Dear Melissa and Sabina,
I only took a brief look at the links you provided, but Sabina is exactly
right - this is the recurrent theme of satanic panic which lives a zombie
life in newspapers just like The Sun, the Daily Mail, survivor groups and
marginal segments of religious, law enforcement, social service and therapy
circles. The calendar has no direct relation to satanic practices for two
reasons: First, there is no unified "satanic movement" in agreement on one
calendar. Second, most of the dates are common pagan festivals, some of
which Satanists are also celebrating, although often for different reasons.
The "satanic" content is entirely fictional and has more to do with
conspiracy theory than contemporary Satanism.
Take a look at the original academic literature on SRA and satanic panic
from the early 1990s:
Hicks, Robert D. (1991). In Pursuit of Satan: The Police model of Satanic
Crime. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Richardson, J. T., Best, J., & Bromley, D. G. (Eds.). (1991). The Satanism
Scare. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Victor, J. S. (1993). Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend.
Chicago; La Salle: Open Court.
Many of the best articles are collected in a volume I edited:
Lewis, J. R., & Petersen, J. A. (Eds.). (2008). The Encyclopedic Sourcebook
of Satanism. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Also, some newer treatments:
Dyrendal, A. (2003). True Religion versus Cannibal Others? Rhetorical
Constructions of Satanism among American evangelicals. (nr 174), PhD thesis,
Faculty of Arts, University of Oslo, Oslo.
Ellis, B. (2000). Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media.
Louisville: Univ Pr of Kentucky.
Ellis, B. (2004). Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular
Culture. Lexington: Univ Pr of Kentucky.
Frankfurter, D. (2006). Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and
Satanic Abuse in History. Princeton: Princeton UP.
Gunn, J. G. (2005). Prime-Time Satanism: Rumor-Panic and the Work of Iconic
Topoi. Visual Communication, 4(1), 93-120.
Hjelm, T. (2009). Satanism and Satanism Scares in the Contemporary World.
Special Issue. Social Compass, 56(4), 499-576.
Jenkins, P. (2004). Satanism and Ritual Abuse. In J. R. Lewis (Ed.), Oxford
Handbook of New Religious Movements (pp. 221-242). Oxford; New York: Oxford
Univ Press.
La Fontaine, J. S. (1998). Speak of the Devil: Tales of satanic abuse in
contemporary England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
La Fontaine, J. S. (1999). Satanism and Satanic Mythology. In B. Ankerloo &
S. Clark (Eds.), Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Twentieth Century (Vol.
6, pp. 81-140). London: Athlone Press.
Medway, G. J. (2001). Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of
Satanism. New York: New York University Press.
Richardson, J. T., Reichert, J., & Lykes, V. (2009). Satanism in America: An
Update. Social Compass, 56(4), 552-563.
I would recommend Victor, Ellis and Frankfurter if you are in a hurry, as
they already focus on the folklore angle. The recent article by Richardson
et.al. is the newest analysis I know of. Also, I have most of the original
articles in store if you need anything specific.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Jesper.
PS. Melissa - a satanic witch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PgAx6Ql2Fg
-----Original Message-----
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Melissa Harrington
Sent: 21. februar 2013 21:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Satanic calendar?
Dear Sabina.
Thank you for letting me know about the links, I don't get a copy of mail I
send to the forum, I have tried again here. If it does not work I can give
people the key words that go straight to these articles. And thanks also for
your response, do you, or anyone else here, have any more information about
these right-wing Christian extremists who have conconcted the calendar from
a variety of sources to "inform" law enforcement about "Satanic ritual
crime." ? Obviously Jean la Fontaine's work on the British satanic panic in
the 1980s is an important resource in such matters, but is there any new
scholarly or concrete information on these newer developments? I had really
not thought I would end up here in such a paper, 20 minutes on "Elf knots,
mysteries since Shakespeare and beyond, now solved by Horse and Hound
Magazine readers" seemed so pleasant; yet in dealing with stories of Witches
it all too often comes back to this terrible battle that is waged without
end by those who want to fight the "forces of darkness" by means fair or
foul!
best regards
Melissa
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085564/Eric-horse-sacrificed-Satani
c-ritual.
www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4060369/Cornwalls-fear-after-ritual-s
laughter-of-horses.html
http://www.survivorship.org/index.html
http://www.survivorship.org/resources/altcalendar.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "Magliocco, Sabina" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Satanic calendar?
Dear Melissa,
The links you promised to attach did not go through, but if the "Satanic
calendar" is anything like a similar piece of folklore circulating in the
US, it has no correspondence to anything that modern Satanists practice.
Instead, it is the product of a small number of right-wing Christian
extremists who have conconcted it from a variety of sources to "inform" law
enforcement about "Satanic ritual crime." This links up to the Satanic
legend complex of the 1980s, which is returning in new guise or, in some
cases, never fully subsided.
Fascinating project, BTW!
All the best,
Sabina
Sabina Magliocco
Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University - Northridge
[log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic
[[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Melissa Harrington
[[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 10:26 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Satanic calendar?
Dear All
I am starting on a paper for the Folklore Society's AGM in April on Urban
Folklore. My original abstract is relatively simple for a very nice topic -
early examples of folklore on mystery braids in horses manes linked to
witches and fairies that have reached the modern day almost intact, how the
folklore may have started, how it is perpetuated today by press, police and
ignorance, and how social networking may be ending this long running myth.
Much as I wanted to avoid this, and though the link is yet small, it seems
the subject is merged at the edges with the understandable hype and fear
round horse mutilations, and how they are linked to Satanism in the press. I
have added 4 links below, one shows how detailed such accounts are, the next
shows how totally unconnected Pagans are linked to it, in this case taking
photos from Cornwall's village Witches' web site and adding them in, and the
next two links show what may be a source for the mysterious St Winebald's
Day, apparently one of ritual sacrifice on which one may expect one's horses
to be slaughtered. It seems like it is the old chestnut of fundamentalists
and recovered memory nutters feeding press with such calendars, in which
they include modern Pagan dates, in which case there may be new urban
folklores starting with echoes of the SRA events of the late 20th century.
However, unlike the braiding which seems to be simple "wind knots" rather
than "witch knots", there have been reports of horrible animal mutilations
over the years that do seem to be ritualised in some ways, this is probably
the activity of sinister nutters, but what kind of nutter and why?
I would value comments on any aspect of this from people on this forum, and
particularly those who are scholars of contemporary Satanism, could you
comment on these calendars please, I have never heard of half these
"festivals", are any of these dates celebrated, is there any link with
modern Satanic rites and any of these purported saints days, revels, feasts
etc?
Many thanks
Melissa
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