Devil Worship
(1). The worship of Satan or Lucifer. (2). The worship by semi-civilised or barbarous people; of deities having a demoniac form.
The Worship of Satan or diabolism is spasmodic and occasionally epidemic. It dates from the early days of dualism (q.v.) and perhaps originated in the Persian dual system when the opposing deities Ormuzd and Ahriman symbolised the good and bad principles respectively. Instances of pure Satanism are comparatively rare, and it must not be confounded with the Sabbatic orgies of witchcraft which partake more of the nature of (2), or with the evocation of the Evil One, for the purpose of making a pact with him. Modern groups practising Satanism are small and obscure, and, unorganised as they are, details concerning them are conspicuous by their absence.
Plentiful details, however, are forthcoming concerning the cultus of Lucifer, but much discrimination is required in dealing with these, the bulk of the literature on the subject being manifestly imaginative and wilfully misleading. The members of the church of Lucifer are of two groups, those who regard the deity they adore as the evil principle, thus approximating to the standpoint of the Satanists, and those who look upon him as the true god in opposition to Adonai or Jehovah, whom they regard as an evil deity who has with fiendish ingenuity miscreated the world of man to the detriment of humanity.
Modern diabolic literature is written from the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church, and much may be said for the theory that it was composed to subserve the necessities of that institution. But this cannot be wholly true, as it is a substantial fact that hosts are frequently abstracted from Catholic churches for the purpose of Satanic rite which requires the destruction of the consecrated wafer as a ritual act. In 1894 a hundred consecrated hosts were stolen from Nôtre Dame by an old woman under circumstances that clearly proved that the vessels which contained them were not the objects of the theft, and an extraordinary number of such larcencies occurred in all parts of France about the end of last century, no less than thirteen churches in the diocese of Orleans being thus despoiled. In the diocese of Lyons measures were taken to transform the tabernacles into strong-boxes, and in eleven of the dioceses similar acts were recorded. In Italy, Rome, Liguria and Solerus suffered, and even in the Island of Mauritius an outrage of peculiar atrocity occurred in 1895. It has been asserted by many writers such as Archbishop Meurin and Dr. Bataille that Freemasonry is merely a mask for Satanism, that is, that in recent years an organisation of which the ordinary mason is ignorant has grown up which has diabolism for its special object. This it is asserted is recruited from the higher branches of masonry and initiates women. Needless to say, the Devil Worship change is indignantly denied by masons, but it must be remembered that the persons who bring it are Catholics, who have a direct interest in humiliating the fraternity. Bataille and Margiotta have it that the order of the Palladium or Sovereign Council of Wisdom, was constituted in France in 1737, and this, they infer, is one and the same as the legendary Palladium of the Templars, better known by the name of Baphomet (q.v.) In 1801 one Isaac Long, a Jew, carried the "original image of Baphomet to Charleston in the United States, and it is alleged that the lodge he founded then became the chief in the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite. He was succeeded in due course by Albert Pike, who, it is alleged, extended the Scotch Rite, and shared the Anti-Catholic Masonic chieftainship with the Italian patriot Mazzini. This new directory was established, it is asserted, as the new Reformed Palladium Rite or the Reformed Palladium. Assisted by Gallatin Mackey, one Longfellow, Holbrook and a Swiss, Phileas Walder by name, Pike erected the new rite into an occult fraternity with world-wide powers, and practised the occult arts so well that we are asked to believe that the head lodge at Charleston was in constant communication with Lucifer! Dr. Bataille in a wholly ludicrous work Le Diable au XIX Siècle, states among other things that in 1881 his hero 66
Dr. Hacks" in whom his own personality is but thinly disguised, visited Charleston in March 1881, where he met Albert Pike, Gallatin Mackey and other Satanists. Mackey showed him his Arcula Mystica in appearance like a liqueur stand, but in reality a diabolical telephone, worked like the Urim and Thummim. Miss Diana Vaughan, once a Palladist, Grand Mistress of the Temple, and Grand Inspectress of the Palladium, was converted to Roman Catholicism, and in Memoirs of an ex-Palladist, (1895) she has given an exhaustive account of her dealings with the Satanists of Charleston. She claims to be descended from the alchemist Thomas Vaughan, and recounts her adventures with Lucifer. These are so wholly absurd that we must request freedom from the necessity of recounting them. There is little doubt that Miss Vaughan was either the victim of hallucination or else the instrument of the Roman Catholic Church in its attempts to brand Masonry as a vehicle of Satanism. The publications of Margiotta and Gabriel Pages are equally puerile, and we may conclude that, if Satanism and the worship of Lucifer exists, that the rites of their churches are carried on in such a secret manner, that few, even mystics of experience, can be aware of them.
When applied to the ceremonies of barbarous races, devil-worship is a misnomer, as the "devils" adored by them are deities in their eyes, and only partake of the diabolic nature in the view of missionaries and others. But inasmuch as the gods possess a demoniac form they may be classed as diabolic. Among these may be enumerated many South American and African tribes.
The Uapès of Brazil worship Jurupari, a fiend-like deity, to whom they consecrate their young men. His cult is invested with the utmost secrecy. The myth of his birth states that he was born of a virgin who conceived after drinking a draught of chahiri, or native beer. She possessed no sexual parts, and could not give birth to the god until bitten by a fish whilst bathing. When arrived at man's estate Juruparı invited the men of the tribe to a drinking-bout, but the women refused to provide the liquor, and thus gained his illwill. He devoured the children of the tribe because they had eaten of the uacu tree which was sacred to him. The men, enraged at the loss of their offspring, fell upon him, and cast him into a fire, from the ashes of which grew the paxiuba tree, which the Uapès say is the bones of Jurupari. Whilst it was night the men cut down the tree and fashioned it into sacred instruments which must never be seen by the women, on account of the dislike Jurupari conceived for them. Should a woman chance to see the sacred symbols pertaining to the worship of Jurupari, she is at once poisoned. On hearing the "Jurupari music" of the priests on the occasion of one of his festivals the women of the tribe wildly rush into concealment, nor dare to emerge from it until all chance of danger is past. In all probability this custom proceeds from the ancient usage common to most American tribes that the rites of initiation of the men of the tribe must not be witnessed by the women thereof, probably on account of some more or less obscure totemic reason or sex-jealousy analagous to the exclusion of women from the rites of freemasonry, to which, strange to say, the worship of Jurupari bears a strong resemblance.
This is a good example of the "devil worship" of savage races. The Chinese also placate devils (see China) as do the people of Burma and Cambodia (q.v.) but in no sense can their oblations to evil spirits be classed as "worship," any more than the gods of classic times may be regarded as devils, simply because they were so labelled by early Christianity. (See Gnostics, Obeah, Ju-ju, Devil, Demonology, etc.) LITERATURE :--Huysman, La Bas; Bataille, Le Diable au XIX siècle; Rosen, Satan et Cie; Meurin, La synagogue du Satan; Papus, Le Diable et L'Occultisme; Waite, Devil-Worship in France; Julie Bois, Petites Religions de Paris: Satanisme et la Magie; Spence, article "Brazil" in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.