I'm now retired but I worked in human services for nearly my whole career. This brought me to a number of institutions where I encounteered and worked with the people you call satanists.

Yet my experience with the majority of them was that they were usually damaged, misguided and sick humans. The ones who flaunted their "satanic powers" were disturbed people who could be problematic but certainly had no significant occult powers.

Actually they were rather pathetic folks whose unwise life decisions had brought them entirely under the control of the state.

Having become so powerless in the control of their own lives they sought to impress others with their scary superhuman powers. What's wong with this picture?

In that sense, the ones who didn't identify themselves were more threatening to order and health.

I have two life-long friends who have worked in the ministry. The Lutheran minister calls them her "alligators." She says they are in every church. Troublemakers.

The missionary is retired and now does service work with a Christian motorcycle group in the prisons in FLA. She is in agreement with me that people whom some perceive to be "posessed" can easily be disarmed by not allowing them the power of your fear.

In all that time of working with the state's most damaged humans I only encountered a couple of "entities." And they are truly frightening but I've learned that, much like the old vampire legend, one needs to "invite them in" before they can do any serious damage to you.

Have you read M. Scott Peck's, People of the Lie: the Hope for Healing Human Evil?

It's a fascinating puzzle the self-destructive forces that lay within us all and how and why some of us feed them.