Sat an Part 2

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1. Modern Prometheus2. The Magic Circle3. The Church of Satan4. Diabolical Endeavors5. Media Circus


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Modern Prometheus

Anton Szandor LaVey never expectedto be the founder of a new religion, buthe saw a need for something publiclyopposing the stagnation of Christianity,

and knew that if he didnt do it, someoneelse, probably less qualied, would.

LaVey saw there must be a newrepresentative of justice, someonewho understood the torments of beinghuman, who shared our own passionsand foibles yet was somehow wiserand stronger. He began to realize

that most of our progress in scienceand philosophy had been achievedby those who rebelled against Godand the Church, or the dictates ofconventional society. We needed arepresentative for that revolutionary,creative, irrepressible spirit within us.The single gure who t the bill wasclear to LaVey from an early point

in his life; a deity whose rebellious,passionate nature had beendescribed, either in awe or fear orboth, from the dark beginnings of time.

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Modern Prometheus

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Satan, by one name or another,haunted mankind, tempting him withsweet delights and enlightening himwith blinding secrets intended onlyfor gods. He was one who could bepetitioned for powers of retributionand who gave deserved rewards.

Instead of creating sins to insureguilty compliance, Satan encouragedindulgence. He was the single deitywho could really understand us.


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The Magic Circle / Order of the Trapezoid

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The Magic Circle / Order of theTrapezoid

From the early 1950s, Anton LaVeyexplored some of these ideas, eventu-ally gaining a reputation as a power-ful black magician and San Francisco

character. Others who felt alignedwith his philosophy gravitated tohim, gathering in his notorious Victo-rian Black House. In accordancewith LaVeys explorations of demonicgeometry, they took to wearing anodd-shaped black and red medallionadorned with a bat-winged demonand formed a group called the Orderof the Trapezoid, which later evolvedinto the governing body of the Churchof Satan. Those who attended LaVeyssoirees always comprised an array ofprofessions and pursuits: the Baron-ess Carin de Plessenwho grew upin the Royal Palace of Denmark, Dr.Cecil Nixonmagician and eccentric

extraordinaire, underground lmmak-er Kenneth Anger, as well as artists,attorneys, doctors, writers, and lawenforcement ofcers. City AssessorRussell Wolden might share the room



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with Donald Werby, one of San Fran-ciscos most inuential property own-ers; anthropologist Michael Harnerwith writer Shana Alexander. A shipspurser might be seated next to a deep-sea diver, a dildo manufacturer next toa plastic surgeon. A famous tattoo art-ist, the grandson of a U.S. president,the owner of one of the worlds larg-

est collections of Faberg artifactsallattended LaVeys get-togethers. Theeld of fantasy and science ction per-sonages alone yielded the likes of An-thony Boucher, August Derleth, RobertBarbour Johnson, Reginald Bretnor,Emil Petaja, Stuart Palmer, ClarkAshton Smith, Forrest J. Ackerman,Fritz Leiber, Jr., to name a few, intoLaVeys circle of magical compatriots.

LaVey wanted to establish somethingnew, not strict doctrines awash with at-titudes of blind faith and worship, butsomething which would smash all con-cepts of anything that had come be-fore, something to break apart the ig-

norance and hypocrisy fostered by theChristian churches. Something, too,that could free people to apply theblack magic he and his Magic Circlewere using. Anton became convincedhe was learning methods to harnessthe dark forces which cause a change






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in situations or events in accordancewith ones will which would, usingnormally accepted methods, be un-changeable, as LaVey denes magic.Anton expanded and rened hisformulas for the Magic Circle ritu-als and began achieving precise

resultsprofessional advances, un-expected rewards, monetary gain,sexual or romantic satisfaction, theelimination of certain enemiesit wasapparent to everyone involved thatAnton had indeed tapped into thatmysterious Dark Force in Nature.






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There was the magicand there wasa workable philosophy to go alongwith it. It was a down-to-earth, ra-tional, bedrock philosophy that em-phasized the carnal, lustful, naturalinstincts of man, without imposing guiltfor manufactured sins. To break apartthe crust of stupidity and irrationalityfostered over the past 2000 years,LaVey knew it was necessary to blastits very foundations. His ideas couldnot be presented as just a philoso-

phythat would be too easy to passoff or overlook. LaVey would blas-phemously form a religion and, evenmore, he would call his new organiza-tion a church, consecrated not in thename of God but in the name of Sa-tan. There had always been a Satanicunderground, centuries old, but therehad never been an organized Satan-

ic religion, practicing openly. LaVeydecided it was high time there was.



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The Church of Satan

Anton knew the date upon which therst Church of Satan must be estab-lished. It would have to be during thetraditional night of the most importantdemonic celebration of the year, whenwitches and devils roam the earth,orgiastically glorifying the fruition ofthe Spring equinox: Walpurgisnacht,the night of April 30thMay 1st.

LaVey shaved his head as part of

a formalized founding ritual, in thetradition of medieval executioners,carnival strongmen, and black magi-cians before him, to gain personalpower and enhance the forces sur-rounding his newly-established Sa-tanic order. It was the enactmentof an allusion at the end of SamuelTaylor Coleridges Kubla Khan: an

incantation rejecting the Holy Trinityand the spiritual life in favor of onedevoted to Hell and material pursuits.

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Shaving the head is also traditional tothe Yezidi devil worshippers as a riteof passage that the emerging adeptmust perform. The razor for this riteis washed in the waters of Zamzam,the subterranean well of Islam said tobe the point of origin for undergroundstreams owing under the Seven Tow-ers of Satan. The caverns beneaththe Towers are supposedly tributar-ies leading to the place of the Sa-tanic Masters, known as Shamballah,or Carcosa. Thus, shorn of his locks,

he leaves the world of the descend-ants of Adam behind him. To makethe ritual complete, LaVey declared1966 Year One, Anno Satanasthe rst year of the reign of Satan.

The Council of Nine, following the dic-tates of the Nine Unknown, was estab-lished throughout the world. Many sig-

nicant writers have obliquely referredto this mysterious cabalShakespeare, John Dryden, Talbot Mundy, Richard

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The Church of Satan

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Johnsonan archetypal formationwhich is reected in the nine membersappointed to sit in positions of absoluteauthority on the United States SupremeCourt. The new Age of Fire had beeninaugurated, and though the ceremonyon Walpurgisnacht, 1966, was a high-ly personal, private one, LaVey wouldsoon feel the tremors it was to produce.

We blended a formula of nine partssocial respectability to one part out-rage, says Anton LaVey. We es-tablished a Church of Satansome-thing that would smash all conceptsof what a church was supposed tobe. This was a temple of indulgence

to openly defy the temples of absti-nence that had been built up until then.We didnt want it to be an unforgiv-ing, unwelcoming place, but a placewhere you could go to have fun.

And thus was initiated two revolutionswhich have carried over into today: 1)the integration of magic and logic, and

2) a religion based on self-indulgence,carnality (here and now instead ofthere and then), and pleasure insteadof self-denial. Other ego-afrming, hu-man potential programs like EST, drewfrom the ground-breaking attitudesand techniques of the Church of Satan.

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Diabolical Endeavors


Within a year and a half of its creation,the Church of Satan had been the cent-er of three separate media sensationsthat splashed front page headlinesaround the world. The rst of these wasthe marriage of two of LaVeys promi-nent members on February 1st, 1967.

John Raymond, a politically radicaljournalist and Judith Case, New Yorksocialite daughter of a well-known at-torney, asked LaVey, their High Priest,to ofciate at their wedding ceremony,blessing their union in Satans name.

Word got out and on the day of theceremony, newspapers from Califor-

nia to Europe had more reportersand photographers than any eventsince the opening of the Golden GateBridge crowding the Black House towitness this supreme blasphemy. Therewas such a mob that police had tocordon off the area. Joe Rosenthal,who took the immortal shot of Marinesraising the ag on Iwo Jima during

World War II, was assigned to pho-tograph the evil doings for the SanFrancisco Chronicle. The L.A. Times,among other prominent newspapers,devoted four columns at the top oftheir front page to one of Rosenthalspictures of the wedding. Most of the

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accompanying stories lingered onthe naked female altar, the array ofpersonalities present, and Togare, theNubian lion, roaring from somewherefurther inside the house. The presswas delighted. They dubbed LaVeyThe Black Pope and clamored forinterviews. While many of the earlyarticles were published in mens maga-

zines because of the nude altars, main-stream magazines jumped into thefray as well. Eventually all the majormagazines were doing in-depth coverstories on the rising tide of Satanism.The rituals for the rst year were large-ly intended as cathartic blasphemiesagainst Christianity. Many of the ele-ments were consistent with the reports

of Satanic worship from the famouswritings of diabolists, such as the de-scription in Joris-Karl Huysmans LaBas (translated into English as DownThere). A nude female altar was al-ways used, the accompanying musicwas a series of corruptions of churchhymns, the cross was turned upsidedown, the Lords Prayer was recited

backwards, mock holy wafers wereconsecrated by insertion in a nakedwomans vagina, whiskey was used in-stead of wine for Christs blood, holywater was substituted with seminal u-id in milk, and the names of the infer-nal deities were invoked instead of the


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Christian God. It was too much forsome lapsed Christians to stand.Some would attend out of curios-ity, only to nd eustress quicklyturn to distress, rush home and digout their crosses to protect themfrom the devils theyd confronted.

After awhile LaVey got tired ofsimply mocking Christianity anddecided to work up rituals whichwould be blasphemously positiveand exciting. I realized there wasa whole grey area between psy-chiatry and religion that had beenlargely untapped, said LaVey. Hesaw the potential for group ritual

used as a powerful combinationof psychodrama and psychic di-rection. Instead of just throwingoff the bio-electrical energy andreleasing it to be dissipated in thesurrounding ethers, that energycould be structured, shaped, anddirected to accomplish a specicgoal. He didnt want to do par-lor tricks but real, applied magic.

LaVey decided the world wasready now for the rst public Sa-tanic baptism. People would beforced to see that Satanism is not


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drinking the blood of babies andsacricing small animals. He de-clared, Rather than cleanse thechild of original sin, as in the Chris-tian baptism imposing unwarrantedguilt, we will glorify her natural in-stincts and intensify her lust for life.Who better to be baptized in such

a public ceremony than LaVeysown three-year-old daughter, Zee-na? With her soft blonde hair andengaging smile, she captivated re-porterssuch an angelic child tobe dedicated to the Devil. Whilemany Christian organizations andother concerned citizens wereoutraged at the spectacle, there

was little they could do. Today,LaVey probably would have beencharged with Satanic child abusethere were no such legal avenuesfor religious hysterics in 1967.

A date for Zeenas baptism wasset for May. Photographers start-ed showing up at 6 a.m., eventhough the ceremony wouldnt be-gin for another 15 hours. One ofthe Church members, survivalistKurt Saxon, designed and madea special amulet for Zeena justfor the occasion. It was a color-


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ful Baphomet with an ice cream cone, lolly-pop, and other things a little girl would likeincluded in the circle. Her mother dressed herin a bright-red hooded robe and sat her onthe edge of the altar while photographersfrom New York to Rome snapped away.

LaVey recited an impressive invocation, later

adapted for inclusion in The Satanic Rituals:

In the name of Satan, Lucifer...Welcome anew mistress, Zeena, creature of ecstatic mag-ic light...Welcome to our company; the pathof darkness welcomes thee. Be not afraid.Above you Satan heaves his bulk into the star-tled sky and makes a canopy of great blackwings...Small sorceress, most natural and true

magician, your tiny hands have power to pullHeaven down and from it build monumentsto your own sweet indulgence. Your powermakes you master of the world of frightened,cowering and guilt-ridden men. And so, inthe name of Satan, we set your feet upon theleft-hand path...Zeena we baptize you withearth and air, with brine and burning ame.And so we dedicate your life to love, to pas-sion, to indulgence, and to Satan, and theway of darkness. Hail Zeena! Hail Satan!

The entire ceremony was designed to de-light the child, welcoming her with sightsand smells that were pleasurable to her. Un-


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like the Christian method of dunking alreadyfrightened children in water to baptize them,Zeena sat cheerfully chewing gum through-out the ritual, basking in the attention shewas receiving from admirers and the press.

In December of the same year, Anton was ap-proached by Mrs. Edward Olsen who wanted

the High Priest to perform a funeral for her re-cently deceased husband, a Navy man killedin a trafc accident near San FranciscosTreasure Island station. Both she and EdwardOlsen had become members of the Churchof Satan, despite his Baptist-oriented upbring-ing and his earlier membership in Youth forChrist. When hed entered the Navy, seenmore of the world and married a sexy bru-

nette, he realized Satanism was a more real-istic way of life. He believed in this church,said Mrs, Olsen, and it is in this churchthat he would have wanted his funeral.

Though the Navy ofcials were a bit non-plussed, they agreed to Pat Olsens instruc-tions without much discussion, consideringit their duty to comply with Mr. Olsens lastrequest with dignity. There was a chrome-helmeted honor guard in attendance atthe ceremony, standing rigidly at atten-tion alongside the black-robed witches andwarlocks wearing their Baphomet medal-lions. The sailors held an American ag


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over the cofn while LaVey recited a eulogy emphasizing Edwards com-mitment to life in choosing to walk the Devils path. To end the funeral,the Navy guard red three volleys with their ries, and a Navy musicianplayed taps after the mourners shouted, Hail Satan! and Hail Edward!

Even though the Archbishop of San Francisco was upset by the whole af-fair, immediately sending an outraged letter to President Johnson, mostSan Franciscans, including Naval ofcials, felt Olsen should receive thesame consideration as any other Navy man. The response from the WhiteHouse was actually quite fortuitous for the widow and her young son. Ols-en, a machinist-repairman third-class was erroneously referred to by WhiteHouse aides as chief petty ofcer. Mrs. Olsen was able to use those let-ters to le a claim for a posthumous promotion for her husband and re -ceive higher survivors benets. LaVey credits demonic intervention for

Mrs. Olsens good fortune. Because of the sharp increase of declaredSatanists in the military, Satanism was soon outlined as a recognized reli-gion in the Chaplains Handbook for the Armed Services where it remainstoday, the description updated every few years by the Church of Satan.

Besides the weekly ceremonies, Anton conducted Witches Workshopsand various seminars which attracted notable personalities from up anddown the California coast. Jayne Manseld, the sexy-sweet blonde bomb-shell famous for her stunning measurements and orgasmic squeal, insisted

on meeting the Black Pope. LaVey and Manseld hit it off immediately,each fullling a diabolical need in the other. Jayne became passionatelyobsessed with Anton, calling him several times a day from wherever shetraveled, eventually applying for a drivers license just to be able to driveto San Francisco unescorted by her persistently ubiquitous lawyer/boy-friend, Sam Brody. Jaynes commitment to LaVey, and her dedication tothe Satanic philosophy, continued until her death in June of 1967. The autocrash she died in also killed Sam Brody, who LaVey had formally cursedin response to Brodys jealous threats and attempts to discredit LaVey.

The night of Manselds death, LaVey had been clipping a Church of Satannews item from the German magazine, Bild-Zeitung. When he turned the itemover to paste it in the press book, LaVey was shocked to see he had inadvert-ently cut a photo of Jayne on the opposite side of the page, right across theneck. Fifteen minutes later, a reporter from the New Orleans Associated Pressbureau called Anton to get his reaction to the tragic accident. Jayne had beenpractically decapitated when she was thrown through the windshield of the car.


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Madness rituals, fertility rites, destruction rituals, shibboleth ritu-als, and psychodramas in the form of Black Masses were devised forthe public to participate in and be entertained by every Friday night.The early period of rituals was not a time of games or chicanery, but ofnecessary development, growth, and experimentationas well as gen-

erating a pool of concentrated energy to draw from in later experiments.


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Media Circus

Once the Church of Satan started getting international press, local reportstapered off. While the San Francisco media enjoyed writing about An-ton when he was a local eccentricghost-hunter, sorcerer, and keeper of

lions and leopards as household petshe was no longer fun when he be-came an internationally-recognized Satanist. People were beginning totake Satanism seriously. Magazine articles on cults and covens imitatingthe Church of Satan were suddenly springing up from New York to Lon-don. By the time The Satanic Bible was released in 1969, membership inthe Church of Satan had already grown to well over 10,000 worldwide.Articles constantly appeared in newspapers around the world as editors senttheir reporters to nd out why everyone was buzzing about this San Franciscosorcerer. LaVey and the Church of Satan got major coverage in U.S. maga-

zines like Cosmopolitan, Time, Newsweek, Seventeen, even appearing onthe cover of Look. Wax gures of LaVey were exhibited in a dozen museumsin various parts of the world, the original cast at Madame Tussauds waxworks in London. The rst authentic Black Mass ever recorded, pre-dating theBlack Metal bands by a couple of decades, was taped live at the Church ofSatan in 1968, even before The Satanic Bible was published. Among LaVeysurry of radio and television appearances from 1967 to 1974, one particu -larly memorable performance was an elaborate on-camera ritual for JohnnyCarsons 7th Anniversary show, summoning success for the upcoming year.

Among the rst articles written about the new High Priest of Satan wasShana Alexanders The Feminine Eye column in February, 1967, thenrunning in Life magazine. Titled The Ping is The Thing, the article opensby describing a ping that is often heard when idly listening to the morn-ing news broadcast: This ping seems to signal that something funny, orweird, or maybe even profound may have just occurred, although oneis never sure. Alexander then goes on to give a wonderfully engag-ing account of LaVey and his activities in those early days, describing,as she says, the jarring clash between the exotic and the utterly banal.

The Second Coming, released in 1970, had been the established text onSatanism until its author, Arthur Lyons, wrote another book in 1988, SatanWants You, which updates his rst, providing fresh material on Anton LaVeyand dispelling much of the claims of Satanic animal sacrices and ritualabuse of children. Lyons evocative reporting and appreciation of the meta-phorical aspects of Satanism provide a darkly enthralling vision of LaVey.


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Newsweek magazine has done a few articles covering LaVeys exploits.One from August 16, 1971, entitled Evil, Anyone?, was already raisingquestions about suspected Satanic crimes that have plagued LaVey fromhis organizations beginnings. Antons answer has been consistent overthe years: Satanism, he insists, is developing two circles, an elitist group

which I always intended my church to be, and the faddists who are becom-ing Satanists because its the thing to do. Discovering that murder isnt onSatanisms list of required sacraments, diligent Newsweek reporters had tond something else to entice thrill-seeking readers: Indeed, far from preach-ing sexual or political anarchy, LaVey describes his goal as the creationof a police state in which the weak are weeded out and the achievement-oriented leadership is permitted to pursue the mysteries of black magic.

Because of LaVeys nude female altars (more than a few fetishists addressed

their letters of inquiry to the redheaded nude altar), there were plenty ofmens magazines willing to cover the Church of Satan, jumping at the juicy,ready-made excuse for nudie shots. LaVey himself ashed his ample equip -ment in certain issues of Jaybird Journal and the like. Though most of thestories accompanying the pictures were limited to recounting ancient mythsof devils orgies and naked, nubile acolytes tied to sacricial altars, severalwere written by Burton Wolfe, who eventually wrote a much-needed biogra-phy of LaVey in 1974. Wolfe joined the Church of Satan for a brief periodin 1968 when, as he writes, LaVey was still in his prankish stage. The rituals

and parties in his black house were full of fun and humor, and I thoroughlyenjoyed capers such as playing the role of the director of the insane asy-lum in the Madness of Logic rite. Wolfe continued to fan interest in LaVeywith articles up into the early 1980s and, though he had to drop out of theChurch of Satan because he felt it was evolving into a harsh, vindictive,crypto-fascist style organization, Wolfe wrote a comprehensive introductionto The Satanic Bible which served as the only reliable biographical refer-ence on LaVey since The Devils Avenger went out of print, until the releaseof The Secret Life of A Satanist: the authorized biography of Anton LaVey.


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While reporters had been relatively fair to the Church of Satan in the late1960s, LaVey saw a sharp decline in open-minded, objective reporting in themid-1980s. In 1984, he stated: If real Satanism were allowed the kind oftelevision time that Christianity has now, the kind of drawing out and patiencethat interviewers give sports gures, or the kind of coverage that a base-

ball game gets, Christianity would be completely eliminated in a few shortmonths. If people were allowed to see the complete, unbiased truth, evenfor 60 minutes, it would be too dangerous. There would be no comparison.


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1. Modern Prometheus2. The Magic Circle3. The Church of Satan4. Diabolical Endeavors5. Media Circus


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Documents

Sat an Part 2