THE RIGHT BOOKS

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. Drug-and 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.

WL

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Wayne Lutton

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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. Drug-and 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.