The Devil's Party: Satanism in Modernity (2024)

I not only thought this was a great work with an interesting subject matter, but the writing was top notch and showed an interest in writing about something in a way to engage the reader.
I also detected that the author wrote the book they would want to read, when people do that you can be assured a great read.
I thought this was very well done. I will purchase it.

A solid intellectual history of 'self-declared Satanism', as opposed to the better known Satanism Scares. Intellectual history because, interestingly, with the exception of leading figures such as LaVey and other published representatives, satanists are pretty much absent from the chapters, which instead focus on ideas. We do meet them as short soundbites in Jim Lewis's chapter on his Satanism survey and similarly in a chapter on Polish Satanism online. Anyway, an interesting collection.

I have mixed feelings about this book - not surprising, really, for a collection of essays by twelve different authors.

First, the negative: Many of the essays were too short to really get their teeth into their subject, and ended up essentially restating their central thesis for a dozen pages (e.g. van Luijk). A couple (Petersen and Smoczynski) were riddled with terrible deconstruction prose, for example writing “comprehending the tension between individuality and community, as well as particularity and mainstreaming” (page 143) where a better, less wank author would write “comprehending the tension between the individual and their community, the particular and their mainstream.” I used to be a sucker for that kind of waffle, but, having grown out of it (and dropped my academic career), I resent subjecting myself to it again.

On the other hand, the positive: I did really appreciate several of the essays. I heartily enjoyed Hall’s examples of 17th- and 18th-Century Scandinavians describing their dealings with the devil, and Faxneld’s mini biography of Stanislaw Przybyszewski. Gallagher’s analysis of Anton LaVey’s borrowings from Might is Right, and Lewis’s statistical analysis of contemporary Satanic conversions, both managed to paint remarkably in-depth pictures of their subjects. Lewis’s essay in particular significantly deepened my understanding of my own faith, and is the essay that will stick with me the most from this collection. Finally, Senholt’s essay on the Order of Nine Angels is an important reminder that we need to be vigilant about detecting those who’d use our religion to foment hatred and general dick-headed-ness.

This volume illustrates the variegated development of an intellectual tradition which may broadly be labeled 'satanic'; that is, self-defined cultural and ideological movements explicitly professing inspiration by, sympathy with, or devotion to values, practices, or metaphysical figures which they, largely in keeping with conceptions drawn from western popular culture, identify as satanic. The articles collected here comprise a variety of methodological approaches, including documentary history, quantitative ethnography, and textual analysis of key writings by major figures within subcultural history. Taken together, they serve to place the spectrum of modern 'satanisms' within a common analytical framework with other new religious movements, as well as historical 'world religions'. In this sense, the satanic discursive complex, socially and spiritually elitist in its posture of transgression toward normative social values – especially those construed as inhibiting the self-realization of the individual – has taken shape in conversation with the overlapping spheres of personal identity, group identification, and the relationship between individual and society.