Children of Lucifer

This is a thought-provoking treatment of a movement that has captured the attention of scholars and laypeople alike. Its chronological scope is wide, beginning with a chapter on “The Christian invention of Satanism” (actually, Van Luijk looks briefly at pre-Christian roots of the figure called Satan) up to the twenty-first century. He defines Satanism as “religiously motivated veneration of Satan” (not, e.g., admiration of Satan as one deity or supernatural force among many, but embracing a system of belief or ritual in which Satan has dominance). Van Luijk’s introduction makes a distinction that is fundamental for his analysis, one that he successfully carries out throughout this book: he distinguishes between “attribution” (that is, ascribing Satanism to others, often with completely or primarily fantasized descriptions) and “identification” with, or “appropriation” of Satanism. He contends that attribution precedes identification, a contention that he justifies through the whole of his analysis. The centrality of this distinction to his scholarly endeavor, and the rigor with which he employs it, is a major point of differentiation between Van Luijk’s work and the recent publication by Massimo Introvigne (Satanism: A Social History, Brill, 2016); the two massive books are otherwise similar in scope.

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