Here’s to My Sweet Satan: How the Occult Haunted Music, Movies and Pop Culture, 1966-1980

As a long-time fan of Dungeons & Dragons, it never ceases to amaze me that people link one of my favorite activities with devil worship and other nonsense. But in this day and age, it’s easy to discount just how familiar and commonplace occult imagery is.

Here’s To My Sweet Satan plumbs the source of that familiarity by exploring the initial impact, the ensuing fear, the declining influence, and the increasing homogenization of occult imagery and influence over two decades. From Helter Skelter to the mythical backward-masking of messages in music, from The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby to the McMartin Preschool and the Satanic Panic, George Case hits all of the high notes and the low points of occultism in the second half of the twentieth century.

And although Case recognizes how silly so many of these cultural overreactions appear in insight, he casts no judgment on the sincerity and passion behind each panic, making him a very capable narrator, voice of reason, and scholar all at once.

Here’s To My Sweet Satan explores what happens when people need to restore a bit of magic to the world, even if they have to resort to dark magic to do it.