Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī (973–1048), wrote detailed comparative studies on the anthropology of religions and cultures across the Mediterranean Basin (including the so-called "Middle East") and the Indian subcontinent. He discussed the peoples, customs, and religions of the Indian subcontinent.
In the 19th century cultural anthropology was dominated by an interest in cultural evolution; most anthropologists
assumed a simple distinction between "primitive" and "modern" religion
and tried to provide accounts of how the former evolved into the latter.
In the 20th century most anthropologists rejected this approach. Today
the anthropology of religion reflects the influence of, or an
engagement with, such theorists as Karl Marx (1818-1883), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), and Max Weber (1864-1920).
Anthropologists of religion are especially concerned with how religious
beliefs and practices may reflect political or economic forces; or the
social functions of religious beliefs and practices.
In 1912 Émile Durkheim, building on the work of Feuerbach, considered religion "a projection of the social values of society", "a means of making symbolic statements about society", "a symbolic language that makes statements about the social order"; in short, "religion is society worshiping itself".
Anthropologists circa 1940 assumed that religion was in complete continuity with magical thinking,
and that it is a cultural product. The complete continuity between magic and religion has been a postulate of modern anthropology at least since early 1930s. The perspective of modern anthropology towards religion is the projection idea, a methodological approach which assumes that every religion is created by the human community that worships it, that "creative activity ascribed to God is projected from man". In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach was the first to employ this concept as the basis for a systematic critique of religion. A prominent precursor in the formulation of this projection principle was Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), and an early formulation of it appears in the ancient Greek writer Xenophanes c. 570 – c.
475 BCE), who observed that "the gods of Ethiopians were inevitably
black with flat noses while those of the Thracians were blond with blue
eyes."
Definition of religion
One major problem in the anthropology of religion is the definition of religion itself. At one time
anthropologists believed that certain religious practices and beliefs
were more or less universal to all cultures at some point in their
development, such as a belief in spirits or ghosts, the use of magic as a means of controlling the supernatural, the use of divination as a means of discovering occult knowledge, and the performance of rituals such as prayer and sacrifice as a means of influencing the outcome of various events through a supernatural agency, sometimes taking the form of shamanism or ancestor worship. According to Clifford Geertz, religion is
(1) a system of symbols which acts
to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of
existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of
factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic."
Today, religious anthropologists debate, and reject, the
cross-cultural validity of these categories (often viewing them as
examples of European primitivism).
Anthropologists have considered various criteria for defining religion
– such as a belief in the supernatural or the reliance on ritual – but
few claim that these criteria are universally valid.
Anthony F. C. Wallace
proposes four categories of religion, each subsequent category
subsuming the previous. These are, however, synthetic categories and do
not necessarily encompass all religions.
Individualistic: most basic; simplest. Example: vision quest.
Shamanistic: part-time religious practitioner, uses religion to heal, to divine, usually on the behalf of a client. The Tillamook
have four categories of shaman. Examples of shamans: spiritualists,
faith healers, palm readers. Religious authority acquired through one's
own means.
Communal: elaborate set of beliefs and practices; group of people
arranged in clans by lineage, age group, or some religious societies;
people take on roles based on knowledge, and ancestral worship.
Ecclesiastical: dominant in agricultural societies and states; are
centrally organized and hierarchical in structure, paralleling the
organization of states. Typically deprecates competing individualistic
and shamanistic cults.
Gendercide is the systematic killing of members of a specific gender. The term is related to the general concepts of assault and murder against victims due to their gender, with violence against women and men being problems dealt with by human rights efforts.
Gendercide shares similarities with the term 'genocide' in
inflicting mass murders; however, gendercide targets solely one gender,
being men or women. Politico-military frameworks have historically
inflicted militant-governed divisions between femicide and androcide;
gender-selective policies increase violence on gendered populations due
to their socioeconomic significance.
Gendercide is reported to be a rising problem in several countries. Census statistics report that in countries such as China, the male to female ratio is as high as 120 men for every 100 women. Gendercide also takes the forms of infanticide
and lethal violence against a particular gender at any stage of life.
The World Bank describes violence against girls and women as a “global
pandemic.” One in three women experiences gender-based violence in their
lifetime. In research released in 2019, 38% of murdered women were
killed by an intimate partner.
Etymology
The term gendercide was first coined by American feminist Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection.
It refers to gender-selective mass killing. Warren drew "an analogy
between the concept of genocide" and what she called "gendercide". In
her book, Warren wrote:
By analogy, gendercide would be the deliberate extermination of
persons of a particular sex (or gender). Other terms, such as "gynocide"
and "femicide," have been used to refer to the wrongful killing of
girls and women. Nevertheless, "gendercide" is a sex-neutral term in
that the victims may be either male or female. There is a need for such a
sex-neutral term since sexually discriminatory killing is just as wrong
when the victims happen to be male. The term also calls attention to
the fact that gender roles have often had lethal consequences and that
these are in important respects analogous to the lethal consequences of
racial, religious, and class prejudice.
Memorial plaque in Berlin for Nuriye Bekir, who was murdered in an "honor" killing.
Memorial plaque for Hatun Sürücü in Berlin. The Kurdish woman from Turkey was murdered at the age of 23 by her brothers in an "honor" killing.
Femicide is defined as the systematic killing of women for various reasons, usually cultural. The word is attested from the 1820s. According to the United Nations, the biologically normal sex ratio
at birth ranges from 102 to 106 males per 100 females. However, ratios
higher than normal – sometimes as high as 130 – have been observed. This
is now causing increasing concern in some South Asian, East Asian, and
Central Asian countries.
Such disparities almost always reflect a preference for boys as a
result of deeply embedded social, cultural, political and economic
factors.
The most widespread form of femicide is in the form of gender-selective infanticide in cultures with strong preferences for males such as China and India. According to the United Nations, male-to-female ratios have experienced radical changes from the normal range.
Sex ratios at birth over time in China:
106:100 in 1979 (106 boys for every 100 girls, close to the upper limit of the 'normal' range)
111:100 in 1988
117:100 in 2001
120:100 in 2005
In India, parents may prefer male children because they desire heirs
who will care for them in their old age. Additionally, the cost of a dowry,
the family's price for their daughter to be married off, is very high
in India, while a male heir would bring a dowry to the family by way of
marriage. According to the British publication, The Independent, the 2011 census
revealed 7.1 million fewer girls than boys aged under the age of seven,
up from 6 million in 2001 and from 4.2 million in 1991. The sex ratio
in the age group is now 915 girls to 1,000 boys (109 boys for every 100
girls), the lowest since records began in 1961.
There have been reports of femicide in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico
where 411 assassinations of women were qualified as serial and/or of
sexual characteristic, by domestic violence, intimate femicides and
hatred against women. The response to these murders has included the criminalisation of feminicide in the country.
Contemporary mechanisms of gendercide lie within sexualized
violence against women; the females of "sub-Saharan Africa (Sierra
Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola) in areas that are also
at the heart of the "AIDS belt", are not only at-risk due to living in places where there are "current cases of large-scale rape",
but are also susceptible to contracting HIV. Less popularized tactics
of gendercide against women include the systemic withholding of critical
medical, and nutritional care, predominantly occurring "across the belt
of "deep patriarchy" extending from East through West Asia and into
Northern Africa";
here. Adam Jones, a co-founder of Gendercide Watch, an online research
platform created to spread awareness, estimates that the denial of
healthcare for women equates to approximately the same toll as that of
the 1994 Rwandan Genocide per year.
Over 200,000 die from bleeding, with many giving birth in buses
or bullock carts. Lack of health education restricts commonplace medical
knowledge; thus, bystanders are unable to offer assistance. In
addition, the casualty rate from self-administered abortions is roughly
75,000. Eclampsia, a condition possible pre-, during, and
post-childbirth, is characterized by seizures due to high blood
pressure, and its effects kill another 75,000 through damage to the
brain and kidneys. Moreover, 100,000 die from sepsis, contracted through
untreated infections of the uterus and remaining fragments of the
placenta that poison the bloodstream. Also, female casualties due to
labor obstructions stagger around the 400,000 range.
Adam Jones drafted possible solutions to aid the crisis in
Africa. He concluded treatment "would mean training some 850,000 health
workers, according to UNICEF and World Health Organization reports, as
well as [funding] the necessary drugs and equipment. The total cost
would be US $200 million, about the price of half a dozen jet fighters".
Pharaoh and the Midwives, James Tissot c. 1900. In Exodus 1:15-21, Puah and Shiphrah were commanded by Pharaoh to kill all of the newborn baby boys, but they disobeyed.
Androcide is the systematic killing of men or boys for various reasons, usually cultural. Androcide may happen during war to reduce an enemy's potential pool of soldiers.
Examples include the 1988 Anfal campaign against Kurdish males that were considered "battle-aged" (or approximately ages 15–50) in Iraqi Kurdistan.
While many of these deaths took place after the Kurdish men were
captured and processed at a concentration camp, the worst instances of
the gendercide happened at the end of the campaign (August 25 –
September 6, 1988).
Another incident of androcide was the Srebrenica massacre
of approximately 8,000 Bosniak men and boys on July 12, 1995, ruled as
an act of genocide by the International Court of Justice.
From the morning of 12 July, Serb forces began gathering men and boys
from the refugee population in Potočari and holding them in separate
locations, and as the refugees began boarding the buses headed north
towards Bosniak-held territory, Serb soldiers separated men of military
age who were trying to clamber aboard. Occasionally, younger and older
men were stopped (some as young as 14 or 15).
According to genocide scholar Adam Jones, “non-combatant men have
been and continue to be the most frequent targets of mass killing and
genocidal slaughter, as well as a host of lesser atrocities and abuses.”
Third gender
Gendercide against third gender people is the systemic killing of people who do not fit within the Western gender binary. Deborah Miranda uses the term gendercide to identify the Spanish colonial practice of systemically targeting joyas (the Spanish term for third gender people) in an attempt to exterminate them. Qwo-Li Driskill writes how this violence was waged against people now understood as two-spirit.
In 1513, Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa encountered about forty Indigenous men dressed as women. He commanded his soldiers to execute them through making them prey for their war dogs, which were specially bred mastiffs or greyhounds.
They were dismembered and eaten alive by the dogs. Third gender people
from around the area were rounded up in service of Spanish authority.
Miranda writes that "the Spanish had made it clear that to tolerate,
harbor, or associate with the third gender meant death."
In his 1775 memoir, Spanish soldier Pedro Fages wrote that about two or three joyas could be identified in each Indigenous Californian village and were "held in great esteem" in their communities. Fages sought to initiate a swift reduction of the joyas, writing "we place our trust in God and expect that these accursed people will disappear with the growth of the missions. The abominable vice will be eliminated to the extent that the Catholic faith and all the other virtues are firmly implanted there, for the glory of God and the benefit of those poor ignorants."
The 2015 film No Men Beyond This Point is a science fiction mockumentary
set in an alternate timeline in the 1950s nine months after a
near-Earth object almost hit Earth in 1952, making it possible for women
to reproduce by parthenogenesis
and without men. Men are no longer born, and they have disappeared from
all critical positions. Sex is outlawed, and the male sex becomes a
dying breed. The few remaining men are kept in reserve and are no longer
part of the society, except for a few men who are allowed to do low
work. In this world where women are wearing the pants, are asexual, and
have no male offspring, it is now up to the quiet and modest household
helper Andrew Myers to ensure that the male does not die out. The
37-year-old is the youngest living man on Earth and works for a family
made up only of women.
The 2003 film Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women, an Indian movie directed by Manish Jha, features a dystopian
situation resulting in 2050 from accumulated violence against women
over many years. A wealthy man in one village discovers the existence of
a young woman not too far from his home, and he buys the woman as a sex slave
to be used by him and his sons. In this wretched town in which only men
exist aside from her, the wealthy man's family is torn apart while the
victim finds herself mercilessly dominated by more men. The film
received critical acclaim, with the frank nature of the brutality and
despair portrayed being cited by many reviewers, and it sparked
increased debate over the contemporary problem of rape in India and other human rights issues in the nation.
The 1985 book The Handmaid's Tale depicts a story of a fascistmilitary dictatorship controlled by a clique of theocratic ideologues.
With the population of both men and women having been vastly cut down,
fertile women are relatively scarce and mass numbers of non-fertile
women are forced into becoming unpersons. Fertile women are regarded as property with few rights, being unable to read and do other basic activities. Canadian author Margaret Atwood created the work as a warning about totalitarianism
and oppression of women in the modern age; in particular, she had
experienced a fellowship in the then divided Berlin in the early 1980s,
visiting the Soviet-dominated areas and witnessing a general despair, which helped inspire the book's beginnings.
Personal development consists of activities that develop a person's capabilities and potential, build human capital, facilitate employability, and enhance quality of life and the realization of dreams and aspirations.
Personal development may take place over the course of an individual's
entire lifespan and is not limited to one stage of a person's life. It
can include official and informal actions for developing others in roles
such as teacher, guide, counselor, manager, coach, or mentor, and it is
not restricted to self-help. When personal development takes place in
the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems offered to support positive adult development at the individual level in organizations.
Personal development can also include developing other people's
skills and personalities. This can happen through roles such as those of
a teacher or mentor, either through a personal competency (such as the alleged skill of certain managers
in developing the potential of employees) or through a professional
service (such as providing training, assessment, or coaching).
Beyond improving oneself and developing others, "personal development" labels a field of practice and research:
As a field of practice, personal development includes
personal-development methods, learning programs, assessment systems,
tools, and techniques.
As a field of research, personal-development topics appear in
psychology journals, education research, management journals and books,
and human-development economics.
Any sort of development—whether economic, political, biological, organizational or personal—requires a framework if one wishes to know whether a change has actually occurred.
In the case of personal development, an individual often functions as
the primary judge of improvement or of regression, but the validation of
objective improvement requires assessment using standard criteria.
Personal-development frameworks may include:
Goals or benchmarks that define the end-points
Strategies or plans for reaching goals
Measurement and assessment of progress, levels or stages that define milestones along a development path
A feedback system to provide information on changes
Some programs deliver their content online. Many include tools sold with a program, such as motivational books for self-help, recipes for weight-loss or technical manuals for yoga, and martial-arts programs.
A partial list of personal development offerings on the business-to-individual market might include:
Some consulting firms such as DDI and FranklinCovey specialize in personal development, but as of 2009 generalist firms operating in the fields of human resources, recruitment and organizational strategy—such as Hewitt, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Hay Group, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Korn/Ferry—have
entered what they perceive as a growing market, not to mention smaller
firms and self-employed professionals who provide consulting, training
and coaching.
Two individual ancient philosophical traditions: those of
Aristotle (Western tradition) and Confucius (Eastern tradition) stand
out
and contribute to the worldwide view of "personal development" in the
21st century. Elsewhere anonymous or named founders of schools of
self-development appear endemic—note the traditions of the Indian
sub-continent in this regard.
South Asian traditions
Some ancient Indians aspired to "beingness, wisdom and happiness".
Paul Oliver suggests that the popularity of Indian traditions for
a personal developer may lie in their relative lack of prescriptive
doctrine.
Islamic personal development
Khurram Murad describes that personal development in Islam is to work
towards eternal life in paradise. Paradise is the ultimate goal of
life. Allah has provided ways to help those striving towards eternal
life, including staying away from things of the world. These worldly
things can distract those away from the path to paradise. In the end,
paradise will bring satisfaction to those who are working on their
personal development because of the pleasure that comes from Allah.
Aristotle and the Western tradition
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) wrote Nicomachean Ethics, in which he defined personal development as a category of phronesis or practical wisdom, where the practice of virtues (arête) leads to eudaimonia, commonly translated as "happiness" but more accurately understood as "human flourishing" or "living well". Aristotle continues to influence the Western concept of personal development to this day, particularly in the economics of human development and in positive psychology.
Confucius and the East Asian tradition
In Chinese tradition, Confucius (around 551 BCE – 479 BCE) founded an ongoing philosophy. His ideas continue to influence family values, education and personnel management in China and East Asia. In his Great Learning Confucius wrote:
The ancients who wished to
illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom first ordered well
their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first
regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first
cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they
first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they
first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in
their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such
extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Contexts
Psychology
Psychology became linked to personal development in the early 20th century starting with the research efforts of Alfred Adler (1870–1937) and Carl Jung (1875–1961).
Adler refused to limit psychology to analysis alone. He made the
important point that aspirations focus on looking forward and do not
limit themselves to unconscious drives or to childhood experiences.
He also originated the concepts of lifestyle (1929—he defined
"lifestyle" as an individual's characteristic approach to life, in
facing problems) and of self-image, as a concept that influenced management under the heading of work-life balance, also known as the equilibrium between a person's career and personal life.
Carl Gustav Jung made contributions to personal development with his concept of individuation, which he saw as the drive of the individual to achieve the wholeness and balance of the Self.
Daniel Levinson (1920–1994) developed Jung's early concept of "life stages" and included a sociological perspective. Levinson proposed that personal development comes under the influence—throughout life—of aspirations, which he called "the Dream":
Whatever the nature of his Dream, a
young man has the developmental task of giving it greater definition
and finding ways to live it out. It makes a great difference in his
growth whether his initial life structure is consonant with and infused
by the Dream, or opposed to it. If the Dream remains unconnected to his
life it may simply die, and with it his sense of aliveness and purpose.
Research on success in reaching goals, as undertaken by Albert Bandura (1925–2021), suggested that self-efficacy
best explains why people with the same level of knowledge and skills
get very different results. Having self-efficacy leads to an increased
likelihood of success. According to Bandura self-confidence functions as a powerful predictor of success because:
It causes you to expect to succeed
It allows you take risks and set challenging goals
It helps you keep trying if at first you don't succeed
It helps you control emotions and fears when life may throw more difficult things your way
In 1998 Martin Seligman won election to a one-year term as President of the American Psychological Association and proposed a new focus: on healthy individuals rather than on pathology (he created the "positive psychology" current)
We have discovered that there is a
set of human strengths that are the most likely buffers against mental
illness: courage, optimism, interpersonal skill, work ethic, hope,
honesty and perseverance. Much of the task of prevention will be to
create a science of human strength whose mission will be to foster these
virtues in young people.
Social psychology
Social psychology heavily emphasizes and focuses on human behavior and how individuals interact with others in society.
Infants develop socially by creating trusting and dependent
relationships with others—namely parental figures. They learn how to act
and treat other people based on the example of parental figures and
other adults they interact with often.
Toddlers further develop social skills. Additionally, they begin to
gain a desire for autonomy and grow more and more independent as they
grow older. The balance of social involvement and autonomy varies per
person, but normally autonomous behavior increases with age. Some
studies suggest that selfishness begins to diminish, and prosocial
behaviors increase, between the ages of six years old to twelve years
old.
Additionally, the years of adulthood are times of
development—self-actualization, relational and occupational development,
loss, and coping skills development, etc.—affected by those around us:
parents, co-workers, romantic partners, and children. Social psychology
draws from many other psychological theories and principles yet views
them through a lens of social interaction.
Psychodynamic psychology
The psychodynamic
view of personal development varies from other perspectives. Namely,
that the development of our traits, personalities, and thinking patterns
are predominantly subconscious.
Psychodynamic theory suggests these subconscious changes—which emerge
as external actions—are formed from suppressed sexual and aggressive
urges and other internalized conflicts. Sigmund Freud
and other notable psychodynamic theorists postulate that these
repressed cognitions form during childhood and adolescence. Conscious
development would then be "digging up" these repressed memories and
feelings. Once repressed memories and emotions are discovered, an
individual can sift through them and receive healthy closure. Much, if not all, of conscious development occurs with the aid of a trained psychodynamic therapist.
Cognitive-behavioral psychology
Cognitive-behavioral views on personal development follow traditional patterns of personal development: behavior modification, cognitive reframing, and successive approximation being some of the more notable techniques.
An individual is seen as in control of their actions and their
thoughts, though self-mastery is required. With behavior modification,
individuals will develop personal skills and traits by altering their
behavior independent of their emotions. For example, a person may feel
intense anger but would still behave in a positive manner. They are able
to suppress their emotions and act in a more socially acceptable way.
The accumulation of these efforts would change the person into a more
patient individual. Cognitive reframing plays an instrumental role in personal development. Cognitive-behavioral
psychologists believe that how we view events is more important than
the event itself. Thus, if one can view negative events in beneficial
ways, they can progress and develop with fewer setbacks. Successive
approximation—or shaping—most
closely aligns with personal development. Successive approximation is
when one desires a final result but takes incremental steps to achieve
the result. Normally, each successful step towards the final goal is
rewarded until the goal is achieved. Personal development, if it is to
be long-lasting, is achieved incrementally.
Educational psychology
Educational psychology focuses on the human learning experience: learning and teaching methods, aptitude testing, and so on.
Educational psychology seeks to further personal development by
increasing one's ability to learn, retain information, and apply
knowledge to real-world experiences. If one is able to increase
efficacious learning, they are better equipped for personal development.
Early education
Education
offers children the opportunity to begin personal development at a
young age. The curriculum taught at school must be carefully planned and
managed in order to successfully promote personal development.
Providing an environment for children that allows for quality social
relationships to be made and clearly communicated objectives and aims is
key to their development. If early education fails to meet these
qualifications, it can greatly stunt development in children, hindering
their success in education as well as society. They can fall behind in
development compared to peers of the same age group.
Higher education
During the 1960s a large increase in the number of students on American campuses led to research on the personal development needs of undergraduate students. Arthur Chickering defined seven vectors of personal development for young adults during their undergraduate years:
In the UK, personal development took a central place in university policy in 1997 when the Dearing Report declared that universities should go beyond academic teaching to provide students with personal development. In 2001 a Quality Assessment Agency for UK universities produced guidelines for universities to enhance personal development as:
a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual
to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement and
to plan for their personal, educational and career development;
objectives related explicitly to student development; to improve the
capacity of students to understand what and how they are learning, and
to review, plan and take responsibility for their own learning
In the 1990s, business schools began to set up specific personal-development programs for leadership and career orientation and in 1998 the European Foundation for Management Development set up the EQUIS
accreditation system which specified that personal development must
form part of the learning process through internships, working on team
projects and going abroad for work or exchange programs.
The first personal development certification required for
business school graduation originated in 2002 as a partnership between
Metizo, a personal-development consulting firm, and the Euromed Management School
in Marseilles: students must not only complete assignments but also
demonstrate self-awareness and achievement of personal-development
competencies.
As an academic department, personal development as a specific discipline is often associated with business schools. As an area of research, personal development draws on links to other academic disciplines:
Education for questions of learning and assessment
Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), proposed a hierarchy of needs with self actualization
at the top, defined as "the desire to become more and more what one is,
to become everything that one is capable of becoming". In other words,
self actualization is the ambition to become a better version of
oneself, to become everything one is capable of being.
Since Maslow himself believed that only a small minority of people self-actualize—he estimated one percent—his
hierarchy of needs had the consequence that organizations came to
regard self-actualization or personal development as occurring at the
top of the organizational pyramid, while job security and good working
conditions would fulfill the needs of the mass of employees.
As organizations and labor markets became more global, responsibility for development shifted from the company to the individual. In 1999 management thinker Peter Drucker wrote in the Harvard Business Review:
We live in an age of unprecedented
opportunity: if you've got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top
of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out. But with
opportunity comes responsibility. Companies today aren't managing their
employees' careers; knowledge workers
must, effectively, be their own chief executive officers. It's up to
you to carve out your place, to know when to change course, and to keep
yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50
years.
Management professors Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School and Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School wrote in 1997 that companies must manage people individually and establish a new work contract.
On the one hand, the company must allegedly recognize that personal
development creates economic value: "market performance flows not from
the omnipotent wisdom of top managers but from the initiative,
creativity and skills of all employees".
On the other hand, employees should recognize that their work includes
personal development and "embrace the invigorating force of continuous
learning and personal development".
The 1997 publication of Ghoshal's and Bartlett's Individualized Corporation corresponded to a change in career development
from a system of predefined paths defined by companies, to a strategy
defined by the individual and matched to the needs of organizations in
an open landscape of possibilities.
Another contribution to the study of career development came with the
recognition that women's careers show specific personal needs and
different development paths from men. The 2007 study of women's careers
by Sylvia Ann Hewlett Off-Ramps and On-Ramps had a major impact on the way companies view careers. Further work on the career as a personal development process came from study by Herminia Ibarra in her Working Identity on the relationship with career change and identity change, indicating that priorities of work and lifestyle continually develop through life.
Personal development programs in companies fall into two categories: the provision of employee benefits and the fostering of development strategies.
Employee surveys may help organizations find out
personal-development needs, preferences and problems, and they use the
results to design benefits programs. Typical programs in this category include:
As an investment, personal development programs have the goal of increasing human capital or improving productivity,
innovation or quality. Proponents actually see such programs not as a
cost but as an investment with results linked to an organization's
strategic development goals. Employees gain access to these
investment-oriented programs by selection according to the value and
future potential of the employee, usually defined in a talent management
architecture including populations such as new hires, perceived
high-potential employees, perceived key employees, sales staff, research
staff and perceived future leaders.
Organizations may also offer other (non-investment-oriented) programs
to many or even all employees. Personal development also forms an
element in management tools such as personal development planning,
assessing one's level of ability using a competency grid, or getting feedback from a 360 questionnaire filled in by colleagues at different levels in the organization.
A common criticism
surrounding personal development programs is that they are often
treated as an arbitrary performance management tool to pay lip service
to, but ultimately ignored. As such, many companies have decided to
replace personal development programs with SMART Personal Development
Objectives, which are regularly reviewed and updated. Personal
Development Objectives help employees achieve career goals and improve
overall performance.
Criticism
Scholars have targeted self-help claims as misleading and incorrect. In 2005, Steve Salerno
portrayed the American self-help movement—he uses the acronym "SHAM":
the "Self-Help and Actualization Movement"—not only as ineffective in
achieving its goals but also as socially harmful, and that self-help
customers keep investing more money in these services regardless of
their effectiveness.
Others similarly point out that with self-help books "supply increases
the demand ... The more people read them, the more they think they need
them ... more like an addiction than an alliance".
Self-help writers have been described as working "in the area of the ideological, the imagined, the narrativized. ... although a veneer of scientism permeates the[ir] work, there is also an underlying armature of moralizing".
The Human Potential Movement (HPM) arose out of the counterculture of the 1960s
and formed around the concept of an extraordinary potential that its
advocates believed to lie largely untapped in all people. The movement
takes as its premise the belief that through the development of their
"human potential", people can experience a life of happiness, creativity, and fulfillment, and that such people will direct their actions within society toward assisting others to release their potential. Adherents believe that the collective effect of individuals cultivating their own potential will be positive change in society at large.
The HPM has much in common with humanistic psychology in that Abraham Maslow's theory of self-actualization strongly influenced its development. The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential,
founded in 1955 by Glenn Doman and Carl Delacato, was an early precusor
to and influence on the Human Potential Movement, as is exemplified in
Doman's assertion that "Every child born has, at the moment of birth, a
greater potential intelligence than Leonardo da Vinci ever used."
In the middle of the 1960s, George Leonard did research across the United States on the subject of human potential for the magazine Look.
In his research, he interviewed 37 psychiatrists, brain researchers,
and philosophers on the subject of human potential. He found that "Not
one of them said we were using more than 10% of our capacity."
During the course of his research, Leonard met Michael Murphy, a co-founder of the nascent Esalen Institute
(established in 1962) that at the time was running educational programs
for adults on the topic of "human potentialities". Leonard and Murphy
became close friends and together "put forth the idea that there should
be a human potential movement."
Social influence
HPM was regarded by some as being related to psychedelic culture such as hippies and Summer of Love. According to author Andrew Grant Jackson, George Harrison's adoption of Hindu philosophy and Indian instrumentation in his songs with the Beatles in the mid 1960s, together with the band's highly publicised study of Transcendental Meditation, "truly kick-started" the Human Potential Movement.
As Elizabeth Puttick writes in the Encyclopedia of New Religions:
The human potential movement (HPM) originated in the
1960s as a counter-cultural rebellion against mainstream psychology and
organised religion. It is not in itself a religion, new or otherwise,
but a psychological philosophy and framework, including a set of values
that have made it one of the most significant and influential forces in
modern Western society.
Authors and essayists
Abraham Maslow published his concept of a hierarchy of needs
in a paper in 1943. He argued that as people's basic survival needs are
met, so their desire to grow in mental and emotional dimensions
increases. He also coined the term 'metamotivation' to describe the
motivation of people who go beyond the scope of the basic needs and
strive for constant betterment.
Michael Murphy and Dick Price founded the Esalen Institute
in 1962, primarily as a center for the study and development of human
potential, and some people continue to regard Esalen as the geographical
center of the movement today.
Aldous Huxley
gave lectures on the "Human Potential" at Esalen in the early 1960s.
His writings and lectures on the mystical dimensions of psychedelics and
on what he called "the perennial philosophy"
were foundational. Moreover, his call for an institution that could
teach the 'nonverbal humanities' and the development of the 'human
potentialities' functioned as the working mission statement of early
Esalen.
Christopher Lasch notes the impact of the human potential movement via the therapeutic sector:
"The new therapies spawned by the human potential movement, according
to Peter Marin, teach that "the individual will is all powerful and
totally determines one's fate"; thus they intensify the "isolation of
the self".
George Leonard,
a magazine writer and editor who conducted research for an article on
human potential, became an important early influence on Esalen. Leonard
claims that he coined the phrase "Human Potential Movement" during a
brainstorming session with Michael Murphy, and popularized it in his
1972 book The Transformation: A Guide to the Inevitable Changes in Humankind. Leonard worked closely with the Esalen Institute afterwards, and in 2005 served as its president.
Human Potential in Europe
Maslow's hierarchy of needs, represented as a pyramid with the more basic needs at the bottom
Interest in Human Potential concepts is growing in Europe thanks to
training courses aimed at managers, graduate students, and the
unemployed, mainly funded by the European Union in public development courses in the 1980s and 90s.
In these courses, modules such as communication skills, marketing,
leadership and others in the "soft skills" area were embedded in the
programs, and enabled the familiarization of most of the Human Potential
concepts. A key role was played by "EU Strategic objective 3, 4, and 5"
that explicitly included transversal key competences, such as learning
to learn, a sense of initiative, entrepreneurship, and cultural
awareness".
These training programs, lasting as much as 900 to 1200 hours
aimed at enhancing creativity and innovation, including
entrepreneurship, and contained at all levels of education and training
Human Potential concepts. One of the core concepts, Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human
needs, became popular in Europe in the 80s mainly as a support to
understanding consumer's needs, and only after its use as a key
marketing concept. Philip Kotler's book "Marketing Management" was
particularly influential in the 80's in popularizing several human
potential concepts that were "embedded" in the book and entered in the working and management community.
Specifically targeted books on Human Potential have emerged in
Europe and can be found in the works of specific authors. For the
"Anglo" cultural area, the work of John Whitmore
contains a harsh critique of mainstream approaches to human potential as
fast cures for self-improvement: "Contrary to the appealing claims of The One Minute Manager, there are no quick fixes in business".
For the "Latin" cultural area, an early approach to Human Potential can be found in the work of Maria Montessori. Montessori's theory and philosophy of education were influenced by the work of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, Édouard Séguin, Friedrich Fröbel, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.
Her model emphasized autonomous learning, sensory exploration and
training children in physical activities, empowering their senses and
thoughts by exposure to sights, smells, and tactile experiences, and
later included, problem solving.
The inverted pentagram circumscribed by a circle (also known as a pentacle) is often used to represent Satanism
Satanism is a group of ideological and philosophical beliefs based on Satan. Contemporary religious practice of Satanism began with the founding of the atheistic Church of Satan
in the United States in 1966, although a few historical precedents
exist. Prior to the public practice, Satanism existed primarily as an
accusation by various Christian groups toward perceived ideological opponents, rather than a self-identity. Satanism, and the concept of Satan, has also been used by artists and entertainers for symbolic expression.
Accusations that various groups have been practicing Satanism
have been made throughout much of Christian history. During the Middle
Ages, the Inquisition attached to the Catholic Church alleged that various heretical Christian sects and groups, such as the Knights Templar and the Cathars, performed secret Satanic rituals. In the subsequent Early Modern period, belief in a widespread Satanic conspiracy of witches resulted in mass trials of alleged witches across Europe and the North American colonies. Accusations that Satanic conspiracies were active, and behind events such as Protestantism (and conversely, the Protestant claim that the Pope was the Antichrist) and the French Revolution
continued to be made in Christendom during the eighteenth to the
twentieth century. The idea of a vast Satanic conspiracy reached new
heights with the influential Taxil hoax of France in the 1890s, which claimed that Freemasonry worshipped Satan, Lucifer, and Baphomet in their rituals. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Satanic ritual abuse
hysteria spread through the United States and the United Kingdom, amid
fears that groups of Satanists were regularly sexually abusing and
murdering children in their rites. In most of these cases, there is no
corroborating evidence that any of those accused of Satanism were
actually practitioners of a Satanic religion or guilty of the
allegations leveled at them.
Since the 19th century, various small religious groups have
emerged that identify as Satanists or use Satanic iconography. The
Satanist groups that appeared after the 1960s are widely diverse, but
two major trends are theistic Satanism and atheistic Satanism. Theistic Satanists venerate Satan as a supernatural deity, viewing him not as omnipotent but rather as a patriarch. In contrast, atheistic Satanists regard Satan as a symbol of certain human traits.
Contemporary religious Satanism is predominantly an American
phenomenon, the ideas spreading elsewhere with the effects of
globalization and the Internet. The Internet spreads awareness of other Satanists, and is also the main battleground for Satanist disputes. Satanism started to reach Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, in time with the fall of the Soviet Union, and most noticeably in Poland and Lithuania, predominantly Roman Catholic countries.
In their study of Satanism, the religious studies scholars Asbjørn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis, and Jesper Aa. Petersen stated that the term Satanism "has a history of being a designation made by people against those whom they dislike; it is a term used for 'othering'". The concept of Satanism is an invention of Christianity, for it relies upon the figure of Satan, a character deriving from Christian mythology.
Elsewhere, Petersen noted that "Satanism as something others do is very different from Satanism as a self-designation".
Eugene Gallagher noted that, as commonly used, Satanism was usually "a polemical, not a descriptive term".
In 1994, the Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne
suggested defining Satanism with the simultaneous presence of "1) the
worship of the character identified with the name of Satan or Lucifer in
the Bible, 2) by organized groups with at least a minimal organization
and hierarchy, 3) through ritual or liturgical practices [...] it does
not matter how each Satanist group perceives Satan, as personal or
impersonal, real or symbolical".
Etymology
The word "Satan" was not originally a proper name, but rather an
ordinary noun that means "adversary". In this context, it appears at
several points in the Old Testament. For instance, in the Book of Samuel, David is presented as the satan ("adversary") of the Philistines, while in the Book of Numbers, the term appears as a verb, when Jehovah sent an angel to satan ("to oppose") Balaam. 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 like the Book of Enoch. This Satan was then featured in parts of the New Testament, where he was presented as a figure who tempted humans to commit sin; in the Book of Matthew and the Book of Luke, he attempted to tempt Jesus of Nazareth as the latter fasted in the wilderness.
The word "Satanism" was adopted into English from the Frenchsatanisme.
The terms "Satanism" and "Satanist" are first recorded as appearing in
the English and French languages during the sixteenth century, when they
were used by Christian groups to attack other, rival Christian groups. In a Roman Catholic tract of 1565, the author condemns the "heresies, blasphemies, and sathanismes [sic]" of the Protestants. In an Anglican work of 1559, Anabaptists and other Protestant sects are condemned as "swarmes of Satanistes [sic]".
As used in this manner, the term "Satanism" was not used to claim that
people literally worshipped Satan, but rather, it claimed that the
accused was deviating from true Christianity, and thus serving the will
of Satan.
During the nineteenth century, the term "Satanism" began to be used to
describe those considered to lead a broadly immoral lifestyle,
and it was only in the late nineteenth century that it came to be
applied in English to individuals who were believed to consciously and
deliberately venerate Satan. This latter meaning had appeared earlier in the Swedish language; the Lutheran Bishop Laurentius Paulinus Gothus had described devil-worshipping sorcerers as Sathanister in his Ethica Christiana, produced between 1615 and 1630.
History
Historical and anthropological research suggests that nearly all
societies have developed the idea of a sinister and anti-human force
that can hide itself within society. This commonly involves a belief in witches, a group of individuals who invert the norms of their society and seek to harm their community, for instance by engaging in incest, murder, and cannibalism. Allegations of witchcraft may have different causes and serve different functions within a society. For instance, they may serve to uphold social norms, to heighten the tension in existing conflicts between individuals, or to scapegoat certain individuals for various social problems.
Another contributing factor to the idea of Satanism is the
concept that there is an agent of misfortune and evil who operates on a
cosmic scale,
something usually associated with a strong form of ethical dualism that
divides the world clearly into forces of good and forces of evil. The earliest such entity known is Angra Mainyu, a figure that appears in the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. This concept was also embraced by Judaism
and early Christianity, and although it was soon marginalized within
Jewish thought, it gained increasing importance within early Christian
understandings of the cosmos.
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.
As Christianity expanded throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, it came into contact with a variety of other religions, which it regarded as "pagan".
Christian theologians claimed that the gods and goddesses venerated by
these "pagans" were not genuine divinities, but were actually demons.
However, they did not believe that "pagans" were deliberately
devil-worshippers, instead claiming that they were simply misguided. In Christian iconography, the Devil and demons were given the physical traits of figures from classical mythology, such as the god Pan, fauns, and satyrs.
Those Christian groups regarded as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church were treated differently, with theologians arguing that they were deliberately worshipping the Devil.
This was accompanied by claims that such individuals engaged in
incestuous sexual orgies, murdered infants, and committed acts of cannibalism, all stock accusations that had previously been leveled at Christians themselves in the Roman Empire.
The first recorded example of such an accusation being made within Western Christianity took place in Toulouse in 1022, when two clerics were tried for allegedly venerating a demon. Throughout the Middle Ages, this accusation would be applied to a wide range of Christian heretical groups, including the Paulicians, Bogomils, Cathars, Waldensians, and the Hussites. The Knights Templar were accused of worshipping an idol known as Baphomet, with Lucifer having appeared at their meetings in the form of a cat. As well as these Christian groups, these claims were also made about Europe's Jewish community.
In the thirteenth century, there were also references made to a group
of "Luciferians" led by a woman named Lucardis which hoped to see Satan
rule in Heaven. References to this group continued into the fourteenth
century, although historians studying the allegations concur that these
Luciferians were likely a fictitious invention.
Within Christian thought, the idea developed that certain individuals could make a pact with Satan.
This may have emerged after observing that pacts with gods and
goddesses played a role in various pre-Christian belief systems, or that
such pacts were also made as part of the Christian cult of saints. Another possibility is that it derives from a misunderstanding of Augustine of Hippo's condemnation of augury in his On the Christian Doctrine, written in the late fourth century. Here, he stated that people who consulted augurs were entering "quasi pacts" (covenants) with demons. The idea of the diabolical pact made with demons was popularized across Europe in the story of Faust, likely based in part on the real life Johann Georg Faust.
The Obscene Kiss, an illustration of witches kissing the Devil's anus from Francesco Maria Guazzo's Compendium Maleficarum (1608).
As the late medieval gave way to the early modern period, European Christendom experienced a schism between the established Roman Catholic Church and the breakaway Protestant movement. In the ensuing Reformation and Counter-Reformation, both Catholics and Protestants accused each other of deliberately being in league with Satan. It was in this context that the terms "Satanist" and "Satanism" emerged.
The early modern period also saw fear of Satanists reach its "historical apogee" in the form of the witch trials of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
This came about as the accusations which had been leveled at medieval
heretics, among them that of devil-worship, were applied to the
pre-existing idea of the witch, or practitioner of malevolent magic.
The idea of a conspiracy of Satanic witches was developed by educated
elites, although the concept of malevolent witchcraft was a widespread
part of popular belief and folkloric ideas about the night witch, the wild hunt, and the dance of the fairies were incorporated into it.
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.
Between 30,000 and 50,000 individuals were executed as accused Satanic witches.
Most historians agree that the majority of those persecuted in these
witch trials were innocent of any involvement in Devil worship.
However, in their summary of the evidence for the trials, the
historians Geoffrey Scarre and John Callow thought it "without doubt"
that some of those accused in the trials had been guilty of employing
magic in an attempt to harm their enemies, and were thus genuinely
guilty of witchcraft.
In seventeenth-century Sweden, a number of highway robbers and
other outlaws living in the forests informed judges that they venerated
Satan because he provided more practical assistance than Jehovah. Introvigne regarded these practices as "folkloric Satanism".
18th- to 20th-century Christendom
Stanislas de Guaita drew the original goat pentagram, which first appeared in the book La Clef de la Magie Noire in 1897. This symbol would later become synonymous with Baphomet, and is commonly referred to as the Sabbatic Goat.
During the eighteenth century, gentleman's social clubs became
increasingly prominent in Britain and Ireland, among the most secretive
of which were the Hellfire Clubs, which were first reported in the 1720s. The most famous of these groups was the Order of the Knights of Saint Francis, which was founded circa 1750 by the aristocrat Sir Francis Dashwood and which assembled first at his estate at West Wycombe and later in Medmenham Abbey. A number of contemporary press sources portrayed these as gatherings of atheistrakes where Christianity was mocked and toasts were made to the Devil.
Beyond these sensationalist accounts, which may not be accurate
portrayals of actual events, little is known about the activities of the
Hellfire Clubs.
Introvigne suggested that they may have engaged in a form of "playful
Satanism" in which Satan was invoked "to show a daring contempt for
conventional morality" by individuals who neither believed in his
literal existence nor wanted to pay homage to him.
The French Revolution of 1789 dealt a blow to the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church
in parts of Europe, and soon a number of Catholic authors began making
claims that it had been masterminded by a conspiratorial group of
Satanists. 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. Fiard's ideas were furthered by Alexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier, 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. Although most of his contemporaries regarded Berbiguier as mad, 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.
In the early 20th century, the British novelist Dennis Wheatley produced a range of influential novels in which his protagonists battled Satanic groups. At the same time, non-fiction authors like 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.
During the 1950s, various British tabloid newspapers repeated such
claims, largely basing their accounts on the allegations of one woman,
Sarah Jackson, who claimed to have been a member of such a group. In 1973, the British Christian Doreen Irvine published From Witchcraft to Christ, in which she claimed to have been a member of a Satanic group that gave her supernatural powers, such as the ability to levitate, before she escaped and embraced Christianity.
In the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, various Christian preachers—the most famous being Mike Warnke in his 1972 book The Satan-Seller—claimed
that they had been members of Satanic groups who carried out sex
rituals and animal sacrifices before discovering Christianity.
According to Gareth Medway in his historical examination of Satanism,
these stories were "a series of inventions by insecure people and hack
writers, each one based on a previous story, exaggerated a little more
each time".
Other publications made allegations of Satanism against
historical figures. The 1970s saw the publication of the Romanian
Protestant preacher Richard Wurmbrand's book in which he argued—without corroborating evidence—that the socio-political theorist Karl Marx had been a Satanist.
Modern Satanism
Eliphas Levi's Sabbatic Goat (known as The Goat of Mendes or Baphomet) has become one of the most common symbols of Satanism.
The use of the term "Lucifer" was also taken up by the French ceremonial magicianEliphas Levi, who has been described as a "Romantic Satanist". During his younger days, Levi used "Lucifer" in the same positive symbolic manner as the literary romantics.
As he moved toward political conservatism in later life, he retained
the use of the term, but instead applied it to what he believed was a
morally neutral facet of "the absolute".
Levi was not the only occultist who wanted to use the term "Lucifer" without adopting the term "Satan" in a similar way. The early Theosophical Society believed that "Lucifer" was a force that aided humanity's awakening to its own spiritual nature. In keeping with this belief, the Society began production of a journal titled Lucifer.
"Satan" was also used within the esoteric system propounded by the Danish occultist Carl William Hansen, who used the pen name "Ben Kadosh". Hansen was involved in a variety of esoteric groups, including Martinism, Freemasonry, and the Ordo Templi Orientis, drawing on ideas from various groups to establish his own philosophy. In one pamphlet, he provided a "Luciferian" interpretation of Freemasonry. Kadosh's work left little influence outside of Denmark.
Aleister Crowley was not a Satanist, but used rhetoric and imagery considered satanic.
Both during his life and after it, the British occultist Aleister Crowley
has been widely described as a Satanist, usually by detractors. Crowley
stated he did not consider himself a Satanist, nor did he worship
Satan, as he did not accept the Christian world view in which Satan was
believed to exist. He nevertheless used imagery considered satanic, for instance by describing himself as "the Beast 666" and referring to the Whore of Babylon in his work, while in later life he sent "Antichristmas cards" to his friends.
Dyrendel, Lewis, and Petersen noted that despite the fact that Crowley
was not a Satanist, he "in many ways embodies the pre-Satanist esoteric
discourse on Satan and Satanism through his lifestyle and his
philosophy", with his "image and thought" becoming an "important
influence" on the later development of religious Satanism.
In 1928, the Fraternitas Saturni (FS) was established in Germany; its founder, Eugen Grosche, published Satanische Magie ("Satanic Magic") that same year. The group connected Satan to Saturn, claiming that the planet related to the Sun in the same manner that Lucifer relates to the human world.
In 1932, an esoteric group known as the Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow was established in Paris, France, by Maria de Naglowska, a Russian occultist who had fled to France following the Russian Revolution.
She promoted a theology centered on what she called the Third Term of
the Trinity consisting of Father, Son, and Sex, the latter of which she
deemed to be most important. Her early disciples, who underwent what she called "Satanic Initiations", included models and art students recruited from bohemian circles. The Golden Arrow disbanded after Naglowska abandoned it in 1936.
According to Introvigne, hers was "a quite complicated Satanism, built
on a complex philosophical vision of the world, of which little would
survive its initiator".
In 1969, a Satanic group based in Toledo, Ohio, part of the United States, came to public attention. Called the Our Lady of Endor Coven,
it was led by a man named Herbert Sloane, who described his Satanic
tradition as the Ophite Cultus Sathanas and alleged that it had been
established in the 1940s.
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.
Sloane's claims that his group had a 1940s origin remain unproven; it
may be that he falsely claimed older origins for his group to make it
appear older than Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, which had been
established in 1966.
None of these groups had any real impact on the emergence of the later Satanic milieu in the 1960s.
At the end of the twentieth 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.
Initially, the alleged perpetrators of such crimes were labeled
"witches", although the term "Satanist" was soon adopted as a favored
alternative, and the phenomenon itself came to be called "the Satanism Scare".
Promoters of the claims alleged that there was a conspiracy of
organized Satanists who occupied prominent positions throughout society,
from the police to politicians, and that they had been powerful enough
to cover up their crimes.
Preceded by some significant but isolated episodes in the 1970s, a
great Satanism scare exploded in the 1980s in the United States and
Canada and was subsequently exported towards England, Australia, and
other countries. It was unprecedented in history. It surpassed even the
results of Taxil's
propaganda, and has been compared with the most virulent periods of
witch hunting. The scare started in 1980 and declined slowly between
1990... and 1994, when official British and American reports denied the
real existence of ritual satanic crimes. Particularly outside the U.S.
and U.K., however, its consequences are still felt today.
Sociologist of religion Massimo Introvigne, 2016
One of the primary sources for the scare was Michelle Remembers, a 1980 book by the Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder in which he detailed what he claimed were the repressed memories
of his patient (and wife) Michelle Smith. Smith had claimed that as a
child she had been abused by her family in Satanic rituals in which
babies were sacrificed and Satan himself appeared. In 1983, allegations were made that the McMartin family—owners of a preschool in California—were guilty of sexually abusing the children in their care during Satanic rituals. The allegations resulted in a lengthy and expensive trial, in which all of the accused would eventually be cleared. The publicity generated by the case resulted in similar allegations being made in various other parts of the United States.
A prominent aspect of the Satanic Scare was the claim by those in
the developing "anti-Satanism" movement that any child's claim about
Satanic ritual abuse must be true, because children would not lie. Although some involved in the anti-Satanism movement were from Jewish and secular backgrounds, a central part was played by fundamentalist and evangelical forms of Christianity, in particular Pentecostalism, with Christian groups holding conferences and producing books and videotapes to promote belief in the conspiracy.
Various figures in law enforcement also came to be promoters of the
conspiracy theory, with such "cult cops" holding various conferences to
promote it.
The scare was later imported to the United Kingdom through visiting
evangelicals and became popular among some of the country's social
workers, resulting in a range of accusations and trials across Britain.
The Satanic ritual abuse hysteria died down between 1990 and 1994. In the late 1980s, the Satanic Scare had lost its impetus following increasing skepticism about such allegations, and a number of those who had been convicted of perpetrating Satanic ritual abuse saw their convictions overturned. In 1990, an agent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ken Lanning,
revealed that he had investigated 300 allegations of Satanic ritual
abuse and found no evidence for Satanism or ritualistic activity in any
of them. In the UK, the Department of Health commissioned the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine to examine the allegations of SRA.
She noted that while approximately half did reveal evidence of genuine
sexual abuse of children, none revealed any evidence that Satanist
groups had been involved or that any murders had taken place.
She noted three examples in which lone individuals engaged in child
molestation had created a ritual performance to facilitate their sexual
acts, with the intent of frightening their victims and justifying their
actions, but that none of these child molesters were involved in wider
Satanist groups.
By the 21st century, hysteria about Satanism has waned in most Western
countries, although allegations of Satanic ritual abuse continued to
surface in parts of continental Europe and Latin America.
The Sigil of Baphomet, the official insignia of the Church of Satan and LaVeyan Satanism.
Anton LaVey, who has been referred to as "The Father of Satanism", synthesized his religion through the establishment of the Church of Satan in 1966 and the publication of The Satanic Bible
in 1969. LaVey's teachings promoted "indulgence", "vital existence",
"undefiled wisdom", "kindness to those who deserve it", "responsibility
to the responsible", and an "eye for an eye" code of ethics, while shunning "abstinence" based on guilt, "spirituality", "unconditional love", "pacifism", "equality", "herd mentality", and "scapegoating".
LaVey envisioned a Satanist as a carnal, physical, and pragmatic being.
The core values of LaVey Satanism are the enjoyment of physical
existence, and undiluted naturalism that sees mankind as animals that
exist in an amoral universe.
LaVey believed that the ideal Satanist should be individualistic
and non-conformist, rejecting what he called the "colorless existence"
that mainstream society sought to impose on those living within it. He praised the human ego
for encouraging an individual's pride, self-respect, and
self-realization and accordingly believed in satisfying the ego's
desires. He stated that self-indulgence was a desirable trait, and that hate and aggression were not wrong or undesirable emotions but that they were necessary and advantageous for survival. Accordingly, he praised the seven deadly sins as virtues which were beneficial for the individual. The anthropologist Jean La Fontaine highlighted an article that appeared in The Black Flame,
in which one writer described "a true Satanic society" as 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."
The sociologist James R. Lewis
noted that "LaVey was directly responsible for the genesis of Satanism
as a serious religious (as opposed to a purely literary) movement". Scholars agree that there is no reliably documented case of Satanic continuity prior to the founding of the Church of Satan. It was the first organized church in modern times to be devoted to the figure of Satan,
and according to Faxneld and Petersen, the Church represented "the
first public, highly visible, and long-lasting organization which
propounded a coherent satanic discourse". LaVey's book, The Satanic Bible, has been described as the most important document to influence contemporary Satanism. The book contains the core principles of Satanism, and is considered the foundation of its philosophy and dogma. Petersen noted that it is "in many ways the central text of the Satanic milieu", with Lap similarly testifying to its dominant position within the wider Satanic movement. David G. Bromley calls it "iconoclastic" and "the best-known and most influential statement of Satanic theology." Eugene V. Gallagher
says that Satanists use LaVey's writings "as lenses through which they
view themselves, their group, and the cosmos." He also states: "With a
clear-eyed appreciation of true human nature, a love of ritual and
pageantry, and a flair for mockery, LaVey's Satanic Bible promulgated a gospel of self-indulgence that, he argued, anyone who dispassionately considered the facts would embrace."
A number of religious studies scholars have described LaVey's Satanism as a form of "self-religion" or "self-spirituality",
with religious studies scholar Amina Olander Lap arguing that it should
be seen as being both part of the "prosperity wing" of the
self-spirituality New Age movement and a form of the Human Potential Movement.
The anthropologist Jean La Fontaine described it as having "both
elitist and anarchist elements", also citing one occult bookshop owner
who referred to the Church's approach as "anarchistic hedonism". In The Invention of Satanism,
Dyrendal and Petersen theorized that LaVey viewed his religion as "an
antinomian self-religion for productive misfits, with a cynically carnivalesque take on life, and no supernaturalism". The sociologist of religion James R. Lewis even described LaVeyan Satanism as "a blend of Epicureanism and Ayn Rand's philosophy, flavored with a pinch of ritual magic." The historian of religion Mattias Gardell described LaVey's as "a rational ideology of egoistic hedonism and self-preservation", while Nevill Drury characterized LaVeyan Satanism as "a religion of self-indulgence". It has also been described as an "institutionalism of Machiavellian self-interest".
Prominent Church leader Blanche Barton described Satanism as "an alignment, a lifestyle". LaVey and the Church stated that "Satanists are born, not made"; that they are outsiders by their nature, living as they see fit,
who are self-realized in a religion which appeals to the would-be
Satanist's nature, leading them to realize they are Satanists through
finding a belief system that is in line with their own perspective and
lifestyle. Adherents to the philosophy have described Satanism as a non-spiritual religion of the flesh, or "...the world's first carnal religion". LaVey used Christianity as a negative mirror for his new faith, with LaVeyan Satanism rejecting the basic principles and theology of Christian belief. It views Christianity – alongside other major religions, and philosophies such as humanism and liberal democracy
– as a largely negative force on humanity; LaVeyan Satanists perceive
Christianity as a lie which promotes idealism, self-denigration, herd
behavior, and irrationality.
LaVeyans view their religion as a force for redressing this balance by
encouraging materialism, egoism, stratification, carnality, atheism, and
social Darwinism.
LaVey's Satanism was particularly critical of what it understands as
Christianity's denial of humanity's animal nature, and it instead calls
for the celebration of, and indulgence in, these desires. In doing so, it places an emphasis on the carnal rather than the spiritual.
Practitioners do not believe that Satan literally exists and do not worship him. Instead, Satan is viewed as a positive archetype embracing the Hebrew root of the word "Satan" as "adversary", who represents pride, carnality, and enlightenment, and of a cosmos which Satanists perceive to be motivated by a "dark evolutionary force of entropy that permeates all of nature and provides the drive for survival and propagation inherent in all living things". The Devil is embraced as a symbol of defiance against the Abrahamic faiths
which LaVey criticized for what he saw as the suppression of humanity's
natural instincts. Moreover, Satan also serves as a metaphorical
external projection of the individual's godhood. LaVey stated that "god" is a creation of man, rather than man being a creation of "god". In his book, The Satanic Bible,
the Satanist's concept of a god is described as the Satanist's true
"self"— a projection of his or her own personality, not an external
deity. Satan is used as a representation of personal liberty and individualism.
LaVey explained that the gods worshipped by other religions are
also projections of man's true self. He argues that man's unwillingness
to accept his own ego has caused him to externalize these gods so as to
avoid the feeling of narcissism that would accompany self-worship. The current high priest of the Church of Satan, Peter H. Gilmore,
further expounds that "...Satan is a symbol of Man living as his
prideful, carnal nature dictates [...] Satan is not a conscious entity
to be worshipped, rather a reservoir of power inside each human to be
tapped at will.
The Church of Satan has chosen Satan as its primary symbol because in
Hebrew it means adversary, opposer, one to accuse or question. We see
ourselves as being these Satans; the adversaries, opposers and accusers
of all spiritual belief systems that would try to hamper enjoyment of
our life as a human being." The term "theistic Satanism" has been described as "oxymoronic" by the church and its High Priest.
The Church of Satan rejects the legitimacy of any other organizations
who claim to be Satanists, dubbing them reverse-Christians,
pseudo-Satanists or Devil worshipers, atheistic or otherwise, and maintains a purist approach to Satanism as expounded by LaVey.
After LaVey's death in 1997, the Church of Satan was taken over by a new administration and its headquarters were moved to New York.
LaVey's daughter, the High Priestess Karla LaVey, felt this to be a
disservice to her father's legacy. The First Satanic Church was
re-founded on October 31, 1999 by Karla LaVey to carry on the legacy of her father. She continues to run it out of San Francisco, California.
The Satanic Temple is an American religious and political activist organization based in Salem, Massachusetts. The organization actively participates in public affairs that have manifested in several public political actions and efforts at lobbying, with a focus on the separation of church and state and using satire against Christian groups that it believes interfere with personal freedom. According to Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen, the group were "rationalist, political pranksters". Their pranks are designed to highlight religious hypocrisy and advance the cause of secularism.
In one of their actions, they performed a "Pink Mass" over the grave of
the mother of the evangelical Christian and prominent anti-LGBT
preacher Fred Phelps; the Temple claimed that the mass converted the spirit of Phelps' mother into a lesbian.
The Satanic Temple does not believe in a supernatural Satan, as
they believe that this encourages superstition that would keep them from
being "malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the
material world". The Temple uses the literary Satan as metaphor to construct a cultural narrative which promotes pragmatic skepticism, rational reciprocity, personal autonomy, and curiosity. Satan is thus used as a symbol representing "the eternal rebel" against arbitrary authority and social norms.
Religious Satanism does not exist in a single form, as there are
multiple different religious Satanisms, each with different ideas about
what being a Satanist entails. A minority of Satanists are far-right.
The historian of religion Ruben van Luijk used a "working definition"
in which Satanism was regarded as "the intentional, religiously
motivated veneration of Satan".
Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen believed that it was not a single movement, but rather a milieu. They and others have nevertheless referred to it as a new religious movement. They believed that there was a family resemblance that united all of the varying groups in this milieu, and that most of them were self religions.
They argued that there were a set of features that were common to the
groups in this Satanic milieu: these were the positive use of the term
"Satanist" as a designation, an emphasis on individualism, a genealogy
that connects them to other Satanic groups, a transgressive and antinomian stance, a self-perception as an elite, and an embrace of values such as pride, self-reliance, and productive non-conformity.
Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen argued that the groups within the
Satanic milieu could be divided into three groups: reactive Satanists,
rationalist Satanists, and esoteric Satanists.
They saw reactive Satanism as encompassing "popular Satanism, inverted
Christianity, and symbolic rebellion" and noted that it situates itself
in opposition to society while at the same time conforming to society's
perspective of evil. Rationalist Satanism is used to describe the trend in the Satanic milieu which is atheistic, skeptical, materialistic, and epicurean. Esoteric Satanism instead applied to those forms which are theistic and draw upon ideas from other forms of Western esotericism, Modern Paganism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
Theistic Satanism (also known as traditional Satanism, Spiritual Satanism or Devil worship) is a form of Satanism with the primary belief that Satan is an actual deity or force to revere or worship. Other characteristics of theistic Satanism may include a belief in magic, which is manipulated through ritual, although that is not a defining criterion, and theistic Satanists may focus solely on devotion.
Luciferianism
A version of the symbol of Lucifer, used by some modern Satanists
Luciferianism is a belief system that venerates the characteristics that are attributed to Lucifer. Luciferians usually revere Lucifer not as the devil, but as a destroyer, guardian, liberator, light bringer, and/or guiding spirit to darkness, or even as the true god, as opposed to Jehovah. One group of Luciferians- those of the Neo-Luciferian Church, are influenced by Gnosticism.
According to the group's own claims, the Order of Nine Angles was established in Shropshire, England, during the late 1960s, when a Grand Mistress united a number of ancient pagan groups active in the area.
This account states that when the Order's Grand Mistress migrated to
Australia, a man known as "Anton Long" took over as the new Grand
Master.
From 1976 onward, he authored an array of texts for the tradition,
codifying and extending its teachings, mythos, and structure.
Various academics have argued that Long is the pseudonym of British National Socialist Movement activist David Myatt, an allegation that Myatt has denied.
The ONA arose to public attention in the early 1980s, spreading its message through magazine articles over the following two decades. In 2000, it established a presence on the internet, later adopting social media to promote its message.
The ONA is a secretive organization,
and lacks any central administration, instead operating as a network of
allied Satanic practitioners, which it terms the "kollective". It consists largely of autonomous cells known as "nexions".
The majority of these are located in Britain, Ireland, and Germany,
although others are located elsewhere in Europe, and in Russia, Egypt,
South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and the United States.
The ONA describe their occultism as "Traditional Satanism". The ONA's writings encourage human sacrifice, referring to their victims as opfers. According to the Order's teachings, such opfers must demonstrate character faults that mark them out as being worthy of death. No ONA cell has admitted to carrying out a sacrifice in a ritualized
manner, but rather, Order members have joined the police and military in
order to carry out such killings. Faxneld described the Order as "a dangerous and extreme form of Satanism", while religious studies scholar Graham Harvey
wrote that the ONA fit the stereotype of the Satanist "better than
other groups" by embracing "deeply shocking" and illegal acts. The ONA is connected to multiple killings, rapes, and cases of child abuse and right-wing terrorism. Several British politicians, including the Labour Party's Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, 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 aims to make terror attacks.
The Temple of Set is an initiatoryoccult society that claims to be the world's leading left-hand path
religious organization. It was established in 1975 by Michael A. Aquino
and certain members of the priesthood of the Church of Satan,
who left the CoS because of administrative and philosophical
disagreements. ToS deliberately self-differentiates from CoS in several
ways, most significantly in theology and sociology.
The philosophy of the Temple of Set may be summed up as "enlightened
individualism"— enhancement and improvement of oneself by personal
education, experiment, and initiation. This process is necessarily
different and distinctive for each individual. The members do not agree
on whether Set is real or symbolic, and they're not expected to.
Michael Aquino believed that the name Satan was originally a corruption of the name Set. The Temple teaches that Set is a real entity, and the only real god in existence, with all other gods being created by the human imagination. Set is described as having given humanity —through the means of non-natural evolution— the "Black Flame" or the "Gift of Set", which is a questioning intellect that sets humans apart from other animals. While Setians are expected to revere Set, they do not worship him. Central to Setian philosophy is the human individual, with self-deification presented as the ultimate goal.
In 2005, Petersen noted that academic estimates for the Temple's membership varied from between 300 and 500, and Granholm suggested that in 2007, the Temple contained circa 200 members.
Joy of Satan is a website and esotericoccult group that was founded in the early 2000s by Maxine Dietrich (pseudonym of Andrea Maxine Dietrich), wife of the American National Socialist Movement's co-founder and former leader Clifford Herrington.
With its inception, spiritual Satanism was born – a current that until
recently was regarded only as "theist", but then defined into "spiritual
Satanism" by Theistic Satanists who concluded that the term "spiritual"
in Satanism represented the best answer to the world,
considering it a "moral slap" toward the earlier carnal and
materialistic LaVeyan Satanism, and instead focusing its attention upon spiritual evolution. Joy of Satan presents a unique synthesis of theistic Satanism, National Socialism, GnosticPaganism, Western esotericism, UFO conspiracy theories, and extraterrestrial hypotheses similar to those popularized by Zecharia Sitchin and David Icke.
Members of Joy of Satan are generally polytheists, believing that Satan is one of many deities.
While Satan and demons are considered deities within JoS, the deities
themselves are understood to be highly evolved, un-aging, sentient, and
powerful humanoid extraterrestrial beings. Satan and many demons are equated with gods from ancient cultures, some of which include the Sumerian god Enki, and the Yazidi angel Melek Taus being seen as Satan, borrowing their theistic Satanist interpretations of Enki from the writings of Zecharia Sitchin, and Melek Taus partially deriving from the writings of Anton LaVey. Satan is seen not only as an important deity but a powerful and sentient being responsible for the creation of humanity. Satan is also revered by JoS as “the true father and creator god of humanity”,
the bringer of knowledge, and whose desire is for his creations,
humans, to elevate themselves through knowledge and understanding.
In their beliefs, Yazidism
is in juxtaposition with Satanism as they consider the two share
similar elements, such as Yazidi devotees being defined by Muslims as
"devotees to Shaytan" and regarded as Satanists. It is also believed that the figure of Melek Ta'Us, the peacock angel, may derive from much older pagan deities, such as Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of wisdom who rides a peacock, or even the god Indra, who transforms into a peacock.
The story of Melek Ta'Us itself is also considered by JoS to have many
satanic elements, such as being described as the angel who rebelled
against the Abrahamic god. The sacred text of the Yazidis, the Al-Jilwah, is claimed by the JoS as the word of Satan.
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.
Much of their beliefs on aliens, meditation, and telepathic contacts
with demons have become popular in a larger milieu within the currents
of recent non-LaVeyan theistic Satanism.
According to Petersen's survey (2014), Joy of Satan's angelfire network
has a surprising prominence among theistic Satanist websites on the
internet. In addition, James R. Lewis's "Satan census"(2009) also revealed a presence of respondents to Joy of Satan.
Personal Satanism
The American serial killer Richard Ramirez self-identified as a Satanist.
In contrast to the organized and doctrinal Satanist groups is the
personal Satanism of individuals, who identify as Satanists due to their
affinity for the general idea of Satan, including such characteristics
as viciousness and/or subversion.
Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen used the term "reactive Satanism"
to describe one form of modern Satanism. They described this as an
adolescent and anti-social means of rebelling in a Christian society, by which an individual transgresses cultural boundaries.
They believed that there were two tendencies within reactive Satanism:
one, "Satanic tourism", was characterized by the brief period of time in
which an individual was involved, while the other, the "Satanic quest",
was typified by a longer and deeper involvement.
The researcher Gareth Medway noted that in 1995 he encountered a
British woman who stated that she had been a practicing Satanist during
her teenage years. She had grown up in a small mining village, and had
come to believe that she had psychic
powers. After hearing about Satanism in some library books, she
declared herself a Satanist and formulated a belief that Satan was the
true god. After her teenage years she abandoned Satanism and became a chaos magickian.
Some personal Satanists are teenagers or mentally disturbed individuals who have engaged in criminal activities.
During the 1980s and 1990s, several groups of teenagers were
apprehended after sacrificing animals and vandalizing both churches and
graveyards with Satanic imagery. Introvigne stated that these incidents were "more a product of juvenile deviance and marginalization than Satanism".
In a few cases, the crimes of these personal Satanists have included
murder. In 1970, two separate groups of teenagers— one led by Stanley
Baker in Big Sur, and the other by Steven Hurd in Los Angeles,
killed a total of three people and consumed parts of their corpses in
what they later claimed were sacrifices devoted to Satan. The American serial killer Richard Ramirez
for instance claimed that he was a Satanist; during his 1980s killing
spree he left an inverted pentagram at the scene of each murder and at
his trial called out "Hail Satan!"
In 1984 on Long Island, a group allegedly called the Knights of the
Black Circle killed one of its own members, Gary Lauwers, over a
disagreement regarding the group's illegal drug dealing; group members
later related that Lauwers' death was a sacrifice to Satan. In particular, self-declared Satanist and alleged member of the Knights of the Black Circle, Ricky "the Acid King" Kasso,
became notorious for torturing and murdering Lauwers while attempting
to force Lauwers to declare "I love Satan" during the murder. On November 21, 1998, Jarno Elg, a Finnish Satanist, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a 23-year-old man in Hyvinkää, Finland, eating some of the body parts and instigating others to participate in a ritual that included torturing the victim.
Demographics
A survey in the Encyclopedia of Satanism found that people became
involved with Satanism in many diverse ways and were found in many
countries. The survey found that more Satanists were raised as
Protestant Christians than Catholic.
Beginning in the late 1960s, organized Satanism emerged out of the occultsubculture with the formation of the Church of Satan.
It was not long, however, before Satanism had expanded well beyond the
Church of Satan. The decentralization of the Satanist movement was
considerably accelerated when LaVey disbanded the grotto system in the mid-1970s.
At present, religious Satanism exists primarily as a decentralized
subculture [...] Unlike traditional religions, and even unlike the early
Satanist bodies such as the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set,
contemporary Satanism is, for the most part, a decentralized movement.
In the past, this movement has been propagated through the medium of
certain popular books, especially Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible. In more recent years, the internet has come to play a significant role in reaching potential "converts," particularly among disaffected young people.
— Religion scholar and researcher of new religious movements James R. Lewis
Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen observed that from surveys of Satanists
conducted in the early 21st century, it was clear that the Satanic
milieu was "heavily dominated by young males".
They nevertheless noted that census data from New Zealand suggested
that there may be a growing proportion of women becoming Satanists.
In comprising more men than women, Satanism differs from most other
religious communities, including most new religious communities.
Most Satanists came to their religion through reading, either online or
books, rather than through being introduced to it through personal
contacts.
Many practitioners do not claim that they converted to Satanism, but
rather state that they were born that way, and only later in life
confirmed that Satanism served as an appropriate label for their
pre-existing worldviews. Others have stated that they had experiences with supernatural phenomena that led them to embracing Satanism. A number of Satanists reported anger toward some practicing Christians, and said that the monotheistic gods of Christianity and other religions are unethical, citing issues such as the problem of evil. For some practitioners, Satanism gave a sense of hope, even for those who had been physically and sexually abused.
The surveys revealed that atheistic Satanists appeared to be in
the majority, although the numbers of theistic Satanists appeared to
grow over time. Beliefs in the afterlife varied, although the most common beliefs about the afterlife were reincarnation and the idea that consciousness survives bodily death. The surveys also demonstrated that most recorded Satanists practiced magic,
although there were differing opinions as to whether magical acts
operated according to etheric laws or whether the effect of magic was
purely psychological. A number of Satanists described performing cursing, in most cases as a form of vigilante justice.
Most practitioners conduct their religious observances in a solitary
manner, and never or rarely meet fellow Satanists for rituals. Rather, the primary interaction that takes place between Satanists is online, on websites or via email.
From their survey data, Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen noted that the
average length of involvement in the Satanic milieu was seven years. A Satanist's involvement in the movement tends to peak in the early twenties and drops off sharply in their thirties. A small proportion retain their allegiance to the religion into their elder years.
When asked about their ideology, the largest proportion of Satanists
identified as apolitical or non-aligned, while only a small percentage
identified as conservative, despite the conservatism of prominent
Satanists like LaVey and Marilyn Manson. A small minority of Satanists expressed support for National Socialism; conversely, over two-thirds expressed opposition or strong opposition to it.
Legal recognition
In 2004, it was claimed that Satanism was allowed in the Royal Navy of the British Armed Forces, despite opposition from Christians. 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'."
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.
The court ruled that facilities that accept federal funds cannot deny
prisoners accommodations that are necessary to engage in activities for
the practice of their own religious beliefs.
From the late 1600s through to the 1800s, the character of Satan was
increasingly rendered unimportant in western philosophy, and ignored in
Christian theology, while in folklore he came to be seen as a foolish
rather than a menacing figure. The development of new values in the Age of Enlightenment (in particular, those of reason and individualism) contributed to a shift in many Europeans' concept of Satan.
In this context, a number of individuals took Satan out of the
traditional Christian narrative and reread and reinterpreted him in
light of their own time and their own interests, in turn generating new
and different portraits of Satan.
The shifting concept of Satan owes many of its origins to John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), in which Satan features as the protagonist. Milton was a Puritan, and had never intended for his depiction of Satan to be a sympathetic one.
However, in portraying Satan as a victim of his own pride who rebelled
against the Judeo-Christian god, Milton humanized him and also allowed
him to be interpreted as a rebel against tyranny. This was how Milton's Satan was understood by later readers like the publisher Joseph Johnson, and the anarchist philosopher William Godwin, who reflected it in his 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Paradise Lost
gained a wide readership in the eighteenth century, both in Britain and
in continental Europe, where it had been translated into French by Voltaire. Milton thus became "a central character in rewriting Satanism" and would be viewed by many later religious Satanists as a "de facto Satanist".
The nineteenth century saw the emergence of what has been termed "literary Satanism" or "romantic Satanism". 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". For the literary Satanists, Satan was depicted as a benevolent and sometimes heroic figure, with these more sympathetic portrayals proliferating in the art and poetry of many romanticist and decadent figures.
For these individuals, Satanism was not a religious belief or ritual
activity, but rather a "strategic use of a symbol and a character as
part of artistic and political expression".
Among the romanticist poets to adopt this concept of Satan was the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had been influenced by Milton. In his poem Laon and Cythna, Shelley praised the "serpent", a reference to Satan, as a force for good in the universe.
Another was Shelley's fellow British poet Lord Byron, who included Satanic themes in his 1821 play Cain, which was a dramatization of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. These more positive portrayals also developed in France; one example was the 1823 work Eloa by Alfred de Vigny. Satan was also adopted by the French poet Victor Hugo, who made the character's fall from Heaven a central aspect of his La Fin de Satan, in which he outlined his own cosmogony.
Although the likes of Shelley and Byron promoted a positive image of
Satan in their work, there is no evidence that any of them performed
religious rites to venerate him, and thus they cannot be considered to
be religious Satanists.
Radical left-wing political ideas had been spread by the American Revolution of 1775–83 and the French Revolution
of 1789–99. The figure of Satan, who was seen as having rebelled
against the tyranny imposed by Jehovah, was appealing to many of the
radical leftists of the period.
For them, Satan was "a symbol for the struggle against tyranny,
injustice, and oppression... a mythical figure of rebellion for an age
of revolutions, a larger-than-life individual for an age of
individualism, a free thinker in an age struggling for free thought". The French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who was a staunch critic of Christianity, embraced Satan as a symbol of liberty in several of his writings. 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. These ideas likely inspired the American feminist activist Moses Harman to name his anarchist periodical Lucifer the Lightbearer. The idea of this "Leftist Satan" declined during the twentieth century, although it was used on occasion by authorities within the Soviet Union, who portrayed Satan as a symbol of freedom and equality.
Metal and rock music
Heavy metal singer King Diamond is a member of the Church of Satan
During the 1960s and 1970s, several rock bands— namely the American band Coven and the British band Black Widow, employed the imagery of Satanism and witchcraft in their work.[261] References to Satan also appeared in the work of those rock bands which were pioneering the heavy metal genre in Britain during the 1970s. For example, the band Black Sabbath
made mention of Satan in their lyrics, although several of the band's
members were practicing Christians, and other lyrics affirmed the power
of the Christian god over Satan. In the 1980s, greater use of Satanic imagery was made by heavy metal bands like Slayer, Kreator, Sodom, and Destruction. Bands active in the subgenre of death metal— among them Deicide, Morbid Angel, and Entombed, also adopted Satanic imagery, combining it with other morbid and dark imagery, such as that of zombies and serial killers.
Satanism would come to be more closely associated with the subgenre of black metal, in which it was foregrounded over the other themes that had been used in death metal.
A number of black metal performers incorporated self-injury into their
act, framing this as a manifestation of Satanic devotion. The first black metal band, Venom,
proclaimed themselves to be Satanists, although this was more an act of
provocation than an expression of genuine devotion to the Devil. Satanic themes were also used by the black metal bands Bathory and Hellhammer. However, the first black metal act to more seriously adopt Satanism was Mercyful Fate, whose vocalist, King Diamond, joined the Church of Satan.
More often than not musicians associating themselves with black metal
say they do not believe in legitimate Satanic ideology and often profess
to being atheists, agnostics, or religious skeptics.
In contrast to King Diamond, various black metal Satanists sought
to distance themselves from LaVeyan Satanism, for instance by referring
to their beliefs as "devil worship". These individuals regarded Satan as a literal entity, and in contrast to Anton LaVey, they associated Satanism with criminality, suicide, and terror. For them, Christianity was regarded as a plague which required eradication. Many of these individuals, most prominently Varg Vikernes and Euronymous, were involved in the early Norwegian black metal scene. Between 1992 and 1996, such people destroyed around fifty Norwegian churches in arson attacks. Within the black metal scene, a number of musicians later replaced Satanic themes with those deriving from Heathenry, a form of modern Paganism.
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