THE SECOND COMING: Satanism in America

by Arthur Lyons ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 31, 1970

Few of us are awfully bothered by the idea of Satanism, assuming it to be a fringe phenomenon (and fairly anodyne by fringe standards); but in an alarmist shriek of a preface Lyons enlists such divergent worthies as R. D. Laing and Ortega y Gasset to support his thesis that everything is unravelling into fringe and time has come to worry about the Devil again. There follows one hundred and fifty or so pages of cursory (and rather tedious) historical background which the author frequently interrupts to whip off his glasses and say a few words about the proclivities of Man and our dreadfully disaffecting society. As the noted psychologist (sociologist, philosopher, etc., etc.) Erich Fromm (Eric Hoffer, William James, Santayana, Dewey, etc., etc.) says. . . . Only a couple of pages of genuinely revolting hearsay accounts bear out the sensational promise of the introduction, and follow-up of these items would have been far preferable to what we get: nonsense encomiums to Anton LeVey (who reminds us of Alan Burke) and his stuffily pious Church of Satan (elitism and lay psychotherapy), and flap about Satan as the Big Friend of the little guy. Our favorite passage is one occultist's conclusion that the devil is some delusional but otherwise perfectly ordinary inhabitant of the astral plane, known familiarly as ""Big Mouth.

Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dodd, Mead

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION