Is satanism a Catholic invention?

You know I always felt the real tragedy in the whole witch trial thing was this.
If you’re accused of being a heretic, you could have really committed an act of heresy.
Same with a murder charge or other crimes.
But no has ever had supernatural powers, no one ever could summon a satanic hail storms to destroy the towns crops, or make the cows stop giving milk or transform into a black cat and suck the breath out of new borns.
Every single person ever accused of being a witch was innocent.
 
hgc said:
That's an interesting statement. In what way does it depend on the questions asked? Is it the sense that any question asked under torture is practically guaranteed to bring the questioner's desired response?
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Pretty much, if you are torturing someone they will agree they kissed the devil's ass or that their neighbor was there.
 
arthwollipot said:
Seriously now, I would have to say that Satan is an invention of the Abrahamic religions. In general Satan is a part of Christian tradition (although he also has quite a showing in Islam). Satanism therefore would not exist if not for Abrahamism.

Is that even a word? Abrahamism?
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I am not sure, there do appear to be adversarial beings in many religions.

Now the Xian one is interesting in that it leads to all evil because god is never evil.
 
If a religion has a true adversary, it is dualistic, not monothestic. As far as I can tell, Satan (Lucifer) is an angel, and part of God's heirarchy - at least until the whole "Paradise Lost" thing.
 
Aepervius said:
There are antagonist adversary in other religion too, for example Mara in india. So it isn't limited to "abrahamist" religions.
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This is somewhat true. But there seems to be no such thing as "Maraism" in the same vein as "Satanism".

Or is there? I don't know.
 
Technically, Zoroastrianism had Ahriman _long_ before the Christians invented Satan. (Although the name is older, the concept of Satan as we know it is a fundamentally Christian invention.) Everything that was bad, evil or destructive was his work.

Incidentally, it also pioneered the technique of making everyone else's gods into demons.
 
Difficult to say. In buddhism it looks l(wiki) he is defined as a demon, but not as a source of evil, more like a source of nuisance.

In induisam it is defined as an godly attribute (death) and as a goddess of death (potentially worshipped? I can only find anime or woo web page).
 
arthwollipot said:
Seriously now, I would have to say that Satan is an invention of the Abrahamic religions. In general Satan is a part of Christian tradition (although he also has quite a showing in Islam). Satanism therefore would not exist if not for Abrahamism.

Is that even a word? Abrahamism?
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I think it's more accurately described as an invention of the Zoroastrians, and assimilated into the Abrahamic religions.

For what it's worth, mainstream modern Jews don't believe in the Devil, and any references to such an entity in the Bible are either in the New Testament or a couple of very late references in the deuterocanonical ("apocryphal" for you Protestants) books. It appears that the idea of an anti-God was gaining traction around the time of Jesus. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is not identified as anything other than the Serpent. Satan in the Book of Job is not the ruler of Hell, and Lucifer, the morning star in Isaiah, is a Babylonian (maybe Assyrian?) king.
 
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From what little I understand, Zoroastrianism was the first religion to postulate the whole Good vs Evil conflict - the first to divide the word into Darkness and Light. Essentially it is a dualistic religion, not a monothiestic one with an antagonist. But like I said, I don't know a great deal about it.

Very few people these days remember what Zarathustra actually spake.
 
Cainkane1 said:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanis5.htm

Just prior to the inquisition a grroup of Catholic leaders decided Satan worship and witchcraft was going on. Apparently they sat around deciding what to look for. They had the idea that the Lords prayer would be said backwards. The decided a black mass would be performed which included an inverted pentagram and an inverted cross. They said sex orgies would be going on. They even said the witches would be dancing naked in a counter clockwise circle.

Ok investigations were made and none of these things were found. Not to be denied however they conducted witch hunts anyway and the rest is history.

Ok in the meantime all the rituals and beliefs of Satanism were on paper. The Catholics had it all wrote down. The information got to the general public and voila. You have the Satanic religion and we have the Catholics to thank for it.
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I highly recommend Elaine Pagel's, "The Origins of Satan." It's a short and interesting read on the evolution of the modern concept of Satan. Though that's more about Satan as a being rather than Satanism, but still very interesting.
 
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Directly to the OP's point, I doubt that there has ever been an actual group of people who actually worship Satan with defined orders of service, traditional rituals, etc. There are occaisionally very small groups of individuals led by some sort of locally charismatic fellow who might get together for weirdness that has some sort of Satanic theme, but I doubt that those groups last more than a couple of years before dissolving. They probably do something vaguely like the Black Mass or other rituals that they make up themselves based on what they read somewhere in the annals of history from various witch hunters.

There is an organized "Church of Satan" in the United States, but it would be more like an official, "Church of hedonism with an anti-Christian theme". They worship "Satan" as a symbol of all those cool things you would like to do but the preacher says you aren't supposed to.
 
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I always thought "devil-worshipers" must be the most hardcore catholics. They have to believe all the crazy catholic dogma and "spiritual warfare" crap so strongly to the point where they believe they'll be promoted to officer's school in Satan's Infernal Legion and settle down somewhere reasonably pleasant in the 5th or 6th circle of Hell, because they drew a pentagram and lit a few candles. :D
 
Aepervius said:
No really. It is a qualification of OTHER gods worshipped by other folk as devil, to paint them in a bad light, in reality those gods offered their own positive rewards.

Whereas satan worship is your own little myth worshipping evil entity. That's waaaay different. For one if you believe in satan that means you believe in JC and gods. And if you do it makes no sense whatsoever to worship satan, knowing that you put yourself on *god* list of naughty forever. That has never made sense except in the small brain of zealous idiot seeing enemy everywhere.

(*) yeah I know about the church of satanism as per 1950.
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In America so called Satanists do not worship Satan they worship themselves as Gods using satan as a role model. La Veyan Satanism so called is actually a type of atheism.
 
hgc said:
Yes, this is what I've always wondered. In what way does Satanism make sense? How do you choose to go with the wrong team. To the tiny extent that Satanism may truly have been embraced, it seems just more of religiosity that doesn't check itself for internal consistency.
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First, no I do not believe Satan worship as described in Malleus Maleficarum actually existed anywhere prior to its publication -- and quite possibly existed ever, period. As Cainkane1 pointed out, modern La Veyan Satanism is pretty much play-acting.

Having said that, I can think of at least one way someone can be an honest-to-Devil Satanist without internal contradictions. All you have to do is accept most of Christian (or Muslim for that matter) myth, but drop the "Satan preordained to lose" part. If you think that struggle between God and Satan is a real struggle, and its outcome is uncertain, then for all you know you may be on the winning team.

Or take it one step further -- "Satan is destined to win". Or even "Satan was the good guy, Jehovah just wrote the PR release".
 
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