The Dark Sacrament Read Free

“mind-expanding” drugs. LaVey had little difficulty in attracting a following. With the founding of the Church of Satan, the Devil had left the shadows and gone aboveground.
    Perhaps the defining moment of this narco-satanism came in the summer of 1969 with the frenzied slaughter of Sharon Tate and others. The perpetrators were the Manson “family,” and evidently the crime was satanically motivated. The Devil had arrived in America.
    THE EXORCIST: SATAN ON CELLULOID
    In 1971, William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist appeared, to be followed by a motion picture of the same name.
    The effects of that single Hollywood production were seismic. Until 1973, the release date, exorcism was seldom spoken of in lay circles, much less experienced. That was to change, as long lines formed outside movie theaters, and people emerged white-faced, having seen director William Friedkin’s stunning and altogether alarming dramatization of Blatty’s book. The film was to spawn many imitators and introduce an incredulous public to a subject that the churches had for centuries kept from all but a few.
    It is a curious fact that from the moment the movie was shown in Ireland, Britain, and mainland Europe, there was a veritable epidemic of “possession” symptoms presented by psychiatric patients, many consistent with those shown in The Exorcist. The simple explanation is, of course, that fakery was at work, and that those patients for whom attention seeking was always an intrinsic part of their illness were doing no more than ratcheting up the pressure ontheir therapists. In other words, the “demonic possession” was a cry for help.
    The principle of Occam’s razor, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, could certainly be applied with profit in most such cases. Yet a handful seem to fall outside the ambit of rationality, defying, as they do, reductionism. That of Anneliese Michel is perhaps the most celebrated, and one of the more recent “possession” motion pictures, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, was based loosely on her tragic circumstances.
    A native of Würzburg, Germany, Anneliese began experiencing epileptic fits and “demonic” attacks when she was eighteen. The bishop, Dr. Josef Stangel, ordered the case to be investigated by an authority on such matters, who diagnosed possession. The bishop gave permission for an exorcism, to be performed by a Salvatorian priest with the assistance of a local pastor.
    It was found that ten months of weekly exorcism could not banish the entities that had “occupied” the young woman’s body. They allegedly included Lucifer, Adolf Hitler, Emperor Nero, and Cain. Such was the ordeal that Anneliese endured during the protracted exorcisms that she eventually died. Too little attention had been given to Anneliese’s anorexia, and possible anorexia nervosa, which may have hastened her end: at the last, she was refusing all food and drink. A jury would find both the officiating clergymen and the girl’s parents guilty of “negligent homicide”; all four had, it was decided, allowed Anneliese to starve herself to death. Each was given a six-month custodial sentence, but this was mercifully suspended for three years.
    That same year—1976—saw the publication of a groundbreaking book on exorcism. Entitled Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans, it was written by Malachi Martin, a “laicized” Catholic priest. By laicization is understood that the priest, usually voluntarily, has clerical character, control, or status withdrawn. Father Martin was a former Jesuit and a native of Ballylongford, County Kerry, Ireland.
    He died in 1999 at the age of seventy-eight, and left a legacy of controversy. His detractors claimed that Hostage was a tissue of lies. Even the greatly respected psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck declares in his final book,