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Yet one could make a case that this unglamorous professor is a curious kind of cultural hero. At the very least, Ellis has demonstrated courage and fortitude for little tangible reward. His research field -- Satanism and the occult, especially as perpetuated in the folklore and rituals of teenage culture -- is not seen as respectable either by the society at large or the academic world. He has sporadically been attacked by fundamentalist Christians for spreading the evil gospel of the Horned One. "If you think that Satan is not alive and an ever present threat to Christians," wrote one Penn State alumnus, "then you are either (A) not a Christian or (B) a dupe of Satan himself." The writer went on to say he would pray for Ellis' removal from the classroom -- a prayer the university administration, to its credit, has declined to answer.
When I ask whether people in Hazleton judge him harshly because of his scholarly interest in Satan, Ellis chuckles quietly. "I would say they would judge me harshly on my commitment to literacy," he says. "We're in an area where intellectualism is not especially liked."
But the more you read about Ellis' research into the history of Ouija boards, chain letters, lucky rabbit's feet and adolescent "legend-tripping" (i.e., late-night visits to haunted graveyards and other spooky locations), the more you understand that behind these obscurities lie key questions in contemporary culture. Among other things, Ellis says he understands exactly why so many Americans believe that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were working together, despite the lack of any factual evidence to support that claim.
In both "Lucifer Ascending" and his 2000 book "Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media," Ellis builds a sober and persuasive argument that the recent hysteria over the influence of Satan in America, much of it emanating from the Christian right, reflects a misunderstanding of a cyclical or dialectical process that has repeated itself for centuries. The dorm-room séance and the midnight cemetery voyage in some dude's unmuffled Camaro, he argues, are debased fragments of an ancient and genuine folk-witchcraft tradition. (More so, perhaps, than the New Age feminist happy-talk of contemporary Wiccans and neo-pagans, although Ellis speaks respectfully of such boutique beliefs.) As such, they reflect an eternal struggle between individuals and institutions over access to spiritual and supernatural realms, and the equally eternal struggle of teenagers to resist adult authority in general and the strictures of organized religion in particular.
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