Yesterday I discovered this fascinating Vice doc about a town in Mexico that’s famous for its sorcerers. Catemaco is where Mel Gibson filmed Apocalypto, but it’s also a place where a mix of folk traditions, Catholicism and pop culture have created a web of occult practices that’s as notable for its dynamism as it is for its dynamite aesthetics. Here are a few words from the YouTube page…

Catemaco in Veracruz, Mexico is known for two things: It’s the place where Mel Gibson directed Apocalypto, and it is full of self-called witches that work either for God or the Devil. VICE doesn’t really care about Mel’s movie, but we were quite enchanted by the idea of a town that has gotten such a huge reputation for its witchcraft that even politicians and celebrities from all over Mexico have gone to seek for their cures and powers.

In this episode of Mexicalia, we head down to the Disneyland of satanist tourists and check out all the chicken killing, voodoo dolls, and spirit possessions the town had to offer.

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Just in time for Halloween, it’s Speak of the Devil, the Anton LaVey documentary…

Speak of the Devil: The Canon of Anton LaVey is a documentary film about Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, released in 1993 through Wavelength Video. It contains footage of LaVey including interviews and performances, a tour of his San Francisco home known as “The Black House” and a look into his ritual chamber, music room, library, and the personal retreat he called the “Den of Iniquity”.

If you haven’t explored LaVey’s organ music, you’re missing out. Just what your Halloween party needs! Here’s the flick (NSFW)…

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So this past weekend finally saw the unveiling of the Baphomet statue in Detroit. It looks pretty cool and the organization behind the event claims that it was the largest Satanic gathering ever. I think that title still goes to any Black Friday at Walmart, but I didn’t make the event so what do I know? Here is the word on the scene and the work from TIME magazine…

A little before midnight on Saturday, a crowd of around 700 gathered in an old industrial warehouse a few blocks from the Detroit River for what they’d been told was the “largest public satanic ceremony in history.” Most of them professed to be adherents of Satanism, that loosely organized squad of the occult that defines itself as a religious group. Others came simply because they were curious. After all, Satanists exist in the popular psyche as those who casually sacrifice goats and impregnate Mia Farrow with Lucifer’s child; if this ceremony was indeed unprecedentedly big, who knew what could be in store?

The reality of the event — and of the contemporary Satanic movement at large — was tamer, and, if the Facebook pictures speak the truth, harmlessly festive: a cross between an underground rave and a meticulously planned Halloween party. They were there to publicly unveil a colossal bronze statue of Baphomet, the goat-headed wraith who, after centuries of various appropriations, is now the totem of contemporary Satanism. The pentagram, that familiar logo of both orthodox Satanists and disaffected teens, originated as a rough outline of Baphomet’s head.

It’s odd that ol’ Baphomet suddenly has so much attention, but most people don’t really know the story behind the symbol. Here is Texe Marrs silly take on the beast. This video is full of Marrs’ usual paranoia and speculations, but also with some good basic information about Baphomet’s origins connecting back to the Knights Templar and the myths of Pan and the Green Man.

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June 21 seems a long way off to wait for the premiere of the second season of True Detective. I’m not one to blog about television very often, but, as fans of the show know, True Detective is no regular television show. The first season featured a tour-de-force acting clinic by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson inhabiting a pair of detectives tracking down a murderer in a series of super-creepy Satanic ritual homicides. The show’s atmosphere is pumped-up with literary references that introduce ideas from authors like William S. Burroughs, Robert Chambers and H.P. Lovecraft, and Rust Cohle’s references to existential philosophers seem cherry-picked to reinforce the stereotypical bleakness that’s popularly associated with that school of thought. It all adds up to chilling, riveting television, but what if it was true?

This piece from VICE explores the ritual child abuse case at a Louisiana church that series creator Nic Pizzolatto has cited as one real-life inspiration for the events in the first season of True Detective. The video is definitely NSFW and is full of real life monsters that even the King in Yellow might cower from. I often devote these posts to looking-back a the Satanic Panic of a few decades ago, pointing at the wrongheadedness of religious fundamentalists and advocating for the wrongly-convicted “satanists” the scares uncovered. But this story and the True Detective television show remind us that sometimes the Devil really is in the details…

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