In light of the naive public enthusiasm over Halloween, I thought I’d re-post this article on the history of Satanism.

Real History Of Satanism
By Lyndon LaRouche
LaRouchePub.com | Rense
1-17-5

Anglo-American Satanists

The best-organized Satanist forces operating presently inside the United States include the following prominent organizations:

THE LUCIS TRUST

This is the leading, putatively respectable Britain-based Satan cult (it worships Lucifer). The Lucis Trust, which runs the only religious chapel at the New York United Nations headquarters, The Temple of Understanding, was originally founded as the Lucifer Trust, in London, in 1923. The Lucis Trust associated with the UNO is the New York affiliate of the British organization. The name was changed from Lucifer Trust, to Lucis Trust, to make the nature of the organization less conspicuous.

The Lucis Trust’s leading sponsors include the following prominent figures:

Henry Clausen, Supreme Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, 33rd Degree, Southern District Scottish Rite Freemasons Norman Cousins John D. Rockefeller IV The Rockefeller Foundation, The Marshall Field family, Robert McNamara Thomas Watson (IBM, former US Ambassador to Moscow), The United Lodge of Theosophists of New York City, U. Alexis Johnson, former Undersecretary of State Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum, American Jewish Committee

Prominent front-organizations sponsored by the Lucis Trust, include the following:

The Theosophical Order of Service (founded by Annie Besant in1908,) The Theosophical Society (founded by Helena P. Blavatsky in 1875) The United Nations Association, The World Wildlife Fund, UK The Findhorn Foundation, Greenpeace International, Greenpeace USA, Amnesty International, The Nicholas Roerich Society (chief connection to Russian mysticism, spirituality,) The Anthroposophs of Rudolf Steiner, The Rudolf Steiner School [these could not be genuine followers of Steiner,] UNESCO, UNICEF, The American Friends Service Committee.

THE ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS (OTO)

This is today’s best-known of the hard-core, British-based Satanist cults. Like the Lucis Trust, the OTO is a direct off-shoot of the work of Britain’s leading twentieth-century Satanist, Theosophy leader Aleister Crowley. OTO enthusiasts claim this organization is an offshoot of Templar Freemasonry, and hint at very influential protection from among Templars very high in British Freemasonry.

THE WICCA CULT

The WICCA cult came to the surface early during the post-war period, as a legalized association for the promotion of witchcraft. It is the leading publicly known international association of witches in the world today.

In the United States, WICCA’s outstanding sponsor is the New York Anglican (Episcopal) Diocese, under Bishop Paul Moore. Officially, New York’s Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Divine has promoted the spread of WICCA witchery through its Lindisfarne Center. The late Gregory Bateson conducted such an operation out of the Lindisfarne Center during the 1970s.

No later than the 1970s, and perhaps still today, the crypt of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, is the headquarters for solemn ceremonies of the British (Venerable) Order of Malta. Key figures, such as Gregory Bateson’s former spouse, Dame Margaret Mead, associated with that British Order, have been associated with projects in support of the Satanist “Age of Aquarius” cause.

For obvious reasons, U.S. witches have chosen Salem, Massachusetts, as their national center. One of the most important operations of these witches is their coordination of the hardcore of U.S. astrology rackets.

THE AGE OF AQUARIUS

The “Age of Aquarius,” or “New Age,” is the generic name adopted by the modern Satanist movement. The best-publicized among the founders of the Age of Aquarius movement include Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alex Muenthe (of Capri notoriety), and Aleister Crowley. Most Aquarians trace the origins of modern Satanism to Nietzsche and Crowley.

Anti-Christ cultist Nietzsche announced that the twentieth century would see the end of the Age of Pisces, which Aquarians associate with the figures of Socrates and Christ; Nietzsche prophesied that the New Age would be the Age of Aquarius, which he identified with the Satanic figure Dionysos. Crowley announced himself publicly a devotee of Nietzsche’s New Age cult in his Vienna Theosophy magazine, near the beginning of this century, and indicated as his preferred choice of name for Satan.

Among hard-core insiders, the New Age models its dogma on the Magis’ cult of Mithra, as Nietzsche did. The cult has notable affinities to the Bulgarian-Cathar Bogomil cult(from which the slang term “buggery” is derived). The New Age’s most celebrated historical figure, its choice for the original “incarnation” of the Anti-Christ, is the Roman Emperor Tiberius who ordered the execution of Christ. [Some Roman emperors, most notably Caligula, became possessed by being initiated without being suitably prepared.] Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering were among the notable figures who followed this cult.

The best-known coordinating-center for the Age of Aquarius project in the U.S.A. today is Palo Alto, California’s Stanford Research Institute, whose Willis Harman is the relevant leading personality. See Harman disciple Marilyn Ferguson’s 1980 Aquarian Conspiracy for a popular exposition of Harman’s views and program for subversion of the United States. Ferguson is accurate when she reports that the Fabian Society’s H.G. Wells (World War I boss of British intelligence) is a key figure of the Aquarian Conspiracy. Also key are Wells’ ally, Bertrand Russell, and such Russell cronies as Robert M. Hutchins (Chicago University, Ford Foundation, Fund for the Republic, Aspen Institute, and the project).

Both Margaret Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson were close collaborators of Russell and Hutchins from no later than 1938. The brothers, Aldous (Hollywood) and Julian (UNO) Huxley were collaborators of H. G. Wells, and were recruited to Crowley’s Satanist cult during the late 1920s.

SATAN ROCK

Since the launching of the Beatles as an international project via TV in 1963, “rock” has been the most influential recruiter to Satanism. Rock was created, and is still coordinated by Crowley’s followers and by the OTO network, in cooperation with WICCA. It is, not so incidentally, also the Satanist’s biggest money-maker, and believed to provide the chief logistical support for deployments and other activities of the OTO-WICCA efforts world-wide.

There is nothing spontaneous or accidental about “rock.” It is a product of classical studies of the ancient Phrygian terrorist cult of Satan-Dionysos, the model for the Roman Bacchic cults of similar characteristics. Crowley’s control of the “rock industry” has been documented by a team of [private] investigators, who have also noted, that in addition to the Satanist lyrics, Satanist messages embedded subliminally in rock recordings are a key feature of this subversive operation.

The “rock rhythm” itself is copied from the old Dionysian-Bacchic cults. Even without the drugs and sexual orgies which are characteristic features of hard-core rock affairs, repeated, frequent, hours-long exposure to constant repetition of “rock rhythms” produces lasting, drug-like effects on the mind of the victim. Reducing sexual practices to the level of bestiality is a crucial feature of Satanism in all historical periods studied, from Phrygian Cybele-Dionysos cult-period onward.

From western continental Europe, among the threats to the U.S. from this quarter, the two leading open centers for hard-core Satanism today, are Turin, Italy (where actress ElizabethTaylor’s “Live AIDS” project attempted to sponsor an aborted Satan-rock festival), and Lausanne, Switzerland.

The Satanist Mind

A leading police association has received expert estimate, that of all known murders, one in five is a ritual murder…

Satanists already have numerous victims. Most of the sexual and related atrocities perpetrated upon “disappeared” infants and other children, are done as part of the rituals outlined in manuals of Satanist organizations. A leading police association has received expert estimate, that of all known murders, one in five is a ritual murder, like the ritual London assassination of Italy’s Roberto Calvi, perpetrated by members of Satanist cults. The “Son of Sam” murders in New York, and the Cobb County-based cult operations in the so-called “Atlanta child-murders,” fit into this pattern.

Satanism is not “just another nutty occult fad.” The mind of the Satanist is pure evil; the Satanist is a former person who has been transformed into something no longer human. It begins like drug-addiction; the prospective recruit to Satanism “gets into something” on a playful impulse, but then finds himself or herself gripped by compulsions which he or she can no longer control. Drugs and other special circumstances may be significant collateral features of the initiation, but not necessarily. The key is “letting oneself go,” into the depths of acting-out impulses which combine sexual impulses and rage as a unity, and expressing this form of “pleasure” in the form of an act which violates an important precept of one’s own conscience.

Nietzsche’s writings, especially toward the last period of life preceding his mental breakdown, address these special sorts of emotions, and refer implicitly to terrible obscene acts as the prospective fulfillment of such impulses. Nietzsche recognized these impulses as Satanic –Dionysiac– in quality. [Dionysiac activity, or wild abandon, by itself leads to non-demonic possession. Becoming demonically possessed requires killing, torturing, or tormenting someone with a neutral or positive attitude.]

Ordinarily we think of the criminal mind as representing a person whose goals are based on “normal human impulses,” but whose choice of means is immoral. Doing something illegal is not necessarily immoral; the useful definition of the criminal mind, is the person inclined to prefer immoral means as short-cuts to some goal usually not inconsistent with normal human impulses. In the case of the Satanist, we touch upon something way beyond such a mere criminal mind.

Imagine a criminal mind which has undergone a curious transformation. Perhaps, formerly, this fellow was an habitual thief, even of that sort of twisted mind which delighted in occasions he might have imagined he had pretext to exert the power of life or death over some chance victim on the scene of his crime. Yet, up to that point, robbery or kindred results were always the prompting of his criminal activity.

Now, he has changed. Crime is no longer motivated by the impulse to employ cruel means for personal gain. Instead, the pleasure of the sense of power realized in employing viciously cruel means becomes an end in itself. This form of criminal pleasure becomes a blend of rage and sexuality. Jaded appetites create the mental state in that man, that he must do something more monstrous than he has done before, to realize the desired level of orgiastic pleasure from the evil deed. Evil for the purpose of doing evil, has become for him, a goal in and of itself. This man has become a beast, a virtual Satanist.

That is the state of mind which Satanism seeks to develop inits initiates. It might begin with an ordinary sexual act performed under the influence of an ugly state of mind. Soon, something much more degraded becomes a need for the prospective initiate’s rapidly jaded appetites. In contrast to the healthy mind, which seeks always to become better in what is being mastered, for the initiate to Satanism, a sense of need develops, to seek to muster oneself to do something much worse than one has ever done before. Satanic cults organize that degraded process of self-degeneration. The potential for endemic incidence of individual bestiality within society, is transformed into an organized,institutionalized form of social behavior.

The tradition of the “Black Mass,” points to the mechanisms of Satanism as such. Nietzsche’s instruction is much to the point. Perform some really monstrous act of blasphemy, and associate that blasphemous doing with some sort of degraded, orgiastic pleasure.

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.

This satanic cult-practice was introduced to Mesopotamia from pre-Aryan India [which was Inanna/Ishtar’s assigned domain – see Sitchin’s Wars of Gods and Men]. The so-called “Harrappan” culture, featuring the Earth-Mother and fertility goddess Shakti and her satanic male figure Siva, established a set of colonies in the Middle East. The Sumer established as a colony by what the local Semites named “the black-headed people” (Dravidians), was a Harrapan colony. There, among the Semites, Shakti became known as Ishtar. In the Harrapan colony of Sheba-Ethiopia, Shakti became known as Athtar. In the Caananite (“Phoenician”) offshoot of Harrapan colonizing, she became known as Astarte. The Hellenic cults of Isis and Osiris, were offshoots of the Harrapan cult of Shakti-Siva, by this route. When the same cult spread to an Indo-european people, the Phrygians, Shakti-Siva assumed the Indo-european forms of Cybele and Dionysos (day-night). Apollo and Lucifer are variants of the name for Satan-Osiris-Dionysos. [Ishtar was ambitious.]

Among the Canaanites, for example, Satanism expressed itself in such forms as the worship of Moloch, with the included custom of making a human sacrifice of the first-born of each marriage. Notably, that Caananite tradition is featured in the modern Satanists’ ritual sexual and homicidal rituals upon infants and children used as human sacrifices.

By combining the means by which men and women are degraded into potentially satanic forms of beasts, as rituals associated with Satanism practiced as an “anti-religion,” large-scale Satanic movements are developed through systematic proselytizing.

The result of this initiation, as we have already stressed, is no human being, but a former human being transformed into something which is not human.

Modern liberals and others frown on reports of savage witch-hunts from earlier centuries. Usually, the special British COINTELPRO operation, run in Salem Massachusetts as a covert operation against the independence of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is commonly referenced. A better comparison is the proliferating of Satanist movements during the fourteenth century; these witches were actually sub-human, Satanist beasts, who represented that sort of mass threat to the population of that period. So, the population, as its only defense against a genuine Satanic force of that sort, hunted them down and sought to wipe them out. Not for nothing, does the Old Testament warn, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The witches of the old Middle East and fourteenth-century Europe were very real, very evil witches, no longer human, but murderous beasts.

Modern Witchcraft

The modern spread of witchcraft in English-speaking nations, began during the sixteenth century, in the setting of imported Cabalist and Rosicrucan cults built up around Oxford and Cambridge. Francis Bacon and his secretary Thomas Hobbes were part of this movement. The endemic inculcation in Satanism which this prompted in seventeenth-century England, exploded after the accession of King George I, in the form of the Hell-fire Clubs which proliferated among degenerate English nobility during the long Liberal prime ministry of Hugh Walpole.

During the Stuart Restoration period, the pro-satanic Rosicrucean and Cabalist cultism around the Stuart court seized upon the case of Robert Bruce to reorganize the cult in a new form.

Robert Bruce had been the leader of a group of Satan-worshipping (Baphomet) Templars, who had fled to Scotland, away from the angered justice of the Papacy and the King of France. What they brought with them, was the Templars’ exploitation of the Cathar (Bogomil) tradition in the region of Toulouse and Albi, to build up the syncretic sort of Satanic worship the Templars had acquired in the Middle East. The Papacy had enough of this, and the King of France acted to shut down Templars by the means customary in those times. A group of Templars under Bruce fled to Scotland, and after some initial difficulties, made themselves the lords of the place.

During this century, when the chest of Isaac Newton’s laboratory papers was opened and examined, the content of Newton’s actual “scientific work” turned out to be a selection of lurid and rather insane experiments in “black magic.”

The character of the Stuart court is illustrated by the characterization of one Stuart government of that period as the “Cabal.” In his history, Macauley offers an amiable description of the affair. During this century, when the chest of Isaac Newton’s laboratory papers was opened and examined, the content of Newton’s actual “scientific work” turned out to be a selection of lurid and rather insane experimets in “black magic.” The circles around Francis Bacon and Hobbes were, as we say today, “a prize collection of real kooks.”

So, the Templar mish-mash of Bogomil Gnosticism blended into Hashishin Satanism, caused Bruce’s Templar credentials to be viewed as suitable myth-building material for the taste of the Stuart kooks of the period. The Liberal aristocracy of Britain became a principal concentration of this filthy stuff. When the Liberals came to full power, under Walpole, this Liberal stuff came out in such form as the proliferating Hell-Fire Clubs. That tradition was cultivated under the Second Earl of Shelbourne’s puppet prime minister, William Pitt the Younger, with Satanic figures such as the powerful Jeremy Bentham in the fore.

Satanism gained new ground under the protection of Liberalism and Romanticism during the nineteenth century. In England,the more virulent new forms surfaced around Oxford University’s John Ruksin and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Out of this came theosophy, British “Guild” socialism, the Fabian Society, Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, and Aleister Crowley — Satanists all.

This spilled over into the United States, notably in the circles of putative “Great Awakening” evangelist Johnathan Edwards, and his protege, Princeton Hell-Fire Club activist Aaron Burr. During the late nineteenth century, the sort of spoon-bending kookery associated with such figures as Oliver Lodge and A. Conan Doyle spilled generously among the wealthy anglophile liberals of the United States.

In short, this sort of witchery has been endemic over the centuries. The difference is, that what was endemic has become epidemic.