THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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The second important factor was the shift from theism to humanism, which stressed
individual identity, agency, and responsibility. Man was no longer the plaything ofhigher
spiritual forces, but cl power in his own right, capable ofplanning and controlling his own
destiny through reason and action and, of course, comprehension ofthe universe's natural
laws:
A world which could be shaped so effectively to human desires by men
enjoying a new sense of their natural powers, and a conviction of their status
as autonomous moral agents, appeared less and less to be a world shared with
angels and demons of superhuman abilities. The Middle Ages had believed
in the poverty of human resources, the helplessness of men in a hostile world
through which the Devil wandered, seeking whom he might devour ... When
the eighteenth century dawned, such a sense of the ubiquitous menace of
Satan was no longer possible for educated people, and it was increasingly
common to regard talk of the Devil as a symbolic expression of the evil
tendencies within human beings (Scarre, 1987, p. 58).
Social, economic, and psychological problems thus became attributed more to ignorance
and insufficient control of the scientific laws that regulated mind and matter, than to the
Devil's machinations.
2.7 The modern revival of magic in the 18th Century
The 18th century saw the emergence of a counteraction against rationalism, in the form of
a secret society of Freemasonry, which rapidly spread after its inception in 1717.
Masonry demonstrated the need for magic, ritual, and supernatural meaning, which
rationalism ignored, and the Church failed to satisfy. Masonry combined an essentially
Christian ethic with secret signs, symbols, elaborate regalia, initiation ceremonies, and
arcane rituals. It found historical inspiration in the cult of the Knights Templar, and was
condemned by the Vatican (Cavendish, 1977). Masonry revived the notion that the
universe was a divine organism, and that human beings could ascend to some mystical
higher self. Some Masons were interested in alchemy and Egyptian mythology, and some
conducted seances in order to summon up spiritual beings that would assist in restoring
.the original primordial unity, fragmented by science and rationalism (Cavendish, 1977).