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The guards also forced prisoners to hit one another and to defile what the SS
considered the prisoners‟ most cherished values. They were forced to curse
God, to accuse themselves and one another of vile actions, and their wives of
adultery and prostitution ...any failure to obey an order ...or any help given
a tortured prisoner was viewed as mutiny and swiftly punished by death.32
Are these the beliefs and practices of a “benign” alternative religion? Hardly. Such nihilistic
exhortations are not novel, nor do they lack ambiguity. Indeed, it might be said that the
Satanists and their ilk are attempting to perform a “Black Mass ritual” on our entire
civilization. Church desecrations and heavy metal music may be only portents of what Dr.
Carl Raschke, in his book Painted Black, calls the satanists‟ policy of “cultural terrorism.”
The predatory nature of the abuses reported by Bettelheim are paralleled in the cases of
apparent satanic activity. A taped interview with a teenage girl raped by four of her
teachers, and left unreported because of her family‟s fear, is chilling in its details. She
describes how they ritualistically positioned her, glacially drank in her vulnerability and
terror, appeared to violate her according to a hierarchy of rank, and, when done, viciously
employed a broom handle so violently that it broke! Without a note of concern for their act,
and with an arrogance and confidence borne out by her family‟s silence, they left her where
the violation had taken place.33
CSER‟s report repeatedly claims and implies that no facts exist which can demonstrate a
satanic intent based upon Anton LaVey‟s books, The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals.
The many reports of the presence of these books among the personal belongings of young
criminals is dismissed as coincidence or, at best, a reflection of a curiously anarchistic and
fruitless search. Besides, the report contends, Satan is merely a metaphorical figurehead to
the Satanists and therefore cannot function as the source of a genuine religious impulse. To
demonstrate the inadequacy of this position it is merely necessary to go to the source. Here
is what Michael Aquino, formerly LaVey‟s protégé/colleague, has to say about the Church of
Satan and Satan himself, quoting from the introduction to his religious statement, The Book
of Coming Forth by Night:
In its formative years the Church of Satan took an essentially metaphorical
approach towards the being from whom it took its names. “Satan” was the
term representing, it was thought, simply the principle of carnality. Such
rituals and ceremonies as the Church first celebrated, therefore, were
conceived as illustrative, inspirational, and allegorical. At least, that‟s the way
it all began.
“When he is called,” Eliphas Levi once observed, “the Devil comes and is
seen.” And in that prosaic statement lies a truth whose implications challenge
the rational constructs of the most exacting intellects. The one common
feature to all the gods of all the nations of history, it may be said, is that they
do not come and are not seen.
Satan, however, did come to the Church of Satan -first as the faintest of
atmospheres in its ceremonies, and ultimately as a metaphysical presence
whose expression of being was awesome, exhilarating -the very fire of life to
those who took his name as a part of their own and called themselves
Satanists.34
Such “sacred” revelations were not, of course, to be shared with the “profane.” So while
LaVey continued to preach the gospel of symbolism to the ignorant masses, the Church of
Satan‟s select” inner circle hugged their secret to their bosoms:
Satan is the symbol of the self, then, as it should be within the Satanist. But
this symbolism is only part of the truth, because man‟s very ability to think

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and act in disregard of the “balancing factor” of the Universe necessitates a
source for that ability. And that source is thus the intelligence that made the
Church of Satan far more than an exercise in psychodramatic narcissism. It is
the intelligence of what mankind has personified as the Prince of Darkness
himself -no symbol or allegory, but a sentient being. This was the central
“secret” -and the heart -of the Church of Satan. With the irony that so often
accompanies great truths, it was proclaimed in the institution‟s very title yet
in its simplicity it confronted such a massive psychological block in the minds
of even some of the most dedicated Satanists that it remained unnamed and
unacknowledged. In the discussions and debates which regularly surfaced, it
would be referred to obliquely and in hesitant tones. Eventually Anton and I
spoke openly to one another about it, but only at times and in places of
sacred significance to us.35
So much for the CSER report‟s contention that Satanists do not worship Satan.
It is true that church and cemetery desecration might be the product of merely rebellious
teenagers. But repeated incursions into a Pennsylvania Catholic church, noteworthy for the
patterned drippings of black candle wax around an impromptu bed, violations of the altar
and tabernacle, “calling cards” of amulets, books, and an altar stone stolen from another
church, point toward more design and intent than one would expect from a drunkenly
spontaneous group of young “rebels.”36 Is it not reasonable, then, to deduce that an
adolescent perpetrator of an act of extreme violence is probably acting out, no matter how
indirectly, an act of Satanically inspired predation?
To continue with the CSER report‟s assertions:
2. A large percentage of the membership consists of mail-order members, about whom
the groups‟ [sic] administration knows little and over whom they have no control
(e.g., a teenager who scrawls Satanic graffiti and claims to be a member of the
Church of Satan is acting without the group‟s knowledge or sanction). Members who
are found to be breaking the law and who are more closely associated with the
Church of Satan than being simply a mail-order member are expelled.37
This statement raises more questions than it answers. If this policy is characteristic of the
Church of Satan, what, then, are we to make of the Temple of Set -headed by Michael
Aquino, a former Church of Satan leader -which takes pains to contact and supervise even
its isolated “mail-order” members and requires extensive correspondence and participation?
Does this put the Temple of Set outside the definition of “Satanism?” And if a kid with a
Church of Satan mad-order membership desecrates a church but doesn‟t get caught, does
that mean he is still technically a “real” Satanist because he is, after all, a member of a
“recognized” satanic church? Or that “closely associated” Church of Satan members are
“real Satanists” until they get caught breaking the law and are expelled? Are members of
non-public, non-Church of Satan-affiliated groups “true Satanists” so long as they don‟t
break the law?
The report parrots the claim of LaVey and Aquino that a “real” Satanist would never commit
a heinous crime such as human sacrifice. Anton LaVey claims that his Satanic Bible
expressly forbids actual human sacrifice and therefore cannot be cited as an influence on
Satanism-fixated people who kill. However, LaVey himself seems a bit cavalier about how
literally that admonition is to be taken. In an interview published in the August 10, 1986,
edition of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, LaVey was asked about an instruction in The
Satanic Rituals calling for a human arm or leg bone, which is to be waved about in the
course of one of the rites. “I figured people would get the bone someplace other dm by
Hling a person. But if they‟re going to kill, I hope they at least get a deserving victim,”
LaVey cracked.38 Lest this be excused as a mere slip of his tongue, in an interview in the