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Satanism
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Go back to ancient Mesopotamia, whence Satanism was transmitted to western Europe. The relevant figure of Satanism is not a male, but a female figure. The male figure --Satan, Baal, Lucifer, and so on--is a subordinate figure; the female principle of evil is pre-dominant. Hence, Satan's mother, the "Whore of Babylon,"known otherwise as the Chaldean Ishtar, the Caananite Astarte,Isis, Venus, or the Phrygian Cybele. The ritual of the priestesses of Ishtar was an obscene "religious service" which concluded with the priestesses' fornicating with the congregation. Hence, "Whore of Babylon," and the associated position of Ishtar, Athtar, Astarte, Isis, and Venus as the patron goddess of prostitution.
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Other types of Satanism: Occasionally, serial murderers will claim to be Satanists in order to justify their horrendous activities. Police investigation reveals that they know little about the religion. A small percentage of child molesters will abuse children in a Satanic setting as a means of controlling the victims. The molesters are not actual Satanists; they are simply using the facade of Satanism to further their criminal acts. Some heavy metal rock bands pretend to be associated with Satanism. Their main reason is to gain notoriety in order to sell more records.
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Since the era of the affair, sporadic incidents of Satanism and ephemeral Satanic magic groups have appeared. Among the more renowned were those described in a fictionalized account in J. K. Huysman's novel La Bas in 1891. The groups that appeared were largely made of young people using Satanism as an expression of their youthful rebellion. They came and went with little sign of their existence except a desecrated graveyard or church. A few were discovered during a ceremony or soon afterward. The number of such groups seemed to rise in the years after World War II, though that may have been a result of better reporting and the correlation of the scattered accounts facilitated by improved communications.
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Satanism and Witchcraft at one point in history shared the same stereotype which arose from confessions extracted via the torture of many thousands of men and women at the hands of Christian inquisitors. Before the year 1966, Satanism only existed as a fictional fabrication resulting from these forced confessions. Witchcraft and Satanism were then considered one and the same by Christian churches and today this is generally still the case. When Anton Szandor LaVey founded the Church of Satan in 1966 he was the first person in history to codify Satanism as a religion, with an integrated philosophy to accompany the metaphorical imagery. Prior to this, supposed crimes enacted in the name of a devil were committed by "Devil worshippers," Christian heretics who, as a result of the inquisition, rebelled against established Christian moral codes by using the ideas extracted and cataloged by the inquisitors as a role model for social disobedience. These people believed in the Christian paradigm of God, his son Jesus the savior, and a Devil, and were not Satanists who reject this system of metaphysics as supernatural nonsense.
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Satanism is often mistaken as being a religion that encourages cruelty and irresponsible behaviour, but LaVey's brand is very different. Central is the idea inherited from Nietzsche that an individual must enforce their own meaning on life and rise above the perceived conformity of the masses. The Satanist is seen as equivalent to Nietzsche's Übermensch; LaVey claimed "Satanists are born, not made" and that "[Satanists] have a disease called independence that needs to be recognized just like alcoholism." There is a libertarian element here; diversity is encouraged, everyone is expected to discover their own sexuality, chart their own personality, and decide their own ambitions in life. In this stress on individuality, Satanism is considered a "Left-Hand Path" religion.
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The success of the latest Satanism scare in the 1980s can only be understood as a peculiar development in the history of movements which have been created to fight the so-called "cults". Anti-cult movements are not new in American history. In the 19th century nativist organizations devoted to the defense of a Protestant America labeled as "cults" three groups perceived as quintessentially hostile to the American way of life: Freemasonry, Roman Catholicism, and Mormonism [16]. New entries were gradually added -- Seventh-Day Adventists, Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses -- while Catholics and Mormons were eventually accepted by most Americans as part of the mainline of the national religious life and anti-Masonism became marginalized. By the end of World War II, hostility towards "cults" was reduced to a bigoted fringe of American Fundamentalism. The situation... changed in the 1960s with the emergence of the juvenile counterculture and of new religious movements such as the Children of God, the Moonies and the Hare Krishnas.
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Satanism