Also known as Ophite Cultus Satanas, Our Lady of Endor Coven was a semi-public Satanic cult founded in 1948 by Herbert Arthur Sloane in Toledo, Ohio. Sloane believed he was visited by a demon identifying itself as “Satanas, the Horned God” in his childhood. The being appeared to him a second time when he was 25. Upon reading Margaret Murray’s book The God of the Witches, Sloane realized the Satanas he had been visited by was, in fact, Satan.
The God of the Witches by Margaret Murray
Sloane structured Ophite Cultus Satanas based on his readings of The Gnostic Religion, a scholarly review of Gnosticism by Hans Jonas, to worship Satan(as). He would sometimes select readings from his source material during ceremonies.
Sloane believed that the Christian God was a lesser deity to another God, and that Satanas was the Greater God’s messenger. He brought knowledge of the Greater God to Eve through the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Beyond his involvement thus, the Greater God has no interest in the realm of the Christ-God, apart from returning the shreds of Himself back to his world, a process Sloane believed could be accomplished through gnosis (the acquisition of occult wisdom).
Sloane asserted that worship of Satanas was the oldest world religion, citing the horned god depicted in European cave art as evidence of this fact. Unfortunately, Sloane’s cult lacked the staying power of its predecessors, dissipating shortly after his death in 1975.