Diane Vera

Here's a news story I missed during the time I took a break from monitoring online developments having to do with Satanism:

( London Daily Mail story about Pope setting up exorcist squads )

See also the following posts on my Theistic Satanism blog (listed below in forward chronological order):

• Full-blown alleged SRA case in Italy - Friday, April 27, 2007
• Some news from Italy, about Satanism and about the Catholic Church - Monday, April 28, 2008
• More about Satanism and the Catholic Church in Italy - Friday, May 2, 2008
• Blaming "Satanists" for Catholic clergy sex scandals??? - Saturday, May 3, 2008
• How they'll clean up after you at a Maltese hospital - Tuesday, May 13, 2008

One of my heroes is Brad Hicks, who was one of the earliest activists against the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" scare back in the 1980's. (He discusses this briefly in the following posts of his here on LiveJournal: Wicca Lies (part 3): Hierarchy and Wow, I Haven't Been Threatened for My Writing in More than a Decade.) He was president of the Alliance of Magical and Earth Religions (AMER), in which Michael Aquino, founder of the Temple of Set, was also active.

Anyhow, a recent post of his calls attention to something very scary about Hillary Clinton. Her pastor, Doug Coe, runs a secretive, cultish group called "The Family" or "The Fellowship," to which a lot of religious right wing politicians also belong.

( More here about Doug Coe )

On another topic, another excellent post on Brad Hicks's blog: Republicans and the War on Justice.

P.S., 5/19/2008: Regarding Brad Hicks's fight against the SRA scare, I just now came across another relevant post of his: Personal History: Me versus a Religious Bigot Cop.

Something I missed when it happened, but I just came across it recently: As of January 2008, it seems that the Vatican has revived the hullabaloo about Harry Potter. However, I find two very different accounts of this:

• Potter "Driving Kids to Satanism" by Cameron Millar, Daily Star (U.K.), 16th January 2008


• The Vatican Revives the Harry Potter Debate by Emil Steiner, Washington Post, January 15, 2008

( My observations here )

The Washington Post article ends by asking: "... one has to wonder why the Vatican would want to revive this debate. Could the recent revelations of Dumbledore's sexual orientation have something to do with it?"

A while back I noticed a trend, among conservative and traditionalist Catholics, to blame the clergy pedophilia scandals on an alleged conspiracy by Satanists to infiltrate the Catholic hierarchy. For more about this, see my article The "Satanic Ritual Abuse" scare -- it's BAACK! The alleged conspiracy of "Satanic pedophiles" in the Catholic clergy.

Now it seems that this same alleged Satanist conspiracy is being blamed for clargy sex scandals involving adults too. Not only that, but one priest has even used this claim in an attempt to get himself off the hook.

( Read more )

Looking up "Satanism" on Google News, I came across a metal album review which claims that "Satanism" scares concerning music are totally a thing of the past. However, in other parts of the world, there's still a stereotype that rock music (and especially metal) equals Satanism, judging by an African news story that popped up on the exact same page of Google News search results today.

( Read more )

Lately I've been reading up on the recent revival of traditional libels against Jews, especially in the Muslim world, and also in the former Soviet Union. This topic is of interest to me for a number of reasons, one of which is the parallels between classic anti-Jewish myths, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and paranoid tales about "the Illuminati," which are used to scapegoat Satanists, Pagans, and occultists, among others.

( Read more, including links to news stories )

P.S., 4/28/2008: I've posted quite a bit more about this matter on my Wordpress blog: Refutations of some classic libels against Jews, including more accounts of the spread of the blood libel and other classic anti-Jewish myths.

Here's an interesting recent entry on the Wild Hunt blog,
Where Old Satanic Panic Practitioners Go. Apparently some now-discredited Christian "experts" on Satanism and Wicca have moved their base of operations to the Third World in search of new dupes.

In one of my replies in the thread Grandmothers arrested over 'satanic sex abuse' on "satanicnews," I wrote:

I do not deny that human sacrifice exists. However, it exists in the context of religious and magical worldviews that are largely (though not completely) extinct (unless you stretch the definition of "human sacrifice" to include things like religious wars, religiously motivated terrorism, and executions).

Satanism, on the other hand, is inherently post-Christian, or at least post-Abrahamic. Satanism necessarily involves reinterpretations of the Christian/Abrahamic figure of "Satan." (By the way, I don't define "Satanism" as narrowly as some folks do, e.g. by limiting that term of LaVeyan Satanism. To me a "Satanist" is anyone with a favorable view of Satan.)

Because Satanism necessarily post-dates the Abrahamic religions, most Satanists, of whatever stripe, are simply not in touch with the ancient magical and religious worldviews that necessitated human sacrifice. Ditto for most modern Pagans and occultists, whose beliefs are likewise post-Christian, even though they do pride themselves on drawing from more ancient roots. Of course, even Christianity does preserve the idea of human sacrifice in symbolic form (e.g. the Eucharist). However, by the time of the Roman Empire, most of the civilized world (not just the Abrahamic religions) had pretty much left human sacrifice behind.

( Read more )

Just yesterday I got a LiveJournal account and began exploring here. Among other things I joined a few "communities" that looked relevant to Satanism. One of these was satanicnews ("Satanism in the news"). At first I assumed -- wrongly, it turns out -- that the owner of this community was a Satanist with an interest in keeping tabs on our public image.

Soon after I joined, a post appeared quoting a newspaper article about an alleged SRA case that just now erupted in Italy. This struck me as very significant, because, given the mood of Satanic panic that seems to have gripped Italy these past few years, it is almost surprising that I had not heard of any full-fledged SRA allegations there earlier. Sooner or later it was bound to happen, I guess.

So I wrote a post about it, Full-blown alleged SRA case in Italy, in my new blog on Google blogspot.

Only then did I take a closer look at "satanicnews" itself.
( Read more )