Literary Libertinism in the ‘Deofel Quintet’ of the Order of Nine Angles and Antinomian Esoteric Initiation
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2025 |
| Druh | Další prezentace na konferencích |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Popis | Since its beginnings in the 1960s Church of Satan, contemporary religious Satanism has voiced its appreciation of libertine thought and action. The influence of Sir Francis Dashwood and the 18th-century “Hell-Fire Clubs” on the Church of Satan has been studied by Per Faxneld’s chapter Secret Lineages and De Facto Satanists: Anton LaVey’s Use of Esoteric Tradition (2013). However, the impacts of libertinism on later developments of Satanism have largely fallen out of scholarly attention. This presentation turns to a common textual medium of 18th-century libertinism – libertine novels –, and discusses the libertine elements in the literary narratives of a later manifestation of Satanism, the Order of Nine Angles (ONA), advocating for criminality, human sacrifice, and the use of right-wing extremism. ONA’s main corpus of literary works consists of the “Deofel Quintet”, five novels that the practitioner should read for self-development and gaining esoteric insight. Although ONA considers these novels “not akin to the amoral diatribes of other writers – e.g. de Sade”, the references to de Sade and libertine elements of blasphemy, carnality, and ritual or sexual transgression suggest closer interaction with libertine discourse. The paper explores how sexual and religious transgression is discursively constructed within these novels and how the novels and the surrounding ONA discourse about them instrumentalize sexual and religious taboo-breaking to construct antinomian liberation and self-development. |
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