Theistic Satanism: Home > Popular > Witchhunt > Jerome Dominguez
Jerome Dominguez - the mad doctor
Comments on the "Satanism" article on Jerome Dominguez's "World Religions" site
by Diane Vera
Copyright © 2004 by Diane Vera. All rights reserved.
Jerome Dominguez is identified, on one of his many websites, as having been "Coordinator of the Hispanic Catholic Charismatic Renewal in New York for 25 years." He is also identified as both a medical doctor (with a practice in internal medicine) and as having earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology. In his spare time, he has written oodles and oodles of books, booklets, pamphlets, leaflets, and web pages - mostly about religion, apparently.Among his myriad other writings is a page on Satanism:
http: / / religion-cults.com / Occult / Satanism / Satanism.htm(To make the above URL work, delete the space before and after each slash.)
In his writings, despite his claimed academic and professional credentials, Dominguez doesn't come across as very educated. Of course, English isn't his first language, so we shouldn't expect his English grammar or word usage to be perfect. But what makes him look uneducated is a lot more than just his occasionally bad English. His overall reasoning skills appear to be extremely poor.
His Satanism page is a blatantly sloppy piece of trash. Alas, it's one of the top 20 pages that come up when you do a Google search on "Satanism," which is the sole reason why I'm bothering to comment on it.
He claims that all Satanists are criminals. And he claims that liberal Catholics are Satanists!
About three fourths of the way down his "Satanism" page, there is a section titled "Satanism in the 'Catholic Church'?" in which he claims that various liberal Catholic heresies are "a kind of Satanism." His justification? "Satan attacks the Church from 'without' (1 Peter), and from 'within' (2 Peter)."
If attacking the Catholic Church qualifies one as a Satanist, then millions and millions of Protestant fundamentalists would have to be considered Satanists too. And, if liberal Catholics qualify as Satanists, this too would mean that there are millions and millions of Satanists - contradicting Dominguez's statement, further up on the page, that there may be fewer than ten thousand Satanists in the whole world. More to the point, the idea that liberal Catholicism is a form of Satanism contradicts Dominguez's own definition of "Satanism" - "the worship and imitation of the biblical Satan or Lucifer." Even if liberal Catholics are doing what Satan wants, that's not the same thing as actually worshipping or deliberately imitating Satan.
How can anyone with even half a brain fail to see this?
Although he lives in New York, he's worse than even the most ignorant Bible Belt backwater fundy w.r.t. conflating Satanism with things other than Satanism.
At the very bottom of the page, below the section on "Satanism in the 'Catholic Church'?", there's a section titled "Fetishes, Talismans, Amulets, Charms, Superstitions, Potions, Curses, Spells, Magic Prayers, Spoils". It's unclear why this section is on his Satanism page rather than on one of his more general magic and occultism pages. It pertains more to Santeria than to Satanism.
Also, the bottom section is numbered "4," inconsistent with the section numbering further up on the page. I suspect an incomplete editing job. Perhaps an earlier version lumped the entire occult scene together with Satanism, all on one page, until he finally got too many email complaints from non-Satanist occultists?
It's interesting that he believes that even liberal Catholics are Satanists, yet at the same time he has gotten around to noticing (sort of) that "witchcraft" is not a synonym for Satanism. As he says near the top of his Satanism page, Satanism "is not witchcraft, although in practice the edges of Satanism and Witchcraft are blurred."
Let's now look at what he says about Satanism itself.
He defines Satanism as "the worship and imitation of the biblical Satan or Lucifer." This would be a reasonably comprehensive description of the set of people who call themselves Satanists if only he were to replace the word "and" with "or." (The present wording excludes those who worship but do not imitate Satan, and vice versa.)
He then says, "Satan is referred as the brother of Christ." What??? I've been a Satanist since 1991, and I don't recall ever hearing any Satanist say that Satan is the brother of Christ. He must have confused Satanism with Mormonism, or something.
Next:
The "emblem", is a pentagram, like the one of witchcraft, but inverted, with the face of Satan on it.
Actually, the face of a goat. Does Dominguez believe that Satan is literally a goat?
The "credo", is summed up in "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", coined by Crowley in "The Book of the Law".
Satanists don't all have the same "credo," although most Satanists today are indeed influenced by Crowley to one degree or another, directly or indirectly.
Crowley's "Law of Theleme" is often misunderstood. For a balanced introduction, see Introduction to Crowley (in Five Voices) by Tim Maroney.
Dominguez goes on to say:
There are two kinds of Satanism:
1- Those who believe that Satan exists and is a powerful force... with animals and children sacrificed to worship him and get his favors, and the Black Mass as the main rite.
2- Those who believe that Satan does not exist, but it is merely the symbol or personification of fleshy human desires and appetites... and they try to imitate it, with all kind of sins, pleasures and selfishness, lying, steeling, killing...
In other words, we're all a bunch of criminals.
There's no copyright date on Dominguez's article, so it's unclear what information he could have had access to at the time he wrote it. In the 1980's and early 1990's, there was a big "Satanic Ritual Abuse" scare. The vast majority of alleged cases turned out to be false alarms, until eventually the whole thing was pretty much discredited. (For more information, see the articles linked here.) During that time, an awful lot of sensationalistic nonsense was published about Satanism.
However, even if we give Dominguez the benefit of the doubt and assume that his article was written at the height of the SRA scare, and that he has been just too busy to any further research ever since, he still did not make good use of the information that was available even at that time. For example, even at the height of the SRA scare, reputable authorities in law enforcement and the social sciences already knew that the public Satanic churches were law-abiding.
The next section of Dominguez's article contains yet another of those lists of "Categories of Satanists" which I've parodied in my article Five types of Christians. Dominguez's categories are:
- Group secretive Satanists
- Public Church Satanists
- Youth Gang Satanists
- Individual Satanists
Here, not only does he acknowledge the existence of "Public Church Satanists," but he makes them out to be even more public than they really are. He says that they "hold worship services open to the public."
Dominguez has apparently never bothered to consider the following question: How could a well-publicized public Satanic church continue to exist, for decades, if its members were all or mostly criminals? Wouldn't every single one of its members have been busted by now? Even mafiosi, despite their code of silence and despite all the money they have available for bribes to cops and judges, do eventually get caught. Furthermore, if indeed the "Public Church Satanists" were to "hold worship services open to the public," then it would be easy as pie for the cops to infiltrate them.
Anyhow, his list of "Public Church Satanists" include, besides the Church of Satan and Temple of Set, "The Church of Thelema of Crowley, the Order of the Golden Down, and derivations of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO)," The Golden Dawn was definitely not a Satanic group. The OTO is not a Satanist group per se, although Crowley was indeed fond of using phrases and symbols that had both an obvious Satanic meaning and a more esoteric occult meaning. Likewise the Church of Thelema. As Dominguez himself admits further down on the page, Crowley did not consider himself a Satanist.
Now for Dominguez's other categories:
The "Group secretive Satanists," he says, may be either "Traditionsl" (performing Black Masses regularly) or "Nontraditional" (derived from sources other than Christianity). But, in either case, they all drink blood. Dominguez doesn't explain how he knows this about all these groups, despite their secrecy.
The "Youth Gang Satanists," according to Dominguez, are "dabblers," for whom Satanism is "a passing fad influenced by drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll, but with serious consequences, like in the spectacular case of Charles Mason, or Andrew Newell who stabbed his mate to death, or Peter McKenzie who sexually abused 13 children."
By "Charles Mason," I assume he meant Charles Manson. I wasn't able to find any information about Andrew Newell or Peter McKenzie on the web. Perhaps Dominguez misspelled their names too? Anyhow, it does not seem to me that Manson was really a Satanist of any kind. As far as I am aware, he didn't worship Satan, nor was he a LaVeyan-style Satanist either.
Be that as it may, there do exist some people who have killed people or committed other violent crimes in the name of Satan. But is "Satanism" the cause, or just an excuse?
Also, it should not be assumed that all or most young Satanists, be they serious or dabblers, either are or become criminals.
Dominguez's last category is "Individual Satanists, often disturbed individuals, neurotic or psychotic, like most Satanists!" Regarding the notion that Satanists are all nuts, see my commentaries on articles by Craig Hawkins and Bob and Gretchen Passantino.
Next is a section titled "Morality of Satanism" in which he again accuses us of all manner of crimes, the worst crimes being committed at the highest "levels." He claims, "they believe to get powers to perform magic by doing evil acts."
He then talks about the Black Mass, which he calls "the ultimate rite for a real Satanist to obtain magic powers." What he describes is pretty much the standard sensationalistic stereotype of a Black Mass - except for the idea of yelling "Shemhamphrash!" at the end, which, as far as I am aware, is derived from Anton LaVey's rituals.
Next, in a section titled "Groups of Satanists Today," he elaborates on his earlier list of categories of Satanists. He makes a few allegations I haven't heard before concerning specific public Satanist groups, plus a few allegations which I have heard before, but on which I need to refresh my memory. (I might take the time to research these allegations later, but it's not my top priority right now.) For the most part, his allegations here are not criminal allegations, just bits of gossip. (The only possibly criminal allegation is the one about "debauched, sadistic beating of naked young girls." Dominguez doesn't tell us whether this took place in the context of consensual BDSM.)
He devotes a few paragraphs to LaVey's Satanic Bible and a few paragraphs to the Black Mass in LaVey's Satanic Rituals. He neglects to inform the reader that LaVey's Black Mass does not involve the criminal activities mentioned in Dominguez's own earlier description of a Black Mass. Dominguez just quotes some of the blasphemous words, to which he then responds with a brief sermonette, a prayer, and "in the name of Jesus Christ I order Satan to get out of the heart of any Satanist or Witch who may read these lines." Well, it didn't work on me, that's for sure. He thinks he can command Satan? (Incidentally, his attempt to do so is contrary to official Catholic Church policy, according to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith .)
After he has finished talking about various public Satanist groups, Dominguez then talks about "Youth Gang Satanists" and the ways that young people allegedly become Satanists. He repeats the standard fundy nonsense about roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons. He also claims that there are adults who "actively recruit youngsters into the Occult and Satanism, with the lure of free drugs, drink and promiscuous sex..."
In reality, any serious occultist - of any kind - would want to work with other serious occultists only. Thus they would be very unlikely to be interested in working with immature kids at all, let alone luring them in with free drugs and sex.
Satanists, occultists, and liberal Catholics are by no means the only people to have taken offense at Dominguez's writings. Here is a page by a Hindu who tried unsuccessfully to get one of Dominguez's sites shut down a few years ago.
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