Time magazine article here.
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. . . .
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.
The statue itself is impressive: almost nine feet tall, and weighing in at around a ton.
Eric Metaxas provides useful commentary.
. . . Speaking of C.S. Lewis, in “The Screwtape Letters” Lewis wrote that “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” He added that devils “are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
The people in Detroit managed to commit both errors at the same time. They denied believing in a personal devil, instead regarding Satan as a symbol of the “reconciliation of opposites, emblematic of the willingness to embrace, and even celebrate differences.” Yet at the same time they built a half-ton statue—“idol” is not too strong a word—of what they claim not to believe in and behaved in a way that brings to mind the children of Israel before the golden calf.
This is the cultural moment we’re living in: people either embracing evil and calling it good, or pretending that evil doesn’t exist at all. Oh, but evil does exist, and there is no lack of evidence for that proposition: from the slaughter houses of Planned Parenthood and ISIS, to the erection of a satanic statue in Detroit.