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Satanism: Bunk or Blasphemy?
By Ted Peters

The December 27, 1993 issues of both Time and Newsweek carried cover stories on angels. The Time/CNN poll reported sixty-nine percent answering yes to the question, "Do you believe in the existence of angels?" Angel books are best sellers. Angel gurus gather disciples by telling of their encounters with supranatural beings and by announcing that each of us can have our own angelic guardian. What was clearly missing in these descriptions of heavenly companions was any sense of awe or foreboding, the kind of fear-creating shock that would cause the shepherds on the first Christmas to be "terrified" (Lk. 2:9). Missing as well was any sense of the demonic, any recognition that the supreme malefactor known as Satan has long been thought to be a fallen angel.

Perhaps we should find comfort in this buoyant mood of spiritual optimism that seems to be taking us into the next phase of New Age spirituality. Perhaps the new angelology has arrived just in time to divert our attention from another hardly noticed but theologically significant social phenomenon, namely, Satanism. Since 1980, Satanism has taken on certain identifiable characteristics and become a controversial phenomenon in law enforcement, medicine, psychotherapy, and evangelical bookstore sales, but it has been roundly ignored by mainline theologians. To the extent that spiritual trends in the wider society outside the church should rightfully command theological attention, belief in angels and in the Devil should appear on the theologian's list of items to examine. In what follows, I plan to outline briefly the skeletal structure of one of these current phenomena, Satanism, and then suggest a category-the category of blasphemy-whereby theologians might bite into and begin to digest it.

Ted Peters is a professor of systematic theology at Pacific Lutheran Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He is editor of Dialog and author of The Cosmic Self (1991), GOD--the World's Future (1992), God as Trinity (1993), and, most recently, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society (1994).

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One way a theologian might comfort himself or herself for ignoring an important topic is to assume at the outset that it is bunk, that it consists of outdated superstitions held only by a gullible few and exaggerated by the press. However, reliance on unproven assumptions about unstudied topics renders such a theologian subject to the criticism of narrowminded dogmatism, a criticism that most of us have tried to overcome since the Enlightenment. So, assuming Satanism to be bunk before examination simply will not do. If we examine Satanism, what do we find? I will try to answer this question in what follows.

SATANISM'S FOUR FACES

We will start with Satanism as a social phenomenon. We will take up the theological assessment only later and separately. Satanism as a social phenomenon is protean, frequently changing its visage in recent history. Since 1980, it has had at least four faces. The first is classic Satan worship, continuing a pattern begun probably in eighteenth-century France, which mimics and repudiates everything Christian. The Devil replaces Jesus Christ as Lord and the black mass replaces the eucharist. This form of Satan worship appears to exist in our era in small highly secretive groups and is responsible for torture and ritual murder. In almost all contempo-

"Satanism as a social phenomenon is protean, frequently changing its visage in recent history. "

rary cases, Satan worship is associated with illegal drugs. The purpose of ritual murder and the subsequent eating of human flesh is twofold: to gain magical power from the victim and to desensitize cult members, readying them for criminal assignments. Classic Satanism is the form that skeptics in our time say does not exist, the form that many contend is bunk. I believe there is sufficient evidence to prove that such groups do in fact exist, but I suspect they are self-styled independent groups and not organized in any comprehensive conspiracy.

The second face is public Satanism. The present tradition begins with the teachings of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), a hedonist who declared himself the beast with the number 666 of the book of Revelation and said that Satan's second coming was imminent. If Crowley gave us the prophecy, then Anton Szandor LaVey gave us the fulfillment. The Crowley tradition lives on through LaVey's Church of Satan, which declared in 1966 that the Satanic Age had begun. LaVey served as consultant to the 1968 movie hit by director Roman Polanski, Rosemary's Baby, which parodies the birth of a Satanic messiah on the birth of Christ. One of LaVey's early disciples, Michael Aquino, broke away to form the Temple of Set, hoping to capitalize on the name of the Egyptian god Set and declare independence from the habit of negating Christ. What

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contemporary Crowleyism teaches is that Christian morality is oppressive because it blocks expression of our more genuinely human propensities for unbridled pleasure through sex and power. Satanic ritual seeks to invoke supranatural power to perpetrate revenge on one's enemies, revenge being dubbed one of humanity's greatest pleasures. These public organizations demand protection from prosecution, claiming first amendment rights for freedom of religion and, regardless of what they teach, argue that they themselves do not engage in criminal activity.

The third face is the lone teenage dabbler who fantasizes through role playing games and identifies with heavy metal music. These interests may be combined with indulgence in drugs and sexual orgies, though not necessarily. Mental health workers tell me that such teens have a distinct profile: They are loners who begin to explore esoterica by themselves. This may lead to mail order purchase of Satanic paraphernalia and the reading of Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible, which they take much more seriously than its author did. Such teens are very susceptible to suicide and patricide. They may also team up with a small number of close friends to experiment with the occult and sometimes antisocial activity, such as desecration of churches.

In rare cases, dabblers may become serial killers such as Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, famed for holding up the number 666 inscribed in his hand palm during his trial. At this writing, Ramirez has been convicted of thirteen murders and is facing trial for another. In a gesture of obvious self-justification, he told a television audience that "serial killers only do what governments do, but on a smaller scale." He added, "I gave up on love and happiness a long time ago."¹ This is the fourth face, the self-styled serial killer. These are criminals who borrow satanic themes as a rationale for their anti-social behavior.

The self-styled Satanic killer may overlap with the teenage dabbler and with public Satanism. We might observe that in San Francisco in the late 1960s there was some overlap in persons associated with the Church of Satan and with the Process Church of the Final Judgment, a group founded as a breakoff sect of Scientology in 1964. Process Church theology tied together Christ and Satan and reversed the fifth commandment to read, "Thou shalt kill." One person to be influenced by the Process Church was Charles Manson, who in 1969 asked his "family" to murder ritually Sharon Tate, the then pregnant wife of Rosemary's Baby director, Roman Polanski. A decade later the Process Church was implicated in the rampage of the Son of Sam, the .44 Caliber Killer, in New York City.

Closely tied to these four faces of contemporary Satanism is the as yet inadequately understood problem of cult survivors. To date, our only access to such survivors, three quarters of whom suffer from multiple personality disorder, is through psychotherapy. To complicate matters, books about the phenomenon have themselves become factors in the

¹ A Current Affair, October 14,1991.

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phenomenon. The 1980 publication and 1985 paperback republication of Michelle Remembers, by Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder virtually inaugurated the present chapter in the history of Satanism's significance. ² The book reports what Michelle told her psychiatrist, coauthor Pazder, regarding her own experience growing up in a Satanic cult of the 1950s on Vancouver Island. Unable to remember consciously the horrors she had undergone, only the techniques of therapy could make them known. Pazder helped make them known to Michelle and then, through the book, to the world. It may turn out in retrospect that many of the images that have come to be identified with contemporary Satanism have been stimulated by this and similar books.

TREATING SATANISM AS A PHENOMENON

Whenever we deal with a phenomenon, we are concerned about how something appears to someone. Deriving from the Greek word, phaino, meaning to appear, a phenomenon includes what is perceived plus the perceiver-that is, a phenomenon includes both the object and the subject. In the case of contemporary Satanism, what is perceived is determined in part by who is doing the perceiving. In addition, we can identify not two but three levels of the phenomenon: (1) the Satanism movement, (2) the anti-Satanism movement, and (3) the anti-Satanism movement. Because our access to Satanism is severely limited to these three competing layers of the phenomenon, a simple, factual apprehension of the situation is quite difficult at the present time,

We have already reviewed what seems to be widely accepted as the four faces of Satanism in North America. What is in dispute is whether Satanists exist at all and, if they do exist, whether or not they constitute a broad conspiracy that can be blamed for a long list of crimes. What the anti-Satanists perceive leads them to say yes to both questions. ³

Who are the anti-Satanists? This group includes sensationalizing journalists such as television personalities Geraldo and Oprah who, in the name of public interest, present lurid details of unspeakable horror. ⁴ It includes a scholar such as Carl Raschke, with his controversial book, Painted Black, who tries to connect a wide variety of criminal activity with

² Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, Michelle Remembers (New York: Pocket Books, 1980).
³ Sociologist David G. Bromley assigns the name Anti-Satanism Movement (ASM)-a name with capital letters and an abbreviation that seems to grant it reified status-to those holding what he calls a "countersubversion ideology." Satanism is the alleged subversion the ASM counters. "Satanism: The New Cult Scare," unpublished paper presented at the Fifth Annual International Conference on New Religions, May 16-17, 1991, sponsored by The Institute for the Study of American Religion, Santa Barbara, California. A version of this paper appears in The Satanism Scare, edited by James T. Richardson, Joel Best, and David G. Bromley (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991), pp. 49-72. Isuggest the terms "Satanist Movement" and "anti-anti-Satanist movement" as extensions of Bromley's terminology, even though "movement" may connote more unity to Satanism than probably applies.
⁴ The Geraldo show included specials on Satanism in broadcasts on Nov. 19, 1987; Oct. 6, 1988; Oct. 24, 1988; Oct. 25, 1988; Nov. 29, 1988; Mar. 1, 1989. Oprah had similar broadcasts on Sept. 30,1986; Feb. 17,1988; Jan. 31, 1989.

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Satan's underground. ⁵ It includes hundreds of therapists who are working with multiple personality disorders clients. It includes numerous parent groups seeking to supervise day care centers. It includes law enforcement agencies large and small across the country, many of which have developed specialists in cult crime. And, of course, it includes evangelical and fundamentalist preachers who decry the widespread deterioration of family life and corruption of youth through drugs and heavy metal music.

"...we can identify not two but three levels of the phenomenon: (1) the Satanism movement, (2) the anti-Satanism movement, and (3) the anti-anti-Satanism movement."

How do anti-Satanists describe the present situation? Larry Kahaner, a police investigator, gives us the big picture.

I found a hidden society, much larger and more disquieting than the world of [public] Satanism alone, a place few people know exists…. It is the underworld of "occult crime". . . . The crimes are frightening: a homicide where the decapitated victim is surrounded by colored beads, seven coins and chicken feathers; ritual sacrifices at wooded sites where black-robed cultists mutilate animals on altars; other homicides where the corpses are found drained of blood with symbols such as a pentagram or inverted cross carved into their chests; drug and pornography rings with nationwide connections to occult groups; carefully executed grave robbing; Satanic rituals and human sacrifices involving children-fantastic stories told by hundreds of children in scores of preschools throughout the United States, all of them relating similar horrors.⁶

What the anti-Satanists believe they see is a massive underground network of organized Satanic groups who practice ritual worship of the Devil, sponsor molestations of children in preschools, kidnap or breed their own children for ritual purposes and use them to make kiddie porn movies, torture animals and sacrifice human beings in versions of the black mass, practice cannibalism, leave emotionally scarred survivors who develop multiple personality disorder to be discovered later by therapists, and continue to recruit our nation's young people through heavy metal music and games such as Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the perception of the anti-Satanists. Now, who are the anti-Satanists? This group is a curious amalgam of academic social scientists, skeptics belonging to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, law enforcement personnel who are disenchanted with their anti-Satanist colleagues, and Satanists themselves. Many anti-anti-Satanists doubt that Satanism exists at all in the form of an underground conspiracy; what may exist are sporadic copycat manifes-

⁵ Carl A. Raschke, Painted Black (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990).
⁶ Larry Kahaner, Cults that Kill: Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime (New York:Warner Books, 1988), p. vii.

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tations that mimic the image presented by the anti-Satanists. In other words, the anti-Satanism movement is accused of being the author of the Satanism movement. The anti-anti-Satanist group either finds the anti-Satanists to be a curious phenomenon to study or, more seriously, dubs the anti-Satanists to be in fact the dangerous element in our society. Anti-Satanists are identified as dangerous because they allegedly represent evangelical or fundamentalist Christian beliefs in what is supposed to be a secular society and because they are said to be ideologists who are scapegoating the Satanists.

What are the points at issue? First, the two groups disagree over the scope of the socalled Satanist movement. Anti-Satanists frequently say that there are 50,000 to 60,000 ritual sacrifice victims each year, most performed on abducted children. Anti-anti-Satanist David Bromley is unconvinced. The best estimate places the number of children abducted by strangers annually between 200 and 300. Even if all the stranger abductions were by Satanists, they would not come close to meeting the alleged demand for victims. Then, to be even more charitable, Bromley speculates: If there might be 10,000 sacrifices per year (rather than the more commonly cited 50,000) and if Satanism goes back to the 1950s as is commonly reported by ritual abuse survivors, then this would have produced 400,000 victims, a total rivaling the 517,347 war related deaths from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam combined. Yet not a single casualty of the Satanic movement has been discovered .⁷

A second point at issue has to do with the degree of organization in the Satanist movement. The anti-Satanists describe complex rituals sponsored by a huge and complex underground network. Anti-anti-Satanists say there is no evidence of a common belief system, set of rituals, or organizational apparatus. Despite the descriptions of elaborate rituals, we have found no written sources that trace their historical development or spell out the philosophy of the secret ceremonies. Despite the contention that a conspiracy exists, we have no correspondence, membership lists, telephone logs, travel records, bank accounts, meeting places, crematoriums, or pornographic filming equipment.

A third point of contention has to do with what counts as evidence. What about the desecration of churches and the vandalism of cemeteries? What about reports of animal corpses, such as dogs and cats, that show signs of mutilation? Anti-Satanists suspect cult crime. Bromley says that church and grave desecrations and animal mutilations have a long history in America. Only recently have they been identified with Satanic cult activity. Even so, there is no evidence of an increase in the number of these incidents.

A fourth point at issue is the question: Given the frequency and enormity of Satanic offenses, how have Satanists avoided detection? Is

⁷ Bromley, "Satanism: The New Cult Scare," who relies on Kenneth Lanning, "Satanic, Occult, Ritualistic Crime: A Law Enforcement Perspective," The Police Chief ,56 (1989), pp. 62-83.

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this an air tight conspiracy? Why haven't the children spoken out? The anti-Satanists contend that the children have been so terrorized and intimidated that they have been unable to reveal their victimization to anyone. When they do speak, what they say is so bizarre that it is dismissed as fantasy. In addition, high ranking police officials are alleged to be Satanists themselves, and these persons deflect investigations. Bromley, in contrast, believes the anti-Satanists contradict themselves. On the one hand, they describe the Satanists as a tightly organized, powerful, infallible network that leaves no evidence of its large scale abduction, breeding, and sacrifice activity. On the other hand, Satanic groups are said to leave behind an easily discovered trail of clues such as animal carcasses and open graves that invite official investigation. Bromley goes on to argue that not a single defector has managed to leave with any type of organizational records. Historically, such radical groups have been shown to be particularly prone to schism, defection, and internecine conflicts. This absence of defectors from the Satanic movement is striking.

THE CONTROVERSY OVER MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER

A fifth point of issue is the credibility of accounts given to therapists by persons suffering from multiple personality disorder, known as MPD. The MPD phenomenon was first introduced to the public in the 1950s with the movie "The Three Faces of Eve," but its tie to Satanism and ritual abuse begins in 1980 with the book, Michelle Remembers, and reinforced with similar books, such as Judith Spencer's Suffer the Child in 1989. Hundreds or even thousands of adults report to their therapists that they suffered from ritual abuse while children, implicating their parents and neighbors in ritual crimes. Despite the fact that the clients do not know one another and come from every geographical location, they tell strikingly similar stories of Satanic horror.

"...not a single casualty of the Satanic movement has been discovered. "

The regnant theory among professionals and anti-Satanists is that MPD is a subclass of dissociative disorders. The child in the abusive situation is said to be so overwhelmed with terror and pain that the personality cracks or splits into multiple personalities. The continuity of identity, memory, and consciousness is disrupted. One discrete personality is consigned to the trauma of stress and pain. The other personalities, known as alters, escape by forgetting. The memory of the abuse is pressed down and covered over as a means of psychic protection. What happens in therapy, so the theory goes, is that these previously forgotten experiences are brought to the surface as the therapist tries to talk with each of

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the multiple personalities. Because it is theorized that the fragmenting is itself a form of self-hypnosis, therapy frequently includes the technique of hypnotic regression. Hypnosis allegedly retrieves lost memory. The therapeutic goal is not always the same. In some cases, the goal is to bring all personalities to the surface and then integrate them. In other cases, the goal is to choose one personality and make it dominant. MPD is quite gender specific, affecting nine women to every one man.

The accounts of a grand Satanic underground gained from MPD survivor testimony sound convincing to therapists because the clients tell their stories with evident emotional pain; because they reveal the same stories under hypnosis; because the stories are internally consistent; and because patients from differing parts of the country give such similar accounts.

Anti-anti-Satanists find MPD accounts unconvincing, however. ⁸ Why? Robert Hicks says that survivor testimonies stand alone without any corroborating evidence. No police investigations have ever supported survivor allegations. In addition, Hicks says MPD sufferers are not particularly credible because they cannot discriminate between fantasy and fact. Even with hypnosis, says Hicks, in contradiction to what therapists say, it is difficult to gain a coherent account from a MPD sufferer. Hicks does not doubt that MPD victims have suffered some form of abuse, but this does not mean that we should take literally what they say regarding cult activity. ⁹

In some cases, survivor accounts can be discredited outright. In her book, Satan's Underground, author Lauren Stratford not only claimed she had been a victim of ritual abuse and had the physical scars to prove it, but she also introduced the startling concept of the breeder. She said she had been forced to give birth to three infants who were subsequently killed, two in snuff porn movies and one in a Satanic ritual. A close check by researchers writing for Cornerstone magazine, however, found they could not verify the times and dates Stratford had given in her book. The physical scars she attributed to the Satanic cult appear in fact to have been self-inflicted. Most decisively, this alleged breeder of three babies shows no medical evidence of ever having been pregnant. Based on such

⁸ Ritual abuse survivor testimony is admittedly difficult for the anti-anti-Satanists to combat. "When a growing number of individuals believe that they experienced satanic rituals as children, their beliefs become, in effect, 'eye-witness testimony.' Refuting such testimony becomes a formidable task for those questioning the satanic conspiracy's existence. Indeed, those who question such claims run the risk of being accused of revictimizing the person making the statements" (Bromley, The Satanism Scare, p. 11),
⁹ Robert D. Hicks, "Police Pursuit of Satanic Crime, Part II," Skeptical Inquirer, 14 (1990) p. 382. Some doubt the trauma theory. ". . it has not been proven that childhood trauma causes MPD…. An independent verification of alleged abuse, which often occurred 10 or more years prior to being reported in therapy, is almost impossible for the average therapist to obtain." Frank W. Putnam, Diagnosis and Treatment of MPD (New York: Guilford Press, 1989) p. 47, cited by Robert D. Hicks, In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1991) pp. 149-150.

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revelations, the publisher of Satan's Underground appears to have quietly withdrawn the book from the market in 1990.¹⁰

Beyond those cases that can be discredited directly, we must still ask: How can we explain the continuity of accounts among patients in diverse locations who seemingly do not know one another? Anthropologist Sherill Mulhern proposes an answer: The therapists have a professional subculture that has been building the notion of cult conspiracy into its diagnosis of MPDs since 1984, when the First International Conference on Multiple Personality/Dissociative States was organized in Chicago. The communication among professionals has built an aura of plausibility around the conspiratorial blood cult image. "The alleged victims of satanic cults are not so much saying the same things as they are being heard the same way," Mulhern says.¹¹

Anti-anti-Satanist Robert Hicks offers a broader answer: Satanism is an urban legend-that is, a form of folklore that is spread by a coalition of anti-Satanists, such as therapists, clergy, and cult-cops. The legend began, Hicks contends, with the publication of Michelle Remembers in 1980. Prior to that there were no such cult survivor accounts.

Suspicion that the source of the problem is to be found with the therapists and not the clients has led to the March 1992 formation of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation of Philadelphia. The foundation has collected 3,000 accounts of families accused by an adult child-mostly women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s-of incest and satanic ritual abuse. Four hundred and fifty of these families have had to defend themselves from such charges in court. The charges arise from hypnosis in which alleged memories of abuse first surface in the presence of the therapist. FMS sees hypnosis as a suggestive and potentially dangerous tool for creating false images. Without denying the existence and tragedy of actual cases of incest and child abuse, FMS contends that not every accusation can be true. What is called for here is critical thinking, caution, and rational consideration until the truth be found.

The anti-anti-Satanism movement would have us believe that Satanism is bunk and, further, that the anti-Satanists are the real threat to society. This dismissing of Satanism as an urban legend applies primarily to its

¹⁰ Lauren Stratford, Satan's Underground: The Extraordinary Story of One Woman's Escape (Eugene: Harvest House, 1988). CL Gretchen and Bob Passantino with Jon Trott, "Satan's Sideshow," Cornerstone 18 (1990), pp. 23-28; and Philip Jenkins and Daniel Maier-Katkin, "Occult Survivors: The Making of a Myth," The Satanism Scare, pp. 132-133. Jenkins and Maier-Katkin write, "We can already discern the early stages of a troubling process that permits the almost unlimited manufacture of survivors and their grisly tales. Ideological and theoretical changes within the therapeutic community have contributed to a dramatic increase in the numbers of self-described occult survivors…. As survivor tales proliferate, the sheer volume of apparent evidence may convince some of the truth of the charges. We would suggest, however, that many of these stories should be seen as little more than derivative of the first few accounts, and that those first few accounts are themselves highly questionable." Ibid., pp. 141-142.
¹¹ Sherill Mulhern, "Satanism and Psychotherapy: A Rumor in Search of an Inquisition," The Satanism Scare, p. 158.

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classic face, because the existence of the three other faces-public Satanism, teenage dabbling, and serial killing-is easily confirmable. And even classic Satanism cannot easily be written off. Regardless of how the controversy over MPD is finally resolved, some of these cults of sacrifice with all their blood-shedding horror have reached public attention. ¹² Satanism in its cult and ritual form most likely exists in small self-styled groups scattered around the country, but it probably does not take the form of a monolithic or organized conspiracy.

My twofold conclusion is, first, that Satanism exists on sufficient scale to be considered by theologians as a distinct form of evil and, second, that, as a phenomenon, theologians should consider analyzing the cultural perception of Satanic practices as it surfaces in the media, in evangelical preaching and literature, and especially among MPD therapists and anti-anti-Satanist scholarship. In conclusion, I will look at the form of evil we find in Satanism and analyze it in terms of blasphemy.

Satanic practices are a form of blasphemy. What makes them blasphemous is that they deliberately seek to prostitute divine symbols so that the experience of God's grace is shut off.

There are two kinds of blasphemy. Both seek to sever the tie between the name of God and the grace of God. The first form of blasphemy is the subtle form. It uses the name of God directly or indirectly in order to hide evil behind a veil of righteousness. It is hypocrisy. It presumes the goodness of God and then tries to steal the appearance of God's goodness to cover over insidious injustice. What is dangerous here is that victims who see through the hypocrisy may get the false impression that language about God has deceit as its only function. The name of God becomes so tarnished that we no longer think to use it to call upon God and ask for divine grace.

The second kind of blasphemy occupies us here. This is the non-subtle form, the form to which the biblical definition belongs. Blasphemy (Greek: blasphamia) is the dishonoring or reviling the name, being, or work of God through slander, cursing, or showing contempt. It is a denial of God's holiness. It is a repudiation of God's saving work. It is a rejection of God's grace. It is a defamation of God's character. It takes the form of employing divine symbols for the purpose of disavowing all loyalty to the God of love and salvation. Worse, it employs these symbols to prevent others from gaining access to the God of love and salvation.

Let us look at what may be a terrifying case in point, a case of classic Satanism uncovered through MPD therapy. Judith Spencer's book, Suffer the Child, describes a case of multiple personality disorder being treated by two psychotherapists from 1983 to the present. ¹³ In Suffer the Child, a real woman with a fictitious name, Jenny, has created over four hundred

¹² The Matamoros case, for example, wherein pre-med student Mark Kilroy along with thirteen others were ritually murdered, is discussed in detail in chapter 8 of my book, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), from which much of the material in this article is adapted.
¹³ Judith Spencer, Suffer the Child (New York: Pocket Books, 1989).

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personalities as a method of psychic survival in the face of abuse received at the hands of a Satanic cult. The task of the therapists has been one of helping the fractured array of personalities reunite and recover a single whole identity. Among other things, this book portrays the horrifying nightmare undergone by a victim of ritual abuse.

Born to a mother who was a member of a Satanic cult, little Jenny, as a preschooler, was initiated. She heard pseudo-scriptures being read that blasphemed God and praised Satan. She watched sexual intercourse on the Devil's altar. She witnessed the torture and sacrifice of animals such as dogs, cats, chickens, squirrels, and goats. Extremities would be amputated so that the blood would flow to fill up waiting drinking cups. She herself-as well as other children-would occasionally be placed on the altar beneath a priest with dagger in hand. Blood was drawn from her vagina and scrapes of skin taken to be used in the very literalized eucharistic ritual by which the worshipers, whipped up into a frenzy by taking drugs and alcohol, would actually drink human blood and eat human flesh. Spencer's book receives its title from the voice of the priest inviting Jenny, saying, "suffer the little children to come unto him [the

"Satanic practices are a form of blasphemy. What makes them blasphemous is that they deliberately seek to prostitute divine symbols so that the experience of God's grace is shut off. "

Devil], for of such is the kingdom of hell." This, in my judgment, is the blasphemy. Taking the words of Scripture that otherwise bear the power of salvation and pressing them into the service of Satan robs the victim of psychic access to symbols that could bring internal comfort.

On one occasion, the wedding at which five year old Jenny became the Devil's bride, she was given the words, "kill her." These words came after she was handed a dagger and placed above a naked woman, who had been drugged into unconsciousness and stretched across the altar. Jenny did as she was told. Presumably the beating heart of the sacrificed woman provided the flesh and blood for that night's ritual.

The cult taught Jenny the meaning of the symbols. The dagger stands for manhood, the chalice for womanhood. Church came to mean distress. She was taught that she must not look upon the Christian cross nor listen to words blaspheming her master, the Devil. To participate in baptism or communion in a Christian church would mean certain death. Here the very concept of blasphemy itself was being turned around so as to close the door all the more tightly against the salvific power of the symbols of grace.

The cult also taught Jenny theology. Evil persons cannot go to heaven. They go to hell, a place of burning ruled by Satan. Those who serve Satan go to hell, to be sure; yet they will not burn. The highest rank in hell would

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be reserved for them.¹⁴ Why would this theology attract anybody? Relevant might be the fact that Jenny's mother was born out of wedlock. Jenny was also born out of wedlock. They referred to themselves as "bastards." Perhaps for people whose self-image communicates that they are already no good and contaminated with evil, the invitation to become a disciple of Satan and get rewarded with an upper berth in hell sounds good.

Is Satanism bunk or blasphemy? Regardless of how the controversy over MPD is finally settled, the twisting of symbols in such an account must be addressed. Whether the source of this symbol twisting is objectively that of a ritual cult, or perhaps subjectively, the coming to expression of a matrix of mythologemes lurking either in the collective unconscious of Jenny or in the collective unconscious of the therapists and their professional community or a combination, the blasphemous structure requires assessment.

What is striking in the case of Jenny and in countless other examples of Satanic practice is the direct attention given to manipulating symbols. It is vital for the theologian to investigate this, because symbols of the divine provide us with access to the reality that transcends our daily world. The titles for God, such as Lord, King of the universe, heavenly Father, the Almighty, and the Eternal, remind us that there is a transcendent reality not limited by suffering and death. The descriptions of Jesus Christ at work, such as Savior or Redeemer, confront us with the news that God rescues us from the vicissitudes of our history fraught with suffering and death. References to God as Holy Spirit, Comforter, and Sanctifier communicate that we are not alone, that no matter how severely the forces of evil assail us. God protects us BV binding us to the power of ultimate reality. When we find ourselves victimized by stress and distress, such symbols of a transcendent and loving God work within our psyche to give us integrity, courage, and peace of mind. To deny us access to such symbols would leave us frightfully alone, terrorized not only by evil but also by the loneliness of our own suffering.

To put it another way, the words we use to talk about God do not leave us unaffected. Talking about God simultaneously orders our soul. To blaspheme God destroys our soul.

This is because the power in the words is not simply ours. The words bear a power that is more than merely what we give them in our usage. This is especially true with regard to the Word of God. The Word of God bears an evocative and transforming power that is greater than what we can attribute to it. This is because the Word of God is itself God at work in the world. "God's Word is God himself in His revelation," writes Karl Barth. ¹⁵

Hence, the seriousness of the commandment, "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord" (Exod. 20:7). To make wrongful

¹⁴ This satanic theology is reminiscent of John Milton's Paradise Lost (1:263), "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in heaven."
¹⁵ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936-1962) 1 / 1, p. 295.

393 - Satanism: Bunk or Blasphemy?

use of symbols in the form of names, titles, and stories of God alienates us from God. It subjects us to the powers of destruction while denying us access to the presence of divine grace. To separate us from divine grace is the Devil's delight because, as Barth has said, "the grace of God is the basis and norm of all being, the source and criterion of all good." ¹⁶

Perhaps the symbol most susceptible to blasphemous misuse is sacrifice. As a symbol of grace, the sacrifice on the cross communicates the profundity of God's love for us. The incarnation of this love in Jesus Christ means that God subjects God's self to the vicissitudes of finitude, anxiety, violence, and death. God sacrifices all the protections of eternity and omnipotence in order to establish a bond with a temporal and weak human race. The preeminent sacrifice is God's sacrifice. We, in turn, love one another as a response to, and an extension of, the divine model. Jesus puts it forcefully, "[W]hoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:27-28).

"What is striking in the case of Jenny and in countless other examples of Satanic practice is the direct attention given to manipulating symbols. "

In the hands of the blasphemers, however, sacrifice becomes a means for pressing others into one's own service. The reason Satanists practice animal sacrifice and human sacrifice is to gain magical power, suprahuman power thought to be bequeathed by the Devil to his loyal subjects. My concern here is for the victims, not only in their physical suffering but in their psychic suffering. What is so devastating about such blasphemous sacrifice is that it robs their victims of eternal comfort amidst their temporal suffering. By twisting the symbol of sacrifice to serve someone's magical advantage, the risk is that the one being sacrificed will see his or her loss not as divine but as vain.

I call this ritual kind of blasphemy "radical evil." By deliberately twisting symbols of grace into symbols of evil, it repudiates the sham allegiance to goodness found in garden variety hypocrisy. I speak of it as radical because it cuts the soul off from consolation. It vitiates goodness at the roots (vitiatum in radice).

Let me stress that, by far and away, most of our human sin is of the self-justification or hypocritical type. We normally pursue evil in the name of the good. Only rarely do we pursue evil in the name of evil. The overt and conscious employment of the symbols of Satan is rare, to be sure; yet it constitutes evil in its most radical form, blasphemy against God while destroying the human soul.

¹⁶ Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3/3, p. 354.