THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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S's ceremonial initiation commenced with him swearing to accept Satan as his father,
Lord, and master, and signing a pact to this effect in his own blood (39,41). He had to
denounce Christ, and symbolically attest his hatred of Christianity by defiling and
destroying a crucifix (40). A sacrificial animal was then offered to Satan, and S had to
drink the fresh blood, signifying the acceptance of Satan and his demons into his body
(42). When S committed himself to Satan, and invited demonic possession, he felt a
powerful force surge through his body, and experienced a sense of omnipotence (44)
From this point he experienced an intensification of his hatred and cruelty, and felt he had
made the right decision by becoming a Satanist (43). S's initiation ritual facilitated the
oral incorporative fantasy of introjectively identifying with an idealised paternal object,
Satan, thereby elaborating and celebrating the ego-syntonic destructive subpersonality that
had so influenced his psychic life as a child. The perverse aspect of this identification
process was that it was the bad part-object which was idealised, thereby transmogrifying
bad into good, while the split-off counterpart, symbolised by Christ, was denigrated.
Identification with an idealised bad object allowed S to enact his own destructiveness
without suffering depressive anxiety and guilt, hence the ego-syntonic intensification of his
hatred and cruelty (43).
14.7.3. Experience of satanic cult involvement
S's hatred of people, and consequent desire for power and control over them, provided a
strong motivation for his satanic involvement (45). By means of meditation, and ritual
demonic invocation, S believed he obtained a power that allowed him to influence
people's actions through thought alone (46). This reveals a primitive omnipotent fantasy
ofcruelly penetrating and mentally controlling others.
He was also attracted to the cult by the freely available drugs and alcohol, and Satanism's
encouragement of uninhibited sexual indulgence (47,48). He felt gratified that Satanism
renounced the moral codes of society, and encouraged him to express his anger, hatred
and cruelty (49,63). Satanism thus encouraged S's identification with, and expression of,
sexual. and aggressive impulses, in this way ridding him of moral conflict and guilt. S
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