Evil Incarnate Rumors Of Demonic Conspiracy And Satanic Abuse In History – David Frankfurter

(One notices a similar construction of dispassion- ate, exploitative cruelty in stories of UFO abductions, in which the aliens’ laboratory takes on many of the features of the formalist rit- ual.)84 The author of this last passage, a sociologist and therapist, pre- sented this testimony as first-hand evidence that secret cults thrive on the margins of mainstream religion and are concocting such weird rit- ual procedures out of perverse interpretations of scripture.85 Other writers on SRA tried to relate such stories of Satanic cults to those classic images of savage rites on the geographical periphery, both in modern times (like Haiti) and ancient (all those cannibal barbarians that Greeks, Romans, and other ancient cultures imagined to dwell beyond their borders).

By tracing the contemporary Satanic cults to such putative origins, the contemporary cults could be shown to de- scend from much more established cults of evil, still practicing their ritual atrocities according to traditional schemes—a conspiracy with an ancient and savage past.86 In all these quasi-scholarly endeavors, writers try to understand the diverse, allegedly first-hand claims of Sa- tanic cult abuse through association with other exotic ritual traditions, which themselves tend to be the fantastic constructions of Otherness typical to folkloric and literary thinking. We thus come full circle to the idea that danger arises from the imagined encroachment of the antihuman—from the ends of the earth to our very neighborhood.

A fascination with the monstrous cul- ture and its inverse ceremonies when they are in their place becomes horror and panic when that culture is believed to be among us, prac- ticing their ancient customs in the basement of that house down the street or in those local woods. If the foreign cult of ecstatic, bloody de- votions comes into the city, those devotions become potentially preda- tory, and their essential monstrosity, expressed ritually, is viewed as a source of immediate disorder.

Copyright © 2006 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW All Rights Reserved Second printing, and first paperback printing, 2008 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-13629-5 The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows Frankfurter, David, 1961– Evil incarnate : rumors of demonic conspiracy and satanic abuse in history / David Frankfurter.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-691-11350-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-691-11350-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Demonology—Public opinion—History. 2. Conspiracies—Public opinion—History. 3. Ritual abuse—Public opinion—History. 4. Good and evil—Public opinion—History. I. Title. BF1543.F73 2006 133.4’2—dc22 2005044499 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Goudy Olde Style Typeface Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ press.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 For Raphael and Sariel Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xv chapter 1 Introduction 1 Sorting Out Resemblances 4 Circumstances for Imagining Evil 6 Evil in the Perspective of This Book 9 chapter 2 An Architecture for Chaos: The Nature and Function of Demonology 13 Thinking with Demons 13 Demonology, Lists, and Temples 15 Beyond the Temple: Demonology among Scribes and Ritual Experts 19 Conclusions 26 chapter 3 Experts in the Identification of Evil 31 Prophets, Exorcists, and the Popular Reception of Demonology 33 Witch-Finders: Charisma in the Discernment of Evil 37 The Possessed as Discerners of Evil 48 Contemporary Forms of Expertise in the Discernment of Evil: Secular and Religious 53 Conclusions: Expertise and the Depiction of Satanic Conspiracy 69 chapter 4 Rites of Evil: Constructions of Maleficent Religion and Ritual 73 Ritual as a Point of Otherness 76 Ritual and the Monstrous Realm 85 Ritual as a Point of Danger 101 The Implications of Evil Rites 119 chapter 5 Imputations of Perversion 129 The Imaginative Resources of the Monstrous 129 Constructing the Monstrous 136 Conclusions 158 chapter 6 The Performance of Evil 168 Performance and Demonic Realms 169 Direct Mimetic Performance 179 Indirect Mimetic Performance 188 Direct Mimetic Parody 198 Conclusions 203 chapter 7 Mobilizing against Evil 208 Contemplating Evil, Chasing Evil 208 Matters of Fact and Fantasy 212 Notes 225 Select Bibliography 259 Index 281 viii C O N T E N T S List of Illustrations Figure 1.

Frontispiece to Matthew Hopkins, Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1647). 47 Figure 2. Theodor de Bry, scene of Tupinamba cannibals, from Grands voyages, Book 3: Americae (1593), p. 87. 80 Figure 3. Theodor de Bry, scene of first-born child sacrificed to the king while women dance, from Grands voyages, Book 2 (1603), pl. 24. 82 Figure 4.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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