SHOW LINKS

• TRANS LIFELINE SUPPORT, SATANIC CIRCLE
• FORMULA DRIVE, RENO SATANIC
  • From Explicit and Implicit Measures of Black Cat Bias in Cat and Dog People Greg C Elvers et al, Journal of Animals, 2024: The precise significance of a black cat depended on the circumstances: In superstitions from the 17th century on, to see it walking toward you is a good omen, but if it crosses your path it is a harbinger of evil, especially in the morning. Those in dangerous professions, such as miners and fishermen, would often refuse to go to work that day if a black cat ran in front of them. ‘This fear of a black cat crossing one’s path persists in the United States and certain other parts of the world, and in some places spitting is said to be the only way to avert the bad luck it brings. Whether lucky or unlucky, the black cat has long been seen as having special powers, and the black cat as a witch’s familiar is an image common in folklore and storybooks, often believed to be the witch herself in animal form. Folk remedies from the seventeenth century often feature a black cat: rubbing its tail into the eye was a traditional cure for a sty, and drinking its blood was believed to restore health. The idea that a cat may “die” nine times goes back at least to the sixteenth.century and, although its precise source is unclear, it probably has its origins in the belief that a witch could take on the body of a cat nine times. This fear of cats is reflected in the old tradition of entering a house with the greeting “God bless all except the cat.” When a dead family member was laid out in the house prior to the funeral, cats were kept well away to prevent them from jumping onto or over the body, or else the spirit of the dead person would be endangered or the next person to see the body would die. A cat can supposedly foretell a death and will refuse to stay indoors if a member of the family is about to die. They are also reputed to have the ability to “suck the breath” out of infants, and therefore must never be left alone with one. Records show that this belief was so widespread that, in the eighteenth century, one coroner actually ruled a cat responsible for the death of a child.
    • • While a common superstition in the United States is that black cats bring bad luck, that is not universally true across cultures and times: Until 1975, black cats were required to be onboard British ships as a good luck charm. Some of the negative superstitions associated with black cats may arise from the belief that black cats are associated with witchcraft and heresy. After looking at adoption records of over 29,000 cats, black kittens took about 4 days longer to be adopted than kittens who were not primarily black, while black adult cats took almost six days longer on average. In our studies, superstitious behaviors, belief in witchcraft, and religiosity were expected to be directly correlated with black cat bias measured both explicitly and implicitly. These relations are predicted to be stronger in dog people than in cat people. Belief in witchcraft was a predictor of explicitly measured black cat bias for dog people with a medium effect size but not for cat people. As belief in witchcraft increases in dog people, black cat bias tends to increase. Religiosity is also a predictor of black cat bias for dog people. Because self-identified cat people have, on average, more cats than dog people, cat people may have more experience with black cats that offers protection from bias. Given the correlation between religiosity and belief in witchcraft, it is not surprising that black cat bias can also be predicted from dog people’s religious point of view. Partially consistent with the predictions, the bias is more extreme around Halloween, which, in the United States, is a holiday associated with superstition and witchcraft. This finding is important because it suggests that black cat bias might be malleable—it might be changed by external factors. Future research could look at whether an intervention designed to reduce belief in witchcraft could influence black cat bias. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11640230/pdf/animals-14-03372.pdf 
    • From THE CAT IN THE MYSTERIES OF RELIGION AND MAGIC, Mary Oldfield Howey, 1956: The Luciferans worshipped god’s eldest son, who had power over wealth and worldly happiness. They are said to have adored a black cat as the symbol of Satan when celebrating their mysteries, and to have sacrificed children at their nocturnal orgies, and used the victim’s blood in making the Eucharistic bread of their Order. The Gnostic sect of the Manicheans were accused by their persecutors of many terrible and incredible crimes, and were said to worship the devil in the form of a black cat. Confessing witch Rolande de Vernois acknowledged “The Devil presents himself for the Sabbath in the form of a great black cat.” Such beliefs are still prevalent in the remoter parts of Europe. We may instance the peasants of Southern Slavonia who are firmly persuaded that the devil dwells in a black cat. They try to keep clear of such felines by night, as during the hours of darkness the Fiend has power suddenly to resume his proper form and seize and destroy the unwary traveller. To illustrate the survival of the old beliefs in our enlightened land, the well-known ghost-hunter Mr. Elliott O’Donnell assures us that “there are, at the present moment, many houses in England haunted by phantasms in the form of black cats, of so sinister and hostile an appearance, that one can only assume that unless they are the actual spirits of cats, earthbound through cruel and vicious propensities, they must be vice-elementals, i.e. spirits that have never inhabited any material body.”  In the legend of Lilith we recognise the origin of the widespread superstition that cats will suck the breath of a sleeping child, and it is also clear why black cats are banished from children’s cradles. In mediaeval times witches were thought to assume cat form to play the part of vampire, and seem to have usurped the role of Lilith. We may see the lingering remains of this belief among all classes of the population to-day, in the numerous black cats named “Satan,” and images of black cats carried by the superstitious; all so many flags of truce held out to the Lord of the World.
    • From Many Faces of Evil, Pasi Klemettinen, Studies In Folkore & Popular Thought, 2002: Literary sources for European Christian beliefs dealing with the devil and witchcraft usually identify the cat as a faithful ally of the witch. We must remember, however, to make a distinction between animals given to witches by the devil, and demonic creatures in which the devil materializes. In Scandinavian folklore, horses and dogs are more commonly associated with the devil than are cats; in Finnish folk belief, the cat is deemed an unclean animal, thus, the appearance of a black cat, an especially heinous creature, generally foretells unhappiness and warns of imminent danger.. Lencqvist refers to an incantation in which the sorcerer summons a demon cat to his aid. The animal, by causing pain, impels the thief to return stolen goods: “Mistress of Pain, demon cat, give the legs a splendid claw, pain will make him hurry.” In the minds of many, the demon dog and cat are virtually interchangeable as images associated with the kingdom of the dead. Archival materials related to folk beliefs also reveal accounts of the devil himself assuming the form of a black cat. Likewise, one of the most frequent incarnations of the devil in Russian folklore is a black dog or cat. There was a haunted house in Impilahti. At night something would rattle objects indoors and during the day it would cause a ruckus in the attic and even in the hayloft. The people of that household soon had no peace of mind and were growing more and more desperate by the day. Finally, one Sunday after church, the owner of the house went to talk to the priest. The priest went to the house with his holy water and wine and held a sermon, and then walked around the house sprinkling holy water on the walls. They then noticed a huge black cat leave the house and head for the woods. After this the house was no longer haunted, and the people believed that the devil himself – as a black cat – had abandoned the house and stopped haunting it and troubling the inhabitants.
    • From Sketches of Old Dublin, Ada Peter, 1907: The proceedings of the Hell-Fire Club, whether on the summit of Mount Pelier, or within the walls of the Eagle Tavern on Cork Hill, were whispered among the plainer folk with awe and horror. It was told how blasphemous toasts were followed by the sudden death of the speaker on more than one occasion, while the sulphurous flames and fumes which were produced at their gatherings caused any country person who happened to witness them to be convinced that they saw the infernal regions. Among the beverages consumed by the members of the Dublin HellFire Club was a mixture made by brewing whiskey and butter together, and as the making of this was an art in itself, they employed a special scaltheen maker. From this man have come many stories of the doings of his wild masters, who, as they imbibed the burning drink so carefully prepared, used, he said, to stand in impious bravado before blazing fires till they dropped down dead from the heat. Again, he related how brimstone certainly was perceptible to the senses and how the very horses showed a dislike to draw their hearses. Of a certain black cat there are several accounts: This animal belonged to the Club, and had a place at the dinner table, when it was always served first, and any insult or neglect to it was regarded as an offence to be punished by the life of the offender. A country clergyman, his curiosity aroused at seeing the cat helped first, inquired as to the reason, and received for answer that it was out of respect for age, as they believed it to be the oldest individual in the company. The clergyman replied that he believed so too, as it was not a cat but an imp of darkness, which had the effect of making the cat assume its proper form of a fiend and forthwith flew away. 
    • From Spinsters, Old Maids, & Cat Ladies, Katherine Barak, Bowling Green State University, 2014: Using Foucault’s notion of “containment strategies,” representations of the crazy cat lady, the spinster, and the old maid negatively frame independent, single women as models of failed white womanhood. These characters must be contained because they intrinsically transgress social norms, query gender roles, and challenge the limitations of mediated womanhood. The cat lady in popular culture has become a shorthand signifier for non-normative femininity. The cat lady addresses the same gender concerns as her predecessors in Spinsters and old maids. Historical context dictates the manner in which they are depicted, but the message has been resoundingly the same: women must adhere to heteronormative gender expectations. Be desirable, flirt, catch a husband, marry, have children, and you will have succeeded as a woman. Whether by choice or situation, spinster, old maid, and cat lady characters neglect their feminine duties and become cultural models for failure. The domestic cat’s nature is marked by ambivalence: They’re wild animals that enjoy the comforts of civilization. Despite claims of domestication and dependence on human intervention, the cat is still resolutely independent. Cats have come to symbolize opposing forces: domestic and wild, dependent and independent, good and evil, innocence and promiscuity, and so on. The same can be said of women – they might be depicted as benevolent or beguiling. 
      • Woman and cat, goddess and sacred animal, witch and feline familiar: the relationship has existed for centuries and the connotations range from domestic home and hearth to the supernatural. Women and cats’ ambivalent iconographies, some of which still exist today in Euro-American popular imagination, took root during the Middle Ages. Sacred animals were not adopted into the larger European religions. This is true of all Christianity, but Protestantism in particular. The cornerstone to Protestantism lay in the relationship of an individual to god. Rather than mediated by saints, sacraments, animals, or the church, the connection should be direct. Medieval European culture shied away from conceptualizing animals as anything more than their use-value in aiding labor, their exchange-value, or a food source. Animals were non sequiturs in worship. This notion was paralleled by animals’ importance within pagan religious rituals. When pagan beliefs were deemed unacceptable alongside sanctioned religious practices the animals associated with those beliefs suffered. Folklorist Katharine M. Briggs blames failed syncretism for the longstanding cultural discomfort with cats. Christianity was on the rise and female deities and their feline companions were no longer respected. In fact, women gathering or participating in rural religious rites or traditions were now indicative of nocturnal ceremonies, sorcery, and witchcraft, and cats, especially black cats, became agents of devilish acts and witches’ familiars.
    • From Witches & Poison Cats, Wu Haiyun & Wang Mingke, Sixth Tone, 2023: In the course of his fieldwork, Wang Mingke, one of the world’s foremost experts on Chinese minority groups, has explored one of the most marginalized groups within these villages: women accused of witchcraft. Known in the local language as “poisonous cats,” villagers are hostile toward these women out of a belief they can transform into animals and perform magic. It’s a near universal form of violence across humanity, one that Wang, always interested in the broader applications of his work, has linked to current hot-button issues like social media “tribalization” and anti-Asian hate. The legend of the “poisonous cat” is widespread in villages in northern Sichuan. The accused typically possess several marginal characteristics: They are female, usually elderly, and many have married into the village from elsewhere. Caught between the village’s fear of external enemies and its suspicions about internal foes, these individuals occupy a complex position: neither fully assimilated nor wholly excluded. Consequently, they become convenient scapegoats for various ills. They can be targeted at any time to alleviate intra-village tensions and unify the community. Poisonous cats may exhibit a defiant and antisocial mentality. For instance, within a traditional Chinese extended family, there may be a daughter-in-law who is treated as an outsider and unfairly blamed when problems arise. In traditional novels or dramas, this young daughter-in-law often resorts to tearful threats of self-harm, but she also might seek revenge through various means, such as spreading rumors about family scandals or inciting chaos by leaving the household. In such circumstances, she transforms into a “poisonous cat.” There are certainly similarities between European witches and poisonous cats: both are invented enemies. However, the difference lies in the fact that the phenomenon of poisonous cats is limited to the internal dynamics of a village, often appearing as idle gossip that eventually fades away. On the other hand, in the case of witches, Europe witnessed a widespread witch-hunting hysteria. Many women accused of being poisonous cats are socially ostracized, and even their daughters have difficulty finding marriage prospects. However, these poisonous cats did not endure the same level of persecution as found in the witch-hunting campaigns in European history. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1013535 
    • From Did Mass Cat Killings Help Spread the Black Death, Jack Izzo, Snopes, 2023: According to some social media posts, during the Middle Ages, cats were considered Satanic and evil because of a 1233 papal decree, so Europeans rounded up cats across the continent and dispatched them in mass killings. But the cats had their revenge from beyond the grave — their pest control prowess would have led to fewer rats had their population not decreased, and in the next century or two, more cats and fewer rats could have saved people from the Black Death. “Vox in Rama” is a real document written as a letter in the year 1233 by Pope Gregory IX. It did indeed target heretics in that area of Germany, who, according to the decree, had formed cults worshipping the devil, and it does mention the use of cats in the rituals. “There is no evidence beyond “Vox in Rama” itself to suggest that these rituals actually took place. Did ‘Vox in Rama’ Lead to Europeans Thinking Cats Were Evil? Not really. While “Vox in Rama” did have papal authority, it wasn’t widely shared. Even if churches did preach about the evils of cats, that would be their fault for misinterpreting the decree, which again does demonize cats per se or compare them to Satan. None of the evidence suggests that mass killings of cats happened. Bubonic plague is caused by a bacteria which infects fleas. These fleas do live on rats, which are carriers of the plague. But cats are actually highly susceptible to plague themselves. According to historian Mike Dash, like many common myths found on the internet, this originated in the late 90s or early 2000s. “The story about the cats is almost certainly a modern internet-based fabrication,” Dash told Snopes via email. Snopes found a reference to the myth in Donald Engels’ book “Classical Cats: The Rise and Fall of the Sacred Cat,” published in 1999. Dash, found a book reference to the idea in “The Cathars” by Malcolm Lambert, published in 1998. The claims likely originated from these books, then spread to blogs on the internet, then beyond. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/11/08/cats-mass-killings-plague/ 

The post Episode 207: Black Cats & Devils 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.

SHOW LINKS

• • From Revelation 17-18, King James Version: And he saith unto me, the woman which thou sawest is a great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and god hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,
  • From Notes on the New Testament, Albert Barnes, 1830s: “How much she hath glorified herself,” meaning been proud, boastful, arrogant. This was true of ancient Babylon, that she was proud and haughty; and it has been no less true of the mystical Babylon that is Rome. “And lived deliciously,” ie, by as much as she has lived in luxury and dissoluteness, so let her suffer now. The word used here and rendered “lived deliciously” in the Greek is derived from the noun which is used in Revelation 18:3, and rendered “delicacies.” It means  “to live strenuously and rudely,” as in English, “to live hard”; and then to revel, to live in luxury, riot, and dissoluteness. No one can doubt the propriety of this as descriptive of ancient Babylon, and as little can its propriety be doubted as applied to papal Rome. This word occurs nowhere else in the New Testament and may also be rendered as “luxury,” or “proud voluptuousness”; and the reference is to such luxuries as are found commonly in a great, a frivolous, and a splendid city. These, of course, give rise to much traffic, and furnish employment to many merchants and sailors, who thus procure a livelihood, or become wealthy as the result of such traffic. Babylon or Rome is here represented under the image of such a luxurious city; and of course, when she falls, they who have thus been dependent on her, and who have been enriched by her, have occasion for mourning and lamentation. It is not necessary to expect to find a literal fulfillment of this, for it is emblematic and symbolical. The image of a great, rich, splendid, proud and luxurious city having been employed to denote that anti-Christian power, all that is said in this chapter follows, of course, on its fall. The general idea is, that she was doomed to utter desolation, and that all who were connected with her, far and near, would be involved in her ruin.
  • • From Entertaining Satan, John Demos, 1983: The grasping quality attributed to witches comes through again and again in court testimonies. A witch would start by asking for what she wanted but, when rebuffed, would not hesitate to resort to stronger means.Envy, like “discontent,” was directly associated with the process of becoming a witch. Potential recruits were plied with “fine promises”: for example, “money, silks, fine clothes, ease from labor” for Elizabeth Knapp) a chance to be “big rich” for Mary Staples; to “live deliciously” for one unidentified boy, or to “go where there were fine folks” for Katherine Branch); even “an husband” and a guarantee against death for Mercy Short).  According to Cotton Mather, the Devil was acutely alert to signs of envious wish : “There is no condition but what has indeed some hunger accompanying it; and the Devil marks what it is that we are hungry for, [whether] preferments or employments, cash or land or trade, merriments or diversions, the Devil will be sure to suit his persuasions accordingly.
  • From Robert Eggers Explains ‘Butter’ and ‘Living Deliciously’, David Crow, Den of Geek, 2019: Before Robert Eggers’ The Witch became the toast of the Sundance Film Festival and earned him a Best Directing Award, he was a first-time filmmaker trying to get an indie horror movie out into the world. During that post-production process, he did test screenings, and time and again he received the same note: Why butter? Why a pretty dress? “That was a pretty consistent note, so I kept trying to find something better,” he says. There was just one thing the director couldn’t get past: “Those were things the devil actually promised.” Or at least they were things those pressured into confessing to witchcraft claimed were their greatest wishes. “What struck me as I read through the reams of Salem depositions was how a young boy is asked, ‘Well, what did the devil promise you? Why did you make covenant with the devil?’ And he says in complete innocence, ‘I wanted a pair of shoes.’” He also points to the story of Elizabeth Knapp, a Puritan teenager who in 1672 was believed to be possessed by the Devil. Said Eggers, Beginning with complaints of physical pain, Knapp eventually displayed convulsions, laughing fits and “hysterics,” and hallucinations. After seeking a medical solution, her employer Samuel Willard eventually concluded Knapp was possessed by the Devil, and pushed her to confess that she had been assaulted by the Dark One before making a pact with him and letting him into her bed. Willard, a minister, asks Knapp, ‘What does the devil mean to you?’ ‘Well, he’s going to take our ashes from the fireplace.’ “You fall over laughing when you see this, but you realize this is a fifteen-year-old-girl who’s sick to death being a domestic slave.” Eggers eventually compared Knapp’s likely sorrowful plight to that of Thomasin in The Witch. While Thomasin lives with her family, she is treated with suspicion and loathing and her mother wishes to rid the farm of Thomasin and sell her into servitude to another family. “Tking the ashes out seems silly or mundane, but it’s so… sad,” Eggers reflected on the Knapp case in comparison to The Witch. https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-witch-explains-butter-living-deliciously/ 
  • From The Witch: The Complete Guide, Novum, YouTube, 2024: And now we come to probably the most famous scene in the film, not just because it has a  talking goat. We begin with this  sound of bells ringing in the dark; bells are traditionally used to ward off witches, the devil, evil spirits and so on. I actually think this might be meant to allude to the goat  bells we’ve heard previously, only made more mystical sounding now the farm is somewhat overrun by this satanic presence. The blood around Thomasin’s mouth and spilled on her chest is very in line with the trope of the fallen women that we see so often and reminds us of Eve biting into the forbidden fruit, an indicator of unfeminine desire for violence and consumption. Thomasin’s sin is revealed to be Greed, she wants to live deliciously, she wants to sample  all the delights of life. This should be unsurprising as it has roots in this ‘night demoness’ archetype that Thomasin is in the process of embodying, of vampirism, inverted motherhood, twisted desire, and fears regarding female emancipation. She is, in every sense, the fear of what women would be without religion. The question “What does thou want?” should have been easy to answer, but Thomasin is directionless and doesn’t  necessarily know what to even ask for. She replies “What cans’t thou give?” and we can and should read this as indicative of Thomasin’s inexperience, she doesn’t know what the ceiling is on what she can ask of the Devil, but it’s also indicative of an ‘I want it all’ attitude, I’ll take everything you’re offering. 
  • The taste of butter and a pretty dress are cribbed from actual, or alleged, incidents  from witch trials–to quote Robert Eggers “things that the Devil actually promised.” For a couple of centuries the eating of butter had  been considered a sin within the Catholic church, something that actually catalysed the Protestant reformation in its own small way. The most famous line in the film  “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” And This offer of living deliciously makes  her immediately say yes. She leaps on it. Thomasin only really bites at this offer to live a grander, more delicious life, to gorge on earthly delights in every sense she can. So much of the film is rooted in consumption. Thomasin tells him that she cannot write her name and he says ‘I will guide thy hand’. This could well be a reference to the phrase “your hand will guide me” from Psalm 139, which refers  essentially to god’s loving care. But primarily this is demonstrating how consent is working: Thomasin may not know how to write her own name,   but she is eager to do it. The Devil can’t force her to do it but he can guide her in how. This issue of consent was very important in  Puritan witch trials. Cotton Mather wrote: “In the case of Witchcrafts we know that the Devil is the immediate Agent in the Mischief done, so the consent or compact of the Witch is the thing to be demonstrated.” So it’s crucial that while Black Phillip is willing to help her hold the quill and show her how to write, this isn’t a scenario she can be forced into. Coerced but not forced.  This is her soul and her decision.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEYgVnKUiRY&t=281s 
  • From Satanism and Feminism in Popular Culture, Miranda Corcoran, 2025: The relationship between woman and the devil is arguably even older than the Satan myth itself. When we say “relationship” we mean that pretty literally, as our modern concept of Satan probably stretches back to Second Temple Jewish myth and the stories of the mysterious Watchers angels who were seduced to sin and vice by the comeliness of mortal women in the Book of Enoch: These dalliances between mortal and immortal beget evil, violence, war, and even a race of cannibalistic giants. In the end, the disobedient angels are cast into everlasting fire. At face value, Enoch seems to put fault on the male-coded Watchers, but it didn’t take long for misogynist preachers and church fathers to implicate the womenfolk. In The Testament of Reuben, a mostly apocryphal second century text, Reuben, son of the Israeli patriarch Jacob, preaches that women “allured the Watchers” and warns, “women are evil, and by reason of their lacking authority or power over men, they scheme treacherously.” Mind you, Reuben is most famous for stealing his father’s concubine and getting cut out of his will, so we might wonder who asked him to begin with? But not to worry, because Reuben has corroboration from “the angel of the lord,” who assures him that “women are more easily overcome by the spirit of promiscuity.” Reuben seems to have rarely been overcome with the spirit of self-awareness himself, but we’ll let that lie for now. 
  • The Watcher story went out of favor in time, replaced by the now-famous Eden myth, with Eve seduced by a mouthy serpent as an alternate origin for worldly evil; naturally, popular preaching cast Eve, and by extension women generally, as tools of wickedness, often barely differentiated from the Satanic serpent; as dusty old second century Roman preacher Tertullian put it: “And do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of god on this sex of yours lives in this age: […] You are the devil’s gateway […] the unsealer of that forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law.” That sounds pretty metal to us, but apparently Tertullian meant this as a bad thing? Religion is confusing. When European witch scares kicked into high gear in the 15th and 16th centuries, witch-hunting weirdos were quick to frame witches as sultry feminine temptresses who were quite literally seduced by the devil through diabolical orgies with attendant demons. In a typically unironical example, Italian philosopher Gianfrancesco Mirandola wrote in 1523 that devils ensured the loyalty of witches by way of their “virile members,” which apparently were of quite remarkable proportions and “filled up the most secret parts of the witches”–and we’ll just pause for the reader to add their own editorial comments here. As Neil Forsyth points out in his book The Old Enemy, “blaming women is an uncomplicated solution for men suspicious of their own sexual needs.”
  • From I Await the Devil’s Coming, Mary MacLane, 1902: Now I feel and I want things and I know it with burning vividness. I want Fame more than I can tell. But more than I want Fame I want Happiness. What would I not give for one day, one hour, of that charmed thing! None of the other fools desires Happiness as I desire it. I am ready and waiting to give all that I have to the Devil in exchange for Happiness. I have been tortured so long with the dull, dull misery of Nothingness—all my nineteen years. I want to be happy—oh, I want to be happy! The Devil has not yet come. But I know that he usually comes, and I wait him eagerly. I am fortunate that I am not one of those who are burdened with an innate sense of virtue and honor which must come always before Happiness. They are but few who find their Happiness in their Virtue. The rest of them must be content to see it walk away. But with me Virtue and Honor are nothing. I long unspeakably for Happiness. And so I await the Devil’s coming. The Devil has given me some good things—among other things—my admirable young woman’s body, which I enjoy thoroughly and of which I am passionately fond. A spasm of pleasure seizes me when I think in some acute moment of the buoyant health and vitality of this fine young body that is feminine in every fiber. “It is good,” I think to myself, “oh, it is good to be alive! It is wondrously good to be a woman young in the fullness of nineteen springs. It is unutterably lovely to be a healthy young animal living on this charmed earth.” There are persons who say to me that I ought not to think of the Devil, that I ought not to think of Happiness—Happiness for me would be sure to mean something wicked; that I ought to think of being good. I ought to think of God. These are persons who help to fill the world with fools.”
  • From How Ethical Hedonism Plays Into Theistic Satanism, Chia Satana, Satanic Spirit, 2018: Embracing ethical hedonism has brought me closer to Satan. The definition of hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure and sensual self-indulgence. People think of the pursuit of pleasure as immoral, corrupt, and sinful, but ethical hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure but with personal ethics involved. Ultimately, I decide which pleasures are okay to indulge in and to what extent I can indulge. Religions often shame people for pursuing pleasure, especially the worldly pleasures. Have you ever heard of good food described as “sinful”? Satan wants us to enjoy life, he wants us to experience pleasure without the fetters of guilt or shame. Pleasure is one of the many gifts Satan gives humanity, one of the things that makes life worth living. Pleasure isn’t the only thing to live for, but it’s an important component in life. I make pleasure a priority in life because it makes me feel good, not just pleasures like lust and food, but also the smaller pleasures such as funny memes or time with friends. Worldly pleasures are here for us to enjoy, not avoid; so long as each person involved consents to the activity and the activity itself is carried out in a safe manner, hedonism is ethical. 
  • Admittedly, not all pleasures are ethical: Some pleasure causes harm and has negative consequence, and I acknowledge that there are pleasures that can harm you if you indulge too much. This is where ethics comes in to decide what/how much I can eat without harming my health. Don’t get me wrong: I still eat too much, but I’m trying to work on eating healthier. I know eating healthy will bring me pleasure because I’ll get to enjoy the benefits of health, and this will lead to more pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure is a highly personal thing: Nobody should feel guilty over indulging in pleasures like consensual sex or laughing at an enemy’s expense. Satan helps free me from this unnecessary shame over experiencing and valuing pleasure in life. He also helps me appreciate these pleasures more since I believe Satan, as the true creator, made these pleasures for us to enjoy. I thank Satan for the gift of pleasure every day. Ultimately, only you can decide your personal ethics surrounding pleasure. I think my life is a happier place with both ethical hedonism and Satan involved in it. I find that the more I embrace Satan, the more of an ethical hedonist I become.
  • From the Satanic Revelation, Allison P, 2013: And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And after these things I saw another infernal Spirit come up from Hell, having great power; And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is risen, and is become the habitation of Devils, and the hold of every infernal Spirit and the dominion of those who kept Satan’s covenant! For all nations have drunk of the wine of the pleasure of her fornication, and the Kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from Hell, saying, go into her, my people, that ye be partakers of her wisdom, and that ye receive of her joys. For the great works of men have reached unto Heaven, and even the enemy hath remembered her glory. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled: How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are given to thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are imparted to thee, and thou shalt find them forevermore. For in one hour so great riches is come. Rejoice over her, the victorious, for the Lord Lucifer shall deliver you to her. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_xsXutOpIO9wzwlH7I73s1ZcZVehLn65UCHmEJ-uH2E/edit?tab=t.0 
  • From To Live Deliciously, Cradle of Filth, 2025: Velvet incantations, standing ovations from the stalls The torturous stage is a bountiful harvest To which we stay in thrall We wish to live deliciously in this garden of delights, We wish to live deliciously enraptured, bedight, We wish to live deliciousl, in this sea of paradise, We wish to live deliciously, enchanted, enchanted. Greatest expectations, enemy nations, all shall fall to a future wherein peace remains the rule. Behold the golden dawn: Our world reborn to a sworn horizon, as from the grip of winter’s siege, we prise ourselves to rise again, to live deliciously. We expire, best never wait lest these ecstatic fires burn as dreams evaporate. Just one stretch above, so run amok and thunder far in lust and utter bliss, embark: We wish to live deliciously, in this garden of delights, we wish to live deliciously, enraptured, bedight, we wish to live deliciously in this sea of paradise, we wish to live deliciously, enchanted, free to every vice. Forget redemption, for the time is rife to face the day and empower the night, to revel disheveled in the chaos of life, embracing the playful and the slayful knife.

The post Episode 196: Living Deliciously appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• Sara Moslener, After Purity: https://saramoslener.com/
• Photo by Tony Hisgett: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_One_Ring_%2831626343711%29.jpg
• From A History of Celibacy, Elizabeth Abbott, 1999: Chastity as it relates to sexuality is abstention from unlawful sexual activity, said especially of women; celibacy is the state of being unmarried, especially that of a person under a vow. Celibacy paraded through history under a legion of names: It was Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, Tolstoy, and even Leonardo da Vinci, fearful of a second accusation of sexual impropriety. Celibacy is also writ large in the world’s medical literature, monopolizing large sections of textbooks and the wisdom of most cultures. Therein are elaborated a wealth of semen-centered perspectives and detailed instructions about regimens that help conserve precious ejaculate. Most Western kitchens harbor the shades of the intense, celibate social movement that sought to encourage semen-focus and quench the embers of sensuality: which one of us hasn’t enjoyed corn flakes and Graham flour, designed by the chaste John Harvey Kellogg and Sylvester Graham to cool ardor and promote bland healthfulness? Not unexpectedly, sex-negative, celibacy-obsessed Christianity dominates the first part of our book, though its pagan and Jewish antecedents marked important passages along the path–in pagan Greece especially, premarital chastity was such an essential requirement in brides that young women were thrust into marriage just after puberty to eliminate any possibility of a sexual lapse, and among the pantheon of deities, powerful, and ambitious goddesses maintained lifelong vigilance over their virginity. But celibacy is at Christianity’s core, the story of a divine infant miraculously born to a virgin. The Christian fixation on celibacy, from its condemnatory preoccupation with lustful Eve to its ideological sterilization of chaste Mary and, in the Catholic Church, its rejection of married priests, has endured for twenty centuries, embraced hundreds and millions of people, and imbued Western civilization with its ideals and ideology. Through the lens of Christian celibacy, I saw women seize on this new doctrine as a tool to emancipate themselves from the drudgery of marriage and childbearing, but celibacy is not always so uplifting: The great value most societies place on bridal virginity gives this dimension of celibacy a decidedly ugly side, even when girls’ tiny feet are no longer bound, and chastity belts are rusty museum curiosities. 
• • • From Adam, Eve, & the Serpent, Elaine Pagels, 1988: For many Christians of the first four centuries, the greatest freedom demanded the greatest renunciation — above all, celibacy. This identification of freedom with celibacy involved a paradox, then as now, for celibacy (to say nothing of fasting and other forms of renunciation) is an extreme form of self-restraint. Yet as Christians saw it, celibacy involved rejection of “the world” of ordinary society and was thereby a way to gain control over one’s own life. Pagan contemporaries regarded such renunciation not only as social suicide but as the worst impiety and dishonor, but ascetically inclined Christians projected their idealized celibacy back into [Eden] and turned the story of the first marriage into a story of two virgins whose sin and sexual awakening ended in their expulsion from the “Paradise of virginity.” The Christian teacher Thaelia accused Christians of using marital relations to gratify themselves sexually while pretending that their concern is with procreation. She admits that scripture did not require celibacy, but says the Apostle Paul certainly preferred it for any who were capable of achieving this “means of restoring humanity to Paradise.”
    • Jovinian strictly avoided any contact with women, but after some years underwent a change of heart and questioned whether this was spiritually beneficial. Although he remained sexually abstinent, he soon argued that celibacy in itself is no holier than marriage and accused certain fanatical Christians of having invented “novel dogma against nature.” Jovinian rejected the common belief that celibate persons are holier than those who marry and declared that “virgins, widows, and married women, who have once gone through Christian baptism, if they are equal in other respects, are of equal merit.” St. Jerome saw Jovinian as a serious threat and set out “to crush this Epicurus of Christianity.” When Jerome read Jovinian’s treatise he said he heard “the hissing of the old serpent; by counsel such as this, the dragon drove man from Paradise.” What bothered Jerome especially was that Jovinian was supported by some of the leading Christians of Rome. Jerome acknowledged that even though everyone praised celibacy, not everyone took it seriously, even as a qualification for the priesthood: “That married men are elected to the priesthood, I do not deny; the number of virgins is not so great as that of the priests that are needed. Jerome declares that Jesus himself remained “a virgin in the flesh and a monogamist in the spirit,” faithful to his only bride, the church, and adds that “although I know that crowds of matrons will be furious at me  I will say what the apostle Paul has taught me: In view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean.”
    • From What You Should Know About Purity Culture, Joe Carter, Gospel Coalition, 2019: “Purity culture” is the term often used for the evangelical movement that attempts to discourage dating and promote virginity before marriage, often through the use of tools such as purity pledges, purity rings, and purity balls. A prime example is the original pledge from the book True Love Waits, which read: “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to god, myself, my family, those I date, and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage.” Purity rings were popularized by the Christian ministry The Silver Ring Thing, which promoted abstinence primarily through music events. Rings were worn by several young actors and pop stars, including Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez. Father-Daughter Purity Balls are formal dance events attended by fathers and their daughters that promote virginity until marriage for teenage girls. Fathers would often sign a pledge that they would be the example of purity for their daughter. The dances were originally conceived in 1998 by a California couple, Randy and Lisa Wilson, as a way of “celebrating God’s design and life’s little growth spurts.” 
    • The purity movement began in the 1990s as Christians who were children or teens during the beginning of the 1960s-era sexual revolution began to have children and teenagers of their own. In the 1970s only 2 percent of American women had more than 10 sexual partners before marriage; in the 1990s that percentage had increased to 10 percent; in 2010 it was 18 percent. We cannot only think of our chastity in relationship to our bodies, but to the very way that we are forming and being conformed in our inmost being to the image of Christ as pure, faithful, and chaste beings. I choose purity for Christ’s glory. I am doing this for his sake, not my sake. I am doing this because he deserves adoration, and the purity of my life is a way to show him that adoration. There is no moralism. If I choose sexual purity for the glory of Christ, that is just pure worship. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/faqs-know-purity-culture/ 
    • From How History Shaped Evangelical Womanhood, Sara Moslener & Sarah Stankorb, In Polite Company, 2023: Gail Biederman’s book Manliness and Civilization demonstrates the formation of Victorian gender roles and the cult of true womanhood — the Four Virtues, of which purity is one. What she argues is the true woman ideal was in response to the creation and the growth of the middle class in the 19th century. Capitalism was growing because there was an enslaved workforce, which means white people were getting wealthy. But there’s a sense that there’s a kind of disease with that, because it pushed against certain values — be humble, work hard, very early American grit. So, there’s a sense of unease, and especially because men were working out of the home in politics and commerce and were having to do what could be considered things that lacked virtue. The way to balance is to pair the public man with the domestic woman who takes on all the virtues of goodness: piety, purity, domesticity, and submission. This is where we get these notions of white femininity, what came to be known as “the angel in the house.” She stays home. She raises the children. She teaches and is in charge of her children’s spiritual training. Victorian homes would often have a space, an entire room set apart, as a chapel. You marry the sort of public, rough-and-tumble unethical world that the man is in with the woman’s sanctuary of the home. That’s the perfect combination, because then he can come back to his sanctuary and be grounded in the virtues there. But it’s her job to make sure virtue remains in the home, that the home is a virtuous home. Slavery was created on a black/white binary. When that ended, they needed another way to maintain the race line: anti-miscegenation law was one way, reinforced by two powerful stereotypes: the sexually pure and innocent white woman and the aggressive, black male.  Rumors of clandestine relations or inappropriate exchanges were enough to insight white racial violence against entire Black communities. Pure, white womanhood was a propaganda tool for justifying white racial power. In the 19th century, there was very much the sense of the white, Anglo Saxon Protestant family was the one that was most suited to growing civilization, and it was white women who were bearers of the civilization. Whiteness was all encoded in these gender ideologies, [but] they would be adopted and adapted, especially by the growing Black middle class in the early 20th century. 
    • Fundamentalism was responding to so many things. It was responding to science, of course, because you have the Scopes Monkey Trial. And then you have the response to the New Woman trying to change the gender roles. Also at that time were debates over biblical interpretation, academics who are interpreting the Bible academically while fundamentalists believed that the Bible is one truth and anyone can read it and know the truth. But academics were coming along and saying, ‘Well, no, the truth isn’t self-evident,’ right? The Bible is a complex book.’ So, that was the huge clash. That really animated everything. Gender roles became about protecting biblical gender roles and arguments about science were to come from the Bible. Fundamentalism was very much a response to the more modernizing influences that were happening. Billy Graham comes in the ‘30s, with Youth for Christ, and makes it all hip and interesting again. He’s someone who would go from being a fundamentalist to being an evangelical as a way to sort of bring fundamentalists out of their separatism. This is also the time period when you see the growth of Christian colleges and radio—especially evangelical media. Evangelicalism was really kind of creating their own parallel institutions as a way to separate themselves from “the World.” That really took off in ‘70s. I really like Mara Einstein’s book Brands of Faith. She comes out of marketing and advertising and then writes about and studies religion. That’s why many of these evangelical churches were in the suburbs then. That’s when you get a church that looks like a mall, because people didn’t want to go to a church that looks like a church. There was still this idea within evangelicalism of having a family where the wife doesn’t have to work as a middle class goal. This period is also where I start to see an argument about white Christian nationalism develop, with this vision of the family as the foundation of the American nation state. And it’s the white, middle class, suburban, heterosexual family. https://sarahstankorb.substack.com/p/how-history-shaped-evangelical-womanhood?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1179398&post_id=95847619&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email 
    • From Eric Sprankle: Facts You Need To Know, Ellyn Santiago, Heavy.com, 2018: Eric Sprankle, a professor of sexuality studies in Minnesota, is a sex therapist and a Satanist. A controversial tweet from the not-shy Psy.D. has created a firestorm. In it, he suggests god impregnated the Virgin Mary without her consent. And even if there was consent, god was infinitely more powerful than a teenaged Mary and put her at a disadvantage, he claims. Sprankle is no stranger to controversy in that his ideas and opinions are unconventional and he appears unafraid to share those opinions. A number of students have said he’s funny and smart and fascinating. Others disagree. Now, Sprankle is being criticized for his latest heretical pronouncement, but given he’s a Satanist, he does not hide it: “The virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen. There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario. Happy Holidays.” A commenter replied that in the story of the Annunciation, Mary talk’s about God’s plans with the angel Gabriel and says, “I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled.” Sprankle responds that Mary could not have consented given god’s supreme and almighty power over her. “The biblical god regularly punished disobedience. The power difference in deity vs mortal and the potential for violence for saying ‘no’ negates her ‘yes.’ To put someone in this position is an unethical abuse of at best and grossly predatory at worst. Not surprisingly, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson blasted Sprankle: “Fifty years ago this kind of shallow banality would be something the province of a drunk undergraduate at three in the morning.” Sprankle is an Associate Professor at Minnesota State University & Teaches Psychology & Sexuality Studies. “Promoting sexual health while reducing shame and respecting body autonomy,” is how Sprankle describes his goal as a college professor teaching students about sexuality. Sprankle is a Minnesota-licensed clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist. Sprankle is also very focused on demystifying sexual mores and abolishing sexual stereotypes, He says, “I tweet mostly about sex worker rights, abortion, and atheism. After the brouhaha over his tweets, some students jumped on a site where people rate their college professors. Some were not happy with his take on the Annunciation. One student wrote about Sprankle saying at once his lectures are “amazing” but that he’s an “awful” professor. Another said simply, “He is a condescending know it all. Has great hatred for traditions.” But another said, “Sprankle is hilarious and very intelligent. He makes every little bit of information interesting and his personality is just too fantastic to ignore.” https://web.archive.org/web/20181207223947/https://heavy.com/news/2018/12/dr-eric-sprankle
    • From Christian purity culture is still being felt, Chrissie Thwaites, The Conversation, 2022: Purity culture was most significant in America, and since the noughties it has gradually faded from cultural prominence. Its impact, though, is global and ongoing: Purity culture was built on an established religious ethic but came to encompass a subculture in American evangelical Christianity. A prolific industry of purity-themed bibles, rallies, and books emerged. Beyond abstinence, young Christians were encouraged not to date. Romantic attachments not leading to marriage were discouraged due to a perceived risk of emotional and physical impurity. Young women and girls were instructed to be careful how they dressed and interacted with others to avoid “tempting” men, and strict gender roles were encouraged. Purity culture is harmful: It taught women in particular to be suspicious and ashamed of their bodies, and resulted in anxiety, panic attacks and even PTSD. The identifiable rituals of purity culture – such as purity rings and pledges – have receded, but key organisations are rebranding themselves and changing the way purity culture is presented. Purity ring organisation Silver Ring Thing has recently remarketed as Unaltered Ministries, dropping its focus on purity rings but nonetheless holding onto its heritage. Alongside this, new brands which recycle purity messaging are also emerging, like GirlDefined, a YouTube channel run by two sisters promoting “biblical womanhood”. Both sisters waited until marriage to kiss their husbands and describe feminism as an “attack on God’s design for woman”. The permeation of purity culture into church teachings and cultures can be seen in anxieties around male-female friendships, relationship expectations, the Christian idolisation of marriage, the equation of virginity with value, and inferences that women are responsible for gatekeeping men’s sexual behaviour. Meanwhile, former purity culture adherents are grappling with its after-effects. Many have spent years analysing how purity teachings affected their view of their body and relationships with other people. Women have described feeling trapped in their own skin. The repackaging of purity culture into new formats, and its permeation into broader Christian culture means the movement persists. https://theconversation.com/the-impact-of-christian-purity-culture-is-still-being-felt-including-in-britain-182907 
    • From Satanists’ Sexual Self-Concept, Samuel Danielson Minnesota State University, 2022: This sample of Satanists consists primarily of white, cisgender women from the United States with an average age of about 32 years. Additionally, more than half of the sample also identified as being bi- or pansexual. Most Satanists in this sample were raised in childhood homes where Christianity was the primary religion. Participants reported primarily engaging in forms of Satanism that are atheistic or non-theistic. A majority of participants also reported being members of The Satanic Temple. The average age that participants converted to Satanism was about 25. The analysis of Satanists’ sexual behavior indicated that two-thirds of Satanists have engaged in BDSM play. More than two-thirds of the sample also reported having engaged in non-BDSM kink or fetish play. This surpasses the percentage of individuals in the general population. More than half of Satanists masturbate more than once a week, but only about 35% utilize pornography at the same rate. The high prevalence of engagement in taboo or stigmatized sexual behaviors within Satanism could be attributable to the sex-positive and permissive attitudes promoted by the religion. Additionally, the more positive feelings one has about being a Satanist, the more positively one may evaluate their ability to relate with others sexually, as engaging in sex is an affirmation of their Satanist identity and beliefs. 
    • Interestingly, the analysis also indicated that these factors are all significant predictors of sexual anxiety. A possible explanation for this relationship between the strength of Satanist identification and sexual anxiety could be minority stress from one’s Satanist identity: As Satanism is an atheistic belief system, it is likely that identification with the religion also leads to social stigma and, therefore, negative psychological outcomes. Furthermore, as sex may be considered a religious activity for Satanists, engagement in sexual behavior may make Satanists’ internalized anti-Satanism more salient, leading to increased tension, discomfort, or anxiety. However, cognitive engagement with and affirmation of one’s Satanist identity may help to buffer the negative effects of minority stress on sexual anxiety. Future research could also attempt to control for otherl factors that past research has found to be associated with social anxiety such as gender, marital status, race, disability, and body image. Though data for gender, marital status, and race were collected in the data set used for the current study, this data used a nominal scale of measurement which cannot be used for regression analyses if there are more than two levels to the variable, as there were for these variables. The minority stress model could also be applied to Satanism, similar to how it has been applied to atheism in future research to determine if there are any specific affects that minority stress may have on Satanists. 

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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.

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The post Episode 180: Frankenstein appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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The post Episode 169: Satanic Blasphemy appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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The post Episode 168: The Walpurgisnacht Episode appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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The post Episode 161 – The Return of Lilith appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

When it comes to Deadly Sins, there’s one option you can always count on for putting skin in the game. So why do conventional religions have so many intimate inhibitions about Lust, and what can we do with the baggage we’ve inherited from them?

SHOW LINKS

• Salon: “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic” is a thing that exists now, Kelly McClure (2023)
• Cathechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition
• The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil, by Stanford M. Lyman (1989)
• The Book of Watchers (Third Century BCE)
• The Old Enemy, by Neil Forsyth (1989)
• Adam, Eve, & the Serpent, by Elaine Pagels (1988)
• The Devil: A New Biography, by Philip C. Almond (2014)
• Satanic sexuality: understanding Satanism as a diversity issue for sex and relationship therapists, Eric Sprankle et al. (2021)

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• Coffee Hour is the third Thursday of every month from 6 – 8 pm at Wicked Grounds in San Francisco!

The post Episode 138 – Deadly Sins: Satanic Lust appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.