The authorship of these files on cults has his or her own motivations for providing them a

    [Fredric Rice, The Skeptic Tank:  The authorship of these files on
    cults has his or her own motivations for providing them and will
    contain his or her own bias.  What I find typical is that
    individuals and organizations which report on cults are usually
    themselves a competition cult yet like to think of themselves as
    "a religion, not a cult."  In actual fact, _ALL_ religions are
    cults by the primary, secondary, and terciary usage definition of
    the term.  Some of the information you find here is inaccurate and
    contains urban legend -- take what you find with a grain of salt.
    If you wish to acquire a copy of the Law Enforcement Guide on
    Occult Crime, contact myself at frice@stbbs.com or at The Skeptic
    Tank (818) 335-9601 and I'll forward the address and information
    you need.]

Voodoo

Voodoo, the occult and Santeria

        [Fredric Rice: This description is wildly inaccurate and
        makes many unfounded accusations -- accusations which many
        police agencies around the world have researched and found
        to be urban legends.  The authorship has elected to group
        many diverse and widely different religious groups into
        one under this general heading for some reason.]

According to a book called The Secret World Of Cults, one in every
200 peoplein Britain is involved in the occult and 10 per cent of
those are seriouslyinvolved in satanism. Apologists for the occult
claim that child abuse mediascares deflect public attention away
from the age-old tradition in which they follow. Many are well-
educated and well-read in the history of their own persecuted
movement; from Middle Age Satanists, through Rosicrucians to the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which included Aleister Crowley
and W B Yeatsamong its members.

Though they happily admit to clandestine ceremonies that others
would consider bizarre (and in the case of animal sacrifice illegal)
they insist that this does not include human slaughter. Even so,
Crowley himself went so far as to recommend which humans would be
most appropriate:

        "A male child of perfect innocence and high
        intelligence is the most satisfactory and
        suitable victim."


They meet each other through notice boards in specialist occult
bookshops and,increasingly, the Internet. They claim that they
have no more in common withone-offpsychopathic child abusers than
most football supporters do with hooligans. Thepolice agree;
social services and the tabloids don't. A similar growth in
fascination for pre-industrial demonology has been detected in
America. Among the Cuban community in Miami, a resurgence of
interest in Santeria (CubanVoodoo) has been noted, with some
well-heeled exiles paying up to $5,000 forsecret initiation
ceremonies involving animal sacrifice and trances. A jury in
Louisiana recently had to deal with a case where a woman had
asked her sister toremove her eyes because she believed she had
been cursed by a Voodoo spirit.

While this residual Western interest in black magic is often
cause forconcern (if not incredulity), it is not necessarily cultic.
All forms of black magic are rooted so deeply in the past and in
oral tradition that 'recruiting',deception and contemporary figure
heads do not feature as they do in classicdefinitions of cult
dynamics.

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