Historical references

Satanism is a movement in which the biblical figure, called the Devil or Satan, is the principal reference point of its rituality. Satan can be considered simply a state of superior conscience of man (as in rationalist Satanism) or a preternatural personage (as in occultist Satanism): but the centrality of Satan in the subject matter and in the ritual is essential to be able to speak about Satanism. According to some scholars on the subject, Satanism moves in history with a pendulum effect. Small groups of Satanists rise to the forefront of the mass media. Since the explicit adoration of evil is, by definition, intolerable, the presence of Satanist groups, no matter how small, determine reactions which immediately become disproportionate, attributing to these groups an importance and a capacity to influence social and political affairs which, in reality, they do not have.
This organized anti-Satanism finishes by being discredited by its own excesses. This allows the resurfacing of new Satanist groups which, for a time, are tolerated by the society, until a new wave of reaction is determined, and so on.
Satanism appeared, for the first time, around 1700, on the fringes of the court of the King of France, Louis XIV, where the first black masses were organized, in which the Devil was worshipped in order to obtain favours and material advantages. In the Eighteenth Century, the phenomenon spread throughout the Dukedom of Modena, Italy, England, and probably Russia. This proto-Satanism would finish by attributing two phenomena to the occult actions of Satanism, for different reasons shattering for the world of Christianity: the French Revolution and the diffusion of spiritualism. The anti-Satanist exasperation gave rise to a way of thinking which manifested itself in the paradoxical literature that saw, behind the principal events of the epoch, the work of secret congregations of Satanists.
According to the mentioned pendulum effect, anti-Satanism in the period of 1850-1890 was so discredited that it allowed, in those years, in France and Belgium, the rise of a relatively undisturbed small Satanist movement. According to the same pendulum scheme, a particularly virulent wave of anti-Satanism followed.
All the activities of the Freemasonry – at that time involved in a hard clash with the Catholic Church – are attributed to the Satanists, who were united in a mysterious sect: the “Palladism”.
Within a few years, many works inherent to the activities of the Palladists were published, according to which these same Palladists, said to be inspired directly by Satan, secretly guided the Freemasonry and controlled numerous European governments. It was then discovered, through direct admission of one of its exponents, that the story of Palladism was no more than a pure invention to discredit the extreme gullibility of the Catholics.
Nevertheless, the affair, which from many aspects still remains obscure, provoked a resurfacing of real Satanists who, at the beginning of the century were treated with indulgence and even sympathy by the Press. These are the years in which the growing influence of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) spread throughout the Satanist environment. A strictly non-Satanist, Crowley writes in his work “Magick” that the Devil does not actually exist as a person. For Crowley, the Satanists of the 19th Century, with all their claimed devotion to Lucifer or Belial, were, in their Christian spirit, for the most part, inferior Christians, since their methods were puerile. As far as the rituals were concerned, Crowley remains a continual source of inspiration for all of the successive Satanism.
An important connecting link is constituted by John Whiteside Parsons (1914-1952), a Californian engineer and scientist, well-known explosives expert, who developed, in the Agapè Lodge, the ideas of Crowley, transforming them into an Antichrist cult. With Parsons, we find ourselves on the eve of the real contemporary Satanism, which acquired form through the work of a Hollywood underground film-maker, Kenneth Anger and his friend, Anton Sandor LaVey (pseudonym of Howard Stanton Levey, 1930-1997), founders, in 1961, of an organization called the Magic Circle, and in 1966, of the Church of Satan.
Internal tension between an interpretation of the rationalist Satanism of LaVey and an occultist, Michael Aquino (at that time, Colonel in the United States Army, specialized in war psychology and disinformation), in 1975, led to the schism of Aquino, who founded the Temple of Set, which, today, constitutes the major expression of organized Satanism on an international scale.


Classification

From the vast and heterogeneous case record – frequently characterized by mutual contamination between the different doctrinaire orientations – four different currents of Satanism can be abstracted:
- rationalist Satanism: Satan is the symbol of the vision of the hedonist and the antichristian world (LaVey) (1) ;
- occultist Satanism: accepts the vision of the world as described in the Bible, the story of the Creation, the expulsion of the rebel angels from Heaven, to then become demons, aligning themselves on the opposite side, at the service of the Devil. It is an organized cult with structured and hierarchical groups (Aquino):
- Luciferism: it is Satanism of the Manichaean orientation. Lucifer is venerated, but is not considered the principle of evil, rather, the rebel against the Creator God, complementary to God;
- Acid Satanism: satanic groups composed, prevalently, of young people who accompany the rituality with the use of drugs.
The scholars make a net distinction between the Satanism of adults, which is formed of groups that have a doctrinal and ritual continuity, identifiable leaders, headquarters, and sometimes also publications, and the young Satanism, composed of little groups of minors without an organized continuity and rituality, who stage savage satanic ceremonies influenced by films, TV, comics and satanic rock.
Within sufficiently sure margins, the statistics on the Satanism of adults can be reconstructed in rather a precise way, since it is difficult that organized groups of a certain size are able to continue without escaping the notice of specialists, journalists or the Police.
On the contrary, the statistics on juvenile (or acid) Satanism, are, by definition, hypothetic and fluid because many groups come to light only on occasion of the commission of crimes or of the verification of incidents. It is much more difficult to take a census of them and much more dangerous, not so much for a greater intrinsic violence as for the smaller possibility of surveillance and control.
It involves groups of adolescents who practice a rituality – copied from certain literature on Internet sites, films and comics – represented by the sacrifice of animals, sexual acts accompanied by the breaking of a crucifix or another Christian symbol, desecration of churches and, more often, of cemeteries.
In the juvenile groups, it is much easier that the sense of limit between metaphor and reality is completely lost and that under the influence of drugs, therefore, it transcends in acts of carnal violence, and in rarer cases, but not inexistent, as illustrated by events, in human sacrifices.


Structural elements

In general, the Satanists organize themselves in almost hierarchical structures where various figures emerge (2) . First of all, that of the Priest, who has an undoubted role in advising and guiding the followers or initiates. Sometimes a controversial figure, in addition to the spiritual management, he becomes the reference point for the participants. He presides over what is defined as the “black mass”, which is structured according to ceremonies characterized by orgiastic rites, sacrilegious attitudes, speeches and expression that have the evident objective of ridiculing the Catholic Mass by railing against central figures of the Christian cult. Rivalry, competition, bullying, individualism, arrogance, mythomania and ignorance play an important role. The relation that is established between guide and initiate is of a psychological, economic and very often, sexual dependence. It has its origins in secrecy, obedience, subjection and intimidation. Terror is the predominant element in the extremely difficult course of leaving the sect.
Given that, as previously mentioned, a net distinction exists between organized movements and self-created Satanists, characterized by spontaneity and structural deficiency, elements have been noticed that denote, above all, in the larger sects, a precise and rigid organizational formation, essentially finalized to the preservation of the group and to the elusion of infiltration attempts and outside control.
In this regard, three circles are spoken of, corresponding to three different sectors, having secrecy levels proportionate to the degree of protection to be guaranteed to the parties concerned: the first circle, the external one, is formed of figures who appear publicly and report to the middle circle, whose members are known to them; these last have the main task of surveillance of the nucleus or inner circle, formed of unknown elements, from whom they receive instructions through precise codification. It is also said, for example, that someone recognized the signs of satanic rites in the nature of the wave of killings of the monster of Florence.
This satanic rituality is attributed to a third existing level of sect which, obviously, has nothing to do with the ‘Saturday night’ sects formed of adolescents who gather in the woods and abandoned isolated houses to perform their rites, but rather to historic sects such as the Temple of Satan, which have fixed headquarters and exclusive and inaccessible clubs that are difficult to enter and, unlike the self-created groups, are almost impossible to abandon.
As in the Jehovah’s Witness religious sect, there are members with inspection functions of the various ‘Halls of the Kingdom’, the more structured congregations send inspectors to the various peripheral seats with the scope of monitoring and signalling any eventual anomalies, excesses or elicit activities.
Notwithstanding the open denial by some of the most qualified scholars, the contact between traditional, organized Satanism and juvenile groups, there are testimonies from medical and religious ambits in which accounts of patients and followers, little more than adolescents, refer frequently to a superior and mysterious figure connected to another satanic territorial reality. The same Beasts of Satan, according to the acquisitions of the same specialists, have frequented environments of Turin, Racconigi (TO) and Biella.

Photo Ansa

Satanism in music There is a conviction among the scholars of the necessity of working to bar the way to a certain provocative Satanism oriented towards a certain juvenile area, essentially constituted, besides a certain kind of literature, virtual games etc., by the satanic rock music. The have been numerous cases in the news, that have, in recent years, traced mysterious and inexplicable crimes to the influence of this musical genre. The murder of Sister Maria Laura Mainetti, by three underage girls of Chiavenna, brought attention to the influence of blasphemous messaged launched by certain rock groups: in this case, one of the three was a worshipper of the controversial rock-star, Marilyn Manson. The question, however, must be faced calmly and one must not be goaded by the extremist attitudes of the sceptics and catastrophists.

The first reference to the world of Satanism in music appeared on the cover of one of the most famous records in the story of rock: Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of the Beatles, in 1967. Many well-known people appear on the cover of the album. Among them, at the top on the left, the image of a bald man, Aleister Crowley, stands out. In the rock environment of the 60’s, where the interest in esotericism flowered, Crowley was in fashion. He was appreciated for his unconventional nature and for his invitation to refuse any rule imposed from above.
In the 70’s hard rock was born, characterized by metallic sounds, distorted electric guitars and loud voices. Among the pioneers of the genre, a fundamental role is attributed to the English group of Led Zepperlin for the relation between music and Satanism. The famous and extraordinary guitarist, Jimmy Page, is a fierce supporter of the Crowley doctrine and such was his interest for the occultist that he made a collection of all his personal objects: books, manuscripts, hats, pictures and ritual tunics. Page actually lives in the house where Crowley lived. The Led Zeppelin is the first group to use satanic symbols on the covers of their albums.
In particular, on III, near the label of the record, Jimmy Page had the motto of Crowley written: “Do what you want”. Also Jim Morrison of the Doors was deeply involved in the occult. He declared: “The darkness, the evil, the savage, are the territories for us to probe, to travel riding the serpent …mine is also an invitation to the powers of darkness, to the forces of evil to come out into the open”.
In the 80’s and 90’s, the hard rock current becomes even harder, originating the heavy metal vein. With this musical genre, Satanism becomes explicit, with a strong tendency to the use of esoteric themes in the lyrics and in the images on the album covers. Among the most representative groups: the Danish ‘Merciful Fate’. One of their songs “Don’t break the oath” recites the formula of a traditional pact with the Devil. The ‘Deicide’ is of the same genre, the leader of which, Glen Benton went as far as having the form of a cross burnt onto his forehead, thereby maintaining the scar forever.
One cannot deny the influence that sacrilegious messages launched by certain groups can have on the imagination of minors, but it should also be said that often the information tends to confuse and disguise the ultimate reasons of a problem that must be faced from its origin. It is true that the music can act as a bridge to the world of occultism, but what is the condition that pushes always more youth towards esoteric practices and to the adhesion to satanic sects?
The new generations live in a condition of fragility and uncertainty that pushes them to seek security or simple identification in a world of destroyed, altered, disguised values of that which is a blatant marketing operation: that of satanic rock. An operation that is able to condition the most fragile minds and for this, risks becoming dangerous.
In the face of Marilyn Manson one can spot the irrefutable example of the antichrist, in other words, an artist who knows how to make music and plays, with subtle genius, on the personage she has created: paradigm of who knows how to fire the juvenile imagination and the mass media which, with their counter criticism do nothing but favour the publicity of a individual who builds her fame more on scandals and glaring shock declarations than on her music.
Scandal has always been synonymous with audience and, therefore, money, as the record industry has understood. It churns out one Lucifer after another just as the rock reviews repeatedly talk of Satanism and music, which attracts the curious, the transgressor and the naïve. Successful business is assured by shifting the attention onto these show personalities, but the problem lies elsewhere and should be sought in a society that, everywhere, manifests its defects. It is a serious responsibility. Even more serious, however, is that the greater part of this musical culture is spread by multinationals through proposing new models for the young to imitate. So, one cannot but reflect upon the content matter that these personalities are diffusing and the blind tolerance of a society that allows the spreading of attitudes symptomatic of a pathology which is, perhaps, even more serious than that which already affects certain juveniles.


Ritual practices

There is a very vast literature on the satanic rituals of black magic and black masses. Texts that deal in the matter are extremely diffused on the Internet, where it is also possible to participate in virtual rites. Texts are also on sale in various book sellers or shops of conjurer articles.
The satanic rituality teaches contempt of life with painful humiliations that arouse hatred. The personality deteriorates as it progressively loses the sense of the value of its own life and the lives of others. The only divinity is man and Satan is the symbol to honour, since it concedes to the man dominion over others and the earthly satisfactions to which he aspires.
By the admission of those who practice this cult, Satanism is egoism, hatred, and individualism, war against everything that impedes the attainment of pleasure and the taste for doing evil to others (3) . The initiation, in fact, tends to humiliate and unhinge the personality through physical and psychological pain, instilling contempt towards life.
The use of narcotic substances during the rituals lowers the levels of judgement and the perception of danger. It goes without saying that exceeding the legal limitations constitutes a logical consequence. These excesses can be sexual abuse, mistreatment of people, killing of animals, horrifying practices on foetuses, the use of organic liquids and the
violation of tombs and cemeteries. Not all rites include criminal behaviour, since some of them are performed exclusively with candles, incense, designs on floors or walls, and invocations or evocations.
A common denominator of the Satanists’ prayers is the reciting or reading backwards. This does not mean that certain rites are not equally dangerous. In fact, as well as economic damage, those who belong to a sect are generally affected by psychological dependence and by frequent personality disturbances. Often they are minors who find themselves in a crucial phase of their interior life or who are in need of family support. In adults, on the contrary, an under-development of the personality is noted and the absence of appropriate values associated with scarce self-esteem.
The favourite techniques of the leaders to obtain control over the followers are, in fact, prevalently of the physical-psychological-bi-sexual type. The fundamental requisite of the Satanists, above all, those at the top, is the capacity of manipulation or disassociation of the subject who, often falls into a trance in which he can receive any kind of instruction, which will be re-evoked in the vigilant state of consciousness. The leaders, furthermore, are gifted with the ability of communication and histrionics, to the point that they can amaze, seduce and convince. They also have the capacity of rapidly establishing any type of empathetic ties in the intimate sphere of the interlocutor.
The initiate, usually a schizoid personality, must convince himself that he has acquired powers and greater energy, which can increase with total devotion to the leader. This, not infrequently, through an infinite sequence of costly specialization courses, under the illusion of being able to rise to ever higher levels.
In the last ten years, African contamination has entered into the European rituals. It is principally of YuYu origin, which has given space to an unlimited variability of rites. These follow many diversified methodologies, being enriched by a multiplicity of aspects, according to the fantasy of those who practice them.

In general, the organized sects adopt precise rituals that slavishly follow the indications of the texts, such as Goetia, the manual elaborated by Crowley. In each case, mainly among the larger sects, the procedure followed is imprinted with a punctilious precision and continual verification of all the circumstances and situations necessary: a north exposure of the place where the black mass is to be celebrated; the correspondence of favourable astral constellations; the use of determinate magic equipment etc. The meticulousness, at times paranoiac, is justified by the possibility that rites celebrated, for example, to cast an evil spell, in the case of error in the evaluation of certain circumstances or omission of essential conditions, could strike the authors themselves and not the person or persons for whom they are intended.

Photo Ansa

The performance of the rite foresees the use of an altar, which is generally represented by a nude woman. Frequently, young people are used. From certain accounts from people who have fled the sects, engaged through medical-religious operators, appalling aspects have emerged of rituals having as object: foetuses from provoked abortions; the insertion of tiny animals into the natural cavities of the woman; the use of menstrual blood to sign agreements; the sacrifice of animals to put curses on someone. A detailed description was given of a black mass, celebrated in a church of octagonal form, situated near the Basilica of Superga, in Turin.
At the central point of the mass the hoofs of a goat were amputated and thrown on a fire. Concomitantly, all those present invoked a demon, inviting it to go to the designated person to bring about the same mutilation.
The same witnesses – who had been seriously threatened – referred to a dangerous “Sect of the Black Hand” going back to the 18th Century which, like the one named “The Enlightened” of Bavaria (and of its ramification “The Enlightened of Tanatos”) carry out a human sacrifice every year for which tramps or prostitutes are chosen as victims.


The ‘acid’ Satanism in Italy

As previously specified, the knowledge of Satanism in its juvenile formations is, by definition, hypothetical and intangible, to be seen only when incidents or crimes are verified in connection with the celebration of rites and the consequent police investigations. Around these events, with the complicity of information, frequently morbid and inclined to exaggerate the phenomenon, violent and angry alarm is generated over the existence of diffused realities and dynamics commonly considered perverse and inadmissible.


The Beasts of Satan

In January of 2004, the arrest of Andrea Volpe and Elizabeth Ballarin – caught, more or less, red-handed in the barbarous assassination of Mariangela Pezzotta – pierces the activities of the Beasts of Satan, a Satanist group to which the successive investigations will tie two other cases of murder and the induction to suicide of two young initiates.
The group established itself around 1995, gathering young people from the lower residents of the Province of Varese to the upper-Milanese, involved principally in questions of perversion, drugs, alcohol and sex performed in an obsessive manner, besides being zealous fans and interpreters of an extreme fringe of the satanic rock.
In particular, from diaries of some of those involved, emerges an unequivocal interest for themes and rituals of a vague occultist and satanic genre. In fact, Chiara Marino, one of the victims, had put up a small altar in her room with black candles and a sheet bearing a five pointed star and the reproduction of a large foot of a male goat and a skull. Furthermore, one of the accused, Mario Maccione, was held to be a medium who, during the rites celebrated by the group, became possessed by demons. From the judicial context, although with some discrepancies probably attributable to the various defence strategies used by the defendants’ lawyers, the assassinations appeared to take place within a satanic ritual context.
In February, 2006, the Court of Appeal of the Juvenile Court of Milan condemned the two minor defendants to 16 years and 9 months of imprisonment.
In October of the successive year, after three instances of judgement, the trial concluded with imprisonment from between 12 to 20 years for the defendants who were of age.


The Children of Satan

After a juvenile experience in the “Fratellanza Cosmico” (Cosmic Brotherhood) of Bologna UFO cult, Marco Dimitri, influenced by the Aleister Crowley literature, declared himself a Satanist of the pagan style and founded the “Children of Satan”.
The group celebrates its rituals in isolated country house ruins and woods in the Province of Forli, between Rimini and Riccione, in the port areas of Pesaro and in the vicinity of Bologna.
The name, the “Children of Satan” refers both to the child within, in other words to that creation, the structure of which is originated in the Magic Work managed by the Will, and to the purity of an original Satanism that only eternal children can rediscover. The practices include rituals of evocation, in which tantric elements and sexual magic are not lacking: sexual intercourse is practised between everyone, also of a homosexual nature, as well as activities addressed to the public. The initiation takes place with the tracing of the number 666 with the blood of the founder on the forehead of the initiate, who, in this way, receives the mark of the Beast. The novice must draw up and write a pact in his own hand in which he/she indissolubly undertakes to be loyal to the Magic Work, proclaiming himself Satan and God of himself:
“I swear to be faithful to the Work of the Children of Satan and to Satan himself, understood as myself upright in my nature, in my divine ego. I swear loyalty in my work, and pursuing it according to my form of initiation. Sealing my signature with a drop of my own blood, I proclaim myself Satan”.
The sect offers a complete gamma of services to its followers, distinguished in fourteen different ritual categories. Among these, the celebration of heterosexual and homosexual marriages are conspicuous, also in three and whatever sex, as well as incestuous unions between persons of any degree of kinship and sex. For Catholics or for those who have practised other cults or religions, a ceremony of annulment is prescribed of the respective baptismal rites.
According to Dimitri, Satan is money, art, orgasms, music, lesbianism and betrayal. His satanic philosophy is based on the exaltation of: vice; art, since it is demoniacal par excellence; war as life inherent in the material; science as enemy of religion, the spirit, which is principally pride and self-confidence, wealth, loved by Satan and is the material rendered perfect from the view point of pleasure.
Certainly, the ambitions of Dimitri are not modest when he declares “… after the death of Crowley, the fall of LaVey and Manson (both useless before and after their demise), given the idiocy of the idea of the existence of a church of Satan, ridiculous absurdity, I propose myself as world reference point of the demoniac cult. My objective is to be the young guide of all the demons of the earth”.
At the end of the 80’s, various judicial enquiries (after dismissed), as well as the publicity deriving from the appearance of Dimitri in television transmissions, led to an appreciable increase in the number of followers of the Children of Satan.
In 1996, however, in the face of serious accusations of carnal violence to the detriment of a minor and a child. Dimitri and two followers of the sect were held under arrest. Also Efrem Del Gatto, Maestro of the Homonymous Brotherhood and the Roman actress, Christina Bagnolini were involved in the enquiry.
Acquitted in full of each accusation in 1977, after two years, following other reports – then shown to be unfounded – the group comes, once again, into the sights of the Judiciary.
Therefore, it is justified to assert that if, on the one side, the mediatic exposure had, in fact, led to a quantitative growth in the number of the Children of Satan, on the other, it can be considered a concomitant cause of the numerous judicial misadventures. These connections of publicity, proselytism and police investigations are evidently very common in the structured sects, which prefer a low profile.


The organized satanic cult in Piedmont
and in the Turin urban context

The mythology, according to which Turin – being part of a magic triangle with another two cities, identified from time to time in a different way – is, therefore, the city of Satan, is not of ancient origin, but only goes back to the years between 1968-1972.
The legend according to which 40 thousand Satanists were present in Turin in those years, was created by a group that was able to make people believe this totally imaginary information, as it was revealed to be, in 1988. The idea comes down from a preceding historical period, 1850-1870, during which time the Piedmont Risorgimento Government showed itself to be extraordinarily tolerant of all forms of non-Catholic or anti-Catholic religiosity, which it held to be instrumentally useful to its polemics against the Church of Rome. In consequence, in those years, Piedmont and Turin, in particularly, lived in an atmosphere of tolerance towards religious and magic movements, spiritualists and occultists, which was unique in Europe.
Although the presence in Turin – of not even a single Satanist, in the strictest sense of the term – has never been proved, rumours were plenty and the public presence of occultists and magicians who organized anti-Catholic provocations created, in the anti-Piedmont and anti-Risorgimento literature, the fame of the city of the Devil.
After Rome was taken in 1870, the instrumental reasons for the Piedmont tolerance towards the magicians no longer applied and, in 1890, with the so-called “Trial of the Somnambulists”, the Turin Police and Judiciary gave a clear signal that the golden days for the free practice of the black arts were over..
However, the legend continues
Formed of a few dozen members, the world of the local organized Satanism becomes more substantial: in primis, in the two Churches of Satan in Turin, differentiated on the basis of the rationalistic or occultist nature of their orientation (4).
According to some, but there are discordant voices, their black masses have less macabre rituals than those of the other groups. They do not carry out orgiastic rites, neither do they practice sexual abuses, but during the course of their celebrations the hate for God is shouted, the crucifix is profaned and amrit – a mixture of male sperm and female secretion is consumed. The two Churches have never carried out organized forms of proselytism, recruiting new members on the basis of personal contact. The rites are similar although the occultist sect prefers to practice them in the open. They are very closed sects, which have never had headquarters, constituted associations or published journals. Something even more rare – and this probably explains their long duration – is that they have never sought contact with journalists. The Church of Satan would seem to be asleep since 1997 (which does not exclude that the few surviving members meet occasionally for ceremonies and rituals).
Nevertheless, the occultist current continues to celebrate an annual summer rite in the open air in a zone to the West of Turin. In recent years, the uproar over the Beasts of Satan crimes seem to have advised a further reduction of activities.
Another sect with a lesser local following, “The Temple of Set” is an American satanic group, founded in 1975 by Michael Aquino, ex-member of the Church of Satan. The principal Italian representation is in Naples and it has been accused, among other things, of having organized a black mass in the underground area of the San Paolo stadium. Other ramifications are present in nearly all of the Italian provinces and one of the most numerous in Turin. To celebrate its rituals, the sect avail themselves of choreography that is modelled on ancient Egypt, in honour of a black God frequently depicted together with the Egyptian divinities. The sect is inspired by the writings of Plato, Pythagoras and Crowley.
Also traces of the sects called “The Children of OID” and “Ugandists” have been indirectly noted. The latter operates in the region of Vercelli, but their points of reference and their number are unknown. OID is the word DIO (God) written backwards. Other esoteric groups in Turin, rigorously omitting from the phenomenon satanic sects, are those that can be put into the controversial category of the groups of ceremonial magic, which can be understood as a form of magic experience where the attention is placed on the efficacy of the ceremonies, on their capacity to function and obtain results, more than on the legitimacy of the initiatory chain, even if this second moment is not absent nor neglected.
The “Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn” is situated at the origins of the modern ceremonial magic, founded in 1888 in London. After a few years, the Order broke into a myriad of autonomous ramifications. Among these, two of the most well known, crucial for the contemporary ceremonial magic were founded by Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune. Of this peculiar category, to which the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis) belonged, there are no recent traces of them at Turin. In 1987, the “Sovrano Ordine del Tempio della Via della Luce” (SOTVL) (“Supreme Order of the Temple of the Way of the Light”) was founded in Novara. In the same city, in December of 1997, the Hotel Bussola hosted, in occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of Aleister Crowley, the first international Thelemic Convention on the theme “The magic of the star and the serpent: arts, sciences and eroticism of a new renaissance”. Approximately 80 people participated in the event.


Conclusion

Ultimately, the objective examination of the phenomenon, in particular, of that emerging on the Piedmont territory, traditionally the privileged forge of the esoteric arts, leads us to conclude that a meagre presence of organized Satanist movements exist, with texts, leaders and references to a doctrine and to a specific tradition, with a few dozen members at most. It is necessary to underline that we must not confuse Satanism with different realities, such as, spiritualism, ceremonial magic, neo-witchcraft and neo-paganism. Today, in Turin, there are no more Satanists than there are in any other large Italian or European metropolis.
In Italy, there are a few hundred affiliates of organized groups of Satanists and some of these, like the “Temple of Pan - former “Satanic Empire, The Light of the Divinities and Inhabitants beyond the Tomb and Church of the Great Order of Satan”, a Luciferian group that operated in Central Italy, and the “Brotherhood of Efram De Gatto” (CEDG), active in Rome, seemed to have ceased their activities.

A distinction must be made between this typology of Satanism and that composed of bands of fools. In general – but not always – youngsters constantly in contact with the drug world who, obtaining confused information from the press, from Internet or from particular kinds of music, construct a ‘do it yourself’ Satanism. These groups, which are not organized, do not have publications or headquarters, escape from any kind of control and are manifest only through the perpetration of crimes of various kinds (5) . The circumstance, nevertheless, that the desire of juvenile transgression remains, from a statistically circumscribed criminal viewpoint, must not authorize misleading interpretations. The phenomenon remains, for the most part, submerged by an insidious and violent mechanism, operating in places where perversion, prevarication, social marginalization and drugs abound. It is a clear expression of juvenile discomfort, not necessarily connected with the problems of poverty in an economic sense. The exposure to perverse models, proposed with effectiveness without any kind of filter from the modern means of communication, and even more, music, literature, cinema and even interactive games that sing hymns to suicide, to disembowelment of children, to the raping of young girls and to the gassing of Hebrews (6) , constitute an alarming phenomenon, the prevention of which, for all its difficulties, constitutes, in primis, a legitimate and desirable moral imperative.

Photo by www.globalpress.it

The satanic sub-culture, including the classic Satanism, which is not absent of ideological responsibility typical of bad teachers, finds it origins in a more complex and articulated problem of internal misery and general crisis of values, which cannot simply be entrusted to the repressive solution, but must involve the very best social resources and the cultural and religious educative institutions.