ECU Libraries Catalog

Satanism : a reader / edited by Per Faxneld and Johan Nilsson.

Other author/creatorFaxneld, Per.
Other author/creatorNilsson, Johan (Historian of religion)
Format Electronic and Book
Publication InfoNew York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023]
Descriptionvi, 351 pages ; 25 cm
Supplemental Content Full text available from Oxford Scholarship Online Religion
Subject(s)
Uniform titleSatanism (Oxford University Press)
Partial contents Eliphas Lévi, la Bible de la liberté (1841) / Julian Strube -- Jules Michelet, La Sorciére (1862) / Ruben van Luijk -- Albert Pike, morals and dogma of the ancient and accepted Scottish rite of Freemasonry (1871) / Fredrik Gregorius.
Abstract Satanism is a phenomenon that has existed as a prominent trope since very beginning of Christianity, when the Church Fathers entertained fantasies about people worshipping the Devil and indulging in macabre rituals. In the early modern period, similarly unfounded ideas led to the infamous witch trials which transpired primarily between 1400 and 1700. In the 1980s and 1990s, what has been labelled a "Satanic Panic" swept the United States and parts of Europe, with again, unfounded rumors about secret Satanist networks committing gruesome murders, kidnappings and ritualistic child abuse. Today, the so called Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories in the United States again draw on these motifs, this time postulating that left-wing Satanists are secretly manipulating politics and doing nefarious deeds in the shadows. This book, however, is only indirectly concerned with the purely fictional Satanism of such paranoid fantasies. It does not deal directly with the literary tradition of Satanism either, where Satanists can appear as antagonists (or, more rarely, protagonists) in the plot of a story, or authors express Satanic sympathies in a poem or two. Rather, our selection of source texts focuses on actual, existing Satanic groups, and thinkers of importance to the emergence of a Satanic milieu that forms part of a broader landscape of alternative religion. Some of the texts do in a sense belong to the above-mentioned categories, e.g., Léo Taxil's spoof on conspiracy theories, or the quite literary pseudo-histories of Satanism - in fact Satanic tracts in disguise of Jules Michelet and Stanislaw Przybyszewski, but we have aimed to concentrate on 1. self-designated Satanic groups and ideologists, 2. groups and ideologists who prominently revere a figure they identify with Satan, even though they may not self-designate as Satanists, and 3. groups and ideologists mostly excluding, however, literary texts and conspiracy theories whose re-interpretations of Satan were crucial to the growth of such ideas-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references.
Access restrictionAvailable only to authorized users.
Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
LanguageTexts chiefly in English, some works in Dutch, French, German, and Italian.
Genre/formElectronic books.
LCCN 2023019543
ISBN9780199913558 (paperback)
ISBN9780199913534 (c/p)
ISBN(epub)

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