The meaning of, and motives for, participation in satanic cult organisations was explored using a hermeneutic methodology based on psychoanalytic object relations theory. Fifteen self-professed ex-Satanists, ranging from 19 to 45 years of age, were interviewed using a semi-structured interview format. The transcribed interviews of seven of these participants (six males and one female) were selected for analysis. The interviews and interpretive analyses addressed five main questions: (1) what psychological factors predispose certain individuals to satanic cult involvement; (2) what is the process whereby individuals become satanic cult initiates, and what meaning does this have for them; (3) how do they experience life in the cult; (4) what is the psychological status of demons, and how may we understand the phenomena of demonic possession and invocation; and, (5) what prompts members to leave satanic cults, and how do they experience this process. The interpretive phase comprised three stages. In the first stage, the self and object representations in the subjects' narratives were identified, along with their associated affect links, interpersonal contexts, and fantasies about these interactional contexts. In the second stage, the underlying personality organisations structuring subjects' self and object representations were identified and employed to formulate a comprehensive interpretation of each subject's intrapsychic world, in order to illuminate the influence of this inner world on their cult experience. In the final stage, features common to the individual analyses were integrated into a general psychoanalytic interpretation of subjects' satanic involvement. A model based on a dialogue between object relations theory and analytical psychology was applied to extend the interpretive findings of the data analysis phase. This integrative archetypal object relations perspective was suggested to provide a richer and more encompassing understanding of satanic cult phenomena. The fact that Satanism in South Africa appears to be largely confined to the white sector of the population is located in the socio-historical context of recent political changes in South African society. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.

Traditional methods of psychological and forensic research fail to adequately provide an account of the psychological meaning that perpetrators of crime derive when appropriating their actions to Satanic involvement. In February 2001, a young man appeared in a South African High Court and testified that he had committed murder as a result of his involvement in Satanism. The aim of this study is to gain a phenomenological understanding of how this man appropriates the act of murder to involvement in Satanism. A review of literature elucidates Satanism as a context for meaning, provide a framework for defining murder as a criminal act, and situate this study in the broader field of phenomenological-existential, psychological research. An emergent design case-study approach was applied to data gathered from a single subject, by means of a three-interview series. An empirical phenomenological methodology was used during the interpretive phase to arrive at both a descriptive account of the subject's phenomenological experience and how the eidetic structure of the experience of Satanism as a context tor meaning emerged. A discussion of the subject's appropriation of murder with Satanism illustrates how the subject imposed a dichotomy of good and bad on his life-world in an attempt to derive meaning from his experience of inadequacy. Involvement with Satanism is meaningful, in that it affords its followers an increased sense of power, a safe environment to explore individuality, shared responsibility associated with exercising free choice, social situatedness and an affirmation of being through an increased awareness of finitude. The research subject experienced committing murder as an act of loyalty to the perceived gains he had been afforded as result of his involvement with Satanism.

The purpose of this essay is to provide theoretical positioning for the Satanist Society (Det Satanistiska Samfundet), a religious community by Swedish law whose practice includes political Satanism. The study is also a comparative approach that compares the discourse of the Satanist Society with its American model The Satanic Temple. The essay also wants to try Henrik Bogdan's theory that Satanists and Satanism are seen as the “Other" and are accused of being the evil principle in the Christian worldview. The essay is preformed using a discourse analysis that targets on satanic discourses, political actions, and media/society’s view of the Satanist Society.The result of the study demonstrates that the Satanist Society and the Satanic Temple shares the same satanic discourses, rooted in romantic satanism, feministic satanism and modern satanism, as stipulated by Anton LaVey. Their political approach is what sets the two movements apart. The Satanic society´s political actions take place in social media platforms as Instagram and Facebook, while the Satanic Temple makes its political statements in provocative demonstrations and in the US court system by suing actions, they find violating the right to freedom of religion. The study also shows that media and society reproduce historical stereotypes of satanism sprung both from the Christian construction and the more recent pop culture, which put the Satanist and Satanism as the “Other”.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 131 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Despite the glut of literature focusing on numerous aspects of mainline American religious life, there is a surprising dearth of information regarding deviant religious practitioners. Importantly, there remains a lack of focus on the specificities of religious and spiritual deviance, and the accounts of those who engage in such practices. This exploratory study closely examines the members of one such religion; specifically, the Church of Satan. Despite the stigma associated with Satanism, individuals continue to willfully engage in such practices. Research uses face-toface, semi-structured interviews to better discern the rationale behind Satanic worship as understood by modern-day believers. Particular attention is given to the accounts of Satanists to examine motivations for engaging in such practices, as well as identity management techniques for dealing with potential stigma. Results of the analysis show that Satanists utilize a variety of accounts when speaking about their spiritual choices and the potential stigma that surrounds such choices. These results are discussed and directions for additional research are presented.

When The Satanic Temple was formed in 2013 they immediately sparked a debate in American media through their political activism. With a Satanic discourse they both confused and angered many people, especially persons from the Christian Right-Wing and other Conservatives. With themselves in focus, they also initiated a debate of what a religion is or should be, after starting to demand religious rights through their activism. The idea of using a Satanic discourse in order to emphasize Left-Wing politics is not a new idea though. Already the Romantic Satanists used a similiar strategy some 200 years ago, and The Satanic Temple is quite vocal about the fact that they see them as forerunners. But traces could also be found in the Anarchistic Satanists of the middle 1800’s and the Feminist Satanists around 1900. This essay shows the inheritence of the political Satanism of the 18- and 1900’s through a discourse analysis of these movements compared with The Satanic Temple. The essay also discusses what defines a religion, viewed through The Satanic Temple’s fight for the status of one and compared to academic research on the subject, mainly the idea of viewing religion as a discourse.

Chaos-Gnosticism is a branch of the occult tree which through an eclectic approach tries togather all the dark, antagonistic aspects and forces from certain religions and mythologies ofthe world in order to reach back to the primeval Chaos, the stage that existed before theCreation. With a fundamental gnostic worldview the cosmos is seen as a prison, created byDemiurges, and in Chaos a total freedom rules.The philosophy (or Chaosophy to use a term used by the Chaosgnostics) has spread all over theworld during the past ten years or so. It is vital, in connection to this fact, to give the importanceto the music scene, especially the genre called black metal, for the spreading of theChaosgnostic ideas. Some of the leading bands in this genre, for instance Dissection, Watainand Arckanum, have adopted the Chaosgnostic tenets into their music and thus making theseideas more known all around the world than they otherwise would have been. That being said,it is not clear how many actual practioners of Chaos-Gnostcism there are since it is mainly anindividual religion and the handfull of orders that exist display no sorts of missionary ambitionsand are, additionaly, quite closed for outsiders.Although the first ideas of Chaos-Gnosticism emerged in Sweden in the middle of the 1990´s,an in-depth academic survey has not yet been made on the movement itself. This essay aims tochange that by putting Chaos-Gnosticism in its correct historical and occult context and also byshedding some light on the fundamental tenets and beliefsystem aswell as the importance ofnumerology and central symbols. The essay also presents the three different Chaosgnosticbranches that has emerged to date: Temple of the Black Light, with its Qabbalistic approach,Templum Falcis Cruentis, inspired by folktraditions of Central America and the biblical figureof Cain and finally Thursatrú in which the Chaosgnostic worldview is adopted on Old Norsemythology.

Syftet med denna studie är att göra en analys av två olika satanistiska rörelsers texter och deras syn på identitet och identitetsskapande. De rörelser som valdes till denna studie är The Church of Satan och The Greater Church of Lucifer. För att genomföra analysen valdes två böcker ut som representerar respektive rörelsers grundläggande filosofi, dessa var The Satanic Bible (1969, 2005) samt Wisdom of Eosphoros (2015). Analysens teori grundade sig på begrepp som är plockade från queerteorin, för att belysa synen på vad som är normalt och onormalt samt synen på sexualitet och genus. Utöver detta analyserades även rörelsernas syner på kärlek och relationer, innan rörelsernas budskap jämfördes för att se om det finns några korrelationer mellan de två. För att genomföra analysen valdes en kategoriseringsmetod som inspirerats av idé- och ideologianalys. Resultatet visade att båda rörelserna var kritiska till givna samhälleliga sanningar, och ställde sig kritiska till tanken om att det skall finnas några universella normer och moralregler. De båda förespråkade även den fria sexualiteten, där läggning och preferenser ses som irrelevanta. Hos satanismen gick det att återfinna normativa uttalanden kring genus, kön och könsroller, medan luciferianismen inte lägger någon vikt vid dessa kategorier. Dock lägger de båda rörelserna sitt huvudsakliga fokus på den enskilde individens autonomitet och självbestämmande, där man uppmanas att bryta mot alla konventioner som inte leder till den egna lyckan.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 466-477). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Waikato, 2008. / Title from PDF cover (viewed October 2, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-97)