Preface to The Satanic Conspiracy: Witch Hunting in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

This—the last of my Major Writing Assignments for English 098—was the most daunting of the three projects. Researching the piece was not difficult, but it was extremely time consuming nonetheless, and the collection of citations became an endeavor unto itself. Despite the fact that I would have liked more time (and space) to discuss the issues of Satanic ritual abuse and religious intolerance, I am very pleased with the end product. I feel I argued my point well, and offered sufficient reasons to support my thesis statement. I presented strong quotes from an array of respected authorities, many of whom aren’t professed Satanists, thus avoiding any accusations of using only biased sources. The overall writing of this piece is stronger than the previous two, as I took into careful consideration the feedback I received about certain stylistic tendencies I may at times display. (The abundance of run-on sentences was amongst the biggest gripes made by both my advisor and my peers, so I hope that this last essay was far less migraine-inducing than my previous assignments.) One of my main concerns when writing this piece was that it not be reiterative of my previous essay, “Snuff: The Final Cut.” Both dealt with debunking an urban legend, so it would have been easy (and tempting) to simply follow the same formula. Luckily, I feel I was successful in restructuring it in a way so readers wouldn’t be hampered too terribly much by feelings of déjà vu.

I chose the subject “The Satanic Conspiracy: Witch Hunting in the Twentieth Century and Beyond” in order to further discredit the myths involving Satanic cults and their supposed involvement in abuse and murder in the last forty-odd years. In addition, I wanted to clarify what Satanism is and how its ideologies contradict the unfounded rumors that have been constantly leveled against it by the religious right. Having been a card-carrying member and an active representative of the Church of Satan for about ten years now, I have been exposed to no shortage of prejudice and bigotry when I have disclosed my philosophical beliefs in public. Since I knew my audience probably knew very little if anything about Satanism, I felt it would be a perfect opportunity to shed some light on the subject. Furthermore, I felt it would interest most readers because of its sensationalistic aspects, even if they did not agree with the assessment I made.