Seeking the truth about Satanism

   Looking up Christ Church, Hampstead, on my iphone for the times of services, I am met by a horrifying and lengthy account on the web of "Satanist" child paedophile rings and activities at the church school -  not easy to read over the Sunday morning tea and biscuits.   But  I did read it along with the various follow-ups, and felt disinclined after that to go to church.     While I had been away, there had been groups booing outside the church after hearing about the allegations.   It was obviously a crisis point for the church and the vicar, who I knew well.
     But then there emerged a postscript to all this.  After more reading, I discovered that all these mind-blowing charges had been denied and an allegation made that an angry mother had made them up to upset the husband from whom she had separated and that she had now left the country.   Her two children, aged 8 and 9, had been at the school and named as "whistleblowers", doing so at their mother's command.  There had been a court case and the judge had dismissed the allegations and handed out a suspended sentence to the mother..   But the allegations have remained on the web.


          But that still left a question mark over the Church of Satan.  This was not the first time I had come across it.   Years ago, in Cornwall, a priest had told me he was worried about Satanism and crimes being carried out by the same people who ran an illegal drugs trade into the county.    He gave me the names of a rural dean and local doctor, who both confirmed his story.   Not an easy one to follow up, though some arrests were eventually made, the headquarters of the cult appearing to be in Penzance.
      So does the Church of Satanism exist still?   Yes, and books on it can be bought and its antecedents available by googling it.   It was founded in the 'sixties by Anton LaVey, now dead, an American from Chicago with a Russian mother and Ukrainian father.  He was a circus performer who became interested in witchcraft and its accompanying rituals.    And the cult he founded, with its worship of materialism  and the ego appears to be thriving still in some parts of the country, including, as I now know, in Hampstead, London and Cornwall.   The arrests were made some years ago in the Midlands so the spread then was wide.   Does it still exist?  I think we have to assume that it does but there are no very obvious ways to attack it except by prayer.   Long ago, when I interviewed police in Penzance, they admitted that Satan is a difficult one to arrest.


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