Satans High Priest [Hardcover]

Judith Spencer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1997

From the days when Joseph's father, the charismatic Dexter Warren, established his prosperous mercantile and mortuary business, the occult opportunities the Warrens offered held a powerful allure for many of the townsfolk in their quiet community. The dark underside of Dexter's magnetism came to light in secret backroom meetings at his funeral parlor, where he presided over a coven of Satan worshipers that included people of authority and influence in the town. At home, Dexter's rigid morality and stern discipline made him a figure of awe and terror to his younger son, Joe, who was equally damaged by his mother's negligence and her subsequent death. Powerless against his father, Joe submitted to the teachings of satanism with rites of alcohol and drugs, sexual orgies, and humiliating physical torture, in a cycle that continued throughout his youth. Joe was free to leave the cult in early adulthood - but while college enrollment and excelling at football gave an outward appearance of normalcy, his cult training was deliberately calculated to ensure he would return. In his only act of personal revolt, Joseph overthrew his own father to claim the cult's highest position of power, to fulfill his destiny as sole commander of Satan's followers. Illuminating both the "why" and "how" behind the rise of Joseph Warren and others like him, Judith Spencer explores the compulsions behind the physical and emotional abuse inflicted, to lend a greater understanding of satanic cult behavior - and the incredible state of mental dissociation that allows an everyday person to partake in rituals with no memory of his or her "other" self. Against the chilling backdrop of Joseph Warren's colliding worlds oflight and darkness - where the effects of his destructive extremes continue to challenge all those he drew into his relentless service of evil - Judith Spencer unlocks the mysteries of the satanic cult phenomenon, and exposes its dark and deadly traps.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Intended as a hard-hitting exposé of secret cult practices in America, Satan's High Priest attempts to straddle a fine line between fiction and journalism--a line best left to the likes of skilled tightrope walkers such as Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe. The book doesn't really succeed at either, though the story of Joseph Warren's sadistic rise and fall as the "Great One" of a Southern cult is somewhat morbidly fascinating when read as a story that "could happen anywhere."

Warren, in his role as high priest to the unnamed coven, delights in rapes and murders, bestiality and necrophilia, and happily involves his entire circle of acquaintances in the small town of Lathrop (the state remains unidentified) in his "shows." To describe the atrocities of this multigenerational death cult, Judith Spencer places men like Warren and his father, Dexter, in their proper perspectives as outwardly normal, well-respected men of commerce. Warren and his brother, Linc, inherit their father's mortuary and dry-goods businesses, and while many of their customers are fellow cult members, life goes on as normal outside the pentagram; Spencer attempts to depict men who would casually gossip as they buy nails or coffee or a pair of boots, after having raped and ritually sacrificed children the night before. The problem for Spencer is that none of this particularly makes sense. She describes dozens of murders, yet offers no particulars or dates or corroborating evidence. Lathrop and Joseph Warren exist in a sort of deep concealing fog, impossible to pin down. Still, despite any doubts as to the book's veracity, it works as a somewhat elevated example of supermarket-tabloid-variety shock journalism. --Tjames Madison --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Atria (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671728008
• ISBN-13: 978-0671728007
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #200,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book so far on satanic cults., August 19, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Ukiah, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Satans High Priest (Hardcover)

SATAN'S HIGH PRIEST

BY

JUDITH SPENCER

If you only purchase one book this year,
choose this one. Spencer carefully
and artfully turns her pen into a scapel as
she lays bare the secret horror in
the tiny town of "Lathrop." The details
of ritual abuse become apallingly real,
and the reader begins to understand how
satanic cults have flourished for
generations.

The book brackets the time frame of WWII
and focuses on the life of Joseph
Warren, an insescure man who was ritually
abused at the hands of his father, whose
role as High Priest he usurps. The reader
is shown vividly how this cult uses their
own children to satiate perverse needs.
Through dissociation, which Ms. Spencer
carefully explains, the children are made to
feel special while enduring atrocities,
often at the hands of their own parents.

Judith Spencer has courageously provided us
with the information we need to help put an
end to this evil, and to open our minds
and our hearts to the thousands of cult
defectors who, against all odds, choose
light over the darkness.

Robin Hall

August 1997

[e-mail]

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let the truth be known..., December 23, 2006

By 

Kelly Lynn "voice4hope" (Arizona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Satans High Priest (Hardcover)

I understand that some that read this book are skeptical. One of the areas of confusion is that some wonder where all the bodies went. I can tell you. My whole family were high level Masons involved in a multi-generational Satanic Cult. The main way our cult disposed of bodies, both animal and human:

The cult's main activities took place in the farmlands of Wisconsin (my hometown was La Crosse, WI). There were hundreds of farms that were hidden in acres of corn and various crops. They built both underground networks for rituals and converted barns, silos and homes for rituals/rooms for torture etc... (and yes, in small communities, usually many are involved in the cult. our pediatrician, dentist, my dad's doctor and our pharmacist were all cult members...very clever indeed...they 'hid' all evidence of torture, rape etc... by being our treating doctors, putting in our files only that which was 'normal' for a growing child to experience. multi-generational cults are masters at hiding evidence)

To continue...In one underground room was a large wooden butcher-block table, a man with a leather butcher's apron and an industrial strength meat grinder. All the remains from the nights' rituals/sacrifices/torture sessions gone wrong were brought to the 'butcher'. (in many rituals/sacrifices most of the internal body parts and all of the blood are used/consumed, so there is often not a lot left to destroy) The butcher receives the body remains, and grinds them up into mulch, for lack of a better word. Bones, skin, cartilage etc... are finely ground, then mixed with farm animal manure, then spread on the crops as fertilizer. Healthy corn and no one was the wiser.

That is one of the ways I witnessed how the many bodies were rid of.

The reason i am sharing this, is it is hard enough for our minds to get around the possibility that this does and is happening, all over the world. All of this is real, unfortunately. It is a sad, but true fact of humanity. But the only way to stop it from continuing is to bring it out into the light; To expose it and for people to be aware. Judith wrote a powerful book. She has the courage to tell the truth, even though it is a very sad truth. If we can answer questions with facts that will help your mind understand, then hopefully, this book will be a step in exposing the horrible events and bring them to an end.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Exploration into the Psychology of Perpetrators, March 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Satan's High Priest (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is an objective and unemotional biography of a man who leads a satanic cult. It delves expertly and gracefully into the psychology of perpetrators.

It gives a balanced view of an unthinkable lifestyle and explains the day-to-day routines of the greatest monsters of our time.

This book is a genuine eye-opener, and very accurate, according to my own experience as a survivor of satanic ritual abuse.

Perpetrators and protectors of perpetrators (and there are many) will undoubtedly be alarmed at the exposure-value of this fine piece. It takes the mystery out of the lives of the practitioners of the black arts, and reveals them for the sad, destructive, harmful vermin that they are.