Raising the Devil

It wouldn't surprise me at all if some people believe that Ellis doesn't have the "right" to write a book like Raising the Devil, and not would I be very surprised if many of these critics stated their opinions without even bother reading the book. But why shouldn't Ellis be allowed to make a thorough analysis of the so-called "satanic panic" that raged in both North America and Great Britain from time to time during the 20th century? Because, he happens to be an active member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. And to many narrow-minded Satanists, this equals an inability to remain objective. Well, that might be so, but let's not consider the fact that he happens to be a Christian. He also happens to be a folklorist, and a very good one, too. He might be the most Christian guy you ever met; this still doesn't stop him from with Raising the Devil creating a book that's not only a high-quality analysis of how Satanism and devil worship, both in America and Great Britain, were forced to become the no.1 scapegoats for various social ills; it's also a study that most self-appointed Satanists should read and ponder. And let's not forget all the hard-core Christians who never hesitated to put the blame on something without making sure to know all the facts first. What Ellis does is describing how phenomena that not necessarily has any reality to it still becomes something very real, when fear for the unknown and unnatural forces the antagonists into creating something that isn't really there to begin with. Or in the words of Ellis himself discussing alleged witch-cults in Great Britain: "The claim that they existed seems to have brought the witch-cults into existence", that is, it wasn't until people started worrying about witches that witches came into existence. In America, not-so objective representations of different law enforcement agencies and Pentecostals, with their fanatic struggle to exterminate everything which in their eyes was satanic and evil, resulted in the accusations of both innocent individuals and actions. It's a thin line between what's good and what's evil, and the most fascinating aspect of his study is his ambition to point out how fanatics (mostly Christians) with extreme, yet well-meaning, intentions are mostly to blame. Their ruthless crusade against everything occult (which in their eyes were a whole lot of things), turned out to be "a sincere but wrong-headed effort to fight the devil by raising the devil". So far, Sweden has been spared the same kind of hysteria about satanic panic and occult conspiracies, mostly because we simply don't have the same kind of religious landscape that the U.S. has. However, there's always a risk for fiction to become more believable than truth wherever folk-narratives and folk-processes are able to triumph over what's really out there, and because of this, books such as Raising the Devil are good tools in the fight against imaginations and prejudices.

It was a great show while it lasted, the subject of fervent newspaper reports, television specials and an exposé by Geraldo Rivera in the 1980s. Satanism was rampant across America, nay, the world, with protean manifestations, if people would just pay attention. Twenty years before, there had been Satanism, but it was not very well publicized and not very interesting. But somehow it became the fashionable scare. How did this happen, and what should we do about it?Bill Ellis is a folklorist, and an academic specializing in English and American studies. His book, Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (University Press of Kentucky) attempts a sympathetic understanding of how the Devil made one of his cyclic emergences and how folklore can affect society and politics. Scares about Satan and witchcraft have been present for centuries, and seem to give a safety valve for social aggression, scapegoating deviant individuals. At the individual level of, say, someone who thinks he is possessed by a demon and someone who thinks he can cast that demon out, there is a social agreement on a folkloric belief that may be beneficial for both concerned (if not for the demon). But Ellis's theme is that social groups can take over a folkloric belief to push a religious or governmental agenda, with disastrous consequences. He shows how demon possession and speaking in tongues are two sides of the same coin, and how belief in demons was ballooned into the belief that there was a huge underground satanic network ruining our country. Those who promulgated such conspiracy beliefs also bought into conspiracies involving Jews, vampires, the Illuminati, and cattle mutilations.Raising the Devil is an academic work, well documented and organized. Ellis tries to illuminate the role of the folklorist in examining these sorts of belief, and realizes that he and his fellows have the difficult road to follow of accepting folklore (even if it is patently untrue) as a force between small numbers of individuals, while they also have to confront institutions that would harness folklore for political or religious change. His academic prose is leavened by the strange subject matter. For instance, the Governor of Colorado is quoted as saying that cattle mutilations were "one of the greatest outrages in the history of the western cattle industry," and a leader of a coven in England warned about bogus cult groups, as he had heard about one in which members "started getting in prostitutes dressed in rubber gear and there was wife swapping, too. It gives Satanism a bad name."

This is a book that I could not put down! It explains how the media reacts so viciously to Satanism and new religions, which they know very little about. I myself am a Satanist and think that the media makes it sound much more evil than it really is. I think this was a good book because I can relate to the media and Satanists.