| Description |
1 online resource. |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Series |
Oxford studies in western esotericism
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Oxford studies in Western esotericism.
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| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Summary |
Satanism adopts Satan, the Judeo-Christian representative of evil, as an object of veneration. This work explores the historical origins of this extraordinary 'antireligion.' |
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If we are to believe sensationalist media coverage, Satanism is, at its most benign, the purview of people who dress in black, adorn themselves with skull and pentagram paraphernalia, and listen to heavy metal. At its most sinister, its adherents are worshippers of evil incarnate and engage in violent and perverse secret rituals, the details of which mainstream society imagines with a fascination verging on the obscene. Children of Lucifer debunks these facile characterizations by exploring the historical origins of modern Satanism. Ruben van Luijk traces the movement's development from a concept invented by a Christian church eager to demonize its internal and external competitors to a positive (anti- ) religious identity embraced by various groups in the modern West. Van Luijk offers a comprehensive intellectual history of this long and unpredictable trajectory. This story involves Romantic poets, radical anarchists, eccentric esotericists, Decadent writers, and schimastic exorcists, among others, and culiminates in the establishment of the Church of Satan by carnival entertainer Anton Szandor LaVey. Yet it is more than a collection of colorful characters and unlikely historical episodes. The emergence of new attitudes toward Satan proves to be intimately linked to the ideological struggle for emancipation that transformed the West and is epitomized by the American and French Revolutions. It is also closely connected to secularization, that other exceptional historical process which saw Western culture spontaneously renounce its traditional gods and enter into a self-imposed state of religious indecision. Children of Lucifer makes the case that the emergence of Satanism presents a shadow history of the evolution of modern civilization as we know it. Offering the most comprehensive account of this history yet written, van Luijk proves that, in the case of Satanism, the facts are much more interesting than the fiction. |
| Contents |
Cover; Series; Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; Practical Indications for the Reader; Introduction: Mostly for Academic Readers; Defining Satanism; Available Literature; Hypothesis, Framework, and Methodology of This Study; 1. The Christian Invention of Satanism; A Short Biography of the Devil; Constructing Worshippers of Satan; Exorcising the Devil's Fifth Column; The Satanist Conspiracy of Witchcraft; Black Magic and the Black Mass; The Affair of the Poisons; Satanists before the Modern Age? |
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Intermezzo 1 The Eighteenth Century: Death of Satan?2. The Romantic Rehabilitation of Satan; The Satanic School of Poetry; God, Satan, and Revolution; Poetry, Myth, and Man's Ultimate Grounds of Being; Satan's New Myths: Blake and Shelley; Satan's New Myths: Byron and Hugo; How Satanist Were the Romantic Satanists?; 3. Satan in Nineteenth-Century Counterculture; Sex, Science, and Liberty; Satan the Anarchist; (Re)constructing Historical Satanism; Satan in Nineteenth-Century Occultism; Children of Lucifer; Intermezzo 2 Charles Baudelaire: Litanies to Satan; 4. Huysmans and Consorts |
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"Down There"Huysmans Discovers Satanism; Péladan, Guaita, and Papus; Joseph Boullan; The Remarkable Case of Chaplain Van Haecke and Canon Docre; Intermediary Conclusions; Competing Concepts of Satanism; Aftermath; 5. Unmasking the Synagogue of Satan; The Unveiling of Freemasonry; Taxil before Palladism; Excursus: Taxil's Sources; The Rise and Fall of Palladism; The Great Masonic Conspiracy; How Freemasons Became Satanists; 6. Unmasking the Synagogue of Satan: Continued and Concluded; Fighting Democracy by Democratic Means; Hidden Temples, Secret Grottos, and International Men of Mystery |
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A Few Words on Satan in Freemasonry, and on Neo-PalladismThe Jewish Question; By Way of Conclusion; Intermezzo 3 Nineteenth-Century Religious Satanism: Fact or Fiction?; 7. Paths into the Twentieth Century; The Church of Satan; Precursors and Inspirations; Aleister Crowley, or the Great Beast 666; The Other Tradition: Attribution; The Heritage of Romantic Satanism; The Paradox of Antireligious Religion; Reviving "Black" Magic; 8. Tribulations of the Early Church; Satan and Set; LaVey and Aquino; The Satanism Scare, or, The Virulence of Old Legends |
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Nazism, the Western Revolution, and Genuine Satanist ConspiraciesLaVey's Last Years; Intermezzo 4 Adolescent Satanism, Metal Satanism, Cyber-Satanism; Conclusion; Attribution; Rehabilitation; Appropriation; Application; Notes; Bibliography; Index |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Satanism -- History.
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Satanism. |
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History. |
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BODY, MIND & SPIRIT -- Parapsychology -- General. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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Electronic books.
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History.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Luijk, Ruben van. Children of Lucifer. New York : Oxford University Press, [2016] 9780190275105 (DLC) 2015044388 (OCoLC)933273961 |
| ISBN |
9780190275112 (electronic book) |
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0190275111 (electronic book) |
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9780190275136 (electronic book) |
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0190275138 (electronic book) |
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0190275103 |
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9780190275105 |
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9780190275105 (cloth) |
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