Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes

Dawn Perlmutter. Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2004.

Scholars of new religions have likely bumped up against religious and ritualistic crime. New religions, minority religions, marginalized religions, religions associated with minority populations, are often accused of religious violence and crime. The classic example of such accusations is the Satanic Panic in which alleged Satanic cults were accused the sexual molestation and kidnapping of children across the U.S. And some new religions have perpetrated crimes and committed murders. The two that immediately come to mind are murders and coerced suicides at Jonestown in 1978, and the subway gas attack by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995. Violence has also been perpetrated against new religious groups, such as the attack on the MOVE group in Philadelphia in 1985 and the attack on the Branch Davidian property in Waco, Texas in 1993.  

The Delphi, IN murder case recently brought this all back for me. In 2023, the defense team in the case released a 100+ page memorandum alleging that the murders were committed by a secret cult of Odinists who ritually sacrificed the victims to the god Odin. In a 2024 hearing, the defense brought in Dr Dawn Perlmutter as an expert witness to testify that the crime scene showed evidence of ritual sacrifice. Read my blog post about Dr, Perlmutter's testimony  here.

Dr Perlmutter's book Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crime aims to provide law enforcement officials and criminal investigators a handbook for identifying religiously-motivated crime and violence. Perlmutter has a background in art history and aesthetics, and has leveraged herself as an expert in symbolism, especially interpreting religious symbolism in ritualistic crime scenes - crimes that were committed by religious or cultic practitioners for religious reasons.

When I learned of her involvement in interpreting the Delphi crime scene for the defense, I read her book to try to better understand her perspective. 

Here is a quick summary of the book:

• In Chapter one, Perlmutter tries to define types of religious violence.
• Chapters 2-7 look at several categories of religious or cultic groups. There is a chapter each on Millennialism; Domestic religious terrorism most of which concerns white supremacist groups including Odinism; Islamic terrorism; Satanism; Vampirism; and Syncretic religions by which she means Afro-Caribbean religions like Santeria, Voodoo (her spelling), Brujeria, Palo Mayombe. 
• Chapters 8-10 look at crimes scenes to help investigators discover "clues" to the ritual activity of these various groups, and the symbolic analysis of crime scenes to formulate a "ritual homicide typology."

On pages 231-232, Dr Perlmutter turns her attention to religion scholars. She addresses the issue of religious scholars refuting claims of religiously-motivated ritual crime. Discussing a particular case in Mexico associated with Palo Mayombe she writes, "many scholars have published articles refusing to acknowledge the ritual murders as human sacrifice and relegate the deaths to a form of sadism.. . . Essentially it is difficult for even well-educated, good intentioned persons to recognize religious violence for what it is . . . these murders must be viewed in the context of the belief system they were perpetrated in." Then after describing the terrible spate of murders in the border region Jaurez and El Paso she writes "it is also quite feasible that another Mexican religious cult could be ritually murdering young women." (232)

It is true that many scholars of religion push back against these claims of religious and cultic violence. And for good reason, these claims are often spurious and made without good evidence - the lurid stories of ritual sacrifice and secret occult groups create a sort of vicarious interest that overrides rational and knowledgeable interpretations. The witch trials are a notorious example of this. Scholars who study actually study New Religious Movements are only too aware of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s in which completely false stories of suburban Satanic child-sacrificing cults spread throughout American popular culture with harmful consequences. For the Satanic Panic, you might read Dr, Sarah Hughes' American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2021, or Dr Jeffrey S Victor's 1999 book Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend. With the Satanic Panic in mind, one can see the similarities with Dr Perlmutter's approach in this book. 

So on one hand, I can take her perspective as a good reminder that religious scholars should be aware of the potential for violence in these religions that we study. At the same time, we should caution people to avoid over-interpretion and misinterpretation which might implicate whole religions as violent and criminal without sufficient warrant. 

Here are some of my problems with this book:

1) Sources: There are very few footnotesand citations and those that are given do not refer to reliable sources. Much of the information is sourced from the internet, not from reliable and scholarly sources. The book lacks academic rigor and quality sources.

2) Suspicion: The book casts suspicion over a broad swath of minority religions--which are not illegal or criminal but portrayed as if they are. This can lead to or exacerbate unhelpful and false conspiracy theories, Satanic panics, and witch hunts. An example from her book is the chapter on Satanic religious violence. She claims, without any sources, that "Satanism is widely practiced in Western society." She discusses several Satanic religious organizations, but then (very briefly) mentions that none of them have any recorded incidents of violence. The categories that have been associated with criminal and violent activity, "Self-Styled Satanists" and "Youth  Subculture Satanists," are the two areas she spends the least time on in the book.

3) Over-indication: The evidence for ritualistic crime presented in the book is so broad that someone could see it anywhere. If you are looking for it, you will find it, or think you have found it. For instance,  burning candles and candle magic, 268-78. On pages 274-278, she included photos of candles in a New York City botanica  - without any shred of association with criminal activity. Yet this is presented in a way to imply or cast suspicion on it. Perlmutter mentions that burning candles is "the most common form of religious worship" and says "it is important to emphasize that  . . . candles alone may not indicate criminal activity" - yest this is in a chapter in a book on religious crime! There is always the danger of criminalizing or casting criminal suspicion on behavior, religious or otherwise, of which "we" the mainstream culture disapproves, that is outside of mainstream social norms. The book gives the strong impression that the presence of certain symbols and practices indicates criminal activity, when that is not the case--casting suspicion on ritualistic or religious activity that is out outside of the usual secular and Christian mainstream. (269) There seems to be a slippery slope from "weird" to "criminal" that this book participates in. I mention a similar suspicion cast on Norse tattoos in Being Viking--not everyone who has a Valknut tattoo is a neo-Nazi, in fact most are not. But the suspicion remains, as we see in this Delphi case where suspicion is cast onto the shadowy menace of Odinism.

4) Saturation of Pop Culture: She writes "It is important to note that some ritualistic crimes are conducted by individuals who mimic media depictions of the occult but are not involved in any organized group or follow any established belief system" (235). There is so much cultish and occult aesthetic present in the culture, that it can be difficult to determine what it actually indicates. (I have written about the problem of the "witchy aesthetic" here.) I think that occult symbolism may be associated with crimes that are best explained in other ways. For instance, a Santa Muerte image may be associated with a crime that is best explained and investigated through the violent culture, economics, and rivalries of drug trafficking gangs.

Of course ritualistic crimes and religiously-motivated crimes take place. Being aware of the signs of these types of crimes could be helpful in investigating, understanding, and prosecuting those crimes.  But over-interpretation can be just as much of a problem. And this book contributes to that problem.

I think it would be better to read Catherine Wessigner's How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate  than this book. Hopefully scholars of new religions will have more than an internet, Google-search-level knowledge of their subject matter, which is basically what you will get from this book. A lot of the content was sourced from the internet. Much of the content in the book is just not particularly relevant to the actual social locations of religious violence. Religions that have perpetrated religious violence aren't thoroughly covered - Aum Shinrikyo (31-42) gets about ten pages with several pictures thrown in there - and almost nothing on Islamic-sourced violence - but then there are several chapters focused on other religions that have little to no association with violence. For instance, is it helpful and relevant to have a much longer discussion of Santeria (182-210) in a book about criminal religious activity? And several pages of Vodou Vèvè drawings as evidence of potential criminal activty when there is no actual connection to violence outside of the movies?

 

I, Julian by Claire Gilbert and the Porous Self

Icon by Kara Gillette illustrates
Julian's most well-known shewing
of the world as a hazelnut, as
well as her cat, and the divine
illumination coming through the
 window of her cell

In May 1373, having survived at least two waves of the Black Death, a 30 year old woman fell into a life-threatening fever and illness. After lying sick for seven days and nearing death, she raved, "I raved today. I thought the crucifix bled" (126). But she came to understand these ravings as "shewings" or revelations - direct embodied mystical experiences of Christ. 

Amazingly, these shewings were written down in "the English of the fourteenth century," the same Middle English in which her contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer wrote. The shewings were written in the first person, which suggests that they were dictated by Julian to a priest who recorded her account. 

Julian became an anchoress - a solitary religious dwelling in a room connected to a church in Norwich - entombed or encased, bricked into the room from which she did not emerge. As an anchoress, she contemplated her revelations - they became the sacred text from which her theology emerged. After years of contemplative life, she gained further spiritual insight in the deeper meaning of her visions.  In chapter 86 in the Long Text she writes, "from that time that it was shewed I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord's meaning. And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in ghostly [i.e. spiritual or mystical] understanding, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord's meaning."

I, Julian is a fictional autobiography of the 14th century anchoress Julian of Norwich by Claire Gilbert. Gilbert wrote a 2018 PhD dissertation on Julian, Restoring Porosity and the Ecological Crisis: A Post-Ricoeurian Reading of the Julian of  Norwich Texts, at King's College London. During a cancer diagnosis and more than two years of treatment, Gilbert turned to Julian as more than an academic interest, as a spiritual guide through her own experience with illness, facing death, and walking through grief. She drew close to Julian in a new way, as she says "almost experiencing the visions herself." She felt "a call" - perhaps her own mystical experience - to "tell Julian's story in the first person, in homage to her."  

The book deals with the problem of epistemology - how do we know things and what counts as knowledge? Julian's visions - were they ravings or divine revelations? Are they hallucinations or do they show something real and important? A knowledge of reality not obtainable in any other way? When Julian first awakens from her illness, she says to the priest "I raved today." But the priest did not laugh. "You did not laugh. You will not dismiss my visions. And so I do not dismiss them either. I was shocked then and I am still shocked at how easily I could have rejected them, had you not looked so serious." 

Mystics and mystical experiences have fallen into disrepute, and perhaps have always been regarded with skepticism. Yet for those who experience them - they hold a visceral power. The mystic sees something that alters their perspective about reality. Julian's theology begins neither with the Bible nor with her social context - nor does she proceed in the way of logical discourse or syllogistic reasoning. Her approach is far from that of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). Her theology emerges from the visionary experience and her mystical contemplations of them. She continues to be anchored in the "showing" - God showed me and I came to learn . . . " 

And although she is not a visionary herself, Gilbert agrees - if we let Julian's visions in, they can reshape our consciousness and our relationship to the world in a way that would be better for ourselves, others, and the world. Recovering Julian is a step towards a more porous sense of self that sloughs off the facade of autonomous agency and turns outward toward a relational way of being. 

In the novel, Julian has an audience with a noblewoman named Isabel. Isabel begins to share her hidden grief over her many miscarriages - secretly she has given each lost child a name and has held all this inside herself. Now, in Julian's presence, she opens and the grief comes out. In response, Julian models and experiences the porous self. "I listen. I receive her words. . . I feel like a sponge, not just Isable's words but the hot pain that sites inside them, a pain that stays hidden from the world and is intense form its suppression. As the words and the pain enter me, enter my hears and, it feels, my whole body, even as a part of me is wondering at what is happening and fearful for myself, the pain is so hot . . . it is not I who can determine how to receive and relieve the pain, but Jesu, Love herself, and I must allow this soft porosity to open to the healing love that is waiting to serve. So I sit quieter still, wondering, and trusting and unknowing" (145-46).

It is a sharing of selves that occurs, within the matrix of emotions. Isabel's pain bleeds into Julian's empathetic receptivity where it meets with Jesu's healing love. That communion becomes an efficacious and holy ground, "It sems to me," Julian says, "that as each name is called out, a child appears between us and before God, shines, is seen, just for a moment, and then lies down and sleeps" (146). Gilbert feels that the healing we need - personally, socially, and ecologically - needs this porous self, this porous humanity to really encounter the world and its beings as more than Other, as part of ourselves.