The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism
Children of Lucifer debunks facile media characterizations of Satanism by exploring the historical origins of modern Satanism. Ruben van Luijk traces the movement’s development from a concept invented by a Christian church eager to demonize its internal and external competitors to a positive (anti-)religious identity embraced by various groups in the modern West. Van Luijk offers a comprehensive intellectual history of this trajectory, highlighting Romantic poets, radical anarchists, eccentric esotericists, Decadent writers, and schismatic exorcists, among others, culminating in the Church of Satan by Anton Szandor LaVey. The emergence of new attitudes toward Satan proves to be intimately linked to the ideological struggle for emancipation and secularization, when Western culture renounced traditional gods. Children of Lucifer makes the case that the emergence of Satanism presents a shadow history of the evolution of modern civilization as we know it.