Cults That Kill: Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime. - book reviews

National Review, Oct 28, 1988 by Wayne Lutton

AT LEAST since the 1920s popular culture in America has evinced a fascination with the occult. In Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, occultism was represented more or less inclusively by Dr. Jules Amthor, Psychic Consultant, distributing business cards rolled tightly into sticks of "tea." In recent years-influenced perhaps by the writers of rock lyrics as well as, paradoxically, by the ascendancy of populist Christianity-occultism has become a more diverse phenomenon, with a strongly manifested impulse toward Satanism. Conventional publishing houses grind out novels of Satanic possession, which go on to become blockbuster movies; tabloid journals, taking up the challenge, print sensational stories on the subject: BABY WITH POINTY TAIL BORN TO UNWED MOM. Meanwhile other stories, less lurid but still disturbing, have become part of the experience of worried priests and hardboiled footpads in big-city police forces. Recently, reports have appeared of ritualized child abuse at day-care centers in California; the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, among other newspapers, have reported on the activities of Santeria, a diabolist cult imported to the United States by Cuban "refugees" in 1980. In Cults That Kill Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime (Warner Books, $17.95), Larry Kahaner, former Washington correspondent for Business Week (a periodical you have to say is edited at an emotional level a couple of ratchets below that of the National Enquirer), argues that a growing number of horrifying crimes is being committed under the rubric of "Satanism."

Kahaner bases his evidence on firsthand accounts by men and women who are involved in investigating and countering these activities. He relies also on the testimony of academic researchers and upon police records and court documents-which he frequently cites-to support his contention that occult-inspired crime is a growing threat to public safety. This is a difficult sort of investigative work, only rarely involving simple cases and obvious suspects. Instead, there is a maze of secret societies such as Santeria, whose homicides are signaled by the colored beads, handful of chicken feathers, and seven coins ritualistically placed around the decapitated victim. Nevertheless we are, in Kahaner's opinion, experiencing the early swell of a cult-related crime wave. Drugand child-selling networks run by occultists have recently come to the attention of law-enforcement agencies, while brujeria (witchcraft) is spreading in Mexican communities throughout the United States, and at least one investigator believes Satanism to have an international component as well.

How widespread occultism is in this country is a matter of speculation. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the schematic profile of the people involved. Occultists, according to Kahaner, are frequently well-educated persons and, among whites, are typically recruited from upper- and middle-class families. One police report, reprinted here, revealed a Satanic coven headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma: its members included doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. One couple had sacrificed their 15-month-old child.

What apparently attracts people to Satanic groups is a desire for power over both themselves and others. As Kahaner explains: "All occult rituals revolve around one theme: summoning of supernatural power that can be used to effect a change." Dale Griffis, a leading expert on occult crime, notes that cultists employ blood ritualistically because, "According to the beliefs, blood contains the life force. . . . When you sacrifice someone, for the instant just before they die, they supposedly emit their life energy. That power, Satanists believe, can be harnessed for their use. They believe babies are best because babies are pure; they haven't sinned or been corrupted yet. . . . When you sacrifice a baby, you get greater power than if you sacrificed an adult."

It is hard to say why belief in the occult should be on the rise in America. In the past, occultism has flourished during times of cultural decadence (e.g., in France before 1789, in post-Civil War America, and in preRevolutionary Russia). Although members of cult groups often claim to trace the roots of their practices to ancient sources, most of what we are witnessing today is a continuation of the revival of mysticism that emerged in Europe during tbe nineteenth century. Kahaner cites Professor Carl Raschke, who argues that "Public Satanism, people [proclaiming] themselves to practice Satanism, is really a twentieth-century phenomenon." In earlier centuries, people who identified themselves as Satanists ran the risk of serious persecution. Today, many cult activities are considere"religious" and are thus held to be protected by the Constitution.

William Faulkner, in an uncharacteristically philosophical mood, once responded to the subject of rapid social change with the remark that, after all, tomorrow America will be "something else." Devil-worship in Yoknapatawpha County, however, was probably not what he had in mind.