Children of Lucifer

Ruben van Luijk traces the origins of modern religious Satanism from medieval and early modern accusations of devil worship through Romantic reinterpretations of Satan as a rebel and nineteenth-century occultism to the founding of the Church of Satan. He argues that Satanism as a self-conscious religion is a distinctly modern phenomenon shaped by secularization and cultural change. Thoroughly researched, it is one of the most important scholarly histories of the subject.