Daily Archives: November 21, 2022

Shape of a five-pointed star

A pentagram (sometimes known as a pentalpha, pentangle, or star pentagon) is a regular five-pointed star polygon, formed from the diagonal line segments of a convex (or simple, or non-self-intersecting) regular pentagon. Drawing a circle around the five points creates a similar symbol referred to as the pentacle, which is used widely by Wiccans and in paganism, or as a sign of life and connections. The word "pentagram" refers only to the five-pointed star, not the surrounding circle of a pentacle.

Pentagrams were used symbolically in ancient Greece and Babylonia. Christians once commonly used the pentagram to represent the five wounds of Jesus. Today the symbol is widely used by the Wiccans, witches, and pagans. The pentagram has magical associations. Many people who practice neopaganism wear jewelry incorporating the symbol.

The word pentagram comes from the Greek word (pentagrammon),[1] from (pente), "five" + (gramm), "line".[2]Pentagram refers to just the star and pentacle refers to the star within the circle specifically although there is some overlap in usage.[3] The word pentalpha is a 17th-century revival of a post-classical Greek name of the shape.[4]

Pentagram symbols from about 5,000 years ago were found in the Liangzhu culture of China.[6]

Early pentagrams have been found on Sumerian pottery from Ur circa 3500 BCE,[7]and the five-pointed star was at various times the symbol of Ishtar or Marduk.[8][9]

The pentagram was known to the ancient Greeks, with a depiction on a vase possibly dating back to the 7th century BC.[10] Pythagoreanism originated in the 6th century BC and used the pentagram as a symbol of mutual recognition, of wellbeing, and to recognize good deeds and charity.[11]

From around 300-150 BCE the pentagram stood as the symbol of Jerusalem, marked by the 5 Hebrew letters spelling its name.[12]

The word Pentemychos ( lit. "five corners" or "five recesses")[13] was the title of the cosmogony of Pherecydes of Syros.[14]Here, the "five corners" are where the seeds of Chronos are placed within the Earth in order for the cosmos to appear.[15][clarification needed]

In Neoplatonism, the pentagram was said to have been used as a symbol or sign of recognition by the Pythagoreans, who called the pentagram hugieia "health"[16]

The pentagram was used in ancient times as a Christian symbol for the five senses,[17] or of the five wounds of Christ. The pentagram plays an important symbolic role in the 14th-century English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which the symbol decorates the shield of the hero, Gawain. The unnamed poet credits the symbol's origin to King Solomon, and explains that each of the five interconnected points represents a virtue tied to a group of five: Gawain is perfect in his five senses and five fingers, faithful to the Five Wounds of Christ, takes courage from the five joys that Mary had of Jesus, and exemplifies the five virtues of knighthood,[18] which are generosity, friendship, chastity, chivalry, and piety.[19]

The North rose of Amiens cathedral (built in the 13th century) exhibits a pentagram-based motif. Some sources interpret the unusual downward-pointing star as symbolizing the Holy Spirit descending on people.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and others perpetuated the popularity of the pentagram as a magic symbol, attributing the five neoplatonic elements to the five points, in typical Renaissance fashion.

By the mid-19th century, a further distinction had developed amongst occultists regarding the pentagram's orientation. With a single point upwards it depicted spirit presiding over the four elements of matter, and was essentially "good". However, the influential but controversial writer liphas Lvi, known for believing that magic was a real science, had called it evil whenever the symbol appeared the other way up.

The apotropaic use of the pentagram symbol in German folklore (called Drudenfuss in German) is referred to by Goethe in Faust (1808), where a pentagram prevents Mephistopheles from leaving a room (but did not prevent him from entering by the same way, as the outward pointing corner of the diagram happened to be imperfectly drawn):

Mephistopheles:

Faust:

Mephistopheles:

Wu Xing (Chinese: ; pinyin: W Xng) are the five phases, or five elements in Taoists Chinese tradition. They are differentiated from the formative ancient Japanese or Greek elements, due to their emphasis on cyclic transformations and change. The five phases are: Fire ( hu), Earth ( t), Metal ( jn), Water ( shu), and Wood ( m). The Wuxing is the fundamental philosophy and doctrine of traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture.[24]

Based on Renaissance-era occultism, the pentagram found its way into the symbolism of modern occultists. Its major use is a continuation of the ancient Babylonian use of the pentagram as an apotropaic charm to protect against evil forces.[25] liphas Lvi claimed that "The Pentagram expresses the mind's domination over the elements and it is by this sign that we bind the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the spectres of water, and the ghosts of earth."[26] In this spirit, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn developed the use of the pentagram in the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, which is still used to this day by those who practice Golden Dawn-type magic.

Aleister Crowley made use of the pentagram in his Thelemic system of magick: an adverse or inverted pentagram represents the descent of spirit into matter, according to the interpretation of Lon Milo DuQuette.[27] Crowley contradicted his old comrades in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who, following Levi, considered this orientation of the symbol evil and associated it with the triumph of matter over spirit.

The five-pointed star is a symbol of the Bah Faith.[28][29] In the Bah Faith, the star is known as the Haykal (Arabic: "temple"), and it was initiated and established by the Bb. The Bb and Bah'u'llh wrote various works in the form of a pentagram.[30][31]

Haykal by the Bb written in his own hand.

An unidentified work of the Bb.

An unidentified work of the Bb.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is theorized to have began using both upright and inverted five-pointed stars in Temple architecture, dating from the Nauvoo Illinois Temple dedicated on 30 April 1846.[32] Other temples decorated with five-pointed stars in both orientations include the Salt Lake Temple and the Logan Utah Temple. These usages come from the symbolism found in Revelation chapter 12: "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars."[33]

Typical Neopagan pentagram (circumscribed)

Because of a perceived association with Satanism and occultism, many United States schools in the late 1990s sought to prevent students from displaying the pentagram on clothing or jewelry.[34] In public schools, such actions by administrators were determined in 2000 to be in violation of students' First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.[35]

The encircled pentagram (referred to as a pentacle by the plaintiffs) was added to the list of 38 approved religious symbols to be placed on the tombstones of fallen service members at Arlington National Cemetery on 24 April 2007. The decision was made following ten applications from families of fallen soldiers who practiced Wicca. The government paid the families US$225,000 to settle their pending lawsuits.[36][37]

The pentagram is the most notable and widespread symbol of Satanism.

The inverted pentagram is the symbol used for Satanism, sometimes depicted with the goat's head of Baphomet within it, which originated from the Church of Satan. In some depictions the devil is depicted, like Baphomet, as a goat, therefore the goat and goat's head is a significant symbol throughout Satanism. The pentagram is also used as the logo for The Satanic Temple, which also featured a goat's head.

The five-pointed star is a symbol of the Serer religion and the Serer people of West Africa. Called Yoonir in their language, it symbolizes the universe in the Serer creation myth, and also represents the star Sirius.[38][39]

The pentagram has been used in Judaism since at least 300BCE when it first was used as the stamp of Jerusalem. It is used to represent justice, mercy, and wisdom.

The pentagram is the simplest regular star polygon. The pentagram contains ten points (the five points of the star, and the five vertices of the inner pentagon) and fifteen line segments. It is represented by the Schlfli symbol {5/2}. Like a regular pentagon, and a regular pentagon with a pentagram constructed inside it, the regular pentagram has as its symmetry group the dihedral group of order 10.

It can be seen as a net of a pentagonal pyramid although with isosceles triangles.

The pentagram can be constructed by connecting alternate vertices of a pentagon; see details of the construction. It can also be constructed as a stellation of a pentagon, by extending the edges of a pentagon until the lines intersect.

A uniform truncated pentagram t{5/2} produces a doubly-wrapped pentagon with overlapping vertices and edges, {10/2}. A shallower truncation produces an isogonal figure, like this one with equally spaced vertices. A truncated retro-pentagram t{5/3}, or a quasitruncation, produces a decagram, {10/3}.

The golden ratio, = (1 + 5) / 2 1.618, satisfying

plays an important role in regular pentagons and pentagrams. Each intersection of edges sections the edges in the golden ratio: the ratio of the length of the edge to the longer segment is , as is the length of the longer segment to the shorter. Also, the ratio of the length of the shorter segment to the segment bounded by the two intersecting edges (a side of the pentagon in the pentagram's center) is . As the four-color illustration shows:

The pentagram includes ten isosceles triangles: five acute and five obtuse isosceles triangles. In all of them, the ratio of the longer side to the shorter side is . The acute triangles are golden triangles. The obtuse isosceles triangle highlighted via the colored lines in the illustration is a golden gnomon.

As a result, in an isosceles triangle with one or two angles of 36, the longer of the two side lengths is times that of the shorter of the two, both in the case of the acute as in the case of the obtuse triangle.

A pentagram can be drawn as a star polygon on a sphere, composed of five great circle arcs, whose all internal angles are right angles. This shape was described by John Napier in his 1614 book Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio (Description of the wonderful rule of logarithms) along with rules that link the values of trigonometric functions of five parts of a right spherical triangle (two angles and three sides). It was studied later by Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Several polyhedra incorporate pentagrams:

Orthogonal projections of higher dimensional polytopes can also create pentagrammic figures:

All ten 4-dimensional SchlfliHess 4-polytopes have either pentagrammic faces or vertex figure elements.

The pentagram of Venus is the apparent path of the planet Venus as observed from Earth. Successive inferior conjunctions of Venus repeat with an orbital resonance of approximately 13:8that is, Venus orbits the Sun approximately 13 times for every eight orbits of Earthshifting 144 at each inferior conjunction.[43] The tips of the five loops at the center of the figure have the same geometric relationship to one another as the five vertices, or points, of a pentagram, and each group of five intersections equidistant from the figure's center have the same geometric relationship.

The pentagram has these Unicode code points that enable them to be included in documents:

Read this article:

Pentagram - Wikipedia

Modern syncretic pagan religion

Wicca () is a modern Pagan religion. Scholars of religion categorise it as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon a diverse set of ancient pagan and 20th-century hermetic motifs for its theological structure and ritual practices.

Wicca has no central authority figure. Its traditional core beliefs, principles, and practices were originally outlined in the 1940s and 1950s by Gardner and an early High Priestess, Doreen Valiente. The early practices were disseminated through published books and in secret written and oral teachings passed along to their initiates. There are many variations on the core structure, and the religion grows and evolves over time. It is divided into a number of diverse lineages, sects and denominations, referred to as traditions, each with its own organisational structure and level of centralisation. Due to its decentralized nature, there is some disagreement over what actually constitutes Wicca. Some traditions, collectively referred to as British Traditional Wicca (BTW), strictly follow the initiatory lineage of Gardner and consider the term Wicca to apply only to similar traditions, but not to newer, eclectic traditions.

Wicca is typically duotheistic, worshipping and/or working with a Goddess and a God. These are traditionally viewed as the Triple Goddess and the Horned God, respectively. These deities may be regarded in a henotheistic way, as having many different divine aspects which can in turn be identified with many diverse pagan deities from different historical pantheons. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as the "Great Goddess" and the "Great Horned God", with the adjective "great" connoting a deity that contains many other deities within their own nature. Some Wiccans refer to the goddess deity as the "Lady" and the god deity as the "Lord"; in this context, when "lord" and "lady" are used as adjectives, it is another way of referring to them as a divine figure. These two deities are sometimes viewed as facets of a greater pantheistic divinity, which is regarded as an impersonal force or process rather than a personal deity. While duotheism or bitheism is traditional in Wicca, broader Wiccan beliefs range from polytheism to pantheism or monism, even to Goddess monotheism. Others view them as the Universal God and Goddess Who proceed from the One.

Wiccan celebrations encompass both the cycles of the Moon, known as Esbats and commonly associated with the Goddess (female deity), and the cycles of the Sun, seasonally based festivals known as Sabbats and commonly associated with the Horned God (male deity). An unattributed statement known as the Wiccan Rede is a popular expression of Wiccan morality, although it is not universally accepted by Wiccans. Wicca often involves the ritual practice of magic, though it is not always necessary.

Scholars of religious studies classify Wicca as a new religious movement, and more specifically as a form of modern Paganism. Cited as the largest, best known, most influential, and most extensively academically studied form of Paganism, within the movement it has been identified as sitting on the former end of the eclectic to reconstructionist spectrum.Several academics have also categorised Wicca as a form of nature religion, a term that is also embraced by many of its practitioners, and as a mystery religion. However, given that Wicca also incorporates the practice of magic, several scholars have referred to it as a "magico-religion". Wicca is also a form of Western esotericism, and more specifically a part of the esoteric current known as occultism. Academics like Wouter Hanegraaff and Tanya Luhrmann have categorised Wicca as part of the New Age, although other academics, and many Wiccans themselves, dispute this categorisation.

Although recognised as a religion by academics, some evangelical Christians have attempted to deny it legal recognition as such, while some Wiccan practitioners themselves eschew the term "religion" associating the latter purely with organised religion instead favouring "spirituality" or "way of life". Although Wicca as a religion is distinct from other forms of contemporary Paganism, there has been much "cross-fertilization" between these different Pagan faiths; accordingly, Wicca has both influenced and been influenced by other Pagan religions, thus making clear-cut distinctions between them more difficult for religious studies scholars to make.The terms wizard and warlock are generally discouraged in the community.In Wicca, denominations are referred to as traditions, while non-Wiccans are often termed cowans.

When the religion first came to public attention, it was commonly called "Witchcraft".[a] Gerald Gardnerthe man regarded as the "Father of Wicca"referred to it as the "Craft of the Wise", "witchcraft", and "the witch-cult" during the 1950s. Gardner believed in the witch-cult hypothesis, which has since been discredited. There is no evidence that he ever called it "Wicca", although he did refer to the collective community of Pagan witches as "the Wica" (with one c). As a name for the religion, "Wicca" developed in Britain during the 1960s. It is not known who precisely invented the term "Wicca" in reference to the religion, although one possibility is that it might have been Gardner's rival Charles Cardell, who was referring to it as the "Craft of the Wiccens" by 1958.[22] The first recorded use of the word "Wicca" appears in 1962, and it had been popularised to the extent that several British practitioners founded a newsletter called The Wiccan in 1968.

Although pronounced differently, the Modern English term "Wicca" is derived from the Old English wicca [witt] and wicce [witte], the masculine and feminine term for witch, respectively, that was used in Anglo-Saxon England. By adopting it for modern usage, Wiccans were both symbolically cementing their presumed connection to the ancient, pre-Christian past, and adopting a self-designation that would be less controversial than "Witchcraft". The scholar of religion and Wiccan priestess Joanne Pearson noted that while "the words 'witch' and 'wicca' are therefore linked etymologically,[] they are used to emphasize different things today."

In early sources "Wicca" referred to the entirety of the religion rather than specific traditions. In ensuing decades, members of certain traditions those known as British Traditional Wicca began claiming that only they should be termed "Wiccan", and that other forms of the religion must not use it. From the late 1980s onwards various books propagating Wicca were published that again used the former, broader definition of the word. Thus, by the 1980s, there were two competing definitions of the word "Wicca" in use among the Pagan and esoteric communities, one broad and inclusive, the other smaller and exclusionary. Although there are exceptions, among scholars of Pagan studies it is the older, inclusive use of the term which has gained wider usage. Conversely, in various forms of popular culture, such as television programs Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, the word "Wicca" has been used as a synonym for witchcraft more generally, including in non-religious and non-Pagan forms.[33]

Alongside "Wicca", two other names often used for the religion by its practitioners are "Witchcraft" and "the Craft". Using the word "Witchcraft" in this context can result in confusion both with other, non-religious forms of witchcraft as well as other religionssuch as Satanism and Luciferianismwhose practitioners also sometimes describe themselves as "Witches". Another term sometimes used as a synonym for "Wicca" is "Pagan witchcraft", although there are also other forms of modern Paganismsuch as types of Heathenrywhich also practice magic and thus could be described as "Pagan witchcraft". From the 1990s onward, various Wiccans began describing themselves as "Traditional Witches", although this term was also employed by practitioners of other magico-religious traditions like Luciferianism.

Theological views within Wicca are diverse. The religion encompasses theists, atheists, and agnostics, with some viewing the religion's deities as entities with a literal existence and others viewing them as Jungian archetypes or symbols. Even among theistic Wiccans, there are divergent beliefs, and Wicca includes pantheists, monotheists, duotheists, and polytheists. Common to these divergent perspectives, however, is that Wicca's deities are viewed as forms of ancient, pre-Christian divinities by its practitioners.

Most early Wiccan groups adhered to the duotheistic worship of a Horned God and a Mother Goddess, with practitioners typically believing that these had been the ancient deities worshipped by the hunter-gatherers of the Old Stone Age, whose veneration had been passed down in secret right to the present. This theology derived from Egyptologist Margaret Murray's claims about the witch-cult in her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe published by Oxford University Press in 1921;[41] she claimed that this cult had venerated a Horned God at the time of the Early Modern witch trials, but centuries before it had also worshipped a Mother Goddess. This duotheistic Horned God/Mother Goddess structure was embraced by Gardner who claimed that it had Stone Age roots and remains the underlying theological basis to his Gardnerian tradition. Gardner claimed that the names of these deities were to be kept secret within the tradition, although in 1964 they were publicly revealed to be Cernunnos and Aradia; the secret Gardnerian deity names were subsequently changed.

Although different Wiccans attribute different traits to the Horned God, he is most often associated with animals and the natural world, but also with the afterlife, and he is furthermore often viewed as an ideal role model for men. The Mother Goddess has been associated with life, fertility, and the springtime, and has been described as an ideal role model for women. Wicca's duotheism has been compared to the Taoist system of yin and yang.

Other Wiccans have adopted the original Gardnerian God/Goddess duotheistic structure but have adopted deity forms other than that of the Horned God and Mother Goddess. For instance, the God has been interpreted as the Oak King and the Holly King, as well as the Sun God, Son/Lover God, and Vegetation God. He has also been seen in the roles of the Leader of the Wild Hunt and the Lord of Death.[48] The Goddess is often portrayed as a Triple Goddess, thereby being a triadic deity comprising a Maiden goddess, a Mother goddess, and a Crone goddess, each of whom has different associations, namely virginity, fertility, and wisdom. Other Wiccan conceptualisations have portrayed her as a Moon Goddess and as a Menstruating Goddess. According to the anthropologist Susan Greenwood, in Wicca the Goddess is "a symbol of self-transformation - she is seen to be constantly changing and a force for change for those who open themselves up to her."

Gardner stated that beyond Wicca's two deities was the "Supreme Deity" or "Prime Mover", an entity that was too complex for humans to understand. This belief has been endorsed by other prominent practitioners, who have referred to it as "the Cosmic Logos", "Supreme Cosmic Power", or "Godhead". Gardner envisioned this Supreme Deity as a deist entity who had created the "Under-Gods", among them the God and Goddess, but who was not otherwise involved in the world; alternately, other Wiccans have interpreted such an entity as a pantheistic being, of whom the God and Goddess are facets.

Although Gardner criticised monotheism, citing the Problem of Evil, explicitly monotheistic forms of Wicca developed in the 1960s, when the U.S.-based Church of Wicca developed a theology rooted in the worship of what they described as "one deity, without gender". In the 1970s, Dianic Wiccan groups developed which were devoted to a singular, monotheistic Goddess; this approach was often criticised by members of British Traditional Wiccan groups, who lambasted such Goddess monotheism as an inverted imitation of Christian theology. As in other forms of Wicca, some Goddess monotheists have expressed the view that the Goddess is not an entity with a literal existence, but rather a Jungian archetype.

As well as pantheism and duotheism, many Wiccans accept the concept of polytheism, thereby believing that there are many different deities. Some accept the view espoused by the occultist Dion Fortune that "all gods are one god, and all goddesses are one goddess" that is that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are, respectively, aspects of one supernal God and Goddess. With this mindset, a Wiccan may regard the Germanic ostre, Hindu Kali, and Catholic Virgin Mary each as manifestations of one supreme Goddess and likewise, the Celtic Cernunnos, the ancient Greek Dionysus and the Judeo-Christian Yahweh as aspects of a single, archetypal god. A more strictly polytheistic approach holds the various goddesses and gods to be separate and distinct entities in their own right. The Wiccan writers Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone have postulated that Wicca is becoming more polytheistic as it matures, tending to embrace a more traditionally Pagan worldview. Some Wiccans conceive of deities not as literal personalities but as metaphorical archetypes or thoughtforms, thereby technically allowing them to be atheists. Such a view was purported by the High Priestess Vivianne Crowley, herself a psychologist, who considered the Wiccan deities to be Jungian archetypes that existed within the subconscious that could be evoked in ritual. It was for this reason, she said "The Goddess and God manifest to us in dream and vision."[58]Wiccans often believe that the gods are not perfect and can be argued with.

Many Wiccans also adopt a more explicitly polytheistic or animistic world-view of the universe as being replete with spirit-beings. In many cases these spirits are associated with the natural world, for instance as genius loci, fairies, and elementals. In other cases, such beliefs are more idiosyncratic and atypical; the prominent Wiccan Sybil Leek for instance endorsed a belief in angels.

Belief in the afterlife varies among Wiccans and does not occupy a central place within the religion. As the historian Ronald Hutton remarked, "the instinctual position of most [Wiccans]... seems to be that if one makes the most of the present life, in all respects, then the next life is more or less certainly going to benefit from the process, and so one may as well concentrate on the present". It is nevertheless a common belief among Wiccans that human beings have a spirit or soul that survives bodily death. Understandings of what this soul constitutes vary among different traditions, with Feri Wicca, for instance, having adopted a belief from Hawaiian religion that the human being has three souls.

Although not accepted by all Wiccans, a belief in reincarnation is the dominant afterlife belief within Wicca, having been originally espoused by Gardner. Understandings of how the cycle of reincarnation operates differ among practitioners; the prominent Wiccan Raymond Buckland for instance insisted that human souls would only incarnate into human bodies, whereas other Wiccans believe that a human soul can incarnate into any life form. There is also a common Wiccan belief that any Wiccans will come to be reincarnated as future Wiccans, an idea originally expressed by Gardner. Gardner also articulated the view that the human soul rested for a period between bodily death and its incarnation, with this resting place commonly being referred to as "The Summerland" among the Wiccan community. This allows many Wiccans to believe that mediums can contact the spirits of the deceased, a belief adopted from Spiritualism.

Many Wiccans believe in magic, a manipulative force exercised through the practice of witchcraft or sorcery. Many Wiccans agree with the definition of magic offered by ceremonial magicians, such as Aleister Crowley, who declared that magic was "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will", while another prominent ceremonial magician, MacGregor Mathers stated that it was "the science of the control of the secret forces of nature". Many Wiccans believe magic to be a law of nature, as yet misunderstood or disregarded by contemporary science, and as such they do not view it as being supernatural, but a part of what Leo Martello calls the "super powers that reside in the natural". Some Wiccans believe that magic is simply making full use of the five senses to achieve surprising results, whilst other Wiccans do not claim to know how magic works, merely believing that it does because they have observed it to be so.

During ritual practices, which are often staged in a sacred circle, Wiccans cast spells or "workings" intended to bring about real changes in the physical world. Common Wiccan spells include those used for healing, for protection, fertility, or to banish negative influences. Many early Wiccans, such as Alex Sanders, Sybil Leek and Alex Winfield, referred to their own magic as "white magic", which contrasted with "black magic", which they associated with evil and Satanism. Sanders also used the similar terminology of "left-hand path" to describe malevolent magic, and "right-hand path" to describe magic performed with good intentions;[69] terminology that had originated with the occultist Helena Blavatsky in the 19th century. Some modern Wiccans, however, have stopped using the white/black magic and left/right-hand-path dichotomies, arguing for instance that the colour black should not necessarily have any associations with evil.

Scholars of religion Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge claimed in 1985 that Wicca had "reacted to secularisation by a headlong plunge back into magic" and that it was a reactionary religion which would soon die out. This view was heavily criticised in 1999 by the historian Ronald Hutton who claimed that the evidence displayed the very opposite: that "a large number [of Wiccans] were in jobs at the cutting edge [of scientific culture], such as computer technology."

"Identification as a witch can[] provide a link to those persecuted and executed in the Great Witch Hunt, which can then be remembered as a holocaust against women, a repackaging of history that implies conscious victimization and the appropriation of 'holocaust' as a badge of honour 'gendercide rather than genocide'. An elective identification with the image of the witch during the time of the persecutions is commonly regarded as part of the reclamation of female power, a myth that is used by modern feminist witches as an aid in their struggle for freedom from patriarchal oppression."

Religious studies scholar Joanne Pearson

Traditionally, the term "witchcraft" has meant the use of magic to cause harm and misfortune to others,[73][74] as opposed to helpful "white magic". The historian Wouter Hanegraaff noted that the Wiccan view of witchcraft was "an outgrowth of Romantic (semi)scholarship", especially the now-discredited witch-cult hypothesis. He noted that Gardner, like some previous writers, viewed the witch as a "positive antitype which derives much of its symbolic force from its implicit criticism of dominant Judaeo-Christian and Enlightenment values". Hanegraaff noted that Wiccans dismissed various elements traditionally associated with witchcraftnamely infanticide, cannibalism, Satanism, and sexual orgiesby claiming that these were either misunderstandings or fictions invented by the Early Modern witch hunters.Pearson noted that Wicca "provides a framework in which the image of oneself as a witch can be explored and brought into a modern context".

Pearson suggested that Wiccans "identify with the witch because she is imagined as powerful - she can make people sleep for one hundred years, she can see the future, she can curse and kill as well as heal[] and of course, she can turn people into frogs!"Identifying as a witch also enables Wiccans to link themselves with those persecuted in the witch trials of the Early Modern period, often referred to by Wiccans as "the Burning Times". Various practitioners have made the historically inaccurate claim that nine million people were executed as witches in the Early Modern period, thus drawing comparisons with the killing of six million Jews in the Holocaust and presenting themselves, as modern witches, as "persecuted minorities".

Bide the Wiccan laws ye must, in perfect love and perfect trust...Mind the Threefold Law ye should three times bad and three times good...Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill an it harm none, do what ye will.

Lady Gwen Thompson[80]

Wicca has been characterised as a life-affirming religion. Practitioners typically present themselves as "a positive force against the powers of destruction which threaten the world".There exists no dogmatic moral or ethical code followed universally by Wiccans of all traditions, however a majority follow a code known as the Wiccan Rede, which states "an it harm none, do what ye will". This is usually interpreted as a declaration of the freedom to act, along with the necessity of taking responsibility for what follows from one's actions and minimising harm to oneself and others.[83]

Another common element of Wiccan morality is the Law of Threefold Return which holds that whatever benevolent or malevolent actions a person performs will return to that person with triple force, or with equal force on each of the three levels of body, mind, and spirit,[84] similar to the eastern idea of karma. The Wiccan Rede was most likely introduced into Wicca by Gerald Gardner and formalised publicly by Doreen Valiente, one of his High Priestesses. The Threefold Law was an interpretation of Wiccan ideas and ritual, made by Monique Wilson[85] and further popularised by Raymond Buckland, in his books on Wicca.[86]

Many Wiccans also seek to cultivate a set of eight virtues mentioned in Doreen Valiente's Charge of the Goddess, these being mirth, reverence, honour, humility, strength, beauty, power, and compassion. In Valiente's poem, they are ordered in pairs of complementary opposites, reflecting a dualism that is common throughout Wiccan philosophy. Some lineaged Wiccans also observe a set of Wiccan Laws, commonly called the Craft Laws or Ardanes, 30 of which exist in the Gardnerian tradition and 161 of which are in the Alexandrian tradition. Valiente, one of Gardner's original High Priestesses, argued that the first thirty of these rules were most likely invented by Gerald Gardner himself in mock-archaic language as the by-product of inner conflict within his Bricket Wood coven the others were later additions made by Alex Sanders during the 1960s.[citation needed]

In British Traditional Wicca, "sex complementarity is a basic and fundamental working principle", with men and women being seen as a necessary presence to balance each other out. This may have derived from Gardner's interpretation of Murray's claim that the ancient witch-cult was a fertility religion. Thus, many practitioners of British Traditional Wicca have argued that gay men and women are not capable of correctly working magic without mixed-sex pairings.

Although Gerald Gardner initially demonstrated an aversion to homosexuality, claiming that it brought down "the curse of the goddess", it is now generally accepted in all traditions of Wicca, with groups such as the Minoan Brotherhood openly basing their philosophy upon it,.

The scholar of religion Joanne Pearson noted that in her experience, most Wiccans take a "realistic view of living in the real world" replete with its many problems and do not claim that the gods "have all the answers" to these. She suggested that Wiccans do not claim to seek perfection but instead "wholeness" or "completeness", which includes an acceptance of traits like anger, weakness, and pain. She contrasted the Wiccan acceptance of an "interplay between light and dark" against the New Age focus on "white light". Similarly, the scholar of religion Geoffrey Samuel noted that Wiccans devote "a perhaps surprising amount of attention to darkness and death."

Many Wiccans are involved in environmentalist campaigns.

Many traditions hold a belief in the five classical elements, although they are seen as symbolic representations of the phases of matter. These five elements are invoked during many magical rituals, notably when consecrating a magic circle. The five elements are air, fire, water, earth, and aether (or spirit), where aether unites the other four elements.[97] Various analogies have been devised to explain the concept of the five elements; for instance, the Wiccan Ann-Marie Gallagher used that of a tree, which is composed of earth (with the soil and plant matter), water (sap and moisture), fire (through photosynthesis) and air (the formation of oxygen from carbon dioxide), all of which are believed to be united through spirit.

Traditionally in the Gardnerian Craft, each element has been associated with a cardinal point of the compass; air with east, fire with south, water with west, earth with north, and the spirit with centre. However, some Wiccans, such as Frederic Lamond, have claimed that the set cardinal points are only those applicable to the geography of southern England, where Wicca evolved, and that Wiccans should determine which directions best suit each element in their region. For instance, those living on the east coast of North America should invoke water in the east and not the west because the colossal body of water, the Atlantic ocean, is to their east. Other Craft groups have associated the elements with different cardinal points, for instance Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain associated earth with south, fire with east, water with west and air with north, and each of which were controlled over by a different deity who were seen as children of the primary Horned God and Goddess. The five elements are symbolised by the five points of the pentagram, the most prominently used symbol of Wicca.[102]

The Wiccan high priestess and journalist Margot Adler stated that Wiccan rituals were not "dry, formalised, repetitive experiences", but performed with the intent of inducing a religious experience in the participants, thereby altering their consciousness. She noted that many Wiccans remain skeptical about the existence of the supernatural but remain involved in Wicca because of its ritual experiences: she quoted one as saying that "I love myth, dream, visionary art. The Craft is a place where all of these things fit together beauty, pageantry, music, dance, song, dream." The Wiccan practitioner and historian Aidan Kelly claimed that the practices and experiences within Wicca were more important than the beliefs, stating: "it's a religion of ritual rather than theology. The ritual is first; the myth is second." Similarly, Adler stated that Wicca permits "total skepticism about even its own methods, myths and rituals".

The anthropologist Susan Greenwood characterised Wiccan rituals as "a form of resistance to mainstream culture". She saw these rituals as "a healing space away from the ills of the wider culture", one in which female practitioners can "redefine and empower themselves."

Wiccan rituals usually take place in private. The Reclaiming tradition has utilised its rituals for political purposes.

Many rituals within Wicca are used when celebrating the Sabbats, worshipping the deities, and working magic. Often these take place on a full moon, or in some cases a new moon, which is known as an Esbat. In typical rites, the coven or solitary assembles inside a ritually cast and purified magic circle. Casting the circle may involve the invocation of the "Guardians" of the cardinal points, alongside their respective classical elements; air, fire, water, and earth. Once the circle is cast, a seasonal ritual may be performed, prayers to the God and Goddess are said, and spells are sometimes worked; these may include various forms of 'raising energy', including raising a cone of power to send healing or other magic to persons outside of the sacred space.[citation needed]

In constructing his ritual system, Gardner drew upon older forms of ceremonial magic, in particular, those found in the writings of Aleister Crowley.

The classical ritual scheme in British Traditional Wicca traditions is:

These rites often include a special set of magical tools. These usually include a knife called an athame, a wand, a pentacle and a chalice, but other tools include a broomstick known as a besom, a cauldron, candles, incense and a curved blade known as a boline. An altar is usually present in the circle, on which ritual tools are placed and representations of the God and the Goddess may be displayed. Before entering the circle, some traditions fast for the day, and/or ritually bathe. After a ritual has finished, the God, Goddess, and Guardians are thanked, the directions are dismissed and the circle is closed.[112]

A central aspect of Wicca (particularly in Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca), often sensationalised by the media is the traditional practice of working in the nude, also known as skyclad. Although no longer widely used, this practice seemingly derives from a line in Aradia, Charles Leland's supposed record of Italian witchcraft.[113] Many Wiccans believe that performing rituals skyclad allows "power" to flow from the body in a manner unimpeded by clothes. Some also note that it removes signs of social rank and differentiation and thus encourages unity among the practitioners. Some Wiccans seek legitimacy for the practice by stating that various ancient societies performed their rituals while nude.

One of Wicca's best known liturgical texts is "The Charge of the Goddess".[48] The most commonly used version used by Wiccans today is the rescension of Doreen Valiente,[48] who developed it from Gardner's version. Gardner's wording of the original "Charge" added extracts from Aleister Crowley's work, including The Book of the Law, (especially from Ch 1, spoken by Nuit, the Star Goddess) thus linking modern Wicca irrevocably to the principles of Thelema. Valiente rewrote Gardner's version in verse, keeping the material derived from Aradia, but removing the material from Crowley.[115]

Other traditions wear robes with cords tied around the waist or even normal street clothes. In certain traditions, ritualised sex magic is performed in the form of the Great Rite, whereby a High Priest and High Priestess invoke the God and Goddess to possess them before performing sexual intercourse to raise magical energy for use in spellwork. In nearly all cases it is instead performed "in token", thereby merely symbolically, using the athame to symbolise the penis and the chalice to symbolise the womb.

Gerald Gardner, the man many consider the father of Wicca, believed strongly in sex magic. Much of Gardner's witch practice centered around the power of sex and its liberation, and that one of the most important aspects of the neo-Pagan revival has been its ties, not just to sexual liberation, but also to feminism and women's liberation.[117]

For some Wiccans, the ritual space is a "space of resistance, in which the sexual morals of Christianity and patriarchy can be subverted", and for this reason they have adopted techniques from the BDSM subculture into their rituals.

Publicly, many Wiccan groups have tended to excise the role of sex magic from their image. This has served both to escape the tabloid sensationalism that has targeted the religion since the 1950s and the concerns surrounding the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria in the 1980s and 1990s.

Some Wiccan Traditions substitute a Communion style rite in honor of the God and Goddess rather than the symbolic Great Rite in their Esbat ritual.

Wiccans celebrate several seasonal festivals of the year, commonly known as Sabbats. Collectively, these occasions are termed the Wheel of the Year. Most Wiccans celebrate a set of eight of these Sabbats; however, other groups such as those associated with the Clan of Tubal Cain only follow four. In the rare case of the Ros an Bucca group from Cornwall, only six are adhered to.[120] The four Sabbats that are common to all British derived groups are the cross-quarter days, sometimes referred to as Greater Sabbats. The names of these festivals are in some cases taken from the Old Irish fire festivals and the Welsh God Mabon,[121] though in most traditional Wiccan covens the only commonality with the Celtic festival is the name. Gardner himself made use of the English names of these holidays, stating that "the four great Sabbats are Candlemass [sic], May Eve, Lammas, and Halloween; the equinoxes and solstices are celebrated also." In the Egyptologist Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and The God of the Witches (1933), in which she dealt with what she believed had been a historical Witch-Cult, she stated that the four main festivals had survived Christianisation and had been celebrated in the Pagan Witchcraft religion. Subsequently, when Wicca was first developing in the 1930s through to the 1960s, many of the early groups, such as Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain and Gerald Gardner's Bricket Wood coven adopted the commemoration of these four Sabbats as described by Murray.[citation needed]

The other four festivals commemorated by many Wiccans are known as Lesser Sabbats. They are the solstices and the equinoxes, and they were only adopted in 1958 by members of the Bricket Wood coven, before they were subsequently adopted by other followers of the Gardnerian tradition. They were eventually adopted by followers of other traditions like Alexandrian Wicca and the Dianic tradition. The names of these holidays that are commonly used today are often taken from Germanic pagan holidays. However, the festivals are not reconstructive in nature nor do they often resemble their historical counterparts, instead, they exhibit a form of universalism. The rituals that are observed may display cultural influences from the holidays from which they take their names as well as influences from other unrelated cultures.

Various rites of passage can be found within Wicca. Perhaps the most significant of these is an initiation ritual, through which somebody joins the Craft and becomes a Wiccan. In British Traditional Wiccan traditions, there is a line of initiatory descent that goes back to Gerald Gardner, and from him is said to go back to the New Forest coven; however, the existence of this coven remains unproven.[127] Gardner himself claimed that there was a traditional length of "a year and a day" between when a person began studying the Craft and when they were initiated, although he frequently broke this rule with initiates.

In BTW, initiation only accepts someone into the first degree. To proceed to the second degree, an initiate has to go through another ceremony, in which they name and describe the uses of the ritual tools and implements. It is also at this ceremony that they are given their craft name. By holding the rank of second degree, a BTW is considered capable of initiating others into the Craft, or founding their own semi-autonomous covens. The third degree is the highest in BTW, and it involves the participation of the Great Rite, either actual or symbolically, and in some cases ritual flagellation, which is a rite often dispensed with due to its sado-masochistic overtones. By holding this rank, an initiate is considered capable of forming covens that are entirely autonomous of their parent coven.

According to new-age religious scholar James R. Lewis, in his book Witchcraft today: an encyclopaedia of Wiccan and neopagan traditions, a high priestess becomes a queen when she has successfully hived off her first new coven under a new third-degree high priestess (in the orthodox Gardnerian system). She then becomes eligible to wear the "moon crown". The sequence of high priestess and queens traced back to Gerald Gardner is known as a lineage, and every orthodox Gardnerian High Priestess has a set of "lineage papers" proving the authenticity of her status.[130]

This three-tier degree system following initiation is largely unique to BTW, and traditions heavily based upon it. The Cochranian tradition, which is not BTW, but based upon the teachings of Robert Cochrane, does not have the three degrees of initiation, merely having the stages of novice and initiate.

Some solitary Wiccans also perform self-initiation rituals, to dedicate themselves to becoming a Wiccan. The first of these to be published was in Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft (1970), and unusually involved recitation of the Lord's Prayer backwards as a symbol of defiance against the historical Witch Hunt.[131] Subsequent, more overtly pagan self-initiation rituals have since been published in books designed for solitary Wiccans by authors like Doreen Valiente, Scott Cunningham and Silver RavenWolf.

Handfasting is another celebration held by Wiccans, and is the commonly used term for their weddings. Some Wiccans observe the practice of a trial marriage for a year and a day, which some traditions hold should be contracted on the Sabbat of Lughnasadh, as this was the traditional time for trial, "Telltown marriages" among the Irish. A common marriage vow in Wicca is "for as long as love lasts" instead of the traditional Christian "till death do us part". The first known Wiccan wedding ceremony took part in 1960 amongst the Bricket Wood coven, between Frederic Lamond and his first wife, Gillian.

Infants in Wiccan families may be involved in a ritual called a Wiccaning, which is analogous to a Christening. The purpose of this is to present the infant to the God and Goddess for protection. Parents are advised to "give [their] children the gift of Wicca" in a manner suitable to their age. In accordance with the importance put on free will in Wicca, the child is not expected or required to adhere to Wicca or other forms of paganism should they not wish to do so when they reach adulthood.[133]

In Wicca, there is no set sacred text such as the Christian Bible, Jewish Tanakh, or Islamic Quran, although there are certain scriptures and texts that various traditions hold to be important and influence their beliefs and practices. Gerald Gardner used a book containing many different texts in his covens, known as the Book of Shadows (among other names), which he would frequently add to and adapt. In his Book of Shadows, there are texts taken from various sources, including Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) and the works of 19th20th century occultist Aleister Crowley, whom Gardner knew personally. Also in the Book are examples of poetry largely composed by Gardner and his High Priestess Doreen Valiente, the most notable of which is the Charge of the Goddess.

The Book of Shadows is not a Bible or Quran. It is a personal cookbook of spells that have worked for the owner. I am giving you mine to copy to get you started: as you gain experience discard those spells that don't work for you and substitute those that you have thought of yourselves.

Gerald Gardner to his followers

Similar in use to the grimoires of ceremonial magicians, the Book contained instructions for how to perform rituals and spells, as well as religious poetry and chants like Eko Eko Azarak to use in those rituals. Gardner's original intention was that every copy of the book would be different because a student would copy from their initiators, but changing things which they felt to be personally ineffective, however amongst many Gardnerian Witches today, particularly in the United States, all copies of the Book are kept identical to the version that the High Priestess Monique Wilson copied from Gardner, with nothing being altered. The Book of Shadows was originally meant to be kept a secret from non-initiates into BTW, but parts of the Book have been published by authors including Charles Cardell, Lady Sheba, Janet Farrar and Stewart Farrar.[136]

The pentacle is a symbol commonly used by Wiccans. Wiccans often understand the pentacle's five points as representing each of the five elements: earth, air, fire, water, and aether/spirit. It is also regarded as a symbol of the human, with the five points representing the head, arms, and legs.

There is no overarching organisational structure to Wicca. In Wicca, all practitioners are considered to be priests and priestesses.Wicca generally requires a ritual of initiation.

In the 1950s through to the 1970s, when the Wiccan movement was largely confined to lineaged groups such as Gardnerian Wicca and Alexandrian Wicca, a "tradition" usually implied the transfer of a lineage by initiation. However, with the rise of more and more such groups, often being founded by those with no previous initiatory lineage, the term came to be a synonym for a religious denomination within Wicca. There are many such traditions[139][140] and there are also many solitary practitioners who do not align themselves with any particular lineage, working alone. Some covens have formed but who do not follow any particular tradition, instead choosing their influences and practices eclectically.

Those traditions which trace a line of initiatory descent back to Gerald Gardner include Gardnerian Wicca, Alexandrian Wicca and the Algard tradition; because of their joint history, they are often referred to as British Traditional Wicca, particularly in North America. Other traditions trace their origins to different figures, even if their beliefs and practices have been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by Gardner. These include Cochrane's Craft and the 1734 Tradition, both of which trace their origins to Robert Cochrane; Feri, which traces itself back to Victor Anderson and Gwydion Pendderwen; and Dianic Wicca, whose followers often trace their influences back to Zsuzsanna Budapest. Some of these groups prefer to refer to themselves as Witches, thereby distinguishing themselves from the BTW traditions, who more typically use the term Wiccan (see Etymology).[citation needed] During the 1980s, Viviane Crowley, an initiate of both the Gardnerian and Alexandrian traditions, merged the two.

Pearson noted that "Wicca has evolved and, at times, mutated quite dramatically into completely different forms".Wicca has also been "customized" to the various national contexts into which it has been introduced; for instance, in Ireland, the veneration of ancient Irish deities has been incorporated into Wicca.

Lineaged Wicca is organised into covens of initiated priests and priestesses. Covens are autonomous and are generally headed by a High Priest and a High Priestess working in partnership, being a couple who have each been through their first, second, and third degrees of initiation. Occasionally the leaders of a coven are only second-degree initiates, in which case they come under the rule of the parent coven. Initiation and training of new priesthood is most often performed within a coven environment, but this is not a necessity, and a few initiated Wiccans are unaffiliated with any coven.[144] Most covens would not admit members under the age of 18. They often do not advertise their existence, and when they do, do so through pagan magazines. Some organise courses and workshops through which prospective members can come along and be assessed.

A commonly quoted Wiccan tradition holds that the ideal number of members for a coven is thirteen, though this is not held as a hard-and-fast rule.[144] Indeed, many U.S. covens are far smaller, though the membership may be augmented by unaffiliated Wiccans at "open" rituals.[148] Pearson noted that covens typically contained between five and ten initiates. They generally avoid mass recruitment due to the feasibility of finding spaces large enough to bring together greater numbers for rituals and because larger numbers inhibit the sense of intimacy and trust that covens utilise.

Some covens are short-lived but others have survived for many years.Covens in the Reclaiming tradition are often single-sex and non-hierarchical in structure. Coven members who leave their original group to form another, separate coven are described as having "hived off" in Wicca.

Initiation into a coven is traditionally preceded by an apprenticeship period of a year and a day.[151] A course of study may be set during this period. In some covens a "dedication" ceremony may be performed during this period, some time before the initiation proper, allowing the person to attend certain rituals on a probationary basis. Some solitary Wiccans also choose to study for a year and a day before their self-dedication to the religion.[152]

Various high priestesses and high priests have reported being "put on a pedestal" by new initiates, only to have those students later "kick away" the pedestal as they develop their own knowledge and experience of Wicca. Within a coven, different members may be respected for having particular knowledge of specific areas, such as the Qabalah, astrology, or the Tarot.

Based on her experience among British Traditional Wiccans in the UK, Pearson stated that the length of time between becoming a first-degree initiate and a second was "typically two to five years". Some practitioners nevertheless chose to remain as first-degree initiates rather than proceed to the higher degrees.

A large number of Wiccans do not exclusively follow any single tradition or even are initiated. These eclectic Wiccans each create their own syncretic spiritual paths by adopting and reinventing the beliefs and rituals of a variety of religious traditions connected to Wicca and broader paganism.

While the origins of modern Wiccan practice lie in covenantal activity of a select few initiates in established lineages, eclectic Wiccans are more often than not solitary practitioners uninitiated in any tradition. A widening public appetite, especially in the United States, made traditional initiation unable to satisfy demand for involvement in Wicca. Since the 1970s, larger, more informal, often publicly advertised camps and workshops began to take place.[154] This less formal but more accessible form of Wicca proved successful. Eclectic Wicca is the most popular variety of Wicca in America[155] and eclectics now significantly outnumber lineaged Wiccans.

Eclectic Wicca is not necessarily the complete abandonment of tradition. Eclectic practitioners may follow their own individual ideas and ritual practices, while still drawing on one or more religious or philosophical paths. Eclectic approaches to Wicca often draw on Earth religion and ancient Egyptian, Greek, Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Asian, Jewish, and Polynesian traditions.

In contrast to the British Traditional Wiccans, Reclaiming Wiccans, and various eclectic Wiccans, the sociologist Douglas Ezzy argued that there existed a "Popularized Witchcraft" that was "driven primarily by consumerist marketing and is represented by movies, television shows, commercial magazines, and consumer goods". Books and magazines in this vein were targeted largely at young girls and included spells for attracting or repelling boyfriends, money spells, and home protection spells. He termed this "New Age Witchcraft", and compared individuals involved in this to the participants in the New Age.

"Wicca originated in the early decades of the twentieth century among those esoterically inclined Britons who wanted to resurrect the faith of their ancient forebears, and arose to public attention in the 1950s and 1960s, largely due to a small band of dedicated followers who were insistent on presenting their faith to what at times was a very hostile world. From these humble beginnings, this radical religion spread to the United States, where it found a comfortable bedfellow in the form of the 1960s counter-culture and came to be championed by those sectors of the women's and gay liberation movements which were seeking a spiritual escape from Christian hegemony."

Religious studies scholar Ethan Doyle White

Wicca was founded in England between 1921 and 1950, representing what the historian Ronald Hutton called "the only full-formed religion which England can be said to have given the world". Characterised as an "invented tradition" by scholars, Wicca was created from the patchwork adoption of various older elements, many taken from pre-existing religious and esoteric movements. Pearson characterised it as having arisen "from the cultural impulses of the fin de sicle".

Wicca took as its basis the witch-cult hypothesis. This was the idea that those persecuted as witches in Early modern Europe were not followers of Satanism as the persecutors claimed, nor were they innocent people who confessed under threat of torture, as had long been the historical consensus, but rather that they were followers of a surviving pagan religion.[166] The 'Father of Wicca', Gerald Gardner, claimed his religion was a survival of this European 'witch-cult'.[167] The 'witch-cult' theory had been first expressed by the German Professor Karl Ernest Jarcke in 1828, before being endorsed by German Franz Josef Mone and then the French historian Jules Michelet. In the late 19th century it was then adopted by two Americans, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Charles Leland, the latter of whom promoted a variant of it in his 1899 book, Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. The theory's most prominent advocate was the English Egyptologist Margaret Murray, who promoted it in a series of books most notably 1921's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and 1933's The God of the Witches.[166]

Almost all of Murray's peers regarded the witch-cult theory as incorrect and based on poor scholarship. However, Murray was invited to write the entry on "witchcraft" for the 1929 edition of the Encyclopdia Britannica, which was reprinted for decades and became so influential that, according to folklorist Jacqueline Simpson, Murray's ideas became "so entrenched in popular culture that they will probably never be uprooted."[171] Simpson noted that the only contemporary member of the Folklore Society who took Murray's theory seriously was Gerald Gardner, who used it as the basis for Wicca.[171] Murray's books were the sources of many well-known motifs which have often been incorporated into Wicca. The idea that covens should have 13 members was developed by Murray, based on a single witness statement from one of the witch trials, as was her assertion that covens met on the four cross-quarter days.[171] Murray was very interested in ascribing naturalistic or religious ceremonial explanations to some of the more fantastic descriptions found in witch trial testimony. For example, many of the confessions included the idea that Satan was personally present at coven meetings. Murray interpreted this as a witch priest wearing horns and animal skins, and a pair of forked boots to represent his authority or rank. Most mainstream folklorists, on the other hand, have argued that the entire scenario was always fictitious and does not require a naturalistic explanation, but Gardner enthusiastically adopted many of Murray's explanations into his own tradition.[171] The witch-cult theory represented "the historical narrative around which Wicca built itself", with the early Wiccans claiming to be the survivors of this ancient pagan religion.

Other influences upon early Wicca included various Western esoteric traditions and practices, among them ceremonial magic, Aleister Crowley and his religion of Thelema, Freemasonry, Spiritualism, and Theosophy. To a lesser extent, Wicca also drew upon folk magic and the practices of cunning folk. It was further influenced both by scholarly works on folkloristics, particularly James Frazer's The Golden Bough, as well as romanticist writings like Robert Graves' The White Goddess, and pre-existing modern pagan groups such as the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry and Druidism.

It was during the 1930s that the first evidence appears for the practice of a pagan Witchcraft religion[176] (what would be recognisable now as Wicca) in England. It seems that several groups around the country, in such places as Norfolk,[177] Cheshire[178] and the New Forest had set themselves up after being inspired by Murray's writings about the "Witch-Cult", albeit with influences coming from disparate sources such as ceremonial magic, folk magic, Freemasonry, Theosophy, Romanticism, Druidry, classical mythology, and Asian religions.

The 'witch-cult' hypothesis has since been discredited, but it is still common for Wiccans to claim solidarity with witch trial victims.[179] The notion that Wiccan traditions and rituals have survived from ancient times is contested by most recent researchers, who say that Wicca is a 20th-century creation which combines elements of freemasonry and 19th-century occultism.[180] In his 1999 book The Triumph of the Moon, English historian Ronald Hutton researched the Wiccan claim that ancient pagan customs have survived into modern times after being Christianised in medieval times as folk practices. Hutton found that most of the folk customs which are claimed to have pagan roots (such as the Maypole dance) actually date from the Middle Ages. He concluded that the idea that medieval revels were pagan in origin is a legacy of the Protestant Reformation.[181] Hutton noted that Wicca predates the modern New Age movement and also differs markedly in its general philosophy.

The history of Wicca starts with Gerald Gardner (the "Father of Wicca") in the mid-20th century. Gardner was a retired British civil servant and amateur anthropologist, with a broad familiarity in paganism and occultism. He claimed to have been initiated into a witches' coven in New Forest, Hampshire, in the late 1930s. Intent on perpetuating this craft, Gardner founded the Bricket Wood coven with his wife Donna in the 1940s, after buying the Naturist Fiveacres Country Club. Much of the coven's early membership was drawn from the club's members and its meetings were held within the club grounds. Many notable figures of early Wicca were direct initiates of this coven, including Dafo, Doreen Valiente, Jack Bracelin, Frederic Lamond, Dayonis, Eleanor Bone, and Lois Bourne.

The Witchcraft religion became more prominent beginning in 1951, with the repeal of the Witchcraft Act of 1735, after which Gerald Gardner and then others such as Charles Cardell and Cecil Williamson began publicising their own versions of the Craft. Gardner and others never used the term "Wicca" as a religious identifier, simply referring to the "witch cult", "witchcraft", and the "Old Religion". However, Gardner did refer to witches as "the Wica".[186] During the 1960s, the name of the religion normalised to "Wicca".[188] Gardner's tradition, later termed Gardnerianism, soon became the dominant form in England and spread to other parts of the British Isles.

Following Gardner's death in 1964, the Craft continued to grow unabated despite sensationalism and negative portrayals in British tabloids, with new traditions being propagated by figures like Robert Cochrane, Sybil Leek, and most importantly Alex Sanders, whose Alexandrian Wicca, which was predominantly based upon Gardnerian Wicca, albeit with an emphasis placed on ceremonial magic, spread quickly and gained much media attention. Around this time, the term "Wicca" began to be commonly adopted over "Witchcraft" and the faith was exported to countries like Australia and the United States.[citation needed]

During the 1970s, a new generation joined Wicca who had been influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s. Many brought environmentalist ideas with them into the movement, as reflected by the formation of groups like the UK-based Pagans Against Nukes.In the U.S., Victor Anderson, Cora Anderson, and Gwydion Pendderwen established Feri Wicca.

It was in the United States and in Australia that new, home-grown traditions, sometimes based upon earlier, regional folk-magical traditions and often mixed with the basic structure of Gardnerian Wicca, began to develop, including Victor Anderson's Feri Tradition, Joseph Wilson's 1734 Tradition, Aidan Kelly's New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, and eventually Zsuzsanna Budapest's Dianic Wicca, each of which emphasised different aspects of the faith.[191] It was also around this time that books teaching people how to become Witches themselves without formal initiation or training began to emerge, among them Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft (1970) and Lady Sheba's Book of Shadows (1971). Similar books continued to be published throughout the 1980s and 1990s, fuelled by the writings of such authors as Doreen Valiente, Janet Farrar, Stewart Farrar, and Scott Cunningham, who popularised the idea of self-initiation into the Craft. Among witches in Canada, anthropologist Dr. Heather Botting (ne Harden) of the University of Victoria has been one of the most prominent, having been the first recognized Wiccan chaplain of a public university.[192] She is the original high priestess of Coven Celeste.[193]

In the 1990s, amid ever-rising numbers of self-initiates, the popular media began to explore "witchcraft" in fictional films like The Craft (1996) and television series like Charmed (19982006), introducing numbers of young people to the idea of religious witchcraft. This growing demographic was soon catered to through the Internet and by authors like Silver RavenWolf, much to the criticism of traditional Wiccan groups and individuals. In response to the way that Wicca was increasingly portrayed as trendy, eclectic, and influenced by the New Age movement, many Witches turned to the pre-Gardnerian origins of the Craft, and to the traditions of his rivals like Cardell and Cochrane, describing themselves as following "traditional witchcraft". Prominent groups within this Traditional Witchcraft revival included Andrew Chumbley's Cultus Sabbati and the Cornish Ros an Bucca coven.[citation needed]

Originating in Britain, Wicca then spread to North America, Australasia, continental Europe, and South Africa.

The actual number of Wiccans worldwide is unknown, and it has been noted that it is more difficult to establish the numbers of members of Neopagan faiths than many other religions due to their disorganised structure.[194] However, Adherents.com, an independent website which specialises in collecting estimates of world religions, cites over thirty sources with estimates of numbers of Wiccans (principally from the USA and the UK). From this, they developed a median estimate of 800,000 members.[195] As of 2016, Doyle White suggested that there were "hundreds of thousands of practising Wiccans around the globe".

In 1998, the Wiccan high priestess and academic psychologist Vivianne Crowley suggested that Wicca had been less successful in propagating in countries whose populations were primarily Roman Catholic. She suggested that this might be because Wicca's emphasis on a female divinity was more novel to people raised in Protestant-dominant backgrounds. On the basis of her experience, Pearson concurred that this was broadly true.

Wicca has been described as a non-proselytizing religion. In 1998, Pearson noted that there were very few individuals who had grown up as Wiccans although increasing numbers of Wiccan adults were themselves, parents. Many Wiccan parents did not refer to their children as also being Wiccan, believing it important that the latter are allowed to make their own choices about their religious identity when they are old enough.From her fieldwork among members of the Reclaiming tradition in California during 1980-90, the anthropologist Jone Salomonsen found that many described joining the movement following "an extraordinary experience of revelation".

Based on their analysis of internet trends, the sociologists of religion Douglas Ezzy and Helen Berger argued that, by 2009, the "phenomenal growth" that Wicca has experienced in preceding years had slowed.

View original post here:

Wicca - Wikipedia

Norwegian music scene

The early Norwegian black metal scene of the 1990s is credited with creating the modern black metal genre and produced some of the most acclaimed and influential artists in extreme metal. It attracted massive media attention when it was revealed that its members had been responsible for two murders and a wave of church burnings in Norway.

The scene had an ethos and the core members referred to themselves as "The Black Circle" or "Black Metal Inner Circle". It consisted primarily of young men, many of whom gathered at the record shop Helvete ("Hell") in Oslo. In interviews, they voiced extreme anti-Christian and misanthropic views, presenting themselves as a cult-like group of militant Satanists who wanted to spread terror, hatred and evil. They adopted pseudonyms and appeared in photographs wearing "corpse paint" and wielding medieval weaponry. The scene was exclusive and created boundaries around itself, incorporating only those it deemed to be "trve"[1] or committed. Musical integrity was highly important and artists wanted black metal to remain underground and uncorrupted.

In August 1993, several of its members were arrested and in May 1994 were convicted variously for arson, murder, assault and possession of explosives. Most showed no remorse for their actions at the time. The Norwegian media covered events closely, but the reporting was often sensationalist. Some referred to them as "Satanic terrorists" and one Norwegian TV channel interviewed a woman who claimed Satanists had sacrificed her child and killed her dog.[2] The early Norwegian black metal scene has since been the subject of books and documentaries.

During the 1980s, black metal was a loose grouping of a handful of heavy metal bands who shared Satanic lyrics, although most of the "first wave" bands referred to Satanism only for shock value. During 19901992, a number of Norwegian artists, who were strongly influenced by those bands, began performing and releasing a new kind of black metal music. The surge of interest and popularity that followed is often referred to as the "second wave of black metal". The Norwegian bands developed the style of their 1980s forebears as a distinct genre of heavy metal music. This was partly thanks to a new style of guitar playing developed by Snorre "Blackthorn" Ruch of Stigma Diabolicum/Thorns and ystein "Euronymous" Aarseth of Mayhem, in which guitarists played full chords using all the strings of the guitar in place of power chords using only two or three strings.[4][5] Gylve "Fenriz" Nagell of Darkthrone has credited them with this innovation in a number of interviews. He described it as being "derived from Bathory"[6] and noted that "those kinds of riffs became the new order for a lot of bands in the '90s".[7] Black metal music also became much more satanic and the term 'TRVE KVLT Black Metal'[8] has since become the term for satanic-leaning black metal.

Visually, the dark themes of their music were complemented with corpse paint, which became a way for black metal artists to distinguish themselves from other metal bands of the time,[9] yet some bands such as Emperor and Satyricon ceased wearing corpse paint, often citing its loss of meaning or trendiness due to use by so many bands.

On 8 April 1991, Mayhem vocalist and lyricist Per Yngve Ohlin (known by the stage name "Dead") committed suicide via shotgun blast while alone in a house shared by the band.[10][11] Fellow musicians described Dead as odd, introverted and depressed. For performances, he made himself look like a corpse and would self-harm while performing.[4][12]

Dead was found by Mayhem guitarist Euronymous with his wrists and throat slit and a gunshot wound to his forehead. Before calling the police, Euronymous got a camera and photographed the body after re-arranging some items.[6][10] One of these photographs was later used as the cover of a bootleg live album: Dawn of the Black Hearts.[14]

Euronymous used Dead's suicide to foster Mayhem's "evil" image and claimed Dead had killed himself because black metal had become "trendy" and commercialized. He made necklaces which he claimed as being made with bits of Dead's skull and gave them to musicians he deemed worthy.[17][18][19][20] There was also a false rumor that he had made a stew with bits of Dead's brain.[17][18]

Mayhem bassist Jrn 'Necrobutcher' Stubberud noted that "people became more aware of the black metal scene after Dead had shot himself [...]; I think it was Dead's suicide that really changed the scene."[21] The suicide caused a rift between Euronymous and some of his friends, especially Necrobutcher, who were disgusted by his attitude towards Dead.[10] Some claimed Euronymous "went into a fantasy world" and "tried to be as extreme as he had talked about".[10]

Two other members of the scene would later commit suicide: Erik 'Grim' Brdreskift (of Immortal, Borknagar, Gorgoroth) in 1999[22][23] and Espen 'Storm' Andersen (of Strid) in 2001.[24]

Mayhem guitarist Euronymous was "the central figure involved in the formation of the Norwegian black metal scene",[25] which he "almost single-handedly founded". During MayJune 1991, he opened a record shop called Helvete[28] (Norwegian for "Hell"). The shop was at Schweigaards gate 56 in Oslo. Norwegian black metal musicians often met at the shop and in its basement. They included the members of Mayhem, the members of Emperor, Varg "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes of Burzum, and Snorre "Blackthorn" Ruch of Thorns. Euronymous also founded an independent record label called Deathlike Silence Productions, which was based at Helvete. It released albums by Norwegian bands Mayhem and Burzum, Swedish bands Merciless and Abruptum, and a Japanese band Sigh.[29][full citation needed] Euronymous, Varg,[6] and Emperor guitarist Tomas "Samoth" Haugen[30] lived in the shop at various times. Emperor drummer Brd "Faust" Eithun also lived and worked there.[4][6] The shop's walls were painted black and bedecked with medieval weapons, posters of bands, and picture discs, while its window featured a polystyrene tombstone.[4]

During the time it was open, Helvete was the focal point of the Norwegian black metal scene. Jon "Metalion" Kristiansen, writer of the fanzine Slayer, said that the opening of Helvete was "the creation of the whole Norwegian Black Metal scene". Daniel Ekeroth wrote in 2008,

Within just a few months [of Helvete opening], many young musicians had become obsessed with Euronymous and his ideas, and soon a lot of Norwegian death metal bands transformed into black metal bands. Amputation became Immortal, Thou Shalt Suffer turned into Emperor, and Darkthrone swapped their Swedish-inspired death metal for primitive black metal. Most notoriously, Old Funeral's guitar player Varg Vikernes had already left the band to form his own creation, Burzum.[32]

Those who gathered at Helvete have been referred to as the "Black Circle" or "Black Metal Inner Circle", a name allegedly invented by Euronymous.[6] Euronymous presented the "Black Circle" as an organized, cult-like group of militant Satanists whose activities were funded by his record shop, and a 1993 Kerrang! article referred to them as "Satanic terrorists". Faust later said that it was "just a name that was invented for the people who hung around the shop... there wasn't anything like members and membership cards and official meetings." Likewise, in his review of Lucifer Rising, Varg Vikernes said, "The so-called 'Black Circle' was something Euronymous made up because he wanted to make people believe there was such a thing, but it was nonsense and never existed. The media on the other hand believed it existed for a while, but quickly stopped talking about it when they understood it was a fake rumor."[35]

According to Stian "Occultus" Johannsen, the space that Euronymous rented "was far too big and the rent was too high. That's the reason why it never did well." Only a small part of the building was used for the shop itself. Euronymous shut Helvete in early 1993 when it began to draw the attention of the police and media. The store has since been reopened under the name Neseblod Records, in the same location but with much less floor space.[37] ('Naseblod' is Norwegian for 'nosebleed'.) Many of the original artifacts still remain, and the store also identifies as a "black metal museum".[38]

The Norwegian black metal scene was bitterly opposed to Christianity and organized religion as a whole. In interviews during the early 1990s, Euronymous and other members of the scene presented themselves as militant misanthropic Devil worshippers[39] who wanted to spread hatred, sorrow and evil. They attacked the Church of Satan for being too "humane". The theistic Satanism they espoused was an inversion of Christianity. Euronymous was the key figure behind this ideology.[25] He professed to be in favor of totalitarianism and against compassion, peace, happiness and fun.[42] When asked why such statements were made to the press, Ihsahn of Emperor said, "I think that was very much to create fear among people." He added that the scene "wanted to be in opposition to society" and "tried to concentrate more on just being 'evil' than having a real Satanic philosophy". Vikernes said that the reason they claimed to advocate "evil" was to provoke.

According to the book Lords of Chaos, many who knew Euronymous say that "the extreme Satanic image he projected was, in fact, just that a projection which bore little resemblance to his real personality." They include Necrobutcher,[47] Kjetil Manheim,[11] Vikernes,[6] and Blackthorn (the latter two were convicted for his murder). Faust said that with Euronymous, "there was a lot of smoke but not so much fire."[4] Mortiis, however, said that Euronymous "was such a devil worshipper you wouldn't believe it",[49] and Metalion (who knew Euronymous since 1985 and considered him to be his best friend) said Euronymous "was always telling what he thought... worshipping death and being extreme." As for the other scene members, Samuel Fridh says there is no evidence to support their early claims of being Devil worshippers,[52] and Leif A. Lier, who led the police investigation after Euronymous's death, said he and his men had not met one Satanist.[2] Faust said that "For some people it [Satanism] was bloody serious, but to a lot of them it was all a big hype."

In retrospect, Metalion wrote, "In the past, people just wrote about Satan, but now people meant it. I believe it was seriousmaybe not all the Satanism, but definitely the approach to the music and the lifestyle. It was certainly more destructive than metal had been in the past."[54] Tenebris from the Misanthropic Luciferian Order (a Swedish Satanic order) wrote that the Norwegian scene "meant a lot as long as it lasted. Back then, in 1991, things mainly concerned black metal and ideological Satanism (not so much practical Satanism, but anyway...)... It grew quickly to become a sort of black metal army... and kind of stood and fell with Euronymous and his shop. Therefore, it vanished with his death in '93... Sadly enough, many people involved at the time betrayed their ideals and lost their interest when things fell apart. Like it was nothing more than a hype of temporary nature."[55]

Regarding the term "black metal", Euronymous said that it applies to any heavy metal band who are theistic Satanists and write Satanic lyrics.[42] Such ideas were repeated by other scene members, such as Faust.[56] At the time, bands with a style similar to Norwegian black metal, but without Satanic lyrics, tended to use other terms for their music.[57][58][59]

Some bands in the scene were interested in pre-Christian Norway and its traditions, and there was an undercurrent of romantic nationalism in the scene. Some scene members also flirted with Nazi imagery, but this was largely an attempt to provoke. In a private letter written in the early 1990s, Euronymous claimed that "almost all" Norwegian black metal bands at the time were "more or less Nazis".[61] He was interested in totalitarian communist states and said he wished to see people "rot under communist dictatorship".[62] However, apart from Varg Vikernes, the scene was largely non-political.

In 1992, members of the Norwegian black metal scene began a wave of arson attacks on Christian churches. By 1996, there had been at least 50 attacks in Norway;[2][28] in every case that was solved, those responsible were black metal fans. Some of the buildings were hundreds of years old and seen as important historical landmarks. The first was Norway's Fantoft Stave Church, which was burnt to the ground in June 1992. Police believe Varg Vikernes of Burzum was responsible.[2] The cover of Burzum's EP Aske ("ashes") is a photograph of the destroyed church.[64] On 16 May 1994,[66] Vikernes was found guilty for burning down the Holmenkollen Chapel, Skjold Church, and sane Church.[6] In addition, he was found guilty for an attempted arson of a fourth church, and for the theft and storage of 150kg of explosives. Members of the Swedish black metal scene started to burn churches as well in 1993.

To coincide with the release of Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Vikernes and Euronymous had allegedly plotted to bomb the Nidaros Cathedral, which appears on the album cover.[10] The musicians Faust, Samoth, (both of Emperor), and Jrn Inge Tunsberg (of Hades Almighty)[2] were also convicted for church arsons. Those convicted for church burnings showed no remorse and described their actions as a symbolic "retaliation" against Christianity in Norway. Mayhem drummer Hellhammer said he had called for attacks on mosques and Hindu temples, on the basis that they were more foreign. Today, opinions on the church burnings differ within the black metal community. Many musicians, singers, and songwriters in the early Norwegian black metal scene, such as Infernus and Gaahl of Gorgoroth, continue to praise the church burnings, with the latter saying "there should have been more of them, and there will be more of them."[19] Others, such as Necrobutcher and Kjetil Manheim of Mayhem and Abbath of Immortal,[19] see the church burnings as having been futile. Manheim claimed that many arsons were "just people trying to gain acceptance" within the black metal scene.[10] Watain vocalist Erik Danielsson respected the attacks, but said of those responsible: "the only Christianity they defeated was the last piece of Christianity within themselves. Which is a very good beginning, of course."[73]

The following is a partial list of the church arsons:

1992

1993

1994

1995

On 21 August 1992, Brd "Faust" Eithun killed Magne Andreassen, a gay man, in Lillehammer.[6] According to Faust, while walking home at night, a man sexually proposed to him and Faust agreed to walk with him to the Olympic park. Once in the woods, Faust stabbed Andreassen 37 times, and then kicked him in the head repeatedly as he lay on the ground.

Faust claimed he felt no remorse at the time. In the late 1990s, he said of the murder, "I was outside, just waiting to get out some aggression. It's not easy to describe why it happened. It was meant to happen, and if it was this man or another man, that's not really important." Ihsahn, his bandmate in Emperor, said Faust "had been very fascinated by serial killers for a long time, and I guess he wanted to know what it's like to kill a person." The media linked the murder to black metal, Satanism and fascism. In a 2008 interview, Faust said, "I was never a Satanist or fascist in any way, but I put behind me the hatred and negativity. Those feelings just eat you up from inside."[85]

Police initially had no suspects, and Faust remained free for about a year. However, he told Euronymous, Vikernes and a few others what he had done. The day after the stabbing, he returned to Oslo and allegedly burnt down Holmenkollen Chapel with Vikernes and Euronymous. After Euronymous' murder in August 1993, Faust was arrested and confessed to Andreassen's murder. In 1994, he was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment, but was released in 2003.[85]

In January 1993, an article in one of Norway's biggest newspapers, Bergens Tidende (BT), brought the black metal scene into the media spotlight. Two friends of Vikernes interviewed him and brought the interview to the newspaper, hoping they would print it. In the anonymous interview, "Count Grishnackh" (Vikernes) claimed to have burnt the churches and killed a man in Lillehammer. BT journalist Finn Bjrn Tnder set up a meeting with "Count Grishnackh". The journalists were summoned to an apartment and, allegedly, warned they would be shot if the police were called. There, Vikernes and his companions told the journalists that they had burnt the churches, or knew who had done it, and warned the attacks would continue. They claimed to be Devil worshippers and said, "Our intention is to spread fear and evil."

They told the journalists details about the arsons that had not been released to the press and so BT spoke with the police before publishing it, who confirmed these details. The article was published on 20 January as the front page of the BT. It was headlined "Vi tente p kirkene" ("We set the churches on fire") and included a photo of Vikernes, his face mostly hidden, holding two large knives. However, by the time the article was printed, Vikernes had already been arrested. The police allegedly found him by going to an address printed on a Burzum flyer, although Vikernes believes that Tnder betrayed him.[87]

According to Vikernes, the anonymous interview was planned by him and Euronymous with the goal of spreading fear, promoting black metal and getting more customers for Helvete.[88] Vikernes said of the interview, "I exaggerated a lot and when the journalist left we... had a good laugh, because he didn't seem to understand that I was pulling his leg."[89] He added that the interview revealed nothing that could prove his involvement in any crime. Vikernes claims that, after he was arrested, "the journalist edited the interview and... published an insane version of it the following day, without even letting me read through it."[87] Some of the other scene members were also arrested and questioned, but all were released for lack of evidence.

Euronymous decided to shut Helvete as it began to draw the attention of the police and media. Vikernes condemned Euronymous for shutting the shop rather than taking advantage of the publicity, stating, "by doing so he also made all my efforts more or less pointless. I spent six weeks in custody because of that."[91] Norwegian magazine Rock Furore published an interview with Vikernes in February 1993. In it, he said of the prison system, "It's much too nice here. It's not hell at all. In this country prisoners get a bed, toilet and shower. It's completely ridiculous. I asked the police to throw me in a real dungeon, and also encouraged them to use violence." He was released in March for lack of evidence.

Shortly after this episode, the Oslo police dispatched its Church Fire Group to Bergen, where they set up a makeshift headquarters in the Hotel Norge. According to Lords of Chaos, citing a police report, Vikernes knocked on their door and "virtually forced his way into the suite". He was "dressed in chain mail, carrying two large knives in his belt, and flanked by the two young men who apparently behaved as if they were his bodyguards or henchmen." Vikernes "stated that he was fed up with being harassed by the authorities, and that the police investigation into the Black Metal scene should be stopped." When police told him he had no right to issue orders, Vikernes "took one step back and raised his right arm in a Roman salute."

In early 1993, animosity arose between Euronymous and Vikernes. On the night of 10 August 1993, Vikernes and Snorre 'Blackthorn' Ruch drove from Bergen to Euronymous's apartment in Oslo. When they arrived there was a confrontation and Vikernes stabbed Euronymous to death. His body was found outside the apartment with 23 cut wounds two to the head, five to the neck, and 16 to the back.[94]

It has been speculated that the murder was the result of a power struggle, a financial dispute over Burzum records, or an attempt at "outdoing" the stabbing in Lillehammer.[95] Vikernes denies this and claims he killed Euronymous in self-defense. He says Euronymous had plotted to stun him with an electroshock weapon, tie him up and torture him to death while filming the event, using a meeting about an unsigned contract to ambush him.[6][89] Vikernes claims he intended to hand Euronymous the signed contract that night and "tell him to fuck off", but that Euronymous panicked and attacked him first.[89] The self-defense story is doubted by Faust, while Necrobutcher believes Vikernes killed Euronymous due to the death threats he received from him.[97] Necrobutcher later alleged that he also intended to murder Euronymous himself due to him tastelessly capitalizing on Dead's suicide.[98]

Vikernes was arrested on 19 August 1993, and many other members of the scene were taken in for questioning around the same time. Some confessed to their crimes and implicated others. In May 1994, Vikernes was sentenced to 21 years in prison (Norway's maximum penalty) for the murder of Euronymous, the arson of four churches, and for possession of 150kg of explosives. Two churches were burned the day he was sentenced, "presumably as a statement of symbolic support". Blackthorn was sentenced to eight years in prison for being an accomplice to the murder. That month saw the release of the Mayhem album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, which features Euronymous on guitar and Vikernes on bass guitar.[4] Euronymous's family had asked Mayhem's drummer, Hellhammer, to remove the bass tracks recorded by Vikernes, but Hellhammer said, "I thought it was appropriate that the murderer and victim were on the same record."[4] Vikernes was released from prison in 2009.

There was a strong rivalry between Norwegian black metal and Swedish death metal scenes. Fenriz and Tchort have noted that Norwegian black metal musicians had become "fed up with the whole death metal scene"[99] and that "death metal was very uncool in Oslo" at the time.[10] A number of times, Euronymous sent death threats to some of the more 'mainstream' death metal groups in Europe.[10] Allegedly, a group of Norwegian black metal fans even plotted to kidnap and murder certain Swedish death metal musicians.[10]

There was also rivalry between Norwegian and Finnish black metal bands. Impaled Nazarene printed "No orders from Norway accepted" and "Kuolema Norjan kusipille!" ('Death to the arseholes of Norway!') on early pressings of their first album and innuendo and snarky comments were made in fanzines. Beherit's mainman 'Nuclear Holocausto' used the rivalry to play a series of telephone pranks on Mika Luttinen (of Impaled Nazarene) in which he would call him in the dead of the night playing nursery rhymes at high speed on a cassette recorder. At the time, Luttinen maintained that the messages were threats from Norwegian black metallers.[100] The Finnish band Black Crucifixion criticized the Norwegian band Darkthrone as "trendies" due to Darkthrone originally being a death metal band who later played black metal.[101]

The following is a list of black metal recordings and releases by the aforesaid bands released during 19871993. Releases in bold are albums, while the rest are demos and extended plays.

1991

1992

1993

View post:

Early Norwegian black metal scene - Wikipedia

Widespread moral panic alleging abuse in the context of occult rituals

The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient (and future wife), Michelle Smith, which used the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping lurid claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations which afterwards arose throughout much of the United States involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and powerful world elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution, an allegation that returned to prominence in the form of QAnon.

Nearly every aspect of the ritual abuse is controversial, including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof thereof, testimonies of alleged victims, and court cases involving the allegations and criminal investigations. The panic affected lawyers, therapists, and social workers who handled allegations of child sexual abuse. Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups, including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child advocates, therapists, and clients in psychotherapy. The term satanic abuse was more common early on; this later became satanic ritual abuse and further secularized into simply ritual abuse.[2] Over time, the accusations became more closely associated with dissociative identity disorder (then called multiple personality disorder)[3] and anti-government conspiracy theories.[4][5]

Initial interest arose via the publicity campaign for Pazder's 1980 book Michelle Remembers, and it was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by coverage of the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors, and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular, and religious conferences, as well as through talk shows, sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed.[6] Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, which, as one researcher put it in 2017, "involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping paedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers."[7]

Of the more than 12,000 documented accusations nationwide, investigating police were not able to substantiate any allegations of organized cult abuse.[8]

Allegations of horrific acts by outside groupsincluding cannibalism, child murder, torture, and incestuous orgies can place minorities in the role of the "Other," as well create a scapegoat for complex problems in times of social disruption.[10] The SRA panic repeated many of the features of historical moral panics and conspiracy theories,[10] such as the blood libel against Jews by Apion in the 30s CE, the wild rumors that led to the persecutions of early Christians in the Roman Empire, later allegations of Jewish rituals involving the killing of Christian babies and desecration of the Eucharist, and the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries.[11] Torture and imprisonment were used by authority figures in order to coerce confessions from alleged Satanists, confessions that were later used to justify their executions. Records of these older allegations were linked by contemporary proponents in an effort to demonstrate that contemporary Satanic cults were part of an ancient conspiracy of evil, though ultimately no evidence of devil-worshiping cults existed in Europe at any time in its history.

A more immediate precedent to the context of Satanic ritual abuse in the United States was McCarthyism in the 1950s.[16][17] The underpinnings for the contemporary moral panic were found in a rise of five factors in the years leading up to the 1980s: the establishment of fundamentalist Christianity and the founding and political activism of the religious organization which was named the Moral Majority; the rise of the anti-cult movement which accused abusive cults of kidnapping and brainwashing children and teens; the appearance of the Church of Satan and other explicitly Satanist groups which added a kernel of truth to the existence of Satanic cults; the development of the social work or child protection field, and its struggle to have child sexual abuse recognized as a social problem and a serious crime; and the popularization of post-traumatic stress disorder, repressed memory, and the corresponding survivor movement.

Michelle Remembers, written by Canadians Michelle Smith and her husband, psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, was published in 1980. Now discredited, the book was written in the form of an autobiography, presenting the first modern claim that child abuse was linked to Satanic rituals. Pazder was also responsible for coining the term ritual abuse.[20] Michelle Remembers provided a model for numerous allegations of SRA that ensued later in the same decade.[21] On the basis of the book's success, Pazder developed a high media profile, gave lectures and training on SRA to law enforcement, and by September 1990 had acted as a consultant on more than 1,000 SRA cases, including the McMartin preschool trial. Prosecutors used Michelle Remembers as a guide when preparing cases against alleged Satanists.[22] Michelle Remembers, along with other accounts portrayed as survivor stories, are suspected to have influenced later allegations of SRA, and the book has been suggested as a causal factor in the later epidemic of SRA allegations.[25][26]

The early 1980s, during the implementation of mandatory reporting laws, saw a large increase in child protection investigations in America, Britain, and other developed countries, along with a heightened public awareness of child abuse. The investigation of incest allegations in California was also changed, with cases led by social workers who used leading and coercive interviewing techniques that had been avoided by police investigators. Such changes in the prosecution of cases of alleged incest resulted in an increase in confessions by fathers in exchange for plea bargains. Shortly thereafter, some children in child protection cases began making allegations of horrific physical and sexual abuse by caregivers within organized rituals, claiming sexual abuse in Satanic rituals and the use of Satanic symbols. These cases garnered the label "satanic ritual abuse" both in the media and among professionals.[28][29] Childhood memories of similar abuse began to appear in the psychotherapy sessions of adults.[30][31]

In 1983, charges were laid in the McMartin preschool trial, a major case in California, which received attention throughout the United States and contained allegations of satanic ritual abuse. The case caused tremendous polarization in how to interpret the available evidence.[33] Shortly afterward, more than 100 preschools across the country became the object of similar sensationalist allegations, which were eagerly and uncritically reported by the press. Throughout the McMartin trial, media coverage of the defendants (Peggy McMartin and Ray Buckey) was unrelentingly negative, focusing only on statements by the prosecution. Michelle Smith and other alleged survivors met with parents involved in the trial, and it is believed that they influenced testimony against the accused.

Kee MacFarlane, a social worker employed by the Children's Institute International, developed a new way to interrogate children with anatomically correct dolls and used them in an effort to assist disclosures of abuse with the McMartin children. After asking the children to point to the places on the dolls where they had allegedly been touched and asking leading questions, MacFarlane diagnosed sexual abuse in virtually all the McMartin children. She coerced disclosures by using lengthy interviews that rewarded discussions of abuse and punished denials. The trial testimony that resulted from such methods was often contradictory and vague on all details except for the assertion that the abuse had occurred. Although the initial charges in the McMartin case featured allegations of Satanic abuse and a vast conspiracy, these features were dropped relatively early in the trial, and prosecution continued only for non-ritual allegations of child abuse against only two defendants.[41] After three years of testimony, McMartin and Buckey were acquitted on 52 of 65 counts, and the jury was deadlocked on the remaining 13 charges against Buckey, with 11 of 13 jurors choosing not guilty. Buckey was re-charged and two years later released without conviction.

In 1984, MacFarlane warned a congressional committee that children were being forced to engage in scatological behavior and watch bizarre rituals in which animals were being slaughtered.[42] Shortly after, the United States Congress doubled its budget for child-protection programs. Psychiatrist Roland Summit delivered conferences in the wake of the McMartin trial and depicted the phenomenon as a conspiracy that involved anyone skeptical of the phenomenon. By 1986, social worker Carol Darling argued to a grand jury that the conspiracy reached the government. Her husband Brad Darling gave conference presentations about a Satanic conspiracy of great antiquity which he now believed was permeating American communities.

In 1985, Patricia Pulling joined forces with psychiatrist Thomas Radecki, director of the National Coalition on Television Violence, to create B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons). Pulling and B.A.D.D. saw role-playing games generally and Dungeons & Dragons specifically as Satanic cult recruitment tools, inducing youth to suicide, murder, and Satanic ritual abuse.[44] Other alleged recruitment tools included heavy metal music, educators, child care centers, and television.[44] This information was shared at policing and public awareness seminars on crime and the occult, sometimes by active police officers.[44] None of these allegations held up in analysis or in court. In fact, analysis of youth suicide over the period in question found that players of role-playing games actually had a much lower rate of suicide than the average.[44]

By the late 1980s, therapists or patients who believed someone had suffered from SRA could suggest solutions that included Christian psychotherapy, exorcism, and support groups whose members self-identified as "anti-Satanic warriors." Federal funding was increased for research on child abuse, with large portions of the funding allocated for research on child sexual abuse. Funding was also provided for conferences supporting the idea of SRA, adding a veneer of respectability to the idea as well as offering an opportunity for prosecutors to exchange advice on how to best secure convictionswith tactics including destruction of notes, refusing to tape interviews with children, and destroying or refusing to share evidence with the defense. Had proof been found, SRA would have represented the first occasion where an organized and secret criminal activity had been discovered by mental health professionals.[47] In 1987, Geraldo Rivera produced a national television special on the alleged secret cults, claiming "Estimates are that there are over one million Satanists in [the United States and they are] linked in a highly organized, secretive network."[49] Tapings of this and similar talk show episodes were subsequently used by religious fundamentalists, psychotherapists, social workers and police to promote the idea that a conspiracy of Satanic cults existed and these cults were committing serious crimes.

In the 1990s, psychologist D. Corydon Hammond publicized a detailed theory of ritual abuse drawn from hypnotherapy sessions with his patients, alleging they were victims of a worldwide conspiracy of organized, secretive clandestine cells who used torture, mind control and ritual abuse to create alternate personalities that could be "activated" with code words; the victims were allegedly trained as assassins, prostitutes, drug traffickers, and child sex workers (to create child pornography). Hammond claimed his patients had revealed the conspiracy was masterminded by a Jewish doctor in Nazi Germany, but who now worked for the Central Intelligence Agency with a goal of worldwide domination by a Satanic cult. The cult was allegedly composed of respectable, powerful members of society who used the funds generated to further their agenda. Missing memories among the victims and absence of evidence was cited as evidence of the power and effectiveness of this cult in furthering its agenda. Hammond's claims gained considerable attention, due in part to his prominence in the field of hypnosis and psychotherapy.

Satanic ritual abuse brought together several groups normally unlikely to associate, including psychotherapists, self-help groups, religious fundamentalists and law enforcement.[52] Initial accusations were made in the context of the rising political power of conservative Christianity within the United States,[20] and religious fundamentalists enthusiastically promoted rumors of SRA.[41] Psychotherapists who were actively Christian advocated for the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID); soon after, accounts similar to Michelle Remembers began to appear, with some therapists believing the alter egos of some patients were the result of demonic possession.[21] Protestantism was instrumental in starting, spreading, and maintaining rumors through sermons about the dangers of SRA, lectures by purported experts, and prayer sessions, including showings of the 1987 Geraldo Rivera television special. Secular proponents appeared, and child protection workers became significantly involved. Law enforcement trainers, many themselves strongly religious, became strong promoters of the claims and self-described "experts" on the topic. Their involvement in child sexual abuse cases produced more allegations of SRA, adding credibility to the phenomenon.[20] As the explanations for SRA were distanced from evangelical Christianity and associated with "survivor" groups, the motivations ascribed to purported Satanists shifted from combating a religious nemesis, to mind control and abuse as an end to itself.[55] Clinicians, psychotherapists and social workers documented clients with alleged histories of SRA,[20][56][57] though the claims of therapists were unsubstantiated beyond the testimonies of their clients.[58]

In 1987, a list of "indicators" was published by Catherine Gould,[61] featuring a broad array of vague symptoms that were ultimately common, non-specific and subjective, purported to be capable of diagnosing SRA in most young children.[41] By the late 1980s, allegations began to appear throughout the world (including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia), in part enabled by English as a common international language and in the United Kingdom, assisted by Gould's list of indicators. Belief in SRA spread rapidly through the ranks of mental health professionals (despite an absence of evidence) through a variety of continuing education seminars, during which attendees were urged to believe in the reality of Satanic cults, their victims, and not to question the extreme and bizarre memories uncovered. Proof was provided in the form of unconnected bits of information such as pictures drawn by patients, heavy metal album covers, historical folklore about devil worshipers, and pictures of mutilated animals. During the seminars, patients provided testimonials of their experiences and presenters stressed that recovering memories was important for healing.

Media coverage of SRA began to turn negative by 1987, and the "panic" ended between 1992 and 1995.[76] The release of the HBO made-for-TV movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial in 1995 re-cast Ray Buckey as a victim of overzealous prosecution rather than an abusive predator and marked a watershed change in public perceptions of satanic ritual abuse accusations.[78] In 1995, Geraldo Rivera issued an apology for his 1987 television special which had focused on the alleged cults.[79][49] By 2003, allegations of ritual abuse were met with great skepticism and belief in SRA was no longer considered mainstream in professional circles; although the sexual abuse of children is a real and serious problem, allegations of SRA were essentially false. Reasons for the collapse of the phenomenon include the collapse of criminal prosecution against alleged abusers, a growing number of scholars, officials and reporters questioning the reality of the accusations, and a variety of successful lawsuits against mental health professionals.[20] Astrophysicist and astrobiologist Carl Sagan devoted an entire chapter of his last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996) to a critique of claims of recovered memories of UFO abductions and satanic ritual abuse and cited material from the newsletter of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation with approval.[82]

Some feminist critics of the SRA diagnoses maintained that, in the course of attempting to purge society of evil, the panic of the 1980s and 1990s obscured real child-abuse issues, a concern echoed by Gary Clapton. In England, the SRA panic diverted resources and attention from proven abuse cases; this resulted in a hierarchy of abuse in which SRA was the most serious form, physical and sexual abuse being minimized and/or marginalized, and "mere" physical abuse no longer worthy of intervention. In addition, as criticism of SRA investigation increased, the focus by social workers on SRA resulted in a large loss of credibility to the profession. SRA, with its sensational makeup of many victims abused by many victimizers, ended up robbing the far more common and proven issue of incest of much of its societal significance.[85] The National Center for Abuse and Neglect devised the term religious abuse to describe exorcism, poisoning, and drowning of children in non-satanic religious settings in order to avoid confusion with SRA.[86]

Some people still believe there is credence to allegations of SRA and continue to discuss the topic.[89] Publications by Cathy O'Brien claiming SRA were the result of government programs (specifically the Central Intelligence Agency's Project MKULTRA) to produce Manchurian candidate-style mind control in young children were picked up by conspiracy theorists, linking belief in SRA with claims of government conspiracies.[90] In the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), authors Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson cite ongoing belief in the SRA phenomenon despite a complete lack of evidence as demonstration of the confirmation bias in believers; it further points out that a lack of evidence is actually considered by believers in SRA as more evidence, demonstrating "how clever and evil the cult leaders were: They were eating those babies, bones and all."[91] A Salt Lake City therapist, Barbara Snow, was put on probation in 2008 for planting false memories of satanic abuse in patients.[92] One notable client of hers was Teal Swan.[93]

The far-right conspiracy theory movement known as QAnon, which originated on 4chan in 2017, has adopted many of the tropes of SRA and Satanic Panic. Instead of daycare centers being the center of abuse, however, liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking government officials are portrayed as a child-abusing cabal of Satanists.[94][95][96]

The term satanic ritual abuse is used to describe different behaviors, actions and allegations that lie between extremes of definitions. In 1988, a nationwide study of sexual abuse in US day care agencies, led by David Finkelhor, divided "ritual abuse" allegations into three categoriescult-based ritualism in which the abuse had a spiritual or social goal for the perpetrators, pseudo-ritualism in which the goal was sexual gratification and the rituals were used to frighten or intimidate victims, and psychopathological ritualism in which the rituals were due to mental disorders.[98] Subsequent investigators[who?] have expanded on these definitions and also pointed to a fourth alleged type of Satanic ritual abuse, in which petty crimes with ambiguous meaning (such as graffiti or vandalism) generally committed by teenagers were attributed to the actions of Satanic cults.[99][100][101]

By the early 1990s, the phrase "Satanic ritual abuse" was featured in media coverage of ritualistic abuse but its use decreased among professionals in favor of more nuanced terms such as multi-dimensional child sex rings,[58] ritual/ritualistic abuse,[102] organized abuse or sadistic abuse,[56] some of which acknowledged the complexity of abuse cases with multiple perpetrators and victims without projecting a religious framework onto perpetrators. The latter in particular failed to substantively improve on or replace "Satanic" abuse as it was never used to describe any rituals except the Satanic ones that were the core of SRA allegations. Abuse within the context of Christianity, Islam, or any other religions failed to enter the SRA discourse.

Allegation of cult-based abuse is the most extreme scenario of SRA. During the initial period of interest starting in the early 1980s the term was used to describe a network of Satan-worshipping, secretive intergenerational cults that were supposedly part of a highly organized conspiracy engaged in criminal behaviors such as forced prostitution, drug distribution and pornography. These cults were also thought to sexually abuse and torture children in order to coerce them into a lifetime of Devil worship. Other allegations included bizarre sexual acts such as necrophilia, forced ingestion of semen, blood and feces, cannibalism, orgies, liturgical parody such as pseudosacramental use of feces and urine; infanticide, sacrificial abortions to eat fetuses and human sacrifice; satanic police officers who covered up evidence of SRA crimes and desecration of Christian graves. No evidence of any of these claims has ever been found;[58][108] the proof presented by those who alleged the reality of cult-based abuse primarily consisted of the memories of adults recalling childhood abuse, the testimony of young children and extremely controversial confessions. The idea of a murderous Satanic conspiracy created a controversy dividing the professional child abuse community at the time, though no evidence has been found to support allegations of a large number of children being killed or abused in Satanic rituals.[108] From a law enforcement perspective, an intergenerational conspiracy dedicated to ritual sacrifice whose members remain completely silent, make no mistakes and leave no physical evidence is unlikely; cases of what the media incorrectly perceived as actual cult sacrifices (such as the 1989 case of Adolfo Constanzo) have supported this idea.[58]

A third variation of ritual abuse involves non-religious ritual abuse in which the rituals were delusional or obsessive.[98] There are incidents of extreme sadistic crimes that are committed by individuals, loosely organized families and possibly in some organized cults, some of which may be connected to Satanism, though this is more likely to be related to sex trafficking; though SRA may happen in families, extended families and localized groups, it is not believed to occur in large, organized groups.

Investigators considered graffiti such as the pentagram to be evidence of a Satanic cult. Ambiguous crimes in which actual or erroneously believed symbols of Satanism appear have also been claimed as part of the SRA phenomenon, though in most cases the crimes cannot be linked to a specific belief system; minor crimes such as vandalism, trespassing and graffiti were often found to be the actions of teenagers who were acting out.[99][100][101]

There was never any consensus on what actually constituted Satanic ritual abuse.[113] This lack of a single definition, as well as confusion between the meanings of the term ritual (religious versus psychological) allowed a wide range of allegations and evidence to be claimed as a demonstration of the reality of SRA allegations, irrespective of which "definition" the evidence supported. Acrimonious disagreements between groups who supported SRA allegations as authentic and those criticizing them as unsubstantiated resulted in an extremely polarized discussion with little middle ground.[114] The lack of credible evidence for the more extreme interpretations often being seen as evidence of an effective conspiracy rather than an indication that the allegations are unfounded. The religious beliefs or atheism of the disputants have also resulted in different interpretations of evidence, and as well as accusations of those who reject the claims being "anti-child." Both believers and skeptics have developed networks to disseminate information on their respective positions. One of the central themes of the discussion among English child abuse professionals was the assertion that people should simply "believe the children," and that the testimony of children was sufficient proof, which ignored the fact that in many cases the testimony of children was interpreted by professionals rather than the children explicitly disclosing allegations of abuse. In some cases this was simultaneously presented with the idea that it did not matter if SRA actually existed, that the empirical truth of SRA was irrelevant, that the testimony of children was more important than that of doctors, social workers and the criminal justice system.

The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted a study led by University of California psychologist Gail Goodman, which found that among 12,000 accusations of satanic ritual abuse, there was no evidence for "a well-organized intergenerational satanic cult, who sexually molested and tortured children," although there was "convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or couples who say they are involved with Satan or use the claim to intimidate victims."[8] One such case Goodman studied involved "grandparents [who] had black robes, candles, and Christ on an inverted crucifixand the children had chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease, in their throats," according to the report by a district attorney.[8]

The evidence for SRA was primarily in the form of testimonies from children who made allegations of SRA, and adults who claim to remember abuse during childhood,[117] that may have been forgotten and recovered during therapy.[122][excessive citations]

With both children and adults, no corroborating evidence has been found for anything except pseudosatanism in which the satanic and ritual aspects were secondary to and used as a cover for sexual abuse. Despite this lack of objective evidence, and aided by the competing definitions of what SRA actually was, proponents claimed SRA was a real phenomenon throughout the peak and during the decline of the moral panic.[123] Despite allegations appearing in the United States, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, no material evidence has been found to corroborate allegations of organized cult-based abuse that practices human sacrifice and cannibalism.[122] Though trauma specialists frequently claimed the allegations made by children and adults were the same, in reality the statements made by adults were more elaborate, severe, and featured more bizarre abuse. In 95 percent of the adults' cases, the memories of the abuse were recovered during psychotherapy.

For several years, a conviction list assembled by the Believe the Children advocacy group was circulated as proof of the truth of satanic ritual abuse allegations, though the organization itself no longer exists and the list itself is "egregiously out of date."

Two investigations were carried out to assess the evidence for SRA. In the United Kingdom, a government report produced no evidence of SRA, but several examples of false satanists faking rituals to frighten their victims. In the United States, evidence was reported but was based on a flawed methods with an overly liberal definition of a substantiated case.

A British study published in 1996 found 62 cases of alleged ritual abuse reported to researchers by police, social and welfare agencies from the period of 1988 to 1991, representing a tiny proportion of extremely high-profile cases compared to the total number investigated by the agencies.[127] Anthropologist Jean LaFontaine spent several years researching ritual abuse cases in Britain at the behest of the government, finding that all of the cases of alleged satanic ritual abuse that could be substantiated were cases where the perpetrators' goal was sexual gratification rather than religious worship.[128] Producing several reports and the 1998 book Speak of the Devil, after reviewing cases reported to police and children's protective services throughout the country LaFontaine concluded that the only rituals she uncovered were those invented by child abusers to frighten their victims or justify the sexual abuse. In addition, the sexual abuse occurred outside of the rituals, indicating the goal of the abuser was sexual gratification rather than ritualistic or religious. In cases involving satanic abuse, the satanic allegations by younger children were influenced by adults, and the concerns over the satanic aspects were found to be compelling due to cultural attraction of the concept, but distracting from the actual harm caused to the abuse victims.[129]

In more recent years, discredited allegations of SRA have been levelled against Jimmy Savile during the posthumous investigation into his sexual abuse of children,[130] as well as against former Prime Minister Ted Heath (who was previously falsely accused of SRA during his lifetime).[131]

David Finkelhor completed an investigation of child sexual abuse in daycares in the United States, and published a report in 1988. The report found 270 cases of sexual abuse, of which 36 were classified as substantiated cases of ritual abuse.[98] Mary de Young has pointed out that the report's definition of "substantiated" was overly liberal as it required only that one agency had decided that abuse had occurred, even if no action was taken, no arrests made, no operating licenses suspended. In addition, multiple agencies may have been involved in each case (including the FBI, local police, social services agencies and childhood protective services in many cases), with wide differences in suspicion and confirmation, often in disagreement with each other. Finkelhor, upon receiving a "confirmation," would collect information from whoever was willing or interested to provide it and did not independently investigate the cases, resulting in frequent errors in his conclusions. No data is provided beyond case studies and brief summaries. Three other cases considered corroborating by the public[33]the McMartin preschool trial, the Country Walk case and the murders in Matamoros, by Adolfo Constanzoultimately failed to support the existence of SRA. The primary witness in the Country Walk case repeatedly made, then withdrew accusations against her husband amid unusual and coercive inquiries by her lawyer and a psychologist.[6] The Matamoros murders produced the bodies of 12 adults who were ritually sacrificed by a drug gang inspired by the film The Believers, but did not involve children or sexual abuse. The McMartin case resulted in no convictions and was ultimately based on accusations by children with no proof beyond their coerced testimonies. A 1996 investigation of more than 12,000 allegations of satanic, ritual and religious abuse resulted in no cases that were considered factual or corroborated.[133]

Dutch investigation journalists from Argos (NPO Radio 1) collected the experiences and stories of over two hundred victims of organized sexual abuse. A hundred and forty victims told Argos about ritual abuse. Six well-known people were mentioned as perpetrators by multiple participants in the investigation, and over ten abuse locations. A warehouse in the Bollenstreek was marked as a location for 'storage' and the production of child pornography. During the investigation the Argos journalists received an anonymous email stating the journalists had to 'beaware' because 'they know about your investigation', remarking 'they're going to get rid of evidence just like they did with Dutroux'. The same day as the journalists received the e-mail, the warehouse in the Bollenstreek burnt down. According to Argos, the damage had been classified so severe by the fire department, that a cause of fire could not be determined.[134]

As a response to parliamentary questions following the Argos investigation, Dutch minister of Justice and Safety Ferdinand Grapperhaus said on August 27, 2020, that there would be 'no independent investigation into Ritual Abuse' of children in The Netherlands.[135] The Green Left, the Socialist Party and the Labour Party criticized Grapperhaus for his decision.[136] On October 13 (2020), the Dutch House of Representatives approved a motion in which the PvdA, GL and the SP requested that an independent investigation be conducted into the nature and extent of "organized sadistic abuse of children", bypassing Grapperhaus' original refusal to investigate.[137]

The majority of adult testimonials were given by adults while they were undergoing psychotherapy, in most cases they were undergoing therapy which was designed to elicit memories of SRA.[55] Therapists claimed that the pain which their patients felt, the internal consistency of their stories and the similarities of the allegations which were made by different patients all proved the existence of SRA, but despite this, the disclosures of patients never resulted in any corroboration; The allegations which were obtained from the alleged victims by mental health practitioners all lacked verifiable evidence, they were entirely anecdotal and they all involved incidents which occurred years or decades earlier.[140] The concern for therapists revolved around the pain of their clients, which is for them more important than the truth of their patients' statements. A sample of 29 patients in a medical clinic reporting SRA found no corroboration of the claims in medical records or in discussion with family members.[141] and a survey of 2,709 American therapists found the majority of allegations of SRA came from only sixteen therapists, suggesting that the determining factor in a patient making allegations of SRA was the therapist's predisposition. Further, the alleged similarities between patient accounts (particularly between adults and children) turned out to be illusory upon review, with adults describing far more elaborate, severe and bizarre abuse than children. Bette Bottoms, who reviewed hundreds of claims of adult and child abuse, described the ultimate evidence for the abuse as "astonishingly weak and ambiguous" particularly given the severity of the alleged abuse. Therapists however, were found to believe patients more as the allegations became more bizarre and severe.

In cases in which patients made claims that were physically impossible, or in cases in which the evidence which was found by police is contradictory, the details which are reported will often change. If patients pointed to a spot where a body was buried, but no body was found and no earth was disturbed, therapists resort to special pleading, saying that the patient was hypnotically programmed to direct investigators to the wrong location, or the patient was fooled by the cult into believing that a crime was not committed. If the alleged bodies were cremated and police point out that ordinary fires are inadequate to completely destroy a body, stories include special industrial furnaces. The patients' allegations change and they creatively find "solutions" to objections.

The second group to make allegations of SRA were young children. During the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, the techniques used by investigators to gather evidence from witnesses, particularly young children, evolved to become very leading, coercive and suggestive, pressuring young children to provide testimony and refusing to accept denials while offering inducements that encouraged false disclosures.[55][144] The interviewing techniques used were the factors believed to have led to the construction of the bizarre disclosures of SRA by the children and changes to forensic and interviewing techniques since that time has resulted in a disappearance of the allegations.[20] Analysis of the techniques used in two key cases (the McMartin preschool and Wee Care Nursery School trials) concluded that the children were questioned in a highly suggestive manner. Compared with a set of interviews from Child Protective Services, the interviews from the two trials were "significantly more likely to (a) introduce new suggestive information into the interview, (b) provide praise, promises, and positive reinforcement, (c) express disapproval, disbelief, or disagreement with children, (d) exert conformity pressure, and (e) invite children to pretend or speculate about supposed events."[144]

Specific allegations from the cases included:

A variety of these allegations resulted in criminal convictions; in an analysis of these cases Mary de Young found that many had had their convictions overturned. Of 22 day care employees and their sentences reviewed in 2007, three were still incarcerated, eleven had charges dismissed or overturned, and eight were released before serving their full sentences. Grounds included technical dismissals, constitutional challenges and prosecutorial misconduct.[113]

SRA and the so-called "Satanic Panic" have been called a moral panic and compared to the blood libel and witch-hunts of historical Europe,[10][76][157][158] and McCarthyism in the United States during the 20th century.[159][160] Stanley Cohen, who originated the term moral panic, called the episode "one of the purest cases of moral panic."[162] The initial investigations of SRA were performed by anthropologists and sociologists, who failed to find evidence of SRA actually occurring; instead they concluded that SRA was a result of rumors and folk legends that were spread by "media hype, Christian fundamentalism, mental health and law enforcement professionals and child abuse advocates."[114] Sociologists and journalists noted the vigorous nature with which some evangelical activists and groups were using claims of SRA to further their religious and political goals. Other commentators suggested that the entire phenomenon may be evidence of a moral panic over Satanism and child abuse.[163] Skeptical explanations for allegations of SRA have included an attempt by radical feminists to undermine the nuclear family,[164] a backlash against working women, homophobic attacks on gay childcare workers,[165] a universal need to believe in evil,[16] fear of alternative spiritualities, "end of the millennium" anxieties, or a transient form of temporal lobe epilepsy.[167]

In his book Satanic Panic, the 1994 Mencken Award winner for Best Book presented by the Free Press Association,[168] Jeffery Victor writes that, in the United States, the groups most likely to believe rumors of SRA are rural, poorly educated, religiously conservative white blue-collar families with an unquestioning belief in American values who feel significant anxieties over job loss, economic decline and family disintegration. Victor considers rumours of SRA a symptom of a moral crisis and a form of scapegoating for economic and social ills.[170]

Information about SRA claims spread through conferences presented to religious groups, churches and professionals such as police forces and therapists as well as parents. These conferences and presentations served to organize agencies and foster communication between groups, maintaining and spreading disproven or exaggerated stories as fact.[171][172] Members of local police forces organized into loose networks focused on cult crimes, some of whom billed themselves as "experts" and were paid to speak at conferences throughout the United States. Religious revivalists also took advantage of the rumors and preached about the dangers of Satanism to youth and presented themselves at paid engagements as secular experts. At the height of the panic, the highly emotional accusations and circumstances of SRA allegations made it difficult to investigate the claims, with the accused being assumed as guilty and skeptics becoming co-accused during trials, and trials moving forward based solely on the testimony of very young children without corroborating evidence. No forensic or corroborating evidence has ever been found for religiously based cannibalistic or murderous SRA, despite extensive investigations.[114] The concern and reaction expressed by various groups regarding the seriousness or threat of SRA has been considered out of proportion to the actual threat by satanically motivated crimes, and the rare crime that exists that may be labeled "satanic" does not justify the existence of a conspiracy or network of religiously motivated child abusers.[175]

Jeffrey Victor reviewed 67 rumors about SRA in the United States and Canada reported in newspapers or television, and found no evidence supporting the existence of murderous satanic cults. LaFontaine states that cases of alleged SRA investigated in the United Kingdom were reviewed in detail and the majority were unsubstantiated; three were found to involve sexual abuse of children in the context of rituals, but none involved the Witches' Sabbath or devil worship that are characteristic of allegations of SRA. LaFontaine also states that no material evidence has been forthcoming in allegations of SRA; no bones, bodies or blood, in either the United States or Britain.

Kenneth Lanning, an FBI expert in the investigation of child sexual abuse,[179] has stated that pseudo-Satanism may exist but there is "little or no evidence for ... large-scale baby breeding, human sacrifice, and organized satanic conspiracies."[58]

There are many possible alternative answers to the question of why victims are alleging things that don't seem to be true. ... I believe that there is a middle grounda continuum of possible activity. Some of what the victims allege may be true and accurate, some may be misperceived or distorted, some may be screened or symbolic, and some may be "contaminated" or false. The problem and challenge, especially for law enforcement, is to determine which is which. This can only be done through active investigation. I believe that the majority of victims alleging "ritual" abuse are in fact victims of some form of abuse or trauma.[58]

Lanning produced a monograph in 1994 on SRA aimed at child protection authorities, which contained his opinion that despite hundreds of investigations no corroboration of SRA had been found. Following this report, several convictions based on SRA allegations were overturned and the defendants released.

Reported cases of SRA involve bizarre activities, some of which are impossible (like people flying),[144] that makes the credibility of victims of child sexual abuse questionable. In cases where SRA is alleged to occur, Lanning describes common dynamics of the use of fear to control multiple young victims, the presence of multiple perpetrators and strange or ritualized behaviors, though allegations of crimes such as human sacrifice and cannibalism do not seem to be true. Lanning also suggests several reasons why adult victims may make allegations of SRA, including "pathological distortion, traumatic memory, normal childhood fears and fantasies, misperception, and confusion."[180]

Allegations of SRA have appeared throughout the world. The failure of certain high-profile legal cases generated worldwide media attention, and came to play a central feature in the growing controversies over child abuse, memory and the law.[181][verification needed] The testimony of children in these cases may have led to their collapse, as juries came to believe that the sources of the allegations were the use of suggestive and manipulative interviewing techniques, rather than actual events. Research since that time has supported these concerns and without the use of these techniques it is unlikely the cases would ever have reached trial.[20]

In one analysis of 36 court cases involving sexual abuse of children within rituals, only one quarter resulted in convictions, all of which had little to do with ritual sex abuse.[171] In a 1994 survey of more than 11,000 psychiatric and police workers throughout the US, conducted for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, researchers investigated approximately 12,000 accusations of group cult sexual abuse based on satanic ritual. The survey found no substantiated reports of well-organized satanic rings of people who sexually abuse children, but did find incidents in which the ritualistic aspects were secondary to the abuse and were used to intimidate victims.[8] Victor reviewed 21 court cases alleging SRA between 1983 and 1987 in which no prosecutions were obtained for ritual abuse.

During the early 1980s, some courts attempted ad hoc accommodations to address the anxieties of child witnesses in relation to testifying before defendants. Screens or CCTV technology are a common feature of child sexual assault trials today; children in the early 1980s were typically forced into direct visual contact with the accused abuser while in court. SRA allegations in the courts catalyzed a broad agenda of research into the nature of children's testimony and the reliability of their oral evidence in court. Ultimately in SRA cases, the coercive techniques used by believing district attorneys, therapists and police officers were critical in establishing, and often resolving, SRA cases. In courts, when juries were able to see recordings or transcripts of interviews with children, the alleged abusers were acquitted. The reaction by successful prosecutors, spread throughout conventions and conferences on SRA, was to destroy, or fail to take notes of the interviews in the first place. One group of researchers concluded that children usually lack the sufficient amount of "explicit knowledge" of satanic ritual abuse to fabricate all of the details of an SRA claim on their own.[184] However, the same researchers also concluded that children usually have the sufficient amount of general knowledge of "violence and the occult" to "serve as a starting point from which ritual claims could develop."[184]

In 2006, psychologist and attorney Christopher Barden drafted an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of California signed by nearly 100 international experts in the field of human memory emphasizing the lack of credible scientific support for repressed and recovered memories.[185]

SRA has been linked to dissociative identity disorder (DID, formerly known as multiple personality disorder or MPD),[30][186] with many DID patients also alleging cult abuse.[187][188] The first person to write a first-person narrative about SRA was Michelle Smith, co-author of Michelle Remembers; Smith was diagnosed with DID by her therapist and later husband Lawrence Pazder. Psychiatrists involved with the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (then called the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation), especially associate editor Bennett G. Braun, uncritically promoted the idea that actual groups of persons who worshiped Satan were abusing and ritually sacrificing children and, furthermore, that thousands of persons were recovering actual memories of such abuse during therapy,[190][191] openly discussing such claims in the organization's journal, Dissociation. In a 1989 editorial, Dissociation editor-in-chief Richard Kluft likened clinicians who did not speak of their patients with recovered memories of SRA to the "good Germans" during the Holocaust.[192] One particularly controversial article found parallels between SRA accounts and pre-Inquisition historical records of satanism, hence claimed to find support for the existence of ancient and intergenerational satanic cults.[193] A review of these claims by sociologist Mary de Young in a 1994 Behavioral Sciences and the Law article noted that the historical basis for these claims, and in particular their continuity of cults, ceremonies and rituals was questionable.[52] However at a conference in November 1990, psychiatrist and researcher Frank Putnam, then chief of the Dissociative Disorders Unit of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, led a plenary session panel that proved to be the first public presentation of psychiatric, historical and law enforcement skepticism concerning SRA claims. Other members of the panel included psychiatrist George Ganaway, anthropologist Sherrill Mulhern, and psychologist Richard Noll.[194] Putnam, a skeptic, was viewed by SRA advocates in attendance as using fellow skeptics such as Noll and Mulhern as allies in a disinformation campaign to split the SRA-believing community.[195]

A survey investigating 12,000 cases of alleged SRA found that most were diagnosed with DID as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.[133] The level of dissociation in a sample of women alleging SRA was found to be higher than a comparable sample of non-SRA peers, approaching the levels shown by patients diagnosed with DID.[196] A sample of patients diagnosed with DID and reporting childhood SRA also present other symptoms including "dissociative states with satanic overtones, severe post-traumatic stress disorder, survivor guilt, bizarre self abuse, unusual fears, sexualization of sadistic impulses, indoctrinated beliefs, and substance abuse."[186] Commenting on the study, Philip Coons stated that patients were held together in a ward dedicated to dissociative disorders with ample opportunity to socialize, and that the memories were recovered through the use of hypnosis (which he considered questionable).[141] No cases were referred to law enforcement for verification, nor was verification attempted through family members. Coons also pointed out that existing injuries could have been self-inflicted, that the experiences reported were "strikingly similar" and that "many of the SRA reports developed while patients were hospitalized."[114] The reliability of memories of DID clients who alleged SRA in treatment has been questioned and a point of contention in the popular media and with clinicians; many of the allegations made are fundamentally impossible and alleged survivors lack the physical scars that would result were their allegations true.[30]

Many women claiming to be SRA survivors have been diagnosed with DID, and it is unclear if their claims of childhood abuse are accurate or a manifestation of their diagnosis. Of a sample of 29 patients who presented with SRA, 22 were diagnosed with dissociative disorders including DID. The authors noted that 58 percent of the SRA claims appeared in the years following the Geraldo Rivera special on SRA and a further 34 percent following a workshop on SRA presented in the area; in only two patients were the memories elicited without the use of "questionable therapeutic practices for memory retrieval."[141] Claims of SRA by DID patients have been called "...often nothing more than fantastic pseudomemories implanted or reinforced in psychotherapy"[198] and SRA a cultural script of the perception of DID.[199] Some believe that memories of SRA are solely iatrogenically implanted memories from suggestive therapeutic techniques,[200][201] though this has been criticized by Daniel Brown, Alan Scheflin and Corydon Hammond for what they argue as over-reaching the scientific data that supports an iatrogenic theory. Others have criticized Hammond specifically for using therapeutic techniques to gather information from clients that rely solely on information fed by the therapist in a manner that highly suggests iatrogenesis.[200] Skeptics said that the increase in DID diagnosis on the 1980s and 1990s and its association with memories of SRA is evidence of malpractice by treating professionals.[203]

Much of the body of literature on the treatment of ritually abused patients focuses on dissociative disorders.[114][204]

One explanation for the SRA allegations is that they were based upon false memories caused by use of discredited suggestive techniques such as hypnosis and leading questions by therapists underestimating the suggestibility of their clients.[205] The altered state of consciousness induced by hypnosis rendered patients an unusual ability to produce confabulations, often with the assistance of their therapists.[206]

Paul R. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, discusses in his book Try to Remember the developments that led to the creation of false memories in the SRA moral panic and the formation of the FMSF as an effort to bring contemporary scientific research and political action to the polarizing struggle about false memories within the mental health disciplines. According to McHugh, there is no coherent scientific basis for the core belief of one side of the struggle, that sexual abuse can cause massive systemic repression of memories that can only be accessed through hypnosis, coercive interviews and other dubious techniques. The group of psychiatrists who promoted these ideas, whom McHugh terms "Mannerist Freudians," consistently followed a deductive approach to diagnosis in which the theory and causal explanation of symptoms was assumed to be childhood sexual abuse leading to dissociation, followed by a set of unproven and unreliable treatments with a strong confirmation bias that inevitably produced the allegations and causes that were assumed to be there.

The treatment approach involved isolation of the patient from friends and family within psychiatric wards dedicated to the treatment of dissociation, filled with other patients who were treated by the same doctors with the same flawed methods and staff members who also coherently and universally ascribed to the same set of beliefs. These methods began in the 1980s and continued for several years until a series of court cases and medical malpractice lawsuits resulted in hospitals failing to support the approach. In cases where the dissociative symptoms were ignored, the coercive treatment approach ceased and the patients were removed from dedicated wards, allegations of satanic rape and abuse normally ceased, "recovered" memories were identified as fabrications and conventional treatments for presenting symptoms were generally successful.[207]

Read more:

Satanic panic - Wikipedia