by GERRY O'SULLIVAN
University of Pennsylvania
Copyright (c) 1991 by Gerry O'Sullivan, all rights reserved
_Postmodern Culture_ v.1 n.2 (January, 1991)
[1] The satanism scare has spawned its share
of rumor panics over the last several years. This past Halloween, fundamentalist and
evangelical pastors across the country fed faxes to one another about an international
convocation of satanists allegedly held in Washington, D.C. in September. The gathering --
or so self-described experts claimed -- was intended to allow devil-worshippers from
around the world to meet in order to further the downfall of Christendom, intensify the
war on family values, and to continue consolidation of their stranglehold on government.
[2] Based upon the dubious assertions of one self-styled former satanist, Hezekiah ben
Aaron, the rumor achieved widespread currency. Pat Robertson made mention of the meeting
on his "700 Club," USA Today reported both on the tale and the Christian
countermeasures, and one California- based ministry used it in a fundraising letter.
[3] While the infernal ingathering never occurred, it did produce a flurry of counterfeit
documents. Detailed day-to- day schedules of events were photocopied and circulated among
church leaders, complete with reports of satanic weddings and baptisms. Christians across
the country convened to wage a prayerful campaign of "spiritual warfare" against
the perceived evildoers. And the complete lack of evidence regarding the convention was
received as still further proof of the cunning of the conspirators, always able to
successfully cover their hoofprints.
[4] Several such "panics" -- usually far more localized -- have had tragic
results. Several churches with largely black congregations have been vandalized or set
ablaze when word spread that parishioners were, in actuality, practicing satanic rites
behind closed doors. Preschools have been emptied of children by parents fearful
that teachers were "ritually abusing" their charges. Timothy Hughes of Altus,
Oklahoma murdered his wife after watching the now notorious 1988 Geraldo special on
satanism, convinced that she was a devil-worshipper. And armed mobs in upstate New York
threatened to assault punks who had gathered at a warehouse for a hardcore concert,
fearing that they were "really" assembling to sacrifice a blonde-haired,
blue-eyed child to Lucifer.
[5] A handful of folklorists have tracked such regional rumor panics, finding startlingly
similar patterns from case to case. One constantly recurring theme concerns the racial
identity of the satanists' "intended victim." The ideal offering, at least
according to popular mythology, is a young and virginal child -- always white, always
fair-haired, always blue-eyed. Jeffrey Victor, a sociologist at Jamestown Community
College (Jamestown was the location of the New York warehouse scare cited above), has
collected hundreds of such stories from across the country, all with this theme at its
center. And in each case, the racial component is key. The unseen and vaguely identified
satanist is therefore defined as desiring his or her other -- the pure and virginal as
opposed to the dark and contaminated. The binarism is assumed, and the selfhood of the
devil-worshipper is automatically constituted, through its ritualized desire, by
inversion.
[6] For instance, in the wake of the Matamoros affair, when the bodies of a University of
Texas student and the murdered rivals of a drug-running gang were found buried on a
Mexican ranch, daycare centers along the Tex-Mex border were rife with rumors that
"Mexican satanists" were planning to storm south Texas towns in retaliation for
arrests in the case -- an occult twist on the myth of the brown invading horde. And said
devil-worshippers were again in search of blue-eyed, fair-haired children from surrounding
communities.
[7] Central to the satanism scare is a specific social (and, as we've seen, racial)
fantasy of the family. Mythical satanists allegedly prey upon infants, young children, and
pets -- threshold figures and "weak links" in the household. Once abducted, the
child, cat or dog is offered as a sacrifice during some sexually-charged, moonlit rite.
But the victim is never simply slaughtered. In the lore of pop satanism, its body
must be cannibalized and its blood consumed by the "coven" of devil-worshippers
in order to allow for a transfer of power.
[8] But the family is threatened from within as well as from without. While both children
and pets are seen as satanic quarry, adolescents are depicted as ideal candidates for
membership in such cults. Teenagers are cast as potential and unwitting dupes of cult
leaders, properly socialized for the requisite ritual violence by the icons of their
culture -- heavy metal, hardcore and neo-gothic music, "occult" jewelry, black
clothing, and Saturday morning cartoons which -- as some pastors and Christian activists
allege -- are covertly training children in satanically- inspired, "new age"
thinking.
[9] In all of this, the teenager is never described as an agent, possessed of volition.
Rather, feeling disempowered, the adolescent is said to seek out power "from
below" (but through necromancy rather than, say, insurgency). His or her choice is
never, however, seen as a simple act of willful defiance or resistance. It is conditioned
by a kind of devious social programming which, in its way, parodies both consumerism and
marketing.
[10] The typical teenager, or so the professional lore of the satanologist has it, goes to
his or her local music store to buy the latest Judas Priest, Dio, or King Diamond release.
Little does he or she know, however, that certain tracks have been "backmasked"
with demonic messages which are intended to engender devil-worship, mayhem, suicide and
murder (usually of parents). There's a kind of truth-in- advertising problem here -- kids
aren't getting what they pay for. And once so hooked, they move on to ritual cannibalism,
itself a fantasy of consumption gone wild.
[11] Hundreds of professional training manuals on satanism and "occult-related
crime" have appeared over the past several years, aimed at police officers, pastors,
school administrators and psychologists. And in most cases, adolescent behavior of the
most typical varieties is described as satanic or "pre-occultic." Kids who
question traditional religion or refuse to attend church, act rebelliously, meditate, or
dress in black are, according to several checklists, automatically suspect. Adolescence is
itself demonized as something wild, dark and uncontrollable.
[12] Based upon incorrect information in such training manuals, schools in Kentucky,
Florida and California -- among others -- have banned the wearing of peace symbols on
t-shirts or in jewelry because it is, in reality, the satanic "cross of Nero" --
a broken and inverted cross used by the "pagan" Romans (and later the nazis) to
mock Christianity. This is an old right-wing canard originally promulgated by Louis
Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in "The Morning of the Magicians", later picked up
and circulated by "former satanic high priest," Mike Warnke, in a wildly popular
little anti-occult book called "The Satan Seller". Unfortunately, this piece of
folklore has appeared and reappeared in police guides over the years.
[13] Likewise, one high school principal in Annapolis, Maryland sent letters home to the
parents of black-clad teens, warning that their sons and daughters might very well be
involved in devil-worship and advising them to search rooms and bookbags for other
tell-tale signs of occult dabbling. Anyone wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a
metal band was also picked out of the cafeteria line-up by the vigilant principal, to be
later reported to parents. Unfortunately, some families have taken the satanic panic
one step further, sending their children off to "de- metalizing" and
"de-satanizing" camps for "treatment" at the hands of fundamentalist
pastors. Centers with names like "Back in Control" and "Motivations
Unlimited" have been established to forcibly deprogram the would-be teen satanist.
[14] The satanism scare is "about" several things, among them: the demonization
of adolescent behavior through folkloric and often lurid accounts of bloodletting,
cannibalism and sex; a struggle over the constitution of knowledge elites (the
satanologist -- usually a self-described cult cop or pastor -- versus
"professional" educators and psychologists who may be skeptical of their claims:
it's no coincidence that most so-called cult cops are professing Christians and members of
groups like Cops for Christ); and the ideological reinstitution of the family as racially
pure, intact, and continually threatened from without by dark and hooded people emerging
from the shadows to steal "our" tow-headed children. Combined with forged
documents modelled upon The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, fears of bloodthirsty
invaders from the south, and tales which simply reiterate the medieval blood libel, the
fear of satanism seems to point in several different, and very dangerous, directions.
[15] The satanic panic combines the worst of several scares peculiar to the eighties --
terrorism, secular humanism, drugs and child-kidnapping -- to frame a largely Christian,
populist critique of mass cultural forms. But its analyses remain mired in conspiracy
thinking, racism, eschatological anticipation, and the displacement of what are primarily
familial ills (child abuse and incest) onto highly secretive and hooded outsiders.
Satanism Rumor a "Dead Dog"
by J. Brad Hicks
(St. Louis, MagickNet) Roughly one week after the
Midwinter Solstice, police in South St. Louis County found the corpses of three large
dogs. The dogs were identified as a collie/German shepherd mix, which is very similar to
the dogs which Maury Terry linked to the Son of Sam slayings. These three dogs had been
killed by blows to the back of the head, then skinned literally from the tip of the nose
to the toes of their paws. The final bizarre detail was that investigation revealed that
feces and urine were removed from the corpses. (Of course, anyone who's read the occult
crime manuals knows that animal urine and feces are used in black masses.)
In light of all of the above, it comes as no surprise that the South County area has long
been a hotbed of rumors of teenage Satanism; in fact, one former member of a teen Satanic
"cult" in that area is well known to the author. And of course by now the entire
nation knows that the founder of the Satanic church called the Temple of Set, Dr. Michael
Aquino, has moved into the South St. Louis area--less than a year before the dead animals
were found.
So, here then, were the clues: three dogs slain roughly
one week after a Satanic ritual date, then mutilated, emptied of urine and feces, and
dumped; all in an area known to be heavily infested with teen, self-styled, and religious
Satanists.
The culprits are obvious, right? County officials obviously thought so; within 24 hours of
finding the animal corpses, Dr. Dan Knox of the St. Louis County Animal Control Department
and Jeff Gibbs, field director for the Missouri Human Society had announced that the dogs
were clearly slain in a
Satanic ritual. A two-column-inch story buried deep in the St. Louis Post Dispatch for
January 3rd, 1990 carried the headline, "Satanism Suspected In Killing Of Dogs."
But then a trapper who'd heard about all of the fuss called Missouri Conservation Agent
Arthur Johnson. He provided all of the missing details: they weren't collie/German
shepherd mix dogs; they were coyotes. He had trapped them, clubbed them, and skinned them
for their fur; all quite legally.
The urine and feces are commonly used by trappers to disguise the man-scent on their
traps.
And so the Animal Control Department and the Conservation Commission went back and checked
the corpses. Sure enough, the paws, teeth, and stomach contents of the animals were
incompatible with those of domesticated dogs. The animals were clearly coyotes. St. Louis
Sun, the same day: "Skinned Animals Probably Coyotes." St. Louis Post Dispatch,
the next day: "Three Skinned
Animals Identified As Coyotes."
If they hadn't been blinded by occult-crime conspiracy theories, which are very
fashionable in St. Louis law enforcement circles these days, the various officials might
have checked their facts more carefully BEFORE they ran to the press. As it was, they
rushed into print with an accusation against the Satanic religion, and wound up with egg
on their faces. Fortunately, South County officials didn't have a detailed "suspect
list" of Satanists, or they would all have been rounded up as suspects. And more
fortunately, when St. Louis County officials learned not to going baying and barking after
every
"Satanic cult" accusation, no serious harm was done.
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