THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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personality changes accompanying voluntary possession come to be welcomed rather
than feared, as the ego becomes charged with the raw power of the evil archetype's
undiluted energy, and the individual experiences the accompanying thrill of
omnipotence. All depression and inferiority associated with the negative parental
complex is banished by the mania associated with archetypal inflation.
In the case of satanic worship, inflation produced by identification with the dark
archetypal forces makes one the incarnation and instrument of evil, so omnipotently
powerful that God himself may be blasphemed, denigrated, and symbolically destroyed
without the normal human fear of divine retribution. Satanic rituals would thus serve
to evoke and invoke demonic subpersonalities, which may assume the form of
paranormal reality, and reinforce individuals' identification with the demonic
subpersonalities. The particular form assumed by the subpersonalities is determined by
cult mythology, and would be some variant ofthe cultural shadow in Christian society,
i.e. the personification of aggression, lust, perversion, deceit, etc. Inflation makes the
subpersonality ego-syntonic; however, should the ego try to distance itself from the
subpersonality, the latter would become a persecuting entity, and the resulting
possession state would assume the form oftraditional involuntary demonic possession.
It is important to remember that Satanism is founded upon a negation, and that its
identity is thus inherently negative. Satanism thus exists as the mirror inversion of
Christianity, and is consequently dependent upon Christianity for its existence. lung
identifies a spiritual dissociation in the Christian tradition that matches the
psychological dissociation of complex possession, and which has important
implications for the social context of Satanism's existence. This is discussed in the
following section.
11.13 Jung's attitude toward Christianity
lung's study ofdreams, alchemy and comparative religion revealed that the self is more
accurately represented by the archetypal quaternity as the true complexio oppositorum
(unity of opposites), than by the Christian Trinity. Every archetype - and the psyche in
general - has a bipolar structure.
The energic tension behyeen the opposites is what