Satanism itself is not illegal in some liberal democratic countries.
The term Satanism refers to a group of religious, ideological, philosophical beliefs based on Satan (or the devil) as an entity – especially as a group or movement organized to worship or honor him. In Christianity, Satan is usually associated with his devil counterpart, a fallen angel who is often seen in Christian churches as the leader of demons who tempt people to sin. The phenomenon of Satanism partly shows historical connections - and similarities - with other occult figures and phenomena, such as Chaos, which represents the mythological emptiness, and the figure of the Greek underworld deity, Hekate, and in Christianity, Lucifer or Seth, who represents evil, can also be mentioned, the latter being the deserts , was the god of storms, disorder, violence and strangers in ancient Egyptian religion. Satanism as a term has been used for many centuries by various Christian groups as an accusation against ideological opponents and as a slander against selected heretics, freethinkers and pagans.
Modern Satanism is a philosophy based on the Satanic Bible and the Church of Satan, which was founded in the 1960s by Anton Szandor LaVey (1930–1997), an American writer, musician, and occultist who had a significant influence on this topic. In this philosophical current, Satan becomes a positive, archetypal symbol of the self and ego, yet in popular culture today, Satanism is mostly associated with rituals focused on violence and cruelty.
Some such accusations, which are still present today, speak of a conspiracy embodied in a global satanic cult, a decadent network that includes the wealthy and the international elite, and which satanic cults and forces facilitate the abduction and/or use of children for human sacrifice, pornography, and prostitution. .
In this understanding, satanic ritualized sexual harassment means sexual harassment that is committed in a Satanic or Luciferian-inspired ritual, religious context - even prior to ritual murder - on sensitive, vulnerable people or groups, often children.
More than 12,000 cases, mostly unproven, have arisen in connection with accusations of satanic ritual abuse, a wave of panic from the United States in the 1980s and then to some parts of the world at the end of the 1990s, which gradually spread and partly continues to this day .
Court cases based on often contradictory accusations and criminal investigations related to ritual abuse, the 'satanic panic' initially brought together very different social groups for many years, including, for example, religious fundamentalists, child rights lawyers, therapists and psychotherapy clients. The use of the term 'satanic abuse' was more common at first; this later became 'Satanic Ritual Abuse', and then this too was further secularized into simple 'Ritual Abuse' in the public parlance of the cases.
A related symbolic memorial story from the recent past: There used to be a Ten Commandments monument in front of the Oklahoma State Legislature, which is now outside the Oklahoma State Board of Public Affairs building. The people of Oklahoma finally decided that taxpayer funds cannot be used for religious purposes. The original Ten Commandments monument was privately funded and built until 2009 before being placed on the Capitol grounds in 2012.
During the controversy surrounding the monument, the New York-based Satanic Church (currently operating as a registered religion in the USA) notified the Capitol Preservation Commission that in 2013 it would also like to donate to a monument of its own. (The Church of Satan later in 2018 was able to unveil a statue of Baphomet, revered as a symbol of the devil, in the Arkansas state legislature. The Arkansas state capitol also houses a monument to the Ten Commandments.) In July 2015, the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld an earlier court decision that according to which the Ten Commandments monument must be removed from the territory of the state legislature.
According to the board, the placed monument is a religious symbol and thus violates the state constitution.
In addition to the undoubted presence of right-wing, fundamentalist ideological extremes, the liberal and democratic party - and especially in Europe the left-wing, green - political forces cannot escape from the responsibility that at various levels of public life - including the level of specific public policy decisions - they can allow the case of child protection to be devalued, even in connection with the often overextended legal protection related to sexual minorities. The truly conservative Republicans and Donald Trump personally have tried to emphasize this as much as possible in recent years.
How relevant the connection is is well illustrated by the fact that at the end of July 2024, in connection with the opening ceremony of the Paris (33rd) Olympic Games, which was organized in a satanic manner according to many ki) there was a lot of conservative backlash after the show featured drag queens, a transgender model and a nude singer.
The famous Renaissance painting shows the moment when Jesus tells the apostles that one of them will betray him. It was precisely at this moment that Satan acted at the Last Supper:
"At this he leaned on Jesus' bosom and asked: 'Lord, who is it?' Jesus answered: "The one to whom I will give the dipped morsel." With this he dipped the morsel, took it and handed it to the betrayer Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. After the bite, the devil immediately entered. Jesus only said to him: "What you want to do, do it quickly!" (John 13:25-27).
Two weeks later, the Olympic Games in Paris closed with, among other things, the celebration of the rebirth of Lucifer as the "luminary" of enlightenment.
Of course, many people believe that there is no substantial evidence of a well-organized satanic cult that spans generations and within its spiritual framework en masse, sexually molests and tortures children, although there is convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or even couples who claimed that that they are related to Satan, and that such claims were used to intimidate child victims.
Satanism itself is not illegal in some countries operating in a liberal democracy, but at the same time, there are religious movements created in whole or in part by criminals that profess and claim the doctrines of Satanism. In these cases, it is not the worship of Lucifer/Satan that constitutes the legal basis for possible prosecutions, but real, objective crimes - i.e. regulated in the local criminal codes.
The phenomenon and social issue of Satanism should therefore not be trivialized, just as the conservative opinions cannot be ignored, that nowadays the responses of Western liberals to the challenges of our time, from the classical conservative, Christian Democratic point of view, in some cases may even appear to be satanic ideas, even if they are rationally derived in certain issues , and they also seem to be intellectually well founded.
The author is the spokesperson of CÖF-CÖKA and the general secretary of EuCET.
Featured image: Hungarian Satanist Church/Facebook
