Satan's High Priest: A True Story

by Judith Spencer

Book Overview

Recounts the story of Joseph Warren, a small-town businessman who led a double life as a satanic cult leader, in a tale based on interviews with his family members and cult survivors. Reprint. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671728008
• ISBN13: 9780671728007
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 1.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Superb Exploration into the Psychology of Perpetrators

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.

One of the best I've read on this topic.

This book tells the story of an intergenerational satanic cult located in the southern US. The author has pieced together this history through listening to several survivors who were victimized in this cult. It follows the life of one perpetrator, a satanic high priest, from birth to death. It gives excellent insight into how denial works, the difference between those in collusion who are members and those consciously choose to be perpetrators, and the internal contradictions of participating in such a cult. I think it helps us to understand how a man who looks broken and defeated at the end of his life, could paradoxically have been, in younger days, a powerful and abusive high priest.

New slant on ancient issue of ritual abuse.

Judith Spencer's first book on ritual abuse made me afraid, but Satan's High Priest made me cry. This insightful, new book tells the story of occult crime from the viewpoint of the perpetrator. Joseph Warren, operates the local mortuary and the mercantile as well, so he's exceptionally well situated to succeed his father as high priest of the local satanic cult. As we watch his rise to power, the broadening of his sphere of influence and his masterful control over his subjects, both human and demonic, we see a man driven to flee awareness of his own traumatic past, an awareness that could lead to his own healing. Joe Warren never chooses awareness, but he does lose his power to a bigger player, and the latter days of Warren's life are ruled by fear -- the natural fruit of his labors for evil. Then, just when things look darkest, adults Joe abused and trained to do evil as children begin to remember and reach out for help as they embrace the awareness Joe never had. One of them is Joe's own da

More frightening than King/Koontz because it's true

Starting at the age of two, Joseph Warren was being trained by his father, Dexter, to eventually take over the family's two businesses, running the local mortuary and serving as the high priest to a satanic cult. Dexter was an expert in the art of brainwashing by using physical and psychological abuse to get Joseph ready to one day be in charge. Dexter also used any means necessary to insure that the members properly honored the "Great One". By the end of WW II, Joseph had learned his lessons so well, he committed his first rebellious act and replaced his father as the high priest. For the next fifteen years he ruled the cult by frightening and abusing its members, including his own wife and children. He managed to get the members to commit satanic rituals that were often times vicious, brutal and sexual even towards their own families. By the mid-fifties, a worn out Joseph was finally dethroned as the cult leader. SATAN'S HIGH PRIEST is an incredible true account of a cult leader and his family that sounds more like a Clive Barker movie than a non-fiction book. Readers will begin to understand the why and how cults flourish as Judith Spencer writes an incredible book that turns Mr. Warren into a real person, not just a Roger Corman B movie figure. Harriet Klausner

The best book so far on satanic cults.

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 cavideo@pacific.net