I read a book so you didn't have to: The Little Book of Satanism, by La Carmina
This will be a book review for The Little Book of Satanism: A Guide to Satanic History, Culture, and Wisdom by author La Carmina. In the interests of full disclosure, it would be dishonest here not to mention my long-standing membership in the Church of Satan, so while I will endeavor to keep my personal biases in check and keep everything in the frame of objectivity, its better to get that out in front rather than omit it and have it brought back later.
I’ve decided to initially host this review on my own personal site because it would the the one place I knew that the author, who has already demonstrated a willingness to block people (myself included) and remove comments expressing any kind of criticism, would not be able to touch it here. I may copy some form of this review to goodreads or amazon; I’m undecided on that. I will however leave the comments section open as a matter of principle, even though there’s a chance it will become a shitshow. With that being said, let’s dig into it…
I won’t spend a whole lot of time on the foreward by “Lucien Greaves” (or Doug Mesner or Doug Misicko, depending on who you ask or what court filing you’re looking at). If you’ve ever read a Satanic Temple press release, you’ve pretty much read his foreward. Its the usual schtick…very much the same kind of material presented in very much the same kind of way and with all the posturing that you’ve seen before.
The first couple chapters seem to primarily be concerned with providing historical context for the various mythologies and symbols associated with Satanism and then begins addressing various misconceptions around the religion and tracing their origins. Not a lot of new material here for anyone who has any depth of background with the religion.
Some of the information can seem a bit superfluous, as its almost entirely related to attempting to clear up misconceptions about Satanism, rather than having any actual pertinence to the religion itself, but in that was just a minor issue that I would be perfectly willing to let go, since it seemed geared towards people with no prior background in the religion.
The author does make an effort to clarify about groups that had been historically considered “satanic”, while not actually self-identifying as such, and does make a point to illustrate how the label of “Satanist” was almost exclusively applied as an attack (usually based on political or economic interests) on most of these groups. Had the author stuck with this track, I feel the overall book would be a fine introductory book to the background of the religion.
Unfortunately, that isn’t what ended up happening.
Part 3 is where things start getting…well…odd. Of all the things that you would expect to lead into a discussion of Satanism in the mid- to late-20th Century, The Process Church of the Final Judgement would not be the first thing that springs to mind. Literally the only reason I can think for the inclusion of this offshoot of Scientology in a book about Satanism is Doug/Lucien’s own background as a professed Processian. Odd inclusion for what I can only presume was an audience of one, but fine. Whatever.
The next section is when we start getting into the Church of Satan, and while there still seems to be an attempt at an objective tone, over the next 7 pages the observant reader will start noticing certain language creeping in. Words like “It is said…” and “self-professed”. This terminology by itself is not anything notable or new. The Church of Satan in general and its founder in particular have always had all manner of aspersions cast their way. For what its worth, these are limited and it does feel like the author made some kind of attempt to present the appearance of documentary impartiality, even if there are a few very basic details that she presents that even basic research would show she had presented inaccurately or incompletely (the death of Jayne Mansfield, for example).
There are other omissions and misrepresentations; things that probably could have been clarified or rectified had the author made an effort to reach out to the Church of Satan’s publicly-available contact forms available on the Church of Satan website she says she referenced in the writing of this book. Per the Church of Satan’s own social media posts, no contact attempt was ever made.
The sections that followed delved into Satanism’s influence on pop culture, a short section on debunking various serial killers’ involvement with Satanism, and finally a condensed timeline of the Satanic Panic from the late 70’s, into the 80’s and 90’s, and its current resurgence now in the form of conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and Q-Anon, before getting into the real meat and potatoes of this tome.
Part 4 is where any notion of any kind of objectivity functionally evaporates. The shift in the tone of the language is stark, but you don’t have to take my word for it:
These are the first pages in the book for both the Church of Satan and Satanic Temple sections, respectively. We have arrived in what I can only describe as a naked-faced recruitment pamphlet for The Satanic Temple. Between pages 108 and 130, there is nothing but glowing outlines of various Satanic Temple “initiatives”, its assorted functional divisions, and even mentions a “movie night”…even going so far as to describe their campaigns as “clever”.
While the author made sure to dutifully cover the “schisms” within the Church of Satan, conspicuously absent are any mentions of the schisms within the Satanic Temple. Also absent are any mentions of the repeated lawsuits against four former members from the Seattle chapter, as well as the infamous 24-hour Might is Right podcast. She details some of the court cases the Satanic Temple is or has engaged in, but neglects to reflect on the Temple’s actual litigation track record.
You can consider my bias here if you like, but I’m not just dredging all this up to go on a bashing spree, but rather to illustrate how any objective reader could definitely interpret this as little more than a recruitment drive. And its disappointing, although not unexpected. I really wanted to be surprised by this book. I was even willing to look past Doug’s fingerprints on it and I tried my hardest to hold on to the idea that this was actually going to be some kind of genuine, impartial, documentary effort…it started off with a lot of potential. The author showed a lot of capability to be informative in the first couple chapters.
Mind you, none of us are without bias, but just the naked display of what I can really only call recruitment propaganda in the last part of the book was sorely disappointing. For some people, this will be their first introduction to Satanism…and unfortunately, I think that might have been the intent.
On a final note, the book closes out with a strange couple pages touching on “Japanese Satanism” before getting into the bibliography and a rather dubious “timeline of Satanism”.
I did my best not to join the fray of some of the others in my circles that were ready to condemn this book without having so much as opened it. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, or at least be able to talk about it intelligently on the points where I found it lacking. If the author had stuck to the initial, more documentary track, this book would have been vastly less of a let-down…even with Doug’s bloviating forward.
I won’t say there’s nothing of value in this book, but unfortunately it mostly just seems to be a vehicle to make the subsequent “recruitment drive” more palatable. Unfortunately, nothing I’ve said here is probably going to sway minds on either side that are already made up, and that’s fine. But if you’re just starting your explorations into the religion of Satanism, I cannot comfortably say that I recommend this book as your entry point.