Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism
Ruben van Luijk
Abstract
Satanism adopts Satan, the Judeo-Christian representative of evil, as an object of veneration. This book explores the historical origins of this extraordinary “antireligion.” While the concept of people worshipping Satan was actually an invention of Christianity to demonize its internal and external competitors, this dark stereotype created by the Church eventually came to be embraced as a positive (anti)religious identity by some in the modern West. Children of Lucifer traces the long and tortuous trajectory to this unique occurrence, a story that involves Romantic poets, radical anarchists, ... More
Satanism adopts Satan, the Judeo-Christian representative of evil, as an object of veneration. This book explores the historical origins of this extraordinary “antireligion.” While the concept of people worshipping Satan was actually an invention of Christianity to demonize its internal and external competitors, this dark stereotype created by the Church eventually came to be embraced as a positive (anti)religious identity by some in the modern West. Children of Lucifer traces the long and tortuous trajectory to this unique occurrence, a story that involves Romantic poets, radical anarchists, eccentric esotericists, Decadent writers, and schismatic exorcists, among others, culminating in the establishment of the Church of Satan by the carnival entertainer Anton Szandor LaVey. Yet it is more than just a collection of colorful characters and unlikely historical episodes. The emergence of new attitudes to Satan proves to be intimately linked to the Western Revolution, the ideological struggle for emancipation that transformed the West and is epitomized by the American and French Revolutions. It is also closely connected to secularization, that other exceptional historical process during which Western culture spontaneously renounced its traditional gods in order to enter into a self-chosen state of religious indecision. As this study seeks to show, the emergence of Satanism thus presents a shadow history of the evolution of modern civilization as we know it.
Keywords:
Satanism,
Satan,
evil,
antireligion,
Christianity,
Church of Satan,
Anton Szandor LaVey,
secularization
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190275105 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190275105.001.0001 |
