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Two Books on the Modern Satanism Scare

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Two Books on the Modern Satanism Scare . 1988. Nowhere to Go. New York: Overcoming the Illness Excuse. New York: Harper & Row. Harper & Row. Wambach, Helen. 1978. Reliving Past Lives. Zilbergeld, B. 1983. The Shrinking of America: New York: Harper & Row. Myths of Psychological Change. Boston, . 1979. Life Before Life. New York: Mass.: Little, Brown. Bantam Books. Wolpe, Joseph. 1981. Behavior therapy versus psychoanalysis: Therapeutic and Robert A. Baker is professor emeritus of social implications. American Psychologist, 36:159-164. psychology, University of Kentucky, Wood, Garth. 1987. The Myth of Neurosis: Lexington. Give Me That Old-Time Religion: Two Books on the Modern Satanism Scare Painted Black: From Drug Killings to Heavy Metal—The Alarming True Story of How Satanism is Terrorizing Our Communities. By Carl A. Raschke. Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1990. 276 pp. Cloth, $16.95. In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult. By Robert Hicks. Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y., 1991. 416 pp. Cloth, $24.95. U RICHARD NOLL n the 1980s, the American media that threatens our civilized society. reported with alarming frequency These cults allegedly have maintained I that people who, individually or in a secret existence for hundreds or groups, allegedly committed criminal perhaps thousands of years, and it is activities did so because of their belief claimed that: in, and their active worship of, the —they kidnap and "ritually" abuse Christian conception of "Satan," "the children; Devil," "Lucifer," and other super- —the abuse is physical and sexual natural perpetrators of evil. Com- and leads to the development of munities throughout the United mental illness later in life, particularly States (and then Canada) began to dissociative disorders like multiple- express serious concern about the personality disorder; secret existence of such groups within —they engage in cannibalism; their midst, and claims made about the —they perform infanticide; activities of these "satanic cults" —they engage in the ingestion of seemed to be universal in their agree- blood and other bodily fluids, and ment. The most persistent claim is sometimes excrement; that there is a vast underground net- —they engage in sex orgies and work of satanic cults in North Amer- perform sexual deviations of all sorts; ica, and perhaps around the world. —in perpetrating the abuse, they 412 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, Vol. 15 use "ritualistic" paraphernalia, such as candles, magic circles, robes, altars, etc., all of which are related to the worship of Satan; —the Black Mass is performed, often with human or animal sacrifices. The two books under review here take diametrically opposite positions on this controversy. Both purport to sift through the evidence pro and con for the existence of satanic cults and the influence of Satanism in the commission of criminal acts. Unfor- tunately, only one of these books— a magisterial analysis of the issue by Robert Hicks—can command respect as a truly helpful attempt to weigh the scientific status of these claims. Carl Raschke's book, especially con- sidering his credentials as a professor of religious studies at the University of Denver and the author of many books with theological themes, is a disappointment. It is designed more for the audiences of television talk- a grand amalgam held together by the shows than for informed readers who glue of satanic ideals. The underlying want a more balanced survey. message to the reader is that a grand Raschke is out to fight the great conspiracy of Satanism is operating to dragon as he sees it: Satanism as an tear apart our society. It is the single ideology, and a highly virulent one at dynamic force that unites the drug- that. As in most publications of this crazed teenager who draws pentacles nature, in Raschke's book Satanism as on his murder victim with Adolf Hitler a concept is reified as a threat but and the "occult underground" of the never cogently defined. Just what is Third Reich, Charles Manson, inter- Satanism? The closest Raschke comes national drug cartels, transnational is in the Introduction: terrorist organizations, child porno- graphers, Anton LaVey and the Satanism is a sophisticated and Church of Satan, Michael Aquino and highly effective motivational sys- the Temple of Set, the McMartin Pre- tem for the spread of violence and School case, Dungeons & Dragons, cultural terrorism, all the while the Matamoros murderers, Alice hiding behind the cloak of the First Cooper, the Rolling Stones, Ozzy Amendment. It is an ideology that Osborne, Aleister Crowley, the has found a strategic application in the criminal underworld, even if it "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez, ad was not invented there. (Pp. ix-x) infinitum. Quite a large as well as nasty kettle of rotting flesh this To back up this belief in the threat Satanism business is, isn't it? Most of satanic ideologues, Raschke lumps informed readers who know better than to believe in this sort of magical all the disparate evils and aberrations thinking in which everything is inter- of history and of present society into Summer 1991 413 connected with everything else, and essential historical reference for is also therefore implicitly a conspiracy, anyone wishing to place the present need only look at the photographs in Satanism scare into a historical the center of Raschke's book, for they context. thematically lump together most of Raschke has a bone to pick with the rogues and infidels mentioned anyone who dares to challenge the above and essentially sum up the threat of Satanism to our society. Gospel According to Raschke: Satan- Kenneth Lanning, a special agent of ism is all around us, it's bad, and it's the FBI who has been one of the most our job to fight it. influential critics of claims of satanic Although a professor of religion, crime, is charged with being one of and the author of several books on the "best friends" of "satanist crim- the subject, Raschke makes a number inals" (p. 75). Without addressing of misinterpretations of the historical Lanning's publications or conference evidence of Satanism as an ideology papers in which he presents his and a movement in his chapter titled analysis of the evidence for his critical "The Occult Underworld." He pleads position, Raschke merely resorts to an for reconsidering conspiracy theories, ad-hominem argument, charging that and he then sets about mangling the Lanning writes with "the literacy, the known evidence we have for the research sophistication, and the rhe- beliefs and practices of heretical sects torical finesse of a high school sopho- like the Cathars and the "Luciferans," more." Lanning's work is never who were not devil-worshipers but a addressed; nor is the work of any sect of Waldensians (not Cathars, as other skeptic challenged in depth and Raschke has it). Raschke, though, tells on its own merits. of them worshiping black cats and Intellectuals are suspect, too. In his kissing toads and buttocks. Preface, Raschke boldly asserts that Many other factual mistakes occur "the American intelligentsia has a in this chapter. Raschke's knowledge tremendous capacity for what psy- of the historical literature concerning chologists call 'denial.' The trained Satanism or "diabolism" is apparently academic mind has a difficult time limited. I have found an overwhelming accepting that there are people who lack of evidence for sects or groups could willfully do evil for the sake of or activities of these sorts throughout doing evil" (p. ix). Raschke, it seems, history. (See Noll 1990.) It was only is only interested in rhetorical flour- at the end of the nineteenth century ish. He does not seem interested in that the Black Mass and a philosophy considering the disconfirming evi- of Satanism are recorded as among the dence or opinions. This book, even pastimes of the decadent upper classes though written by an academic and in France. There is no evidence of the an intellectual, is therefore not Inquisitors stumbling upon a devil- recommended. worshiping cult or any performance On the other hand, Robert Hicks's of the familiar Black Mass that inverts book, In Pursuit of Satan: The Police the Roman Catholic rite (but with a and the Occult, will be considered the few salacious additions). All of this is definitive volume on this issue for more fantasy than reality, as British some decades to come. It is a classic historian Norman Cohn so skillfully in its genre. Hicks presents the evi- documents in his book Europe's Inner dence for both sides of almost every Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the issue involving Satanism in our soci- Great Witch Hunt (1975), which is an ety. (Hicks's approach will already be 414 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, Vol. 15 familiar to readers of his two articles comprehensive, and that important. on these topics in the SKEPTICAL Hicks is to be congratulated on his INQUIRER, Spring and Summer 1990.) intellectual breadth and his peerless Hicks's book is a cogent, relentless research. critique of the evidence for the influence of Satanism. "Occult" References crime, day-care-center controversies (including the McMartin case), the Cohn, N. 1975. Europe's Inner Demons: An Matamoros incident, Dungeons & Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch Hunt. Dragons, the subculture of mental- New York: Basic Books. Noll, R. 1989. Satanism, UFO, UFO abduc- health professionals concerned about tions and clinicians: Those who do not Satanism and its alleged creation of remember the past . Dissociation, multiple personalities, and many 2(l):251-254. other topics are discussed in depth . 1990. A Brief Bibliographic Review of and with exemplary scholarship. Works Related to Alternative Hypotheses of the "Satanism Scare" of the 1980s. It would be impossible to survey Unpublished manuscript. every topic Hicks covers in his 420- page tome, but those interested in the Richard Noll is a clinical psychologist at issue of Satanism are strongly advised the Center for Preventive Medicine, The to make his In Pursuit of Satan the Graduate Hospital, Philadelphia.
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