This book provides sweeping treatment of a fascinating and challenging theme that might well provoke its readers into rethinking the intellectual foundations of Western modernity.
Stephen W. Angell, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion
I recommend Children of Lucifer not only for its engrossing history, but also because Luijk engages criticallyproblematizing and theorizing througha vast oeuvre ... Read moreof well-known nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, poets, philosophers, theologians, and occultists. This scope will surely appeal to graduate students, literary critics, and scholars of Christianity, Western Esotericism, and New Religious Movements.
Tarryl Janik, Nova Religio
Van Luijk is an eminent specialist of the Belle Epoque, and a master storyteller. All the chapters of his book about late 19th-century France are rich in details nobody else...found before him, and the story is told in such a vivid prose that even those who have no special interest in esotericism or Satanism would find the book extremely entertaining...Van Luijk's book is...indispensable for understanding the Belle Epoque and the medieval and early modern precursors of modern Satanism.
Massimo Introvigne, Aries - Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism
[T]he prose is engaging and would pose little problem for those unfamiliar with the shibboleths of academia...Children of Lucifer is best at exploring the wider field of Satanic discourse, namely the interplay between literature about Satanism and more explicitly religious manifestations of Satanic practice.
Ethan Doyle White, Correspondences
Ruben van Luijk's Children of Lucifer: The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism is the most readable of a current rush of books on Satanism [it's] a highly valuable and immensely enjoyable book.
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