If you wanna watch it in your language you have to search on “movie2k.to” on the US page….

So long, be happy Karsten

CH

Thank you for your replies. First, let me apologize for misspelling your name. How embarassing. Secondly, I forgot to recommend Asbjørn Dyrendal, my PhD supervisor and colleague, who has written good articles on modern Satanism as well. Third, your relationship with the CoS sounds appropriate.

I definitely know the feeling of being alone with the subject and the feeling of not being read. However, we have established a biannual conference gathering; the first meeting was in 2009 here in Trondheim, Norway, with 30 participants. The next one is slated for Stockholm, Sweden, in September. Please consider attending – we have a British anthropologist coming too.

If you give me your address by mail, I’ll send you a copy of the Ashgate book.

Best,

Jesper.

I deleted the review as I realized (on the re-read) that it was too harsh in wording, and not critical enough in an objective way. On that, you are correct. It was posted before I realized that I may interact with many of its authors in a professional setting (until recently, I was hardly present on the scene); it is not very professional of me, and I apologize. Some of my criticisms still stand, although I fully admit they should have been worded differently. Many of your comments are also worth considering, thank you. I set it to private in order to clean it up. I will think about re-posting it as it was, with your comment, just to show a gesture of good-faith scholarship. Funnily, even though we disagree on some things (on the issue of nomenclature, I think it is sometimes a very delicate and careful dance, guaranteed to dissatisfy), I am actually glad to have some of my work read by scholars who understand the milieu of Satanism – so far my supervisors are learning as I do, as they suggest changes based on their respective areas and training.

In all honesty, the cartoons threw me off, and tainted how I viewed the rest of the book. I kept imagining how this would have been viewed if the topic had been Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, and how they would have been received.

I will most certainly look up the texts you suggest. I am very interested to read Contemporary Religious Satanism.

Best regards,

CH

[The book review suddenly disappeared as I was writing this comment, 404 error?]

Thank you for your comprehensive and critical review of my book. While I agree with many of your observations, such as the lack of freshness (it was mothballed from 2003 to 2008) , the odd illustrations (not my idea) and choice of title (I tried to sell something like your suggestion, but to no avail), I should correct you on a number of mistakes. It is not primarily oriented towards students or academics, but academic libraries – especially now when journal subscriptions are very expensive. As such, the reprints were intentional.

Secondly, your notes on nomenclature reflect your training as an ethnographer. I am a historian of religion with some experience with anthropology, and I find your sympathy towards the Church of Satan (clearly visible here and in your published undergrad thesis) necessary, but methodologically unsound. Indeed, your focus on the CoS skews your view on modern Satanism as a milieu vastly larger than the Church itself, regardless of the rhetoric of its leaders. As such, categories are necessary, and if they “insult” the practitioners, so be it. Research should not be limited to the emic perspective of the informants.

Related to that, the lack of Church material is unfortunate, but no fault of ours. The Church did not want anything to do with the book, as you yourself write. So we could not include their material. Nevertheless, the choice reflects what we had, rather than what we wanted. You have to ask James Lewis about his conflict with the Church, of which I have nothing to do – I would love to talk to Church members of some rank, and I have written extensively about LaVey and CoS material. On the other hand, I find Church members who want to dictate what I should write in articles and books embarassing. And to call research you dislike or diagree with “drivel” is just laughable.

In any case, your position as a confidante to Church members are highly fortunate, and I look forward to coming articles and your dissertation. In the meantime, you might want to look into my attempt at editing what this sourcebook should have been, namely Contemporary Religious Satanism from Ashgate (2009) and my PhD dissertation Between Darwin and the Devil: Modern Satanism as Discourse, Milieu, and Self (just handed in, so not searchable yet). You should also read what James Lewis, Per Faxneld, Dagmar Fügmann, and myself have written in the last couple of years to get up to date.

All the best,

Jesper Petersen.

The great majority of Christians did not suffer martyrdom in the early years, except for small incidents of violence (brief, but bloody). Several actually who sought it out, as it was considered a glorious way to die (this aligns with the notion of Roman death, considered to be a “good” death if it was for a just cause). But the average follower of the Jesus Movement (not yet separate from Judaism) was not at the imminent threat of death.