THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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witches are subservient (Cohn, 1975).
Demons had become ubiquitous and extremely
powerful, while man had become increasingly helpless and vulnerable to demonic attack.
Ritual satanic worship in the form of diabolical witchcraft emerged in France during the
period 1400 - 1700 AD, and soon spread to the rest of Europe. The purported activities
of these witches are almost identical to those allegedly practised by contemporary
Satanists. Russell & Wyndham (1992) identify eight characteristics ofwitchcraft: (1) the
ride by night, (2) the pact sealed by obscene homage to the Devil, (3) the formal
repudiation of Christianity, (4) the secret nocturnal meetings, (5) the desecration of the
Eucharist and the crucifix, (6) the sexual orgy, (7) sacrificial infanticide, and (8)
cannibalism.
Despite the fact that demonic witchcraft had its conceptual origins in the Middle Ages,
most witch prosecution occurred later, in the early modem (1590's to 1660's) era (Scarre,
1987). Scarre's explanation for this provides a plausible sociological account of the
witch scare, namely that it was a radical mechanism of maintaining social control during
a period ofsocial and religious instability:
Belief systems are anchored in time, and are products of the general
intellectual, social and cultural features of the societies which gave birth to
them ... beliefs in the existence of a subsociety of people who have infiltrated
the greater society in order to destroy it are most readily sustained by people
who live in a period of insecurity or rapid transition, in which the reassuring
solidity of the familiar social institutions seems under threat (Scarre, 1987, p.
50).
Cavendish (1977) notes that the Church at this time was under attack by reformers, there
were wars and peasant revolts, famines and epidemics. The whole medieval system was
disintegrating, and people responded to the flux and insecurity by blaming witchcraft
conspiracies for the chaos they witnessed around them. This theory is corroborated by the
decline in witch hunting between 1525-1560, owing to social conditions of relative peace
and prosperity (Cavendish, 1977). However, the rise of Protestantism and the Catholic