Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism

"Yes, absolutely. There’s this one and also Satanism: A Social History , but that’s a bit harder to get hold of. My book is A Little Book of Satanism . It’s a primer, an introduction for a general audience. As I say in the introduction, I always encourage people to dive deeper into the academic sources if they’re interested in learning more. I know that these academic sources are not for everyone. They’re big. They’re expensive. And they’re very dense. But this is one of the best books out there for the origins of modern religious Satanism. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter It traces where Satanism came from, from the concept of anti-Satanism—where the Christians were trying to use this label to demonize who they considered their enemies, like the Knights Templar, or the women who were accused of being witches in the witch trials—up to the how the label was embraced by people in the West, and how it developed into modern Satanism, like the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple today. Yes, from the Greek. My book isn’t only for people who are already knowledgeable about Satanism, so I tried to include some commonly asked questions. I thought people might wonder where these names came from. Who is Mephistopheles? Who is Beelzebub? How does that all fit in?"