claimed to have been a member of a Satanic group that gave her supernatural powers, such as the ability to levitate, before she escaped and embraced Christianity. In the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, various Christian preachers—the most famous being Mike Warnke in his 1972 book The Satan-Seller—claimed that they had been members of Satanic groups who carried out sex rituals and animal sacrifices before discovering Christianity. According to Gareth Medway in his historical examination of Satanism, these stories were "a series of inventions by insecure people and hack writers, each one based on a previous story, exaggerated a little more each time". Other publications made allegations of Satanism against historical figures. The 1970s saw the publication of the Romanian Protestant preacher Richard Wurmbrand's book in which he argued—without corroborating evidence—that the socio-political theorist Karl Marx had been a Satanist. Modern Satanism The figure of "Lucifer" was taken up by the French ceremonial magician Éliphas Lévi, who has been described as a "Romantic Satanist". During his younger days, Lévi used "Lucifer" in the same positive symbolic manner as the literary Romantics. As he moved toward political conservatism in later life, he retained the use of the term, but instead applied it to what he believed was a morally neutral facet of "the absolute". Lévi was not the only occultist who used the term "Lucifer" without adopting the term "Satan" in a similar way. The early Theosophical Society believed that "Lucifer" was a force that aided humanity's awakening to its own spiritual nature. In keeping with this belief, the Society began production of the journal Lucifer in 1887. Some historians have claimed English writers Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley to be among the first Satanists but others believe they simply portrayed him positively without actually venerating him. The first person to promote an explicitly "Satanic" philosophy was the Polish writer Stanisław Przybyszewski, who based his ideology on Social Darwinism of the 1890s. "Lucifer" also figured within the esoteric system propounded by the Danish occultist Carl William Hansen, who used the pen name "Ben Kadosh". Hansen was involved in a variety of esoteric groups, including Martinism, Freemasonry, and the Ordo Templi Orientis, drawing on their ideas to establish his own philosophy. He provided a Luciferian interpretation of Freemasonry in a 1906 pamphlet, though his work had little influence outside of Denmark. Both during his life and after it, the