History
Witchcraft
How witchcraft has meant an accusation, a magical practice, and a modern identity, with examples from museums and trial records.
Results for “Religious experience and discernment”
Culture & Ethics
Halloween
The public holiday of 31 October, including lanterns, visiting customs, disguise, and its Celtic and Christian histories.
Culture & Ethics
Samhain
The Gaelic beginning-of-winter festival, Irish customs of food and divination, and its place in modern Pagan practice.
History
Salem witch trials
The Massachusetts prosecutions of 1692-1693, the spread of accusations, spectral evidence, and the surviving court archive.
Devotional Practice
Black Mass
A term for ritual inversion of Christian worship, with Huysmans's literary portrayal and a modern distinction from Satanic Mass.
Culture & Ethics
Satanic holidays
The different holiday calendars published by the Church of Satan and The Satanic Temple, with dates and organizational meanings.
Theology & Cosmology
Satan
Satan is a figure whose meaning has changed substantially across Jewish, Christian, Islamic, literary, esoteric, and modern Satanic contexts. In contemporary theistic Satanism, Satan may be understood as a real deity, spirit, adversary, initiator, or metaphysical intelligence. Those modern interpretations draw on, but are not identical with, the much older history of the word and character.
Culture & Ethics
Baphomet
Baphomet is an occult figure whose history connects the medieval trial of the Knights Templar, nineteenth-century ceremonial symbolism, twentieth-century Satanic iconography, and the modern public imagery of The Satanic Temple. The familiar goat-headed, winged, androgynous figure is not a medieval portrait of a secret Templar god. It was created in the nineteenth century by the French occultist Éliphas…
Texts & Sources
Grimoires
A grimoire is a book or manuscript containing magical knowledge, ritual procedures, charms, conjurations, talismans, spirit catalogues, astrological instructions, prayers, or other techniques intended to produce supernatural or occult effects. The term is most strongly associated with European magic, but scholars use it within a much wider history of magical books and written ritual technologies.
Devotional Practice
Prayer in theistic Satanism
Prayer is intentional communication addressed to a deity, spirit, sacred power, or ultimate reality. It can include praise, petition, confession, thanksgiving, lament, dedication, silence, repetition, or simple direct speech. In theistic Satanism, prayer usually means addressing Satan or another spiritually real being rather than speaking only to oneself or performing a purely symbolic exercise.
Theology & Cosmology
Hermeticism
Hermeticism names several related traditions associated with Hermes Trismegistus. Philosophical dialogues, alchemical texts, and later occult systems require separate historical treatment.
History
Alchemy
Alchemy concerns historical approaches to material transformation and the interpretation of nature. Spiritual readings form part of its reception but should not replace the material history.
Theistic Satanism
Demonolatry
Demonolatry refers to devotion to demons or daemonic beings. Modern accounts vary in theology, authority, and their relationship with historical grimoires.
Culture & Ethics
Satan in Paradise Lost
Milton’s Paradise Lost gives Satan an influential literary characterization. His persuasive speeches must be read alongside the narrator’s account and the consequences of his actions.
Organizations & Traditions
Theosophical Society
A modern esoteric society with stated aims of fraternity, comparative study, and investigation of nature and human capacities.
Organizations & Traditions
Global Order of Satan
A nontheistic Satanic organization whose public principles emphasize self-determination, compassion, and responsibility.
History
The Devil
The Devil is the principal personification of evil in much of Christian tradition and a major source for later Western images of Satan. The term is not identical with every historical use of Satan, nor does it describe one unchanging character across the Bible, theology, folklore, literature, art, and modern religion. In contemporary speech “the Devil” often functions as a proper name for Satan, but…
Demonology & Spirits
Asmodeus
Asmodeus appears in the narrative of Tobit and in later magical and demonological literature. His different roles reflect the purposes of those texts.
Texts & Sources
Satan in Job
Job 1–2 presents Satan in a heavenly assembly and in a dispute about Job’s righteousness. The passage should be read before later accounts of Satan’s origins are supplied.
Texts & Sources
Temptation of Jesus
The temptation of Jesus is an encounter with Satan in the wilderness narrated by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Its differing forms connect hunger, divine sonship, scriptural argument, worldly rule, and worship.