always been a partial focus on Satan as an individual tempter. It’s in the foundations of the Mormon story, since a young Joseph Smith reported being attacked by Satan in the “First Vision.” The difference is that in the past, Satan was depicted as both an individual tempter AND a cosmic force that could control nature and bring down nations. Today, not so much. What’s particularly fascinating about this domestication is that it comes from some people who would be the first to insist Satan is real, and who would view denying that reality as a dangerous path. When he does venture into wider social issues, those issues are — surprise, surprise — the same ones church leaders are also concerned about in this particular cultural moment, especially gender identity and the weakening of social commitments to marriage and childbearing. What a sad and sorry downfall Satan has had. Let’s all take a moment to extend the guy some sympathy. He’s the one sitting over there at the French café wrestling with the kind of ennui that it’s now his sole raison d’être to inflict upon you. He could have been a contender. https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/07/24/lds-leaders-have-changed-how-they/  t

• “Court rejects Satanic challenge to Boston,” reuters, August 2024: A federal appeals court has rejected a challenge by the Satanic Temple to Boston’s custom of inviting religious leaders to start of city council meetings, a practice it challenged after it was refused an opportunity to participate. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday held that councilors based invites on speakers’ contributions to the local community. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch said councilors had invited speakers of various religious faiths, not just Christianity, based on their work in their districts. She cautioned, though, that since invitations to deliver invocations were designed to politically benefit incumbent city councilors, it could in the future be deemed unconstitutional if councilors begin favoring only speakers representing religious electoral majorities. The Satanic Temple’s attorney said the ruling was “a gift to every would-be theocrat throughout the United States.” At issue in its lawsuit is a long-standing custom dating back to the 1800s in which city councilors in Boston invite a member of the public, often clergy, to speak before the start of its weekly meetings. Before the Satanic Temple first sought in 2016 to deliver an invocation, the speakers over a one-year period had been 94% Christian and 6% Jewish. The Satanic Temple said councilors had refused since 2016 to extend an invitation to one of its members. The Satanic Temple sued in 2021, arguing the practice violated the Establishment Clause. A judge dismissed the case, prompting the appeal. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/couttrt-rejects-satanic-temples-challenge-boston-council-prayer-custom-2024-08-07/ 

• “St. Petersburg Court Finds Anti-Russian Conspiracy in Satanic Bible” MASSIMO INTROVIGNE, Bitter Winter Magazine, September 2024: It is a pity that Russians no longer study Marx. He would have taught them that history often repeats itself as farce. The state-owned domestic news agency RIA informs us that on September 3 “The Satanic Bible” of Anton Szandor LaVey, the deceased leader of the Church of Satan, was added to the list of banned books by the St. Petersburg City Court. The court accepted a Deputy Prosecutor’s claim that “According to the experts’ conclusions, the text of the book is based on the ideas of destruction, hatred and violence and the rejection of values ​​traditional for Russian society, as well as propaganda aimed at forming a negative attitude towards confessions traditional for Russia.” The judge also believes that one of the aims of the book is the “propaganda of the LGBT movement.” When LaVey published “The Satanic Bible” in 1969, his aim was certainly not to produce anti-Russian propaganda; and while in the “Satanic Sex” explained that Satanism approves of all forms of sexual relations between consenting adults, “propaganda for the LGBT movement” was not a main theme of the book either. Strictly speaking, the main theme of “The Satanic Bible” was not even Satan-worship. It seems that the “experts” consulted by the St. Petersburg Court are related to the Russian anti-cultists who have insisted for years on the ridiculous theory that LaVey’s Church of Satan and the CIA cooperate in anti-Russian ventures. In 2022, even an Assistant Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation proposed the preposterous claim that LaVey’s Church of Satan was working with the Ukrainian government and that Ukraine  was in need of “desatanization.” https://bitterwinter.org/st-petersburg-court-finds-an-anti-russian-conspiracy-in-laveys-the-satanic-bible/ 

• “Making sense of the Church of Satan’s founder,” Regina Munch, Commonweal Magazine, October 2024: In the Year of Our Lord 2004, in the Borders bookstore at the local mall, I picked up Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible. I was thirteen, and I bet the pentagram on the cover would upset my mom. I put The Satanic Bible back on the shelf after a couple chapters. In Born with a Tail: The Devilish Life and Wicked Times of Anton Szandor LaVey, journalist Doug Brod catalogs how LaVey became the public face of a movement that rejected Christianity and asserted a combination of epicureanism, Nietzschean nihilism, and social Darwinism, occasionally bordering on fascism. It wasn’t always clear if he ever crossed the line into believing his own bullshit, but once in a while, as he pronounced on the hypocrisies of Christians, he could make a halfway decent point. It is unlikely that he was born with a tail as he claimed throughout his life; he loved to read horror classics like Dracula and Frankenstein as well as pulp magazines. The picture that emerges is of a kid who was bored with life from an early age. He dropped out of high school during his junior year, playing the organ at tent revivals and eventually joining the circus. He set up a loose collection of local churches throughout the country, what he called “grottoes.” He would lead the church members, mostly white professionals, in over-the-top rituals and sacrilegious sex acts. One gets the sense that he was making it up as he went—doing and saying whatever he thought would be most titillating and outrageous. Once, when a reporter pushed him on the nature of evil, LaVey replied, “Look, I’m just trying to make the rent.” For all the raucous blasphemy, the group was still beholden to Christian imagery. It’s offensive in the way that a teenager might try to offend. LaVey alchemized the attention into a slot on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He was profiled by magazines and invited onto other talk shows. LaVey was thrilled at the release of Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, a film that he praised for “presenting Satanism as something that existed among ordinary people.” He claimed to have been the actor behind the devil’s mask—one more item on his résumé that didn’t add up. Brod’s narrative illustrates that, more than anything, LaVey seemed to love talking with people about whatever he was reading that week. He frequently gave talks and hosted conversations about all kinds of kooky things—ghosts and hauntings, funereal practices, human sacrifice, love potions, cryptozoology, sadomasochism, what shapes were the most accursed (the trapezoid, obviously). It was this genuine curiosity and openness—even when it was mixed with opportunism—that comes out in the interviews Brod conducted, Years later—the era of zines, grunge, and the skinhead culture that sometimes came with them—LaVey found a new crowd of admirers: He kept a swastika and a Confederate flag in the Black House for their symbolic “power and aggression” and couldn’t resist “wandering into you-gotta-hand-it-to-Hitler territory.” LaVey died suddenly on October 29, 1997; his estranged daughter, who founded a rival church, claimed to have put a curse on him. With no charismatic leader to shepherd the flock, church activity soon stalled. Today, the Church of Satan mostly exists online, but it has inspired offshoots. LaVey was a man who at bottom wanted his friends to come over so they could fire up the organ and talk about weird shit. That’s the LaVey—totally ridiculous, totally confident—that keeps the rubes coming back. https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/born-tail tt

• “Satanic Verses ban lifted,” Reuters, Nov 2024: India’s three-decade ban on Salman Rushdie’s controversial book “The Satanic Verses” has effectively been lifted after a court said the government was unable to produce the notification that imposed the ban. The India-born British author’s novel was banned in 1988 after some Muslims viewed it as blasphemous. India’s government told the Delhi High Court that the import ban order “was now untraceable and, therefore could not be produced.” As a result, the court said it had “no other option except to presume that no such notification exists.” “The ban has been lifted as of Nov. 5,” said a lawyer for the petitioner Sandipan Khan. Khan’s plea said he approached the court after being told at bookstores that the novel could not be sold or imported in India and then when he searched, he could not find the official import ban order on government websites. “In fact the purported author of the notification has also shown his helplessness in producing a copy,” the Nov. 5 order noted, referring to the customs department official who drafted the order. Rushdie’s novel ran into a global controversy shortly after its publication, as some Muslims saw passages about Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous. It set off violent demonstrations and book burnings. In 1989, Iran’s then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a  religious edict calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie, sending the Booker Prize-winning author into hiding for six years. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses-ban-lifted-india-rcna179264 

• “Satanic Temple’s holiday display investigated as hate crime,” CATHERINE McLAUGHLIN, wmur, Dec 2024: A volunteer dressed as an elf rebuilt the statue of Baphomet outside the State House Wednesday after it was vandalized for the second time in as many weeks. The Concord Police Department is preparing to bring criminal mischief charges against a suspect. Police also contacted the Attorney General’s office about the vandalism potentially being a hate crime, Deputy Chief of Police John Thomas said Wednesday. The suspect was detained on Main Street Tuesday evening after a witness reported to police that someone was taking apart the display. The suspect has not been publicly identified. In New Hampshire, a criminal mischief conviction can carry additional penalties if a person is found to have been “substantially motivated to commit the crime because of hostility towards the victim’s religion, race, creed, sexual orientation… national origin, sex, or gender identity.” “The Baphomet displays will keep being made by our artist coalition. If the haters want to continue to play Whac-A-Mole with a public display, we are ready,” said a statement from the Concord Area Artist Coalition for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion on Wednesday. Members of the coalition have declined interviews because they wish to remain anonymous, citing safety concerns. The statue holds a bouquet of lilacs, the state flower, and an apple in the other. The statue’s presence and approval by the city have made national news. In a statement last week, the city noted that it granted the permit under the legal determination that it had to “ban all holiday displays installed by other groups, or otherwise, to allow it.” Rep. Ellen Read, who contacted The Temple about putting up a display, said she had received death threats because of her involvement. In addition, she said she had been called a “Satan worshipper” and told she would “burn for an eternity in hell.” https://www.wmur.com/article/suspect-vandalism-satanic-temple-display-nh-121824/63227956 

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