David Frankfurter | RITUAL AS ACCUSATION AND ATROCITY: SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE, GNOSTIC LIBERTINISM, AND PRIMAL MURDERS Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing through the 1990s, alarm spread through numerous communities in the United States and the United Kingdom that Satanic cults were preying on children and adults. Sce- narios pieced together from popular “cult” fears, evangelical Christian demonology, and alleged childhood memories “retrieved” by crusading therapists imagined secret intergenerational devil worshippers who in- itiated children into perverse and bloody rites, sacrificed specially bred infants and small animals, and engaged in incestuous orgies.' To the Onginally presented to the ritual studies section of the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting. November 1999 Iam grateful to the American Academy of Religion for a 1999-2000 Individual Research Assistance Grant. ay well as to Beryl Satter, David Bromley. and Bruce Lincoln for eriticisms of previous drafts ‘Among the most important studies of this phenomenon, see James T Richardson, Joe! Best. and David G Bromley, eds. The Sutanivm Scare (New York Aldine De Gruyter. 1991), Jettrey $ Victor. Sutann Panu The Creation of a Contemporary Legend (Chicago and LaSalle. Il Open Court, 1993), Shetill Mulhern, * Satanism, Ritual Abuye, and Mul- tuple Personality Disorder A Soctohustonwal Perspective,” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosts 42.(1994) 265-88, Nicholas P Spanos, Cheryl A. Burgess, and Melissa Faith Burgess. “Past-Life Identities, UFO Abductions, and Satanic Ritual Abuse The Social Construction of Memories,” /nternational Journal of Cluucal and Experimental Hypnosis 42 (1994) 433-46, Mary DeYoung. “One Face of the Devil The Satame Ritual Abuse Moral Crusade and the Lav.” Beha rorad Scrences and the Law 12 (1994) 389-407, Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker Satan's Silence Rrtual Abuse and the Makaig of & Modern American Witch Hunt (New York Baste. 1995}, Karen Leigh Stroup. “The Redis- covery of Evil: An Analysis of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Phenomenon” (Ph D diss . Vander- bilt University, 1996). 1S La Fontaine, Speak of the Devil Tales of Satanwe Abuse i Contemporary England (Cambudge Cambridge University Press, 1998) Primary sources elaborating the Satanic ritual abuse conspiracy include David K Sakherm and Susan E Devine, eds , Our of Darkness Explormg Satanism and Ritual Abuse (New York: Lexington, 1992). Valente Simason, ed.. Treating Survtvory of Satanist Abuse London and New York Routledge. 1994): and James Randall Noblitt and Pamela Sue Perskin, Cult and Ritual Abuse, rev ed, (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 20001 © 2001 by The Limversty of Chicagsr AML rights reversed (00) 8.27 HOODIE NDI Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 353 historian of religions, the resemblances between these scenarios and those propounded by early Christian heresiologists and medieval witch hunters are unmustakable and bear systematic comparison? What concerns me in this article is the use of the word “ritual” over the course of the Satanism scare as a label for the kind of abuse suffered by the Satanic cults’ alleged victims and as an idea that integrated particular atrocities perceived in the world with the scenario of a powerful subversive organization intrinsi- cally dedicated to evil. How did “ritual.” a mainstream descriptive term with pretenses to apply to any religious performance or traditional gesture without prejudice, come to indicate a particular form of violence at the hands of a subversive cuit? And what legacy does ritual carry that its use could bring to popular consciousness the idea of subversive cults and or- giastic violence? I. SATANIC RITLAL ABUSE The concept of Satanic ritual abuse arose in the early 1980s as broader cultural discussions and panics about child sexual abuse collided with a series of widespread rumors about subversive Satanie cults. The publi- cation of Michelle Remenibers (1980), a book coauthored by an alleged Satanic cult survivor and her psychiatrist, was followed by the McMartin Preschool case and other day-care abuse panics in which child-abuse professionals invoked Satanic cult practices as the rationale for the fan tastic scenes that small children were alleged to have witnessed.’ Building explicitly on these sources, nationally broadcast television documentaries exposing devil worship as a pervasive threat appeared in 1985 and 1988. The panic arrived in the United Kingdom in 1989, where it found fertile ground among evangelical Chnsvans and a broader populace already accustomed to conspiracy rumors.” It was at this point that a burgeoning network of mental health pra litioners claiming expertise in child abuse began to propose scientific ? See Erich Goode and Nachnvan Ben-Yehuda, Moral Pantcs The Soctal Construction of Deviance (Oxtord and Cambridge Blackwell, 1994), David Frankfurter, “Religious Studies and Claims of Satame Ritual Abuse A Rejomder to Stephen Kent.” Religion 24 (1994) 353-60, and La Fontaine, pp. 22-37, 180 * Michelle Smith and Tawren:e Pasder, Michelle Remembers. The True Story of a Year- Long Contest between Innocence and Evil New York Congdon & Lattes, 1980) On the influence of this hook and its authors, see Nathan and Snedeker, pp 89-90. 113 On the evo- lution of Satanic cult rationales tor mass day-care abuse, sce Nathan and Snedeker, pp. 98— 103 On the coercive methods wed to eltext children’s testimony mn these cases. yee Nathan and Snedeker, pp 78-K7 and 147-59, and Stephen J Cect and Maggte Bruck. “Suggest- ability of the Child Witness A Historical Review and Synthesis.” Pyychological Bulletin 113, no 341993) 403~49. On the broader « ultural dynamics and anxieties that gave rise 10 tears of Satanic ritual abuse conspiracy. see David G. Bromley, “Satanism: The New Cult Scare.” in Richardson et al.. eds pp 49-72, and Debbie Nathan, “Satamssm and Child Mo- Jestation Constructing the Ritual Abuse Scare.” in Richardson et al.eds pp. 75-94 4 See La Fontaine, pp. 156-75 Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved354 Accusation and Atrocity definitions of Satanic ritual abuse (hereafter SRA) as a particularly horrific subcategory of child sexual abuse. one that typically resulted in such extreme posttraumatic responses as multiple personality disorder (now disputed as a diagnostic category), self-mutilation, and suicide. The existence of Satanic culls was taken for granted in these circles, partly because such experts found more and more of their patients offering lurid firsthand “testimonies” to Satanist cults—invariably as “recovered mem- ories"—and partly because the culture had been sensitized since the 1970s to anxieties about real alternative religions.° For abuse experts untrained in the dynamics of memory and unread in any but the most credulous accounts of historical “devil-worship.” there was no reason to be critical of patients’ testimony and every reason, they believed. to reverse “centu- and put full trust in their patients’ accounts.’ Many of these abuse experts, in fact, were themselves evangelical Christians committed to ideologies such as “spiritual warfare” that pitted their therapeutic “min- istries™ against an organized world of Satanic evil." ries of silence ° See Nathan, pp. 80-81; Jeffrey S_ Victor, “Social Construction of Satante Ritual Abuse and the Creation of False Memories.” in Betteted-In Imaginings: The Narrative Construc+ tion of Reality. ed Joseph de Rivera and Theodore R- Sarbin (Washington, DC APA. 1998), pp 191-216 The transtormation of local psychotherapists to SRA “experts” offers a close parallel to witeh finders im Africa and Europe each constitutes an itinerant profes- stonal im the identification of evil See Mata Green, “Wricheratt Suppression Practices and. Movements Public Polittes and the Logic of Purification,” Compuraitve Studies m Soctety and History 39 (1997) 319-45. on the comparison, see La Fontaine, pp 64, 162 © On therapists’ responses to SRA clammy see Stroup On the legacy of earher anticult rumors in sensitizing the culture to SRA rumors. see David G Bromley, “The Soetal Construction of Subversion A Comparison of Anit-Religious and Anti-Satame Cult Narra- faves.” in Anti-Culr Movements i Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed Anson Shupe and David G Bromley (New York and London Garland, 1994) pp 49-69, and Anson Shupe and David G Bromley. “The Evolution of Modern American AnuCult kdeology A Case Study in Frame Extension.” in America’s Alternate Religions, ed Timothy Miller (Albany State University of New York Press, 1995). pp 41L-16 See esp George A Fraser. “Ritual Abuse Lessons Learned Dilemma of Ritual Abuse Cautions and Gusdes for Therapists, ed. George A. Fraser (Wash- ington, DC American Psychiatric Press. 1997), pp. 119+ 35: and representative therapists testimontes in Patrick Casement, “The Wish Not to Know.” pp 22-25. Pamela $ Hudson, “The Chincxan’s Experience, pp TI-81, Phil Mollon, “The Impact of Evil, pp 136-47; Sundra L Bloom, “Creating Sanctuary.” pp 285-91, and Shela C_ Youngson, “Ritual Abuse The Personal and Professional Cost tor Workers.” pp. 292302, all in Smason, ed. Louise Armstrong attributes the growth of SRA behets to such politically motivated ered ulousness on the part of feminists and child-care advocates. see her Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Polurey (Reading, Mass Addison-Wesley. 1994), esp chap I, ct La Fontame, pp 140-43 "The influence of evangelical Protestantism in the development of the SRA panic has been thoroughly documented im Robert D Hicks, “The Police Model of Satamic Crime.” in Richardson et al. eds, p- 182. Martha L. Rogers. “A Call for Discernment—Natural and, Spiritual An Introductory Editorial to a Specral Issue on SRA.” and Bob Paysantino and Gretchen Passantino, “Satan. Rital Abuse m Popular Christian Literature,” Journal of Pavehology and Theology 2, no 3 (1992) 179-82, 299-308, Victor, Satanic Pame, pp. 69, 219-21: and La Fontame, pp 28-29 38-40, 121-22, 163-67 Satanie cult fe intersected neatly with evangelical exorcist mimstres: see Stephen Hunt. "Managing the “Therapist,” sn The Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions In an effort to give secular legitimacy to the label—for concern about Satanic cult subversion was now shifting from evangelical Christian circles to feminist, psychiatric, and child-advocacy circles —many special- ists amended it to “ritual abuse.” such that the term “ritual” increasingly conveyed the sense of danger and evil. As if to underscore the marginality of behaviors covered by the term ritual, a group of psychologists investi- gating reports of SRA had to invent a separate category. “religious abuse, in order to cover those forms of abuse (and homicide) carried out under Christian aegis, like exorcismns.” [n the same vein, many specialists sought rationales for Sutanist worship and Satamst abuse outside theology. look- ing to post—World War I] notions of “brainwashing” and thought control to explain what seemed to occur in these cults The result was a series of definitions of “ritual.” as it pertained to abuse, fostered outside the religious studies academy. They showed not the criti- al rectification of the term as it proceeded in the religious studies acad- emy over the course of the twentieth century but rather the deep suspicion with which “ritual” had been viewed at least since the Protestant Refor- mation—and pethaps since antiquity. One of the first (1988) and most widely cited definitions uf “ritualistic abuse.” proposed by two secular child-abuse experts. stressed “a context linked to some symbols or group activity that have a religious. magical, or supernatural connotation, and where invocation of these symbols or Demonic Some Aspects of the Neo-Pentevostal Deliverance Ministry.” Journal of Con temporary Religion 13, no. 2 1998)" 215-30, and Lawrence Wright's striking case study of Satante crime confession, “Remembering Satan—Part [." New Yorker (May 17, 1993), pp. 64-66. " See La Fontaine, pp 9-11 On the concept (and veritiable meidents) ol “religious abuye.” see Gail $ Goodman, hanyan Qin, Bette L Bottoms, and Philp R- Shaver. Characteristies und Sources of Allegation, of Rituatistic Child Abuse, Final Report to the National Center on Child Abuye und Neglect (Washington, DC National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1994) pp 99-121. cf Bette L. Bottoms. Phillip R- Shaver. and Gail $ Goodman, “An Analysis of Ritualistic and Religion-Related Child Abuse Alle tions.” Law and Hunan Behavier 20, no 11996}. 10. 31, and Donald Cappy. The Child’ Song: The Religeous Abuse of Citldren (Lomsville, Ky Westminster/John Knox, 1995) © Attempts to nuance SRA as “ritual abuse” based on bramwashmg and min! control in clude Marin H Katchen and David K Sakheim, “Satame Beliets and Practices in Sakherm and Devine. eds . pp 29.36, Noblitt and Peiskin, pp 79-86 113-16, and the hot-hne tran ing page of the Ritual Abuse. Ritual Crime and Healing home page at ww w.nemasys com! rahome/resources/ta_hotl shtml Compare mihe P Rose [pseud |. Reaching for the Light A Gide for Ritual Abuse Survivors and Phew Therapists (Cleveland Pilyrim, 19961 “These forced actions [ol amimal or hurran sacrifice | are among the Ways that abusers ensure their victims’ continued parcipation [C1 & method of programming that imprints in the victm the belief that he or she 1s one of the perpetiators. that he or she 1s bad and can never eave” ip 11Sset pp 21. 83-R5. 201-2) Catherine Gould offers the most elaborate pre-gramman conspiracy scheme thousand of programmed cult victims working unconsciously ay white. collar slaves or prostitutes for the financial advantage of the cult see her“ Deuying Ritual Abuse of Children.” Journal of Povehohustor 22. no (1995) 334 %6 cl Catherine Gould. and Lous Covolino, “Ritual Abuse, Multipheity, and Mind-Control.” faunal af Psyc holagy and Theology 20, no. 311992) 194-96 Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved356 Accusation and Atroctty activities, repeated over time. is used to frighten or intimidate the chil- dren.” The manipulative or exploitative power of “ritual” les at the center of this definition: and, the authors elaborated. “The abuse is a vehicle for inducing in the adults a religious state, mystical experience, or loss of ego-boundary, or tor furthering some social objective of the group, such as group solidarity.”!! The intimations of Durkheim in this description will be addressed in more detail below. A contemporancous (and also widely cited) description of ritual abuse had less concern for secular terminology: “Ritualistic abuse refers to repetitive and systematic sexual. physical, and psychological abuse of chil- dren by adults as part of cult or satanic worship.”'* The author then explained the intrinsic abusiveness of this “satanic worship”: tanism and the occult have always entwined with sexuality, with the fun- damental tenet that followers have a right to abundant and guilt-free sex of every description,” and since “satanism, which negates Christianity, considers the desecration of children to be a way of gaining vietory over God.” Satanic abuse characteristically involves “group cult ceremonies in which children engage in sexual acts with adults and other children; the sacrifice and mutilation of animals; threats related to magical or supernat- ural powers: ingestion of drugs, ‘magic potions. blood, and human excre- ment; and distortion of traditional belie systems.""' In 1993 a team of ritual abuse specialists attempted to generalize the kind of belief system that might motivate the atrocities, defining the term to involve “the repetitious, formalized or stylized use of language, sym- bols, images and activity which draw the abuse into some more ultimate . context or framework of meaning and/or value ”'* This detinition might well be taken to include a Christian “framework of meaning.” but the authors seek to demarcate these abustve rituals from those of more main- stream “ultimate contexts” by signalling their “repetitious, formalized, or stylized” characteristics.'* Finally, im the most recent (2000) professional definition of “ritual abuse.” for which the two authors seek inclusion in an upcoming edition of the Diagnostical and Staustical Manual of Psychological Disorders, ince “sa~ " David Finkelhor and Linda Meyer Williams, Nursery Cromey Sexual Abuse at Day Care (Newbury Park, Calif Sage, 1988). pp 59. 61 Finkethor originally entertained this category ay a hypothesis based on children’s alleged testimony and pending forensic evidence; with no such evidence forthcommg since 1988, he has admatted that the category sonal communteation with author November 8. 2000) ? Susan J Kelley, “Ritualistie Abuse of Children Dynamacy and Impact? Cutie Suudtes Journal 5, n0 2 (1988) 228, emphasis pune Phd. pp_ 229. 230 “4 Alistair McFadyen, Helga Hanky. and Cath James, “Ritual Abuse A Definition.” Child Abuse Review 2 (1983) 38, emphasis mine 'S Tes interesting to note that the largest scientific study of therapists’ experiences with SRA and “relgion-ielated abuse” found considerable evidence for Christian-based abuse, although httle tor SRA’ Goodman et al in 9 hover Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 357 they stress the outrageousness of the acts in concert with some “ceremo- nial” setting: “Ritua) abuse consists of waumatizing procedures that are conducted in a circumscribed or ceremonial manner. Such abuse may include the actual or simulated killing or mutilation of an animal, the actual or simulated killing or mutilation of a person, forced ingestion of real or simulated human body fluids, excrement or flesh, forced sexual activity, as well as acts involving severe physical pain or humiliation. Frequently. these abusive experiences employ real or staged features of deviant occult or religious practices, but this is not always the case"! 1. “RITUAL™ SCENARIOS IN THE SRA LITERATURE All these definitions effectively distill perceptions of ritual as the sort of, thing in which Satanic cults—however one conceives their beliefs or piety—engage. Thus the psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder. the coauthor of Michelle Remembers. deduces the activity of Satanic cults from his pa- tient’s “memories” of atrocious abuse and offers a glimpse of “ritual” as Satanists are supposed to pursue it ‘The [perpetrators that Michelle describes] seem more complex than ordinary cults or secret societies. Their mtuals are vety formal and established. When you stepped out of line and got your mother's dress dirty. they Were furtous, Nothing, really spontaneous 1s allowed to happen, you know? All that makes me think this, group has a long history. ... The only group [ know that fity your description ts the Church of Satan... Thete's a fot in the psychiatric hterature about them, Most people think they're strictly Dark Ages. but the fact is, the Church of Satan is a worldwide organiation. Its actually older than the Christian Church. And one of the areas where they're known to be active 1s the pacific Northwest Satanic abuse emerges as “very formal and established” —almost obses- sional in its exclusion of spontinenty-~and, more important. indicative of a conspiratorial “worldwide organization.”!* As Pazder here claims to deduce Satanic cults and their practices from Michelle's own “memories” of bizarre abuse scenarios. so the definitions of ritual abuse are produced on the basis of a lurid corpus of alleged Satanic cult rituals; and these examples of “actual rituals” offer a sense of how ritual is imagined im thinking about ritual abuse, One woman's recovered memory, published ay proof of the Satanic cult threat, offers this description: “1 was carried to the toolbench where gibberish was spoken by the four robed adults around me Rather than water sprinkled. a small, 16 Nobltt and Perskin (nL above). p 279 1 Smith and Pazder (n 3 above), p11? 1©On the construction of such subversive organizations ay the framework for Satanic abuse rumors, see David G Bromiley. “The Satanism Scare in the nited States.” in Le Defi magique 2. Satunisne. sorcelteri, ed lean-Baphste Marin (Lyon Ptessey universitaires de Lyon, 1994), pp 49-63 Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved358 Accusation and Atrocity black, wriggling cocker spaniel was held over me and disemboweled with a dagger-like instrument. ... The Jong white taper was lit and ceremoni- ously held over me, wax dripping carefully onto each of my nipples. It was then inserted, still lit, into my vagina. In this way 1 was welcomed into the faith”? Here, graphic sexual atrocities point to violations by anonymous priest figures, coldly bent on completing the sequence of motions and gestures, however bloody or depraved, for the sake of the cult. The same scenario is captured visually in a series of drawings by a psychiatrist's patient who claimed to be a cult victim-participant: in one, figures in black robes with peaked hoods, gather in a graveyard (notably full of crucifixes) to force a child to watch exhumations; in another, similar figures gather around a table where a nude woman is bound, and a hooded, nude man holds a knife; in a third, the anonymous hooded figures hold candles while one figure holds crossed swords over an infant on a large stone altar replete with candles and chalices. The patient's indoor scenes all take place in chambers of Gothic design.2” The last two examples and the following one conceptualize Satanic cult ritual in terms resembling high church liturgy—a caricature of Catholic, Anglican, or Orthodox ceremony—such that ritual comprises a pseudo- or inverse Christian liturgy whose central drama is not a mystery but an atrocity: ‘The ceremonies had a congregation area facing a stage with an altar, There a procession down the main aisle from the back of the arena to the stage area Thus procession included the leaders of the cult, several adult women and chil- dren all dressed in a variety of robes depending on their level of command Once all were on stage. the ceremony began, There was a service with chant- ing, the playing of drums in a beat of changing rhythms, and the chef leader speaking and chanting There was a door on the back right side of the stone structure where children entered the stage. Durmg the ceremony children were to drink a drug-induced | ssc | liquid from a large cup as part of the service The service continued to increase in intensity always resulting in the sexual moles- tation of children on the altar and during some ceremonies the killing of those children, ® Anne Hart. “A Survivor's Account,” in Patricia L. Pike and Richard J. Mohline, “Ritual Abuse and Recovery Survivors’ Personal Accounts.” Journal of Psychology and Theology 23,no 1 (1995): 47 Anonymous artist, in George A Fraser, “Visions of Memortes: A Patient’y Visual Rep- resentation of Ritual Abuse Ceremomes.” in The Dilemma of Rawal Abuse Cautions and Guides for Therapists. ed G Fraser (Washington D.C American Pyychiatrie Press, 1997), pp 191-95. figs 95,96. 9.8 2! Sharon J Ireland and Murray J. ireland, “A Case Hitory of Family and Cult Abuse.” Journal of Psychohistory 21. n0 4 (1994) 425-26 The authors admit that the patient “has never referred to the cult as ‘Satanic’ bul calls 1€ a ‘Christran-tike’ meeting” (p 427) Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 359 Rituals have formed a central, integrating component of the Satanic cult scares, both comprehending the alleged perversions as the center of cult activity and linking individual abuse accounts with a broad cult consprr- acy. And thus the term “ritual.” has come to indicate some dangerous realm of behavior, where countercultural conspiracy 15 mobilized, where ordinary people might dissociate and commit perversions, where the innocent might be mesmerized or brainwashed, where the social and symbolic pillars of reality might be inverted permanently. Rather than suggesting tradition or communication or a quality of gesture or perfor- mance in some general sense, the ritual of SRA signilies the altogether Other—that is, gestures meant only to delude and confuse, performances meant to allow perversion or to subvert (not merely invert temporarily) proper Christian liturgy. IIL. PATTERNS IN THE SCENARIOS OF “RITUAL ABUSI The evil of ritual in these rumors, claims, and definitions of SRA suggests that the category is being constructed and imagined according to cultural stereotypes. Ritual’s evil seems to lie especially in two domains: on the one hand, the removal of moral and social constraints such that partici- pants become frenzied and, as it were, bestial: and, on the other hand, the repetitive dramatic program in which certain elite participants gain con- trol over others through staging, robes, and secrets. Ritual, in this form- alist sense, is intrinsically hierarchical, elevating and empowering a priesthood while exploiting initiates and faithful for personal gain. While the first, Bacchantic type of evil ritual assumes that rituals are procedures that lead to erotic or homicidal ecstasy, the formalist type seems to deny any emotionality whatsoever, often emphasizing (as in the examples above) the cold calculation of the leaders. Both concepts of ritual are ingrained in Anglo-American culture. ap- pearing most prominently in horror films. Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Devil’s Rain (1975), for example. popularized the notion of the sub- versive evil cult in its formalist mode: secret and subversive lineages of devil worshippers, organized in hierarchies and bent on coldly manipula- ting anybody tor their ultimate purposes.*? In contrast. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), following a motif epitomized in King Kong (1933) as well as countless literary caricatures of African and Haitian religion, envisioned a mysterious primitive cult on the periphery of moral civilization, whose central dramabe activities lead quickly to collective ecstasy and, ultimately human sacrifice See Michael W. Cunco, “Ot Demons and Hollywood. Exoreism in American Culture, Studtes im Religion/Sevences Relveteuses 27.00 4 (1998) 455-65. on the impact of popular films on American concerns with demonoloxy Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved360 Accusation and Atrocity One would not want to juxtapose these two modes of evil ritual too starkly, of course, since they are often combined. as in the following 1989 description of Satanic “sacritice” from a police training packet: “The Sacrifice is performed with a circle on the surface of the sacrificial area. The circle serves as a containment field for the energy released from the victim. .. . The slaughter is preceded by silent concentration, incantations, and burning of incense. A gradual build-up of excitement culminates in a frenzy at the time of death and the discharge of blood from the victim. An even greater frenzy is reached if there is a simultaneous release of sexual energy through orgasm.”? However, it is useful to consider the way that popular concepts of ritual, clustering in formalist or Bacchantic scenarios. allowed the term to be in- voked and defined as a negative category in descriptions of SRA. For these repetitive scenarios indicate a cultural distrust of ritual that far out- weighs the precision that anthropology and academic religious studies have sought to lend the term. One self-professed survivor, for example, who was given the credibility of a Ms. cover story. referred to the various atrocities she claimed to undergo as “a satanic baptismal ritual” and described “fertility rituals.” in which rape occurred on an altar table “while the fertility rites were chanted.” and the “ritual sacrifice” of a fetus: and yet. she clarifies, “these rituals are not used primarily for spiritual or re- ligious purposes. They are used expressly for the purpose of control and intimidation of cult followers." Phrased as they are with a terminology self-consciously alluding to historical religious practices (fertility, sacrifice, baptism. altar). these images of ritual clearly belong to some intellectual tradition. One might argue that the Bacchantic image, in which a subculture’s religious performance leads to perversion, homicide, and cannibalistic frenzy, is the oldest model of an evil ritual, traceable as far back as Massachusetts State Police. Rolf Call Newsletter (January 1989), p 3, cited in David G. Bromiley, “Satanism The New Cult Scare” in Richardson et al eds. (n. | above). p. 55 2 On attempts at precision im using the term “ntual” and distinguishing 1 from other types of gesture and performance, see. e g . Mary Douglas. Natural Sumboly. Explorations in Cosmology (New York Pantheon, 1983), Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Bare Facts Ritual,” Imaginmg Religion From Babston fo Jonestown (Chicago and London University of Che cago Press. 1982), pp. 53-65. and To Take Place Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), Catherine Bell, Riu! Theory, Rial Prac- tee (New York Oxtord University Press, 1992), and Ritual Perspectives and Dimen: sions (New York Oxtord University Press, 1997). and Talal Asad, “Toward a Genealogy of the Concept of Ritual,” in Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and Reasons of Power in Chasiunit, and Islam (Balumore and London John Hopkins University Press. 1993), pp. 55-79) * Ehvabeth S Rose [pseud |, Cult Ritual Abuse?” Ms 3, no 4 Januar irviving the Unbelievable A First-Person Account of February 1993) 44 Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 361 Euripides’ drama about Dionysiac religion and particularly influential on heresiographical portraits of Gnostic ritual and witches’ sabbats.° In the contemporary imagination, the equation of ritual with sexual and anal reversals and excesses also reflects a kind of primary-process or infantile fantasy world, its presence in depictions of SRA not coincidentally related 1o the use of testimony elicited from small children."7 The formalist image of ritual, in which a priesthood manipulates and exploits mesmerized devotees through empty or frightening symbols, chants, and gestures, stems from anti-Catholic polemic in the seventeenth century. in which Catholic ritual itself was perceived as a kind of sorcery.** In the view of early Protestant historiography. “crafty ancient priests had created and perpetuated a series of fake demigods in order to bewilder the laity into abject spiritual and political subjection to the high priest.” The consequent image of ritual. as first applied to the Catholic Church, involved a hierarchy of priests bent not on orgy but on deliberate evil, de- ceit, and on mesmerising their audiences. using a portentous array of ges- tures, chants, symbols, and robes—often liberally mixed with scatological © This image has been cultivated in Protestant culture since Luther, crystallizing in the concept of the Black Mass, the perfect inversion of Catholic liturgy symbolism, as some early Reformers make clear, 2 Norman Cohn, Europe's hiner Demons (London Paladin, 1975) chapy MI Edwards, “Some Early Chrisian Immorahtes.” Ancient Socrety 23 (1992) 71-82. Andrew MeGowan, “Eating People Accusations of Cannibahsm against Christians in the Second Century.” Journal oy Barty Chistian Studies 2 (1994) 413—42. and James B Rives. “Human Sacrifice amons Pagans and Christians.” Journal of Roman Studies 8S (1995) 65-85 2" See discuysiony of such themes in children’s testimony by Fred Jonker and leye Jonker-Bakker, “Effect of Ritual Abuse The Results of Three Surveys in the Nether lands.” Child Abuse and Neglec! 21, 00 @ (1997) 550, and more cntically, m DeYoung (n Labove). pp 399-402. and Nathan and Snedeker in -[ above). pp. [1415 On the pry chological character af SRA (and other cult subversion tesumontes. see Sherrill Mulhern. “Souvenirs de sahbaty att XX® svele.” mn Le sabbat des sorciers cn Europel SY XVHE wectes), ed. Nicole Jacques-Chaquin and Maxime Piéaud (Grenoble) Milion, 1993), p 147, and Cohn, pp 258-63 * Keith Thomas, Religton ad the Decline of Magre (New York Scr chap 3. and Stast Clark. Thenking with Demon. The Idew of Wate he raft a Europe (Oxford Clarendon, 1997) pp 360-62 2S J Barnett. fdol Temples and Crajts Priests. The Orginy of knleghtewment Ant cfercatrym (Houndnulls and London MacMillan, 1999} p 107 © On this caricature of ritual see Douglas. Natural Simbods, chap 1 Peter Burke, “The Repudiation of Ritu sanly Modern Eutope.” in The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern aly (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1987), pp 223-38. fonathan Z, Smith, Drudgery Divine On the Comparisun of Early Christanities and the Religions of Late Annguin (Chicago University of Chicage Press. 1991), esp pp b= 46, Bell, Rizal Perspectives and Dimenvums. py 253-67, and Barnett. chap 6 On scatological and de monologival charac terrzehions of Cathohe cult m early Protestantism, see Philip M. Soergel Wondrous in His Saints Counter-Reformation Propaganda m Bavaria (Berkeley Univer sity of Califorma Press, 1993}, pp 60-69. 152-58 ers. 1971), ny Modern Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved362 Accusation and Atrocity Whereas Catholic liturgy was often the subject of ludic inversions and parodies in the medieval and early modern periods, the image of the Black Mass differs from these festival forms through its more sinister pomp and pretense and its “magical” investment in formalized gestures. In this and other caricatures of Cathole Inturgy, the formalized ritual functions as an instrument of subterfuge—kceping Us participants in thrall to the priest- hood. Increase Mather describes how, during a medieval siege, “the Popish Priests undertook by Conjuration to obtain Water. The Magical Ceremonies by them observed were most hornd and ridiculous. For they took an Asse. and put the Sacrament of the Eucharist into his Mouth, sang Funeral Verses over him, and then buried him alive before the Church Ay John Wesley put il, a greedy priesthood’s seductive “arts... doors.’ were practised upon the ignorant devotion of the simple. In the contemporary SRA panics. the formalist model of evil ritual came to imply brainwashing and the broader conspiracies that brainwash- ing techniques were popularly feared to serve. ay in the “cult structure” alleged in one professional manual: The power that exists in Satanie (and Luctterian) cults 1s reportedly reflected in an orgamved hierarchy with incremental ranks, These postions may vary somewhat from one group to another, but some which appear common include the following: page, knig h priest (or high priest- ess}, king for queen), savior, and god (Sometimes goddess.) As one increases hl. priest (or priestess), prince (or princess). hig in tank one 1s taught more about the prog: amming cues or “triggers” used in cer- emomies with the other followers of the cult Some of these tnggers are relatively genene and thus can be used with a relatively kage number of people - Those who merease im rank ae not only taught a vanety of inggermg sumult that they can use in controling others (via such programming methods), but they are also deprogrammed so that the responses to these lower-level generic cues are less powerful Thus, survivors who are higher ranking m the Satamie (and sim- alar) cults are “trained” with more highly specite and idiosynerate programming cues so that the mayonty of other members will not readily have control over them. Such control remains with the elite, who are higher mn rank and skill, According to the formalist legacy. then. ritual intrinsically signifies mind control and, hence, a subversive institution that tries to manipulate the innocent SH Increase Mather. An Lysay Jorthe Recordag of Hlustrrous Providence (1684), chap. 4 p 127 John Wesley. Camene feclesusticat Histon (London, (781). 1262. quoted in Barnett, p 11S On iuche myersions of Catholic liturgy. see Dominique Lesourd, “Culture ante et culture populaite dans la noythologie de fu sorcellerte " Anagram 3/4 (1973): 63— 79.Clath Hunking wiih Denvons, chaps. 2-6 and further on symbolism in carnal, Ingvild Solid Gulhus. “Cammy in Religion ‘The Feast of Fools in Fiance? Nummer 37, no. 1 (1990 2-52 Nobhitt and Perskin Gn Lahore p15 Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 363 Both these traceable models or clusters of themes express a suspicion of ritual—or. in the absence of the term, of gesture and religious perfor mance—such that the category ritual comes to imply a dangerous domain of behavior even before it 1s applied to a referent. That is, referring to a new or peripheral religious movement's ritual tends to imply its capacity for dangerous frenzy, hierarchical mind control, and expluitation; and pro- pounding a notion of ritual abuse points to the Bacchantic or formalist or other evil excesses that produce the abuse under discussion. One might say that the absence of any evidence for such Satamst cults or rituals as abuse experts allege places in particularly stark relief the term “ritual’s” negative associations in modern culture. IV. SCENARIOS OF RITUAL AS VPROCITY IN ACADEMIC RELIGIOUS. sTUDI Has academic religious studies stood consistently aloof from these pop- ular notions of ritual? Indeed not: up until the most recent criticism of the category ritual by Mary Douglas, Jonathan Z. Smith, Catherine Bell, and others, religious studies instead contributed to the systematization of both Bacchantic and formalist models of ritual—that is, as theories of ritual." Given the legacy of Protestant historiography and Catholic heresiography in the history of religions, a taste for (respectively) formalist and Bac- chantic theories of ritual should not be entirely surprising. But in this way, religious studies has lent the SRA claims tacit approval and a considerable bibliography to undergird constructions of Satanism. In what follows, then, I will examine the reification of these models in the history of reli- gions. the anthropology of religion, and a similarly synthetic discipline with more explicit aims to influence society: psychohistory. A PROTESTANT HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE FORMALIST RITUAL MODEL The formalist model hay long influenced scholarship on comparative religions and, especially, the conceptualization of ancient religions, Pre- dominantly Protestant historians cast any elaborate ensemble of priest- hood, temple. and formal sacrifices (such as ancient Canaanite religion or even Judaism before the temple’s destruction) as decadent, spinitless, and conniving—that 1s, as proto-Catholic caricatures. Blood sacrifice becomes the violent, literalist. and “magical” act that was replaced spiritually with Christ; priesthoods become elitist worlds separate trom their societies bent on restricting ordinary supplicants from the sacred through their areane rites and control of texts. * See. eg, Douglas. Smuth. “The Bare Facts of Ritual.” und To Take Place, Fiward The- ory in Ritual, Bell, Ritual Theor, Rutwal Practice, and Ritual Perspectives and Dimenstons, sand Asad Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved364 Accusation and Atrocity The formalist model is especially captured in that intriguing, if taxo- nomically cloudy notion of the mystery cult—those ancient Mediterra- nean private religious associations dedicated (so the definitions go) to foreign gods, in which deference to alien priesthoods and acceptance of “oriental” beliefs would allow one to gain a revelation of the true god. While hierarchical and collective in nature—so the portrait proceeds— they are supposed to have catered to individual needs left unfulfilled in popular civic religion. “Tired of seeking truth’ Franz Cumont (a secular Catholic) wrote in 1911, “reason abdicated and hoped to find it in a revelation preserved in the mysteries of the barbarians.”"™ Consequently, “all the Oriental religions assumed the form of mysteries. Their digni- taries were at the same time pontiffs of the Invincible Sun, fathers of Mithra, celebrants of the taurobolium of the Great Mother, prophets of Isis; in short, they had all utles imaginable. In their initiation they re- ceived the revelation of an esoteric doctrine strengthened by their fer- vor. What was the theology they learned? Here also a certain dogmatic homogeneity has established itself. ‘aith was no longer instinctive and impulsive, for erudition and reflection had reconstructed the entire theology.”35 Yet (the classic portrait continues) there lurked beneath the mysteries’ austere philosophical systems and cosmic promises the potential for Bacchantic excesses of the most violent sort: Just as a superticial observation might lead to the belief that the theology of the last pagans had reverted to its origin. so at first sight the transformation of the ritual might appear ke a return to savagery, With the adopuon of the Oriental mysteries barbarous, cruel and obscene practices were undoubtedly spread, as for instance the masquerading in the guise of animals in the Mithraic initiations, the bloody dances of the gall of the Great Mother and the mutilations of the Syrian priests Nature worship was originally as “amoral” as nature itself, But an ethereal spiritualism ideally transfigured the coarseness of those primitive customs The taurobolium, a disgusting shower-bath of luke-warm blood, had become a means of obtaining a new and eternal life: the ritualist ablutions were no longer external and material acts. but were supposed to cleanse the soul of its impurities and to restore its original innocence; . Paganism had become a school of morality, the priest a doctor and director of the conscrence. Mystery cults have thus tended to be generalized in scholarship as bloody (invoking the self-castrations and alleged “blood-showers” in the ¥ Franz Cumont, Ortental Religions in Roman Paganiym (London Routledge, 1911: reprint. New York Dover, 1956). p 6 On Cumont’s alliances with Protestant scholarsby see Cormne Bonnet, “Franz Cumont et les risques du métier d° historien des religions. Hieroy 5 (2000), 22-24 * Ibid . pp. 205-6. © Tid pp. 208-9, Compare Robert Turean, The Culty of the Roman Empire, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford and Cambridge Blackwell, 1996), pp 18-22 Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 365 cult of Cybele), secretive (invoking the cult of Mithras). or ridiculous (invoking the Isis or Eleusis cults and their processions according to Roman authors).*? A portrait is created of pretentious hierarchies—de- scendants of the crudest foreign orgiastic cults—that seduced initiates with secrecy, theater, incomprehensible languages and philosophies, and promises of “salvation” all liberally mixed with magical spells. More recent critical appraisals of these religious associations and their remains have shown much more complex and considerably less sensational forms. of ritual expression." But in these scholarly depictions of the mystery cult, a model of ritual at best unsavory and at worst evil has gained legit- imacy through its application to ancient religions (especially in Protestant circles), allowing scholars and pseudoscholars a picture of a secret and con- spiratorial counterchurch that might reproduce itself and commit atroci- ties over centuries. B. ORGIASTIC VIOLENCE IN PRIMITIVE RELIGION: THE LEGITIMATION OF BACCHANTIC RITUAL MODELS ‘holar- ship that first achieves respectability with the nineteenth-century Semitist W. Robertson Smith. who drew upon a late antique Greek source. At some point in the fifth century, an anonymous Sinai monk (now designated Pseudo-Nilus) described a camel sacrifice among an Arab tribe that was. at the time launching attacks on the Sinai monasteries.” His account of these attacks was sensationalist in a way typical to literature of the period. But Robertson Smith found a particular resonance in the Pseudo-Nilus account, and on its basis he developed a theory of primitive religion: that communal sacrifices of totem animals represented the central and binding religious act at the earliest religious stage. For this reason he recounted the camel sacrifice-—the archetypal primitive rite---with particular verve: The Bacchantic model is also preserved in a stream of religious s ‘The camel chosen as the vicum is bound upon a rude altar of stones piled together, and when the leader of the band has thrice led the worshippers round the altar in a solemn procession accompanied with chants, he inflicts the first wound, while the last words of the hymn are still upon the lips of the congregation, and in all * Such portraits of mystery cults still dominate Walter Burkert’s Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1987) 8 Smith, Drudgery Divine. pp 31~46. ct Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Festament 1° History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistre Age (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), pp. 196-203, tor useful criticisms of the concept af mystery cult See more recent appraisals of these religious associations and their ritualy by. € g.. Richard Gordon, “Who Worshipped Muthras?” Journal of Roman Archaeology 7 W994) 459-74; Philippe Borgeaud, “Taurobolion,” in Avvu hten griechischer Riwale, ed Puts Graf (Stuttgart and Leipng. Teubner, 1998), pp_18 1-98 ton the cult of Cybele), and Frangoise Dunand, fs Mere des Dreux (Paris Editions Errance, 2000), pp 101-40 (on the vult of Its) Pseudo-Nilus Ancyranus. Varratones de cucde monucherum in monte sina ed Fabricius Conca (Leipzig. Teubner, 1982), chap 3. see 12-13 asset Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved366 Accusation and Atrocity haste drinks of the blood that gushes forth. Forthwith, the whole company fall on the victim with their swords, hacking off pieces of the quivering flesh and devour- ing them raw with such wild haste that [in a short matter of ume]... the entire camel, body and bones. skin, blood and entrails. 1s wholly devoured. The plain meaning of this is that the victim was devoured before ls life had left the still warm blood and flesh . . and that thus in the most literal way all those who shared in the ceremony absorbed part of the victim's life into themselves One sees how much more forcibly than any ordinary meal such a rite expresses the establishment or confirmation of a bond of common life between the worshippers. and also, the blood 1s shed upon the altar itself, between the worshippers and their god. Here is clearly a Bacchantic image of ritual: the group reduced to mind- less and bestial acts of violence in the rite (as opposed to the normal meal) in order to achieve communion with a god. Interestingly, one can perceive the historical filiation of this image as Pseudo-Nilus reports it with various caricatures of foreigners’ ritual conventional to novels and historiography in the ancient world.*! In its original literary context such an image of ritual savagery would have contributed toward an exouc and frightening picture of the local Arab tribes currently attacking the monks. Robertson Smith, however, gives new authority to the ancient model of ritual atroc- ity, casting it as the archetype of communal ritual. He describes the ritual in terms that simultaneously admire the overwhelming ecstasy of the sac- rificial meal and reject it as primitive. historically distant. In this way, just as ancient stereotypes of race came to be systematized in nineteenth- century anthropology, so Robertson Smith turned an ancient, spurious, and exoticizing picture of Arab culture into the basis of scientific specu- lation on the origin of religion.’ And the speculation did take hold although twentieth-century anthro- pology has tended to reject the historicity of the camel sacrifice, ay well as “W Robertson Smith, Lectures on she Religion of the Semutes (New York Appleton, 1889), p 320 41 For example, Achilles Tats. Leu ippe and Cltephon 3.15 5, Lollnanos. Phoinkrka in Anctent Grek Novels. The Fragments, ed Susan A’ Stephens and John J. Winkler (Princeton. NJ Princeton University Press. 1995), pp. 314-57. Cassius Dio 68.32, 72.4 See important discussions at these tepor by Authur Darby Nock. “Greek Novels and Egyp- toan Religion.” in Essay on Religion and the Anctent World, ed Z Stewart (Oxford. Claren- don, 1972), -170-71: Jack Winkler, “Lolhanos and the Desperadoes.” Journal of Hellente Studies 100 (1980) 155-81. McGowan in 26 above), esp pp 425-27, and Rives (n 26 above) Compare the somewhat more credulous perspective of Albert Henrichs, “Pagan Ri val and the Alleged Crimes of the Early Christians.” in Xyriaken, vol 1, ed Patrick Granfield and Josef A Jungmann (Munster Aschendorfl, 1970), pp 18-35, esp_pp. 26, 33. © Mircea Eade, Occnitivin, Witch raft, and Cultural Fashions Essays m Comparative Religions (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1976). pp 6-8. Bell, Retwal- Perspec- ines and Dimensions (24 abover. pp 261-62. # See Sander Gilman, “The Hottentot and the Prosutute Toward an Ieonography of Female Sexuality.” in his Difference and Pathology Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (ithaca. NY . and London Cornett University Press. 1985). pp 76-108. esp p. 83. “Buffon, the French naturalist, eredited the black with a lasctvious, apelike sextial appetite, introducing a commonplace «if early travel literature into a pyeudoscientific context.” Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 367 Robertson Smith's theory that religion revolved around a “totemic sac- tifice.” Robertson Smith's idea of an orgiastic “totemic feast’ primal rite and essence of religion-—what served to bind members of a group in supernatural allegiance—came to influence early social anthropol- ogists. Emile Durkheim's concept of “collective effervescence” in ritual events, for example, extended to the reversal of sexual norms ‘The effervescence often becomes so intense that 1t leads to outlandish behavior: the passions unleashed are so torrential that nothing can hold them. People are so far outside the ordinary conditions of life, and so conscious of the fact. that they feel a certain need to set themselves above and beyond ordinary morality, The Sexes come together in violation of the rules governing sexual relations, Men exchange wives. Indeed. sometimes incestuous unions, in normal times judged loathsome and harshly condemned, are contracted in the open and with impunity If itty added that the ceremonies are generally held at night. in the must of shad- ows pierced here and there by firelyzht. we can casily imagine the effect that scenes like these are bound to have ont the mindy of all those who take part7* Durkheim's portrait of primitive ritual here reflects some of the fantas- tic elements of the Bacchantic model. Even if the scenario he imagined was not evil, it represented the orgiastic and sexually amoral degrees to which human groups in their primal state might bring themselves during ritual events, So also Victor Turner. echoing Durkheim, asserted that coun- termoral acts like incest, cannibalism, and bestiali rituals, as they are depicted in mythology, as expressions y are enacted im some not... of law and custom but of unconscious cravings which stand opposed to the norms on which socal bonding seculatly depends—to the rules af exogamy and the prohibition of incest, to those enjoining respect for the bodily person of others. to veneration of elders, and to detinitions that class men differently ftom animals... [Such mtualy serve] to arouse a gross quantity of affect—even of lent affect—only to attach this quantum of affect divested of moral quality. sn a later phase of a great ritual, to hei snd legitimate goals and values. with con- sequent restoration of mora’ quality, but this time postive instead of negative.” For Turner, ritual itself allows the enthusiastic reversal of the most basic social norms. whether in order to bolster those norms after the completion 4 See EE Evans-Pritchard. Theortes of Primitive Region (Oxtord Clarendon, 1965), pp 52-53, Bhade. Occutiyn, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions. pp 5-*. and Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Domestication of Saenitice.” in Violent Orvemy Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, ed Robert G Hammerton-Kelly (Stantord, Calf, Stanford University Press. 1987), pp 191-208 'S Emile Durkheim. Lhe Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, wan Kaien E. Fields (New York: Pree Press. 1995 [1912 p 218, Onginally published as Les Fevmey élemen fairey de la \1e religietve ke s\steme totenique en Ausinute (Paris lean, 1912) “Victor Turner “Passages, Margins. and Poverty.” in his Dramnas, Fiekd’, and Meta phors Sembotic Aco on Hunan Society Uthaea, NY. and London Comet University Press. L974, p 257 a Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved368 Accusation and Atrocity of the ritual inversion or simply to experience the sacredness in antistruc- ture uiself. Turner's own interest in antistracture led him consistently to downplay the order in those ritual periods he regarded as disorder.” This tendency in socral anthropology to regard collective effervescence and disorder ay the most basic expression of religious sentiments cannot be entirely attributed to the influence of the Pseudo-Nilus passage Durkheim researched his theories, and Turner did his fieldwork. But each of these figures found resonance in the notion of ritual as that point when humans launched themselves into varying degrees of amoral enthusiasm. Ritual became the space opened for dramatic moral reversal (© TEGITIMIZING THE BACCHANTIC MODIT IX HISTORY. RESEARCH ON ANTINOMIAN LIBERTINISM A more pronounced dialectic between spurious ritual data and the fantasy of ritual ay potential moral reversal appears in modern scholarship on ancient Jewish and Christian heterodoxies like Gnosticism. In this case, ographers have led some schol- ars 10 View images of Bacchantie ritual not as evidence of primal religious Sentiments, as did Robertson Smith and Durkheim, but rather as deliberate expressions of an actual deology: antinomian libertinism. Before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library and other stores of authentic Gnostic and Manichiean writings. scholars of Gnosticism relied largely on descriptions of early Christian heterodoxies by outsiders Epiphanius. and Augustine. These ancient authors fo- cused on a belief. current among some Gnostic groups, that the creator however, credulous uses of ancient here: such as Trenacus, and law-giving god of the Jewish Bible was an evil demiurge who had enslaved human souls—the divine lights of the true God—within fleshly prisons. Then this evil demiurge had added to our spiritual confinement the special laws and traditions conveyed in the Bible. such that law and adition served ay chains to true knowledge and salvation. For the early Christian heresiographers. the logical expression of such a belief would be the deliberate inversion of all conceivable social mores. especially those sexual, culinary. and domestic. The resulting tableaux of perversity among these writers not coincidentally echoed ancient xenophobic tableaux of ahen cultures such ay those underlying the Pseudo-Nilus passage dis- cussed above: the heretic, bke the ahen, 1 a cannibal and pervert who engages 1m unspeakable and irrational acts: consequently he is not human. ‘or example, Epiphamius describes Gnosue ritual in pornographic terms + On ermiques of Turner's funchonalst juxtaposition of ntual anistructure to normative soenil structure. see Joh D Kelly and Martha Kaplan, “History, Structure, and Ritual,” Annual Rerten of Anthropologs 19 (1990) 1639 Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 369 that would have similarly conveyed the participants’ utter inhumanity to a late antique reader: ‘Them very liturgy they defile with the shame of promiscunty, consuming and con- taminating themselves with human and unclean flesh, LAt their feasts") They sct out an abundance of meat and wine, even if they are poor. Having made their banquet from this and so to speak filled their veins to satiety. they proceed to arouse themselves The man, moving away from the woman, Says to his woman “Arise, hold the love feast with your brother” And the pitiful pair, having made love... then proceed to hold up their blas- phemy to heaven, the woman and the man taking the secretion from the male into their own hands and standing looking up to heaven They hold in their hands the impurity and pray... And -hen they consume it, partaking of their shamefulness, and they say. “This 1s the body of Christ and this 1s the Pasch for which our bodies, suffer and are forced to contess the passton of Christ.” They do the same with what 1s of the woman, when she bas the flow of blood collecting the monthly blood of impurity from her, they take 1 and consume it together in the same way. Although they have sex with each other, they forbid the hegetting of children, They are eager for the act of corruption not in order to engender children, but for the pleasure. Buti. the woman hecomes pregnant, th n listen to something even more dreadful which they dare to do. Extracting the letus at whatever time they choose to do the operauon, they tke the aborted intant and pound it up in a mortar with a pestle, and, mixing in honey and pepper and some other spices and sweet oils so as not to hecome nauseous, all the members of that herd of swine and dogs gather together and each partakes with bis finger of the crushed up child They dare to do other dreadtul things ay well. When they fall into a frenzy among themselves. they soil their hands with the shame of their secretion, and rising, with defiled hands pray stark naked." Through this litany of perversions and reversals. Epiphantus asserts that such orgiastic excesses dramatize certain beliefs that are distinctive for their subversivenesy #? These beliefs are “antinomian” —opposed to moral law—and signify group members’ “libertinism”—freedom from the mo- rality of this world Although most scholars today dismiss these heresiographical tableaux of perversity as polemical fopoi contradicted historically by Gnostic writings * Epiphamuus of Salamis, Panurion 26 43-5 7, tans Philip R. Amidon, in The “Panar- ton” of St. Epiphanuus, Bishop of Salamis. Selectedt Paysage (New York: Oxtord University Press, 1990), pp 76-77 * Allegations of cannibaltwn and sexual perversion prior to Epiphanius ate even more explicitly Bacchanuc. See.e g Irenaeus ut Lyons. Against Heresiey 16 3. 1 234, as well as second-century allegations against Christians, © Christan sources: Manueaus Felix, Octavius 95-6. Athenagoras, Legaiy 41. 31, Tertulhan, Ad wvarem 24-5, Excellent discussions of these themes of disorder and unmoraitty ean be found in the sources fisted in nal ‘Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved370 Accusation and Atrocity themselves.*” some important midcentury historians of religions found this notion of antinomian libertinism captivating in itself. And in suspend- ing the critical sensibilities that such tableaux as Epiphanius's should de- mand, these historians show a tendency to bring preconceived notions of ritual’s potentially chaotic nature to historical data that, critically read. do not support such a notion. Ritual thus once more becomes the temporal and performative circumstance when morality is overturned and reversed— sometimes orgiastically, sometimes systematically. Hans Jonas, for example, viewed the Gnostics’ alleged libertinism as the quintessential expression of an antiworldly philosophy Here we have, beyond the mere indifference [toward morality] of the “sub- jectivist™ argument and beyond the merely permissive privilege of freedom, a positive metaphysical interest in repudiating allegiance to all objective norms and thus a mouve for their outright violation. Even this is not the whole story of gnostic libertinism. Beyond the motive of defiance, we find sometimes the freedom to do everything turned into a positive obligation to perform every kind of action, with the idea of rendering to nature its own and thereby exhausting its powers, The idea that in sinning something like a program has to be completed, a due ren- dered as the price of ulumate freedom, 1s the strongest doctrinal reinforcement of the ltbertinistic tendency inherent in the gnostic rebellion ay such and turns it into a positive prescription of immoralism, Sin as the way to salvation, the theological inversion of the idea of sin nscli—here 15 one of the antecedents of mediaeval Sa si anism Mircea Eliade too saw a compelling coherence in the idea of libertine ritual, even while admitting that the heresiologists’ writings bore all the markings of ancient caricature. Libertinism must have transpired, he argued, because it would have expressed the archetypal religious desire to return to the paradisical state it illo tempore. So also Gershom Scholem, the preeminent scholar of Jewish mysticism writing in the same period, proposed in his essay “Redemption through Sin” that some extreme post- Gnostic Jewish mystics expressed their conviction in a messianic era that “" Kurt Rudolph. Gnows The Nature and History of Gnosticism, trans and ed Robert MeLachlan Wrlson (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983). pp. 247-63: Michael Allen Wilhams, Rethurking “Gnosticism”. An Argument for Dismantling a Dubtous Category (Princeton, N.J - Princeton University Press. 1996). chap 8. Guy Stroumsa, “Gnostic Justice and Antinomuinist Epiphanes’ On Jusiree in Context.” in Barbarian Phulosophs: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Tubmgen Mohr-Siebeck. 1999), pp 246-57 °" Hans Jonas. The Gnostu Religion The Message of the Alien God and the Begumungs 0} Christianity, 2d ed (Boston. Beacon, 1963), pp 273,274 See Michael Waldstein, “Hans Jonas Construct Gnosticism’. Analysts and Critique ” Journal of Early Christian Studies 8, no _3 (2000): 341-72 © Mircea Eliade, “Some Observations an European Witcheratt.” in his Oceultism, Witch craft, and Cultural Fashions. pp 88-92 Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 371 transcended Torah through systematic antinomian behavior, particularly sexual perversity.** Like Eliade, Scholem admitted that almost all reli- gious sects in history had been accused of perversity by their opponents, yet he insisted that anunomian sexual rituals must nonetheless have occurred. For all three scholars, major figures in the development of the history of religions, a philosophical stance—transcendence of the world and its basic laws-—would lead to or require acts of systematic inversion of those laws. These acts would be performed deliberately, secretly, and only by select coteries of adepts, and they would either anticipate a “post- nomian” paradisical world to come or repeat a “prenomian” paradise in illo tempore.*5 As such, these theories of antinomian libertinism suggest a theory of ritual as the performative capacity to invert morality for ideological purposes.°° If Jonas, Eliade, and Scholem were the most articulate intellectual de- fenders of a historical antinomian libertinism, some more recent scholars have simply repeated the ancient heresiographical tableaux of perversity uncritically. Libertinism and ritual atrocities. as Jeffrey Burton Russell and Stephen Benko discuss them, represent something extreme yet inev- itable on the periphery of normal religion. Benko treats Epiphanius’s lurid allegations about Gnosties as basically credible and turns Jonas’s concept of existential rebellion into motivations of a more frank nature: Gnostics “wanted to demonstrate their complete freedom from physical inhibi tions” —the rationale of self-indulgence to which SRA proponents return © Gershom Scholem, “Redeimption through Sin.” in Fhe Messianic tdeu in Judaism (New York: Schocken. 1971), pp 78-141, esp pp_113=I4. 1am indebted to Elliott Wolfson, “Be- yond Good and Evil Hypernomnanism, Transmoralty, and Kabbahste Ethics” (paper presented at Dartmouth Regional Seminar in Jewish Studies. April 30, 2000) for this critique of Scholem’s essay. Steven Wasserstrom situates Scholem’s essay in a 1930 Parisian in- tellectual culture —including Georges Batuille and Dents de Rougemont--in which the writ- ings of de Sade. the behavior at French revolutionaries. and the phenomenon of the festival were taken to represent the transcendent force in tranygresston. see hiy Religion after Re- ligion. Gershom Schoiem. Mucea tdwade and Heny Corbin at Eranoy (Princeton, Nb Princeton University Press, 1999), chap 14 “! Scholem refers to family traditions among the Donmeh. a neo-Sabbutaian sect in modern Turkey, that their recent ancestors had engaged 1n orgies and adultery for religious, purposes. but these traditions as he reports them more likely pomt to communalistic sex- ality of to the appropriation ot negative caricatures. See Scholem “Redemption through p 114, and “The Crypto- lewash See! ot the Donmeh (Sabbatarans) in Turkey.” an his Messanw Idew, pp 142-66, esp pp 162-64 5° Compare Mircea Ehade, “Cosmie and Exchatologieal Renewal,” in his Mephistopheles land the Androgyne Studies w Religious Myth and Symbol, trans 1 M_ Cohen (New York: Sheed & Ward. 1965). pp 125-59 S6Ct E.R Dodds. The Greeky and the Irrational «Berkeley University of California Press, 1951), pp. 270-82, who comptes a great range of ethnographic data, some of obvi ously spuntous quality and relevance (et. p 274, nn 26-28), to yusuty the historical veracity of the violent and orgiastne behaviors that the Greek playwnght Euripides imputed to Dionystae maenads ss Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved372 Accusation and Atrocity repeatedly.’ For Russell, a medievalist, “human sacrifice, cannibalism, and sexual orgies had played an important part in religious ritual the world over... They can happen anywhere and at any time.” He admits that “when we encounter accounts of orgies we cannot be sure whether we are dealing with reality or merely with polemics,” but in so doing he holds open the likelihood of historical antinomian atrocities.** Indeed, in a 1993 interview Russell suggested that past episodes of ritual atrocity lent credence to the modern SRA allegations: “There are such vast numbers of reports from different civilizations of people practicing these rituals, of acrificing animals, sacrificing children, having sexual orgies. and so on—so why shouldn't these things be happening now? . . . [know person- ally that terrible things have been perpetrated in the name of Satanism."? Benko and Russell have often been cited by SRA experts and propo- nents for providing evidence of precursors to the predatory Satanic cults alleged in the late twentieth century.” Proponents of an SRA conspiracy often depend on such modern scholars in assembling their histories of child sacrifice, cultic violence, and subversive cults.*" It would, of course, be difficult to attribute the ritual models involved in the modern SRA panic entirely to concepts of ritual developed in the history of religions. And yet the rationales for antinomian libertinism that these scholars pro- vide. against well-documented reasons for regarding such allegations ay ancient caricatures, suggests that the notion of ritual as potentially orgiastic, bloody. and amoral held an allure beyond the evidence itself. ‘Their rationales, that 18, arise from an a priori assumption that such perverse rituals must have taken place or that there is no intrinsic reason to be skeptical of their reports (as the literature of ancient polemic and xenophobic caricature would warrant). Historical rationalization thus proceeds along speculative lines: “Assuming there is some historical truth to ritual perversions, how can | explain such rituals?” Notions of anti- nomian philosophy. of spiritual freedom, or of cosmic return come readily to the imagination. What is lacking 1 any kind of dependable historical or © Stephen Benko. Pagan Rome and the Larly Christums (Bloomington Indian Unt versity Press, 1984). p72 St Jeffrey Burton Russell. Witt licruft in the Muddle Ages (Secaucus. N J. Citadel, 1972). pp 88, 89 On Russell's methodology, see Cohn (126 above). pp_ 121-24, and M.J Kephart, “Rationalists vy Romantics among Scholars of Wateheraft.” an Witchcraft and Sorcery, ed Max Marwick (Harmondsworth Penguin, 1982), pp. 328-30 © Leste Bennetts, * Nightmares on Main Street,” Vanity Faw (June 1993), p 50 © Sally Hill and Jean Goodwin, “Satanism Sumularities between Patient Accounts and Prenquisitin Historical Sources” Dissoctation 2 no 1 (1989) 40-41, Noblatt and Perskin (| above), pp. 134-35 ©! See, eg. Hill and Goodwin, Noblitt and Perskin, pp 128~33. and esp. Stephen A. Kent. “Diabolic Debates: A Reply to David Frankfurter and J S_La Fontaine,” Religion 24 (1994) 362, 364. 374. nm. 28. invoking Carlo Ginzburg and Giovanni Filoramo for the position that witches’ subbals and Gnosue libertine rites existed and should serve as histort- ccal precedents to contemporary Satanic eults Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 373 ethnographic data for such rituals or these putative rationales: and the parallels often adduced. by scholars and SRA proponents alike, from “primitive” or Asian cultures (“1eal” cannibals. “real” religious orgies. “real” human sacritices) tend to lack context or secure relevance. One is reminded of Evans-Pritchard’s characterization of Fraser and Tylor’s ap- proach to religious ongins as the “if I were a horse” method (“IT [were a primitive with only a sense of magical powers, what might lead me to imagine a god?").°* In this case. the intellectual reasoning would run. “If I were an ancient Chnstian/Jewish heretic and believed what Christian/ Jewish heretics seem to have believed about God and morality, then st stands to reason that | would engage in libertine acts as a way of showing my repudiation of God and morality.” or perhaps, “If | were a heretic and performed such ritual perversions, these are the reasons | would perform them." ‘The scholarship on antinomian hbertinism and its alleged appearances in Gnostic sects, Jewish messianic movements. various medieval heresies. and even modern mbilistic Satanism thus proposes that an idea so radical that it questions the religious or moral order must intrinsically infect its believers with the need io act against the religious and moral order —to celebrate and establish its inverse. And indeed. adherents are expected to establish that moral/rehgious inversion through enacting 1t “ritually.” Just as Epiphanius and other heresiographers promoted the idea that heretics must ritually express their putative antimoral beliefs, so much twentieth-century scholarship on these herestographers: makes sense of their shocking tableaux by elaborating the ideologies that might lead to such perversities. Ancient heresies, like primitive religiosity, have offered scholars (and the culture at large) ways to think about unrepressed sexuality, violence, and amorality —to imagine the extremes of behavior. D. PSYCHOHISTORY FROM PRIMAL, TO ESSENTIAL VIDLENCE IN RITUAL Robertson Smith and Durkheim utilized images of primitive totem ritual merely as examples of soctal dynamics that they viewed as essential to the phenomenon of religion. collective action, tribal celebration, the divinity in the group. But it was Sigmund Freud who, in his Totem and Taboo "2 Bvans-Pritchard (n 44 above), pp. 4. 43, 47 © See Willhams (n 50 above). p82 4 Compare Carl A Raschhe, Pamted Black From Drug Killings to Heavy Metal Alarming True Story of How Satanism ty Terroriciny Our Communities (san Francisco Harper & Row, 1990) who presumes a broad Satante conspiracy in contemporary culture on the busty that current nihilist. ideas popularized in youth media as “Satanie” must antninst- cally lead to Satanic cult atrocities The books and ideas of Friedenieh Nietzsche were like: wise reviewed ay infectiouy and intrinsically conduetve to amoral acts in ninetwenth-ventury Europe see Sander Gilman. “the Nietzsche Murder Case.” in his Difference mt Pathology (n 43 above), pp 59.75374 Accusation and Atrocity (1913), turned the example—indeed. the very camel sacrifice that Rob- ertson Smith described —into an original event, an orgiastic blood patri- cide from which all subsequent religion follows. “In the act of devouring {the futher]." Freud elaborates... they accomplished their identific: ton with him, and cach one of them acquired a portion of his strength. The totem meal, which is perhaps mankind's earliest festival, would thus be & repetition and a commemoration of this memorable and criminal deed, which was the beginning of so many things—of social organization, of moral restrictions and of religion. In thus combining the early anthropological theories of ecstatic totemue feasts with the committing of unspeakable crimes (patricide. cannibalism) in the course of that ecstasy, Freud effectively muddied the distinction between the illustrative case study and the evolutionary fantasy. Indeed, ay a putative event, Freud's descripuon of the primal scene reverts not to Robertson Smith (who used Pscudo-Nilus’s report as a preeminent example of basic religiosity) but to the late antique Pscudo-Nilus himself, who offered the story as documen- of the Araby’ subhuman culture, as well as to all the other ancient stories of alien cultural habits and of culture heroes’ crimes pre- lary evidene served in Greek and Roman literature “ Totem and Taboos free use ot historical supposition also recalls two letters in Freud's correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess trom 1897, in which | symptoms he was observing 1 patients at the ime—specifically, antecedents in the motifs of the witches’ Sabbat he sought historical antecedents to some of the hysteri Fam beginning to grasp an idea. 1 1y as though an the perversions, of which hysteria 1s the negative, we have before uy a remnant of a primeval sexual cult, East (Moloch. which once way-- perhapy sul isa relygion in the Semite Astarte) Perverse actions. moreover, are always the same meaningful and fashioned according (@ some pattern that someday will be understood higion with rites that are carried on secretly, and understand the harsh therapy of the witches’ judges. Connecting links abound. T dream, theretore. of primeval devil © Suemund Ereud, foten: aad fabon tans James Strachey (New York Norton, 1950), p 112. sce generally pp 132-61 © Poeudu-Nilts Conctides. “So Uns as the law of life and rehgion to the barbarians” (Preudo-Nilus. Narvaira, tn Conca, ed jn 39 above). chap 3, see 13-14. Eliade humself 1 highly critical of Ficus use ot the camel sactifice ory: see Oceultrsin, Watcheraft, and Cul- fural Fusions Or 42 abowed. pp ¥-5 On early critiques of Totem and Taboo, see Peter Gay. Brend \ Lite for Our Line (New York Norton, 188), pp. 327-38, and Robin Fox. “Toten aad Taboo Reconswiered ” 0 The Stic neal Studs of Mviiand Totemiym, ed Edmund Leach (London Tavistock 1967) pp lel 78 "Freud te Wilhelm Bless. Janus 24, 1897. Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhebn Press, trans JetTtey M- Masson (Cambnidge and London Harvard/Belknap, 1985), p 227 on which see Shentll Mulhern “Souvents de sabbats au XX* sivele*(n_ 27 above, pp TAP 88 Compare Freud Flies daanwary U7 1N97, Complete Leners, pp 224 Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 375 This fantasy, written fitteen years before Freud read Robertson Smith, offers further insight into his sense of religion and ritual as contexts for the expression of perverse impulses—in this case, their performance rather than repression, Under a veil of secrecy and carried on from gen- eration to generation, so Freud imagined, a “primeval devil religion” sane tioned orgiastic perversity and violence activities. Thus Robertson Smith's description of primal totemic sacrifice and its accompanying violence pro- vided an exciting confirmation of his hypotheses. In this way, Freud legitimized the fantastic image of primal cannibalisuc ec ethnography and history but rather for a growing professional subculture in which historical and religious materials mught be invoked. combined, and arranged only for their relevance to patients or theones of the self. This rendering of primal cannibalistic blood orgies ay an underlying theory of culture gained contemporary legitimation in the works of René Girard. who has written repeatedly of how “primitive societies abandon themselves, in their rituals, to what they fear most during normal perio and who has explicitly sought to revitalize Freud’s theory of violent ori- gins.” Religion exists, Girard proposes, to negotiate, humanize, and mythologize the tendency to orgiastic violence. But for Girard (as for Epiphanius, above) the image of primal orgiastic violence also serves the cause of religious orthodoxy He suggests that such violence-—especially as represented in the frenzied murder of a scapegoat—was integral to society up to the point of the Hebrew Bible and, even more, the Gospels and Christian revelation, which then exposed such rites ay futile and showed more sublimated routes to peace and social harmony than mur- der. Guard thus renders Freud's primal violence episode as preparatio evangelium: a division of history into stages of necessary violence and unnecessary violence exposed by the Church.”" Other scholars have invoked notions of violence and cannibalism at our historical or geographical peripheries to explain, for example. archaeo- logical data.’! But it is a historian of ancient Greek religion, Walter asies not for & Ernest Jones, The Lite and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York Baste 1955), 2:353, and 2350-60 in general Sce also Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimenvons in, 24 above). pp 12-14 © René Girard, Things Hudden since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metter (Stanford, Cahf Stanford University Press. 1987). p22. Compare René Girard, Viofence and the Sacred, trans Patrick Gregory (Baltimore and London Johns Hopkins University Press. 1977) chaps 4-5, 8. and on Gairard’s contribution to the psycho- analyte concept oF ritual, Beil, Ritual Ferspecitves and Dimensions, pp 15-16 °Y Garand. Violence and the Sax red, pp 298-60. and Thangs Hidden, pp. 32.141 J Bottum, “Girard among the Girardians” First Things 61 (March 1996) 42-45 " Most vividly by the anatomist Raymond Dart in his explanation of an early hominid site in South Africa “The blood bespattered, stiughter-gutted archives of human history accord with early universal cannibalism, with animal and human sacrificial practices or their substitutes in formalized rehgions and with the world-wide scalping. head-hunting, body mutilating and necrophilte practices of mankind 1n proctamng this common bloodlust differentiator, this predaceous habit this mark of Cam that separates man chetetieally from 280; and 2001 All Rights |376 Accusation and Atrocity Burkert, who has added the most extensive argumentation to what was, in Freud and Girard, simply a passionate insistence on violent origins. Asserting that “sacrificial killing is the basic experience of the ‘sacred.” Burkert argues that rituals are essentially veiled sacrifices, maintaining and recalling violent urges based in prehistoric hunting.’? (Thus Burkert offers an ethological and functional rationale for primal violence, unlike Girard, for whom homicide itself lies at the core.)”’ The archetypal ritual, which Burkert asserts still preoccupied ancient Greeks, involved a suc- cession of ritual stages: marking off the ritual space (with self-restrictive acts like celibacy and fasting). an emotionally climactic killing and dis- embowelling of a victim much as Robertson Smith described, followed by the restoration of social mores and bonds.” The tripartite structure recalls the ritual stages of Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner: but in “moving from an inhibited, labyrinthine beginning, through a terrifying midpoint, to a scrupulously tidy conclusion” Burkert’s ritual process revolves around the violent upsurge at the core”*—that what is unleashed and then restrained is the impulse to violence in particular. “A community bound by oaths is united in the ‘sacred shiver’ of awe and enthusiasm—the relic of an aggressive reflex that made the hairs bristle in a feeling of strength and readiness. This must then be released in an ‘act’: the sacrificial ritual provides the occasion for killing and bloodshed. . . . Sacrifice transforms us. By going through the irreversible ‘act’ we reach a new plane."7° More- over, this violent impulse. if not basically cannibalistic, has consistently through history extended itself to cannibalism, as well as to sexual license and even, Burkert infers from various ancient legends, the sacrifice of virgins.” ins anthropoidal relatives and allies him rather with the deadhest ot Carnivora. . Man's predecessors differed from hving apes in being confirmed killers. carnivorous creatures, that seized living quarries hy violence, battered them to death, tore apart their broken bod- tes. dismembered them hmb from limb, slaking their ravenous thirst with the hot blood of victims and greedily devouring Invad writhing flesh” (“The Predatory Transition trom Ape to Man." International Anthropological and Linguist Review 10 4 [1953] 207 209) Compare Raymond Dart, Adventures with the Missing Link (Philadelphia: Institutes Press, 1967). pp 191-92, 200-202. as well ay Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey’s co- gent remarks. Lucy The Beginnings of Humankind (New York Warner. 1981), pp 65-66 %2 Walter Burkert, Homo Necuns. The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrafictal Retwal and Myth, trans. Peter Bing (Berkeley: University of California Preys, 1983), quotation from p 3, " Compare Walter Burkert. “The Problem of Ritual Killing.” in Hammerton-Kelly, ed (44 above), p. 172 ™ Burkert, Homo Necans. pp 4-7 5 Iba. p. 12 % Tid . pp. 35, 40, * On cannibalism, see Burkert, Homo Necns, pp. 8. 18, and “The Problem of Ritual Killing.” pp. 175-76. On sexual license and virgin saenifices, see Burkert, Homo Necans, pp. 58-67 Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 377 Orgiastic sacrificial releases from constricting social mores. the ecstasy of blood spilling, cannibalism, virgin sacrifices—all that distinguishes Burkert’s elaborate “ritual tableau” from those imputed to contemporary Satanic cults is its normativity throughout cultures. And yet Burkert goes so far as to portray the Mdnnerbunden that maintained the violent sacri- fices as conspiratorial— almost “cult-like”—in nature. Indeed, their ini- tiates were often viewed as themselves sacrificial offerings.” Both Girard’s Violence and the Sacred and Burkert's Homo Necans had gained wide English readerships by the mid-1980s. Neither became a major source in SRA literature, perhaps because of the authors’ almost enthusiastic (rather than moralistic) portrayals of primal violence.” Yet it may not be coincidental that these attempts to reinvigorate turn-of-the- century fantasies of primal violent impulses with literary, archaeological, and ethological arguments gained academic popularity at approximately the same time as Satanic cult allegations were beginning to surface in the popular media and to be rationalized in mental health professionals’ writings. The same appeal of violent origins might strike biblical schol- ars looking for new ways of confronting crucifixion imagery and maver- ick abuse professionals confronting a spate of patients claiming sexual abuse.*” The most vivid crossover between the academic legacy of primal violence theories and SRA professionals has been located in the Journal of Psychohistory. Since the early 1990s. Bacchantic models of violent, orgiastic primal rites recalling Robertson Smith, Freud, Girard, as well as various notions of antinomian libertinism, have been repeatedly invoked in this forum to legitimize claims of Satanic cult abuse and subversion. Based on the editor Lloyd deMause’s central principles that “the history of humanity is founded upon child assault” and that psychohistory's mandate is to heal society of its repressed ills (particularly child abuse), the Journal of Psychohistory embraces SRA allegations as the latest mani- festation of ancient and deeply seated social evils.*! Articles by private therapists, psychiatrists, and freelance writers that offer elaborate scenar- ios of Satanic rituals link neatly with the editor's compressed histories of * See Burkert, Homo Necans, pp 20. 46 Burkert, Homo Necans, 15 cited 1n Hill and Goodwin (n. 60 above). p 43 *9 For example, Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly. Sacred Violence Paul's Hermeneunte of the Cross (Minneapolis. Fortress. 1992) ® Quotation from Lloyd deMause, “The History of Child Assault,” Journal of Pyycho- hustory 18, no 1 (1990). 1 Sve critical discussion of deMause’s activist psychohistory an Charles B, Strovier and Damel Otter. “The Growth of Psychohistory.” The Leader: Psvcho- Justorveal Essays, ed Charles B Straner and Damtel Offer (New York and London Plenum. 1985). pp. 63-64. and Henry Lawton. “Phe Field of Pyychohistory.” Journal of Pyvcho- Jastory 17, no 41990) 353-b4 See alse Sandra Bloom's mandate for pyychahistory m the service of clinical practice, “The Climcal Uses of Psychohistory.” Journal of Psvcho- Iustor 20, no, 31993) 259.66 Copyright © 2001378 Accusation and Atrocity child abuse, infanticide. child sacrifice, and incest from prehistory to the present.** Satanic cults, it is asserted, continue these atrocities out of a misguided primitive belief that they are necessary: whether to reduce guilt in new endeavors or to achieve magical power.*? In deMause’s tionale for Satanic cult atrocities, he returns vividly to the Bacchan- tic model: Cult abuse, like all sadistte acts, individual or group. is a sexual perversion whose purpose is achieving orgasm by means of a defense against severe fears of tegration and engulfment.. . . Only by reenacting cultic rituals can these deeply n- regressed individuals avoid castration and engulfment feary and reassure them- selves of their potency and separateness Groups are parucularly effective in achieving this traumatic reenactment. The individual identifies with the aggressor and the group and its leader become the murderous. engulfing mommy torturing the child, Actual castration is often inflicted on victims by cults. It 1s also sometimes inflicted upon cult members, who cut off their on fingers and offer them to Satan (o make him more potent. “Ht was considered an honor among satanists (o have one or more fingers missing,” says one cult member. Sometimes the phallus or the finger is actually eaten, an act very effective in restoring potency. The same principle hes behind all cannibahstic acts fof cults Tn fact, all cule rituals eventually aun at the restoration of lost potency This delusional absorption of children’s power has been the central group- fantasy behind all child sacrifice since the days when early civilizations sacrificed children to prevent the world from descending into chaos “4 DeMause adds a psychopathological rationale to the standard topoi of the Bacchantic ritual model to explain how urges to atrocity that should be repressed according to Freud's scheme or ritually approximated in Burk- ert’s scheme might continue today in full (if secret) ceremonial array. But the tableau of perversity stands in the same intellectual/fantastic tra ditions issuing from Robertson Smith through Freud and Girard: the emphasis on group reconstitution, collective absorption of power, canni- balism, and orgasm through rituals in which primal scenes of violence are reenacted. To be sure, the Journal of Psychohustory assumed no sig- * Issues of the Journal of Paxchofustory largely devoted to SRA inelude 21, no, 4 (19941; 22 no 3.(1995), and 24, no 2.(1996). Volume 24. no 2 (19961 includes an article by a par- ent of an alleged child- victim of SRA (Jeanne Hill, “Beheving Rachel.” pp. 132-46) and an- other by a freelance crime writer (Michael Newton, “Wattten in Blood’ A History of Human Sacrifice? pp 104—31) Compare also Lloyd deMause, “The History of Child Abuse.” Jour nal of Poychohistors 25, no. (1998) 216-36, exp_223 on eestatie Satanism * On reducing guilt, see deMause, “History of Child Abuse.” p_ 223, and on achieving magical power. see Gail Carr Feldman, “Satanic Ritual Abuse A Chapter in the History of Human Cruelty.” Journal of Pyvchohustory 22 no 3 (1995) 340-57 *! Lloyd deMause, “Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children.” Journal of Pyychohustory 21, no +1994) S10, S11 1. 512, where the author asserts that trance statey and group. merging with the leader are typical of SRA Copyright © 2001 All Rights ReservedHistory of Religions 379 nificant role in the hunt for Satanic cults or the prosecution of accused Satanists, remaining simply a forum for asserting the existence and larger historical purpose of Satanic cult subversion However. its authors’ views demonstrate how, in a modern, secular, and professional subculture, images of subversive cult ritual are not only conjured according to archaie fears of ecstatic blood orgies but are explicitly heirs to an intellectual history. We have seen severai incidences of convergence between Bacchantic models of violent or libertine ritual embraced in the religious studies academy and the Bacchantic models of abusive ritual promoted by SRA experts. Some scholars volunteered extensions of their historical fantasies of antinomian libertinism: “here.” suggests Jonas. “is one of the anteced- ents of medieval Satanism”: while Freud speculated that “a primeval sexual cult.” diabolical and secretive in nature, still continued in his time.* Others, like Girard and Burkert, describe primal sexual violence at the very core of religious culture, recalled or sublimated in every ritual. If such generalizations seem to resist the SRA proponents’ notion that such ritual atrocities are restricted to subversive cults rather than all religion, they nevertheless put violent, orgiastic, cannibalistic rites at the center of intellectual speculation about order. disorder. and evil in human culture. Once made the focus. such ritual atrocities can be theoretically imputed to the culture's periphery-~Afriew, Haiti, India or its ancient history —Gnostics. ancient child sacrifice, Aztee human sacrifice prehistory.*” The SRA proponents consequently draw on these same models to explain an evil hidden in society- and perpetrated as ritual. Thus they too invoke links to the acadennic notions of violent ritual. Satanic cult rituals, one proponent declares. reveal the operation of “an ancient secret societ with its own theology and hierarchy."** Another sees the continuation of ancient child-sacrifice cults in which “the assassination of children has always been a normative experience, perpetrated by ostensibly respectable individuals in the course of socially sanctioned ceremonies” Another explains SRA with a nod to ethnography: as a modern mutation of ancient shamanistic traditions into sorcery guilds that seek to enslave victims for OF its S See Jonay quotation at ST above y * Read theologically, Girard’ nouon allows that certain msguided culty might secretly practice sacrifices, beheving them vital tor religious consolidation even though Christan revelation hay made them superfluous * On the use of Hartan and Atricun tehgiony ay evidence for SRA ckunis, see Katchen and Sakheim (n 10 above), pp 21- 43, and Nobhitt and Perskin (n J above! chap 8 -°TRe African Connection”! On further attempts to link Satanism with Afro-Caribbean religions. see Thomas A Green. “Accusations af Satannsm and Racal Tensions in the Matamoros Cult Murdets. in Richardyon et 4!.edy in T above). pp 237 48 ** Hall and Goods m, p 4s. emphasis mine © Brett Kahr, “The Historical Foundations ot Ritual Abuse An Excavation of Ancient Infanticide.” 1n Sinason in above). p93 cud quotation at n 67 abor Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved380, Accusation and Atrocity ritual possession: and an elaborate two-part article published in the academic journal Religion argued that Satanic cult atrocities should be attributed to widespread groups on the margins of mainstream religions who draw license for bizarre rituals from ordinary. scripture.” Such authors return consistently to the notion that what occurs in Satanic cults 18 a primal violence, the evidence for and souree of which (it 1s argued) lie in contemporary third-world cultures or ancient human-sacrifice traditions. The loaded use of the word “ritual” in SRA. however. recalls the nega- tive sense that Protestant reformers and subsequent Protestant historiog- raphy have laid on the term. And the elaborations of the pseudo-Catholic Black Mass, together with the equation of ritual and brainwashing, in most SRA scenarios offer vivid dlustrations of the legacy of Protestant notions of ritual m the SRA panic.” Ve CONCLUSION Ritual. we know now, 18 & problematic concept in the study of religions. Since the provocative works of Mary Douglas, Jonathan Z. Smith, and Catherine Bell, we have come to a new awareness about the term’s ca pacity to 1solate practices [rom their context and to evaluate—not simply describe---cultural behaviors. In the case of cult-subversion myths, from ancient depictions of heresy Gand their xenophobic prototypes) through contemporary Satante cult Claims and the professionals who rationalize them. the term “ritual” achieves a special power in denoting evil inversion and stubs ersion of “our” soctal practices. That professionals have used the word “ritual” in the last decade to designate a type of child abuse sets in stark relief the ideological loading of the word. ritual is repetitive, ritual terrorizes, ritual uses empty symbols, ritual brainwashes. ritual involves blood sacrifices, ritual transforms parents into abusers, and ritual links the individual abuse situation with a broad underground conspiracy. From the curliest examples of the cull subversion myth. it is images of ritual that have allowed the advocates and accusers to mark out the boundaries of acceptable religion and morality But the developing field of history of religions bears considerable re- sponsibility for systematizing notions of perverse ritual—both Bacchantic and formalist types-—that otherwise tend to remain at the level of rumor and accusation. The last century’s scholarship on ritual and religion has shown a continual embracing of both Protestant suspicions of ritual and ancient herestographical fantasies ke Epiphanius and Pseudo-Nilus. University of New Hampslure % Noblit and Peishin. pp 113. 16,224, and Stephen A. Kent, “Deviant Seripturahsm and Ritual Satan Abuse, Part | Possible Judeo-Christian Influences.” Religion 23 (1993) 229 41. Compare Lloyd DeMause, “Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children.” p. 512, and Newton "On she continuty of Prowestant ant-Catholie caricatures in the SRA panic. see Philip Jenkins and Daniel Maiet-Kathin,” Oecuit Survivors Fhe Making ol Myth.” mn Richardson ehaleds pp 129 30 Copyright © 2001 All Rights Reserved