At its most sinister, its adherents are worshippers of evil incarnate and engage inviolent and perverse secret rituals, the details of which mainstream society imagines with a fascination verging on the obscene. Children of Lucifer debunks these facile characterizations by exploring the historical origins of modern Satanism. Ruben van Luijk traces the movement's development from aconcept 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 long and unpredictable trajectory. This story involves Romantic poets, radical anarchists, eccentric esotericists, Decadent writers, and schismatic exorcists, among others, and culminates in the establishment of the Church of Satan bycarnival entertainer Anton Szandor LaVey. Yet it is more than a collection of colorful characters and unlikely historical episodes. The emergence of new attitudes toward Satan proves to be intimately linked to the ideological struggle for emancipation that transformed the West and is epitomized bythe American and French Revolutions. It is also closely connected to secularization, that other exceptional historical process which saw Western culture spontaneously renounce its traditional gods and enter into a self-imposed state of religious indecision.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. Offering the most comprehensive account of this history yet written, van Luijk proves that, in the case of Satanism, the facts are much more interestingthan the fiction.

    Both were publicity conscious and made the most of the meetings, which evolved into friendship. Almost always present was German paparazzo Walter Fischer, stationed in Hollywood and catering to image- and scandal-hungry photo magazines all over the world.Fischer’s unique collection of photos takes us straight into the ritual chamber of the Church of Satan in LaVey’s infamous “black house” in San Francisco, as well as into Mansfield’s Hollywood “pink palace”. We also get to follow LaVey on excursions to his friend Forrest “Famous Monsters of Filmland” Ackerman, to Marilyn Monroe’s grave, to TV studios and back to Satanic weddings and Zeena's baptism at the Church of Satan HQ.These were wild and narcissistic times in America. Few understood the power of media exposure better than Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey. Captured alone or together by master paparazzo Walter Fischer, this devilishly handsome couple made headlines that still resonate today.The book also contains an introduction by legendary filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and forewords by writer Carl Abrahamsson and collector Alf Wahlgren.

    Johnson shares his decades of experience as a leading member of the Church of Satan, publisher of Old Nick magazine and real-world knowledge of human sexuality that has afforded him priceless insight into every aspect of what makes a Warlock.The Satanic Warlock contains:* The Primary Satanic Male Archetypes (akin to the LaVey Personality Synthesizer)* The Satanic Gentleman - Appearance & Attitude* The Devilish Art of Seduction* Gaining & Wielding Personal Power* Sex Magick Principles & Application* The Gay & Bisexual Warlock* Case Study Interviews with Exemplary Satanic Warlocks* Case Study Interviews with Practicing Satanic Witches* Sexbots, haptic technology & artificial companions.* Special Introduction by Magus Peter H. Gilmore And much, much more!

    In the popular imagination, the fallen angel Lucifer evokes such concepts as heresy, rebellion, pride, liberation from the bonds of demiurgic oppression, and impetus for human evolution. From his earliest origins, the Proud Angel has been hailed by religious and artistic countercultures as a patron saint of enlightenment his most essential quality embodying overthrow of ignorance and the inspired process of revelation. Allied to ancient Gnostic Christian cosmological conceptions, the fallen angel has also found dominion within occult traditions, folk magic, philosophy, as well as art and literature. Lucifer has also, in many enduring mystical traditions, assumed a female form in the guise of Lucina, Lucia and Diana Lucifera. In his guise as the Serpent of Eden, he bestowed the magical philosophy of the Luciferian Woman, she who was not born of the clay, and was therefore especially receptive to the forbidden powers which would render one as God. "

    Limited to 300 copies

    This dialogue, like the biblical story of the Garden of Eden on which the epic is based, centers on the theme of temptation: in Paradise Lost Satan's deliberate and malicious destruction of Adam and Eve seems to guarantee his guilt, yet it is hard not to sympathize with the heroic passion of Satan's daring odyssey. Many modern critics read this as exactly the genius of Paradise Lost, that it is a seductive text, and that Milton's Satan must be resisted.On the other hand, it's easy to argue that this orthodox reading is medieval--a duty towards obedience to inherited wisdom and the strict containment of your own passionate tendencies; and that this reading is also completely at odds with the liberal, Faustian values of contemporary society. In this thesis, after exploring the orthodox response to Paradise Lost (and the reaction it generates), I'll demonstrate how Milton's writings are symptomatic of an ethical inversion in Western culture, which first caused Satan to be celebrated (as a symbol for revolutionary politics) and later condemned (as humanity confronted the depths of its unrestrained depravity). After tracing how responses to the character of Satan have evolved in literature and entertainment in line with political sympathies, my original contribution to knowledge will be a comparative reading of Paradise Lost through the lens of postmodern thought and existentialism as Satan's over-proximity with the Real (the abyss of freedom creates anxiety which demands action).Satan's crisis of identity can be divided into three major shifts: the development of subjectivity through a crisis of alienation; his resistance to a totalizing power discourse that defines his being; and his ultimate failure to exempt himself from the systemic order that relied on his transgression. The aim of this book will be to show how universally modern thinkers agree on the concept of evil as a negation of what is, in favor of anything else but this--a negation that is paradoxically the source of all human liberty and creativity (which nevertheless leads to death); and also to demonstrate how the silencing of so-called satanic elements allows and perpetuates social injustice and the marginalization of minority voices.