The Devil and All His Works

Dennis Wheatley – 1971

Compendium of supernatural beliefs and practices throughout history by British author Dennis Wheatley.  He wrote many kinds of books but was most famous for a series of novels concerning the occult, such as The Satanist and The Devil Rides Out, which made him somewhat of a specialist on the subject.  The Devil and All His Works is an interesting artifact from the New Age era, a heavily-illustrated coffee-table mockery of The Golden Bough that mixes sloppy science with fuzzy comparative religion.  Its title notwithstanding, it actually has little to do with Satan until later chapters dealing with modern day witchcraft.  Wheatley surveys mythology, mysticism, alchemy, astrology, hypnotism, ESP, numerology, sorcery, demonology, etc, etc.  Throughout, he makes only periodic attempts to seem objective; eventually, his true agenda emerges, which is to promote his own spiritual belief, “the Way” or “the Right Hand Path,” which may or may not be Christianity since saying so outright might turn off the gullible hippies his book was aimed towards.  I haven’t read a lot by (or about) Wheatley, so I can’t say for sure how much he really bought into his own baloney.  Sometimes he comes off as a scholar, but most of the time he seems to be assuming the role of a herald of doom, a standard-bearer in the eternal war of good against evil, Light versus Darkness.  This book follows what I call the “hypocritical Ten Commandments syndrome,” in which 95% of the content lovingly indulges the forbidden and lascivious, and the concluding 5% consists of a moral warning to avoid everything you just saw.  As history and science, the book is totally irresponsible and I only recommend it if is taken with a grain of salt.  It’s in the same vein as the TV show In Search Of…, where the paranormal is treaded seriously by people who know better just to pander to the dumb-dumbs out there.  Unfortunately, The Devil and All His Works is probably one of the more legitimate of countless such books, and Wheatley’s historical perspective is admirable.  But we mustn’t forget that people like Wheatley also bear some responsibility for steering thousands of young people into the arms of false prophets like Charles Manson and Jim Jones.