Small groups existed in various countries. Although not technically a Satanist, Aleister Crowley greatly influenced most subsequent Satanism.
by Massimo Introvigne
Article 3 of 6. Read article 1 and article 2.
The Taxil hoax discussed in the previous article of this series made media more cautious in promoting anti-Satanism campaigns. A late-Belle-Époque Satanism was allowed to exist in several countries.
Less famous than Huysmans’ Satanists, but perhaps more real, was Danish “fringe” Freemason Ben Kadosh (Carl William Hansen, 1872–1936) who proposed in 1906 to establish an occult order devoted to worship Lucifer, or Satan, as the creator of our material world. Although Kadosh founded several small occult societies, it is unclear whether the Satanist one was ever established.
In addition to calling the attention of scholars of Satanism on Kadosh, Swedish scholar Per Faxneld claimed that influential Polish novelist Stanisław Przybyszewski (1868–1927) “formulated what is likely the first attempt ever to construct a more or less systematic Satanism.” Przybyszewski, however, did not create an organization around his philosophical version of Satanism. Some of his disciples perhaps did, although to a very limited extent.
Przybyszewski was also influential on several artists, including Czech painter and occultist Josef Váchal (1884–1969), who often alluded to Satanism in his paintings. Satanic, as well as Theosophical and Christian, images were painted by Váchal between 1920 and 1924 in the extraordinary murals of the Portmoneum, the home of collector Josef Portman (1893–1968), in the Czech city of Litomyšl.
The sulphurous fame of Przybyszewski was also a factor in accusations of Satanism in Poland against Czesław Czyński (1858–1932), who founded in 1926 the Ordo Albi Orientis. Although a number of seemingly ritualistic suicides in his circles were, admittedly, puzzling, scholars tend to agree that Czyński practiced a non-Satanist form of sexual magic.
After World War I, the influence of the leading British esotericist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) started to be felt among those interested in Satanism. Strictly speaking, Crowley was not a Satanist, although he occasionally used “Satan” and “Lucifer” as metaphorical names designating the Sun, the penis, the astrological sign of the Capricorn, or certain spirits of the collective unconscious.
His references to Satanists are normally derogatory. In his work “Magick,” Crowley wrote that “the Devil does not exist. It is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions.” Satanists, he insisted, practiced at best a primitive and lower form of what he preferred to spell “magick.”
According to Crowley, Satanists erred because they believed that the Devil really exists as a person, thus lending credibility to the Jewish and Christian Bible. The 19th-century Satanists, Crowley wrote in his autobiography, “for all their pretended devotion to Lucifer or Belial, were sincere Christians in spirit, and inferior Christians at that, for their methods were puerile.”
Crowley was also influential on the rebirth of ancient witchcraft and the first groups of Wicca established by Gerald B. Gardner (1884–1964). Wicca is also not Satanist. Like Crowley, it accuses Satanists of accepting the Christian narrative about God and the Devil, while Wiccans want to return to pre-Christian and non-monotheistic forms of religion.
Crowley was not Satanist, but some Satanists were Crowleyans, and many modern Satanist rituals are influenced by Crowley. The Fraternitas Saturni, founded in Berlin in 1926 by Eugen Grosche (1888–1964) was an example of an organization combining, at least in its early days, ideas derived from Crowley and Lucifer/Satan worship.
The main link between the Crowleyan milieus and the Satanism of the 1960s was John Whiteside (Jack) Parsons (1914–1952), a renowned Cal Tech rocket scientist who organized in Pasadena a communal cult of the Antichrist, whom he came to identify with himself. Parsons died in the explosion of his laboratory in 1952.
Parsons’ commune, which was not Satanist but influenced subsequent Californian Satanists, is mostly remembered for the involvement of two characters who eventually became famous. The first was artist Marjorie Cameron (1922–1995), who became Parsons’ lover and engaged with him in (unsuccessful) sex magic experiments in order to procreate a “magical child.”
The second was L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), who later founded Scientology. He reported that he successfully infiltrated a “black magic cult” on behalf of the U.S. Navy Intelligence in order to destroy it. From Parsons’ point of view, he was simply a member of the group who left the commune with a part of its money and the scientist’s young girlfriend, Betty Northrup (1924–1997), whom Hubbard eventually married (and quickly divorced). I have discussed elsewhere the complicated relationships between Hubbard, magic, and Parsons, and their misuse by Scientology opponents. I would refer those interested in the matter to my article on the “gnostic” features of Hubbard’s thought.
Other Satanist groups developed independently of Crowley. Herbert Arthur Sloane (1905–1975), a barber in Toledo, Ohio, claimed to have operated, since 1948, the oldest Satanist organization in the U.S. There is no evidence, however, that he called his group Satanist and used the name “Ophite Cultus Sathanas” before hearing of the Californian Church of Satan in the late 1960s. In previous years, Sloane only operated mostly as a Spiritualist medium and a psychic.
More relevant were the activities of Russian aristocrat Maria de Naglowska (1883–1936), a friend of Italian right-wing esotericist Julius Evola (1898-1974). She operated in Paris between 1930 and 1935 the Knights of the Golden Arrow, perhaps the first modern organized Satanist organization. Her elaborate system included sex magic and was based on a dualism worshiping both Satan and God. She attracted the interest of Parisian media and intellectuals, until in 1935 she proclaimed that her mission had ended and left Paris for Zurich, where she died in 1936.