Includes bibliographical references.

1: Introduction / Per Faxneld & Johan Nilsson -- 2: Eliphas Lévi, La Bible de la liberté (1841) / Julian Strube -- 3: Jules Michelet, La Sorciére (1862) / Ruben van Luijk -- 4: Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871) / Fredrik Gregorius -- 5: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (The Theosophical Society), excerpts from The Secret Doctrine (1888) / Per Faxneld -- 6: Léo Taxil, excerpt from Le Palladium régénéré et libre (1895) / Ruben van Luijk -- 7: Stanislaw Przybyzewski, excerpt from Die Synagoge des Satan (1897) / Per Faxneld -- 8: Ben Kadosh (aka Carl William Hansen), Den ny morgens gry (1906) / Johan Nilsson -- 9: Maria de Naglowska, excerpts from La Lumière du sexe (1932) & "Satanisme masculin, Satanisme féminin" (1933) / Hans Thomas Hakl & Michele Olzi -- 10: Aleister Crowley, "Hymn to Lucifer" (undated) & excerpt from The Book of Thoth (1944) / Johan Nilsson -- 11: Kenneth Grant (Typhonian Order), excerpt from "Vinum Sabbati" (1961) / Johan Nilsson -- 12: The Process Church of the Final Judgement, excerpts from "The Gods on War" (1967) & "The Gods and Their People" (1970) / Fredrik Gregorius -- 13: Anton LaVey (Church of Satan), excerpt from interview in John Fritscher's Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch's Mouth (1972) / Cimminnee Holt -- 14: Michael Aquino (Temple of Set), The Book of Coming Forth By Night (1975) / Cimminne Holt -- 15: The Order of the Nine Angles, excerpts from The Black Book of Satan (1984) / Fredrik Gregorius -- 16: Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth (Den Sorte Sirkel / Black Metal Satanism), interview for Close-up Magazine (1992) / Per Faxneld -- 17: The Satanic Reds, "FAQ for Satanic Reds — Social Realist Organization" (c. 2001) / Johan Nilsson -- 18: Thomas Karlsson (Dragon Rouge), excerpt from Kabbala, kliffot och den goetiska magin (2004) / Fredrik Gregorius -- 19: Michael W. Ford (The Order of Phosphorus, etc), excerpt from The Bible of the Adversary (2007) / Olivia Cejvan -- 20: Lucien Greaves (The Satanic Temple), "Church of Satan vs. Satanic Temple" (2017) / Fredrik Gregorius & Manon Hedenborg White

Satanism is a phenomenon that has existed as a prominent trope since very beginning of Christianity, when the Church Fathers entertained fantasies about people worshipping the Devil and indulging in macabre rituals. In the early modern period, similarly unfounded ideas led to the infamous witch trials which transpired primarily between 1400 and 1700. In the 1980s and 1990s, what has been labelled a "Satanic Panic" swept the United States and parts of Europe, with again, unfounded rumors about secret Satanist networks committing gruesome murders, kidnappings and ritualistic child abuse. Today, the so called Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories in the United States again draw on these motifs, this time postulating that left-wing Satanists are secretly manipulating politics and doing nefarious deeds in the shadows. This book, however, is only indirectly concerned with the purely fictional Satanism of such paranoid fantasies. It does not deal directly with the literary tradition of Satanism either, where Satanists can appear as antagonists (or, more rarely, protagonists) in the plot of a story, or authors express Satanic sympathies in a poem or two. Rather, our selection of source texts focuses on actual, existing Satanic groups, and thinkers of importance to the emergence of a Satanic milieu that forms part of a broader landscape of alternative religion. Some of the texts do in a sense belong to the above-mentioned categories, e.g., Léo Taxil's spoof on conspiracy theories, or the quite literary pseudo-histories of Satanism - in fact Satanic tracts in disguise of Jules Michelet and Stanislaw Przybyszewski, but we have aimed to concentrate on 1. self-designated Satanic groups and ideologists, 2. groups and ideologists who prominently revere a figure they identify with Satan, even though they may not self-designate as Satanists, and 3. groups and ideologists mostly excluding, however, literary texts and conspiracy theories whose re-interpretations of Satan were crucial to the growth of such ideas-- Provided by publisher.

Texts chiefly in English, some works in Dutch, French, German, and Italian