Satanism

[2][Note 1] The phenomenon of Satanism shares "historical connections and family resemblances" with the Left Hand Path milieu of other occult figures such as Beelzebub, Hecate, Lilith, Lucifer, and Set.

During the Middle Ages, the Inquisition led by the Catholic Church alleged that various heretical Christian sects and groups, such as the Knights Templar and the Cathars, performed secret Satanic rituals.

[24] Prior to the composition of the New Testament, the idea developed within Jewish communities that Satan was the name of an angel who had rebelled against Jehovah and had been cast out of Heaven along with his followers; this account would be incorporated into contemporary texts such as the Book of Enoch.

[26] While the early Christian idea of the Devil was not well developed, it gradually adapted and expanded through the creation of folklore, art, theological treatises, and morality tales, thus providing the character with a range of extra-Biblical associations.

[63] The earliest trials took place in Northern Italy and France, before spreading it out to other areas of Europe and to Britain's North American colonies, being carried out by the legal authorities in both Catholic and Protestant regions.

[68] Charles Darwin's theory of evolution undermined the doctrine of the Fall in the Garden of Eden and the role of the diabolical serpent, while also providing an "alternative account of human evil" in the form of "a residual effect of our animal nature".

[74] Among the first to do so was French Catholic priest Jean-Baptiste Fiard, who publicly claimed that a wide range of individuals, from the Jacobins to tarot card readers, were part of a Satanic conspiracy.

[75] Fiard's ideas were furthered by Alexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier de Terre-Neuve du Thym (1765–1851), who devoted a lengthy book to this conspiracy theory; he claimed that Satanists had supernatural powers allowing them to curse people and to shapeshift into both cats and fleas.

[76] Although most of his contemporaries regarded Berbiguier as suffering from mental illness,[77] his ideas gained credence among many occultists, including Stanislas de Guaita, a Cabalist who used them for the basis of his book, The Temple of Satan.

[79] Nine years later he told an American magazine that at first he thought readers would recognize his tales as obvious nonsense, "amusement pure and simple", but when he realized they believed his stories and that there was "lots of money" to be made in publishing them, he continued to perpetrate the hoax.

[81] At the same time, non-fiction authors such as Montague Summers and Rollo Ahmed published books claiming that Satanic groups practicing black magic were still active across the world, although they provided no evidence that this was the case.

[87] At the end of the 20th century, a moral panic arose from claims that a Devil-worshipping cult was committing sexual abuse, murder, and cannibalism in its rituals, and including children among the victims of its rites.

A 1994 survey for the women's magazine Redbook reported in 1994, Another Satanic conspiracy theory arose in the United States by 2017,[111] with unsubstantiated allegations of organized Devil-worshippers in prominent positions committing sexual abuse, murder, and cannibalism.

The central QAnon claim purports that a global child sex trafficking ring made up of Democratic politicians, Hollywood actors, high-ranking government officials, business tycoons, and medical experts,[112] were kidnapping, sexually abusing and eating children, but that (then-President) Donald Trump would round up the cabal and bring them to justice in a climactic event known to supporters as "the storm".

[124] This was how Milton's Satan was understood by John Dryden[125] and later readers such as the publisher Joseph Johnson,[126] and the anarchist philosopher William Godwin, who reflected it in his 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

[119] According to Ruben van Luijk, this cannot be seen as a "coherent movement with a single voice, but rather as a post factum identified group of sometimes widely divergent authors among whom a similar theme is found".

[136] Another prominent 19th century anarchist, the Russian Mikhail Bakunin, similarly described the figure of Satan as "the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds" in his book God and the State.

[37] Hansen sought to spread a cult of Satan/Lucifer,[37] and was involved in a variety of esoteric groups, including Martinism, Freemasonry, and Ordo Templi Orientis, drawing on their ideas to establish his own philosophy.

[156][157] The group had a Gnostic doctrine about the world, in which the Judeo-Christian creator god is regarded as evil, and the Biblical serpent is presented as a force for good, who had delivered salvation to humanity in the Garden of Eden.

Instead of idealism, humility, abstinence, (self-denigration), obedience, (herd behavior), spirituality, and irrationality;[201] he praised the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth), as virtues not vices.

[216][217] A "true Satanic society" was described in Lavey's church's periodical The Black Flame and highlighted by anthropologist Jean La Fontaine; it would be one in which the population consists of "free-spirited, well-armed, fully-conscious, self-disciplined individuals, who will neither need nor tolerate any external entity 'protecting' them or telling them what they can and cannot do".

This "left-wing",[231] "socially engaged Satanism",[234] involves activism,[231] rather than the individualism and right-wing-oriented,[235] "getting what you want for yourself",[236] of the CoS.[Note 5] They have been called "rationalist, political pranksters" (by Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen),[238] with pranks designed to highlight religious hypocrisy and advance the cause of secularism.

[240][241][242] The Temple has been described as using the literary Satan as metaphor to promote pragmatic skepticism, rational reciprocity, personal autonomy, and curiosity;[242] and as a symbol to represent "the eternal rebel" against arbitrary authority and social norms.

[270] While maintaining some popularity as a theistic Satanist sect, the group has been widely criticized for its association with the National Socialist Movement and its racial anti-Jewish, anti-Judaic, and anti-Christian sentiment, as well as its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

In recent decades up to 2023, O9A has caught the attention of "white supremacist groups and troubled young men" through its material online, and as of 2013 2,000 people "may be associated with the ONA in one form or another", according to one estimate.

[295] Faxneld described the Order as "a dangerous and extreme form of Satanism",[296] while religious studies scholar Graham Harvey wrote that the O9A fit the stereotype of the Satanist "better than other groups" by embracing "deeply shocking" and illegal acts.

[297] Several British politicians, including the Labour Party's Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee,[278] have pushed for the group to be banned as a terror organization, and according to the BBC News, "the authorities are concerned by the number of paedophiles associated with the ONA."

Additionally, there are various followers of the O9A paradigm who are (or were) also members of banned militant national-socialist groups, namely the Atomwaffen Division, Combat 18, and Nordic Resistance Movement, the first of which even openly aims to perpetrate terror attacks.

[331][332][333] In 2016, under a Freedom of Information request, the Navy Command Headquarters stated that, "we do not recognise satanism as a formal religion, and will not grant facilities or make specific time available for individual 'worship'.

"[334] In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States debated in the case of Cutter v. Wilkinson over protecting minority religious rights of prison inmates after a lawsuit challenging the issue was filed to them.