In 1969, the husband of a woman at one of LaVey’s Witches’ Workshops made a suggestion.
Fred [a recently published author] said I should write a book, and he felt sure it would get published. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m not a writer, never have been, and never have had any aspirations.”
“That’s OK, don’t worry about it,” said Fred. “You can do it.” He introduced me to his literary agent, Mike Hamilburg, who brought a man to see me. His name was Peter Mayer, a dynamic new editor at Avon Books. We talked a little, and Peter asked me, “How soon can you have it ready?”
The book may have arisen, like the church itself, haphazardly, but it would nonetheless serve a number of purposes: it would popularize the church, generate income, and clarify LaVey’s philosophy. “I thought that after being taken as entertainment value, my book would straighten a few things out concerning Satanism.”20 He set about compiling the materials he already
had—lecture notes, pamphlets, handouts, and assorted documents—into a presentable form. At the time, LaVey was contributing a weekly column, “Letters to the Devil,” to the National Insider. Yet still, LaVey, assisted con- siderably by Diane, struggled to amass enough material under the deadline Mayer had set. He solved this problem by adding a Satanic translation of sixteenth-century occultist John Dee’s Enochian Keys to the end of the book. Though comprising only 10 percent of the word count, the Keys com- mand nearly half the pages.
The Satanic Bible reached the bookshelves in early 1970. It has since sold
over 1 million copies and gone through dozens of reprints. Though the in- troduction has been changed many times, the central text has remained un- altered. Labeled a bible, the work obviously does not claim to be the revealed word of Satan in the way that the Christian Bible is the word of God or the Koran is that of Allah. Rather, it is the vehicle by which LaVey articulated the philosophical, ethical, and ritual outlook of Satanism, using “Satan” for its original Hebraic meaning: the adversary. He is not seen as “an anthropo- morphic being with cloven hooves,” but rather as “a force in nature.”21 Shorn
of all theistic implications, modern Satanism’s use of Satan is firmly in the tradition that John Milton inadvertently engendered—a representation of the noble rebel, the principled challenger of illegitimate power.
LaVey’s Bible is divided into four separate sections, the books of Satan, Lucifer, Belial, and Leviathan. The first two articulate the ideology of Satan- ism, the third discusses the theory and practice of ritual, and the final book is mostly Dee’s Enochian Keys. It has often been pointed out that the magical/ ritual aspects of The Satanic Bible sit uneasily with the atheistic, materialistic doctrines that precede it. The preface indicates where LaVey’s loyalties lay:
This book was written because, with very few exceptions, every tract and paper, every “secret” grimoire, all the “great works” on the subject of magic, are nothing more than sanctimonious fraud—guilt-ridden ramblings and eso- teric gibberish by chroniclers of magical lore unable or unwilling to present an objective view of the subject.
The skeptical tone continues: “Herein you will find truth—and fantasy. Each is necessary for the other to exist; but each must be recognized for what it is.”22 So what is the truth, and what is the fantasy? In the first two
books, those that contain the philosophy and social observations of the Sa- tanist, LaVey expounds his position with uncompromising self-assurance. He is, at every point, making what he believes to be an objective statement about the world. There are no qualifiers when LaVey discusses human na- ture and the importance of the individual. By comparison, all discussions of ritual and magic place a large emphasis on the their aesthetic qualities and meaning for the practitioner. LaVey’s view on magic is that its efficacy is pri- marily subjective and psychological, although he occasionally claimed spe- cific magical abilities. From the mid-1970s onward, he became more vocal in his criticisms critical of magic and those he considered “occultniks.” The Church of Satan eventually ceased its ambivalence entirely, bluntly denying the supernatural. In the early 1960s Magic Circle, LaVey was clearly willing to hedge his bets a little more.
The true focus of The Satanic Bible, that of celebrating humanity’s carnal nature, was to be addressed in the prologue:
This is the morning of magic, and undefiled wisdom. The FLESH prevaileth and a great Church shall be builded, consecrated in its name. No longer shall man’s salvation be dependent on his self-denial. And it will be known that the world of the flesh and the living shall be the greatest preparation for any and all eternal delights!23
Fortunately, the faux-King James Bible tone doth not prevaileth through- out. The exclamation marks, however, do: the work contains more than four hundred.
To the contemporary reader, some sections of The Satanic Bible are sur- prisingly commonsense. Despite the work’s sensationalist tone and rumors of debauchery and profligacy surrounding the Church, the essay titled “Satanic Sex” firmly stakes out the middle ground between pious sexual repression and counterculture profligacy. “Satanism does advocate sexual freedom, but only in the true sense of the word. Free love, in the Satanic concept, means exactly that—freedom to either be faithful to one person or to indulge your sexual desires with as many others as you feel is necessary to satisfy your par- ticular needs.” Similarly, despite the book’s stressing that humans are carnal animals, LaVey does not favor indiscriminate excess. “Satanism does not en- courage orgiastic activity or extramarital affairs for those to whom they do not come naturally. For many, it would be very unnatural and detrimental to be unfaithful to their chosen mates . . . Each person must decide for himself what form of sexual activity best suits his individual needs.”24 The frequent
interpretations of modern Satanism as primarily hedonistic are inaccurate. For LaVey, sexuality—as well as the other natural appetites—should not be denied, but must be satisfied in accordance with one of the prevailing man- tras of Satanism, “Indulgence . . . not compulsion.”
Other parts of the book are more predicable. It contains regular fusillades against Christian morality and authority, a relentless focus on the individual in opposition to the collective, frequent conscription of devilish pageantry and rhetorical overkill, a Nietzschean emphasis on temporal existence, and symbolic deification of the self in place of the fallen Christian God. LaVey’s saw God as a cosmological projection of humanity’s self-identity. “All reli- gions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man. He has created an entire system of gods with nothing more than his carnal brain. Just because he has an ego, and cannot accept it, he has to externalize it into some great spiritual device which he calls ‘God.’ ”25 For LaVey, the converse is true. “Man, the
animal, is the godhead to the Satanist.”26
The final book of the Bible, the Book of Leviathan, is mostly composed of John Dee’s Enochian Keys with brief descriptive notes. LaVey’s supposed translation is largely an interpretation of the Keys with Satanic substitutions or augmentations for central phrases that completely contradict the original text, despite LaVey’s insistence that he presents the only accurate, unexpur- gated version of the Keys. For example, the final phrase of Dee’s First Key, “true worshipper of the highest,” becomes, with characteristic subtlety, “true worshipper of the highest and ineffable King of Hell!”27 Similarly, the Second
Key’s “mind of the all powerful” is remodeled as “mind of the All-Powerful manifestation of Satan!”28 With liberties such as these throughout the work,
it is unsurprising that LaVey’s low regard for occultists is returned in kind. Crowley’s one-time protégé Israel Regardie had nothing but contempt for the “stupidity” of the bastardizations in the “debased volume,” declining to even mention the author by name.29
The corruption of the Enochian Keys was not the new author’s only indiscretion. The Satanic Bible was book ended by borrowings from earlier writers. The majority of The Infernal Diatribe from the first book was plagia- rized from an obscure 1896 social Darwinist text titled Might Is Right. The book was published under the pseudonym Ragnar Redbeard, but was most likely written by New Zealander Arthur Desmond, although Jack London is another ( highly unlikely) possibility. LaVey cited the original author— “Ragnar Redbeard, whose might is right”—as an influence in the original 39-name dedication page to The Satanic Bible, but he in no way acknowledged that this section of the work was not his. The brief dedication to Redbeard, an unknown writer, was removed from subsequent printings. The plagia- rism stood unnoticed for nearly two decades, until it was revealed in the late 1980s. LaVey was unapologetic, eventually writing the introduction for
a reprint of Might Is Right, praising its “blasphemy” and taking credit for popularizing it. In his final interview he stated, “Might Is Right . . . is prob- ably one of the most inflammatory books ever written . . . It was only natural that I excerpted a few pages of it for The Satanic Bible.”30 The semantic gulf
between “excerpt” and “steal” seemingly wasn’t apparent to LaVey.
ENTERING THE 1970s
With The Satanic Bible in the bookstores, the Church of Satan entered the 1970s at its strongest point. The book was soon accompanied by the film Sa-
tanis: The Devil’s Mass (1970) in the theaters. The flesh-heavy diablomentary
had everything needed to further the Church’s reputation—flagellation, a boa constrictor, a lion, a naked woman in a coffin, middle-aged exhibition- ists, vague assertions of bestiality, and a half-hearted devil’s kiss. It was an- other effective public relations exercise for the church—risqué enough to trouble the Mormons it interviewed, but seemingly not bothering LaVey’s neighbors. LaVey is shown holding court dressed in a priest’s uniform, de- livering his standard rhetoric. “This is a very selfish religion. We believe in greed, we believe in selfishness, we believe in all of the lustful thoughts that motivate man because this is man’s natural feeling. If you’re going to be a sinner, be the best sinner on the block. If you’re going to do something that is naughty, do it, and realize that you’re doing something naughty and enjoy [it].”31
There were no more naughty publicity events, possibly because events were progressing well at the Black House. Church member Arthur Lyons’ The
Second Coming: Satanism in America (1970) appeared in print, providing a his-
tory of Satanism from earliest times and an extended account of LaVey and his associates. The church was also expanding through its grotto system. A grotto was a satellite of the central church run under the auspices of a Priest of the Church. All grottos were subordinate to the Black House, which be- came known as the Central Grotto. With the interest generated by the Bible, documentary, and publicity stunts, it was an effective way to enable the geo- graphical spread of the church beyond its San Francisco base. By the early to mid-1970s there were grottos across America, including Boston, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, and Louisville. Membership was healthy, though probably far short of the 10,000 members the church claimed. Between 200 and 500 at its peak is usually considered more accurate. Randall H. Alfred, a researcher who claimed to have infiltrated the church from April 1968 to August 1969, gives this indication of local membership: “At the church headquarters in San Francisco during 1968–69, attendance at the rituals of the Central Grotto was usually about twenty to thirty from a pool of about fifty to sixty members at any one time.”32 Michael Aquino, who as a senior
member of the church would have had a clearer knowledge of nationwide figures, appears to support Alfred’s observations, claiming a 1974 member- ship of two hundred and fifty.33 Arthur Lyons generously estimated a 1970s
peak “closer to 5,000.”34 The Church of Satan has never provided any docu-
mented or verifiable membership figures.
With the success of The Satanic Bible, LaVey continued to pursue writing as a means to circulate his ideas. In 1970 he produced The Compleat Witch,
or What to Do When Virtue Fails ( later renamed The Satanic Witch). Far from
another ritual or Satanic theory text, it is a do-it-yourself magical guide for women to aid them in manipulating and seducing men, predominantly by means of exposing cleavage, and once more stressing that humanity’s ani- mal nature is the key to success. Topic headings “How and When to Lie,” “Secrets of Indecent Exposure,” and “Learn to Be Stupid” are a good indica- tion of the main themes and content. The work also contains LaVey’s most frequently lampooned idea, the salad dressing theory of masculinity. Appar- ently, a lot can be learned from a man’s taste in salad dressing: opt for a sweet French or Russian dressing and you are obviously a strong masculine type; choose a strong blue cheese, vinegar, or Roquefort flavor and you are a sub- missive, feminine type or “passive or latent or active homosexuals.” Why the difference? Because the former dressings resemble “the odor of a woman’s sexual parts and therefore agreeable to the archetypical male,” and the latter “is similar to the male scrotal odor.”35
The Satanic Bible was followed by its companion volume The Satanic Ritu- als in 1972, a collection of nine rituals, each with its own short introductory
essay. LaVey also used his essays in the church’s monthly ( later, quarterly) publication The Cloven Hoof, and in its 1990s successor The Black Flame, to put forth his opinions on Satanism, culture, music, and mannequins. Begun as an internal church newsletter in 1969, The Cloven Hoof soon developed into a full publication. Two collections of LaVey’s essays from the 1970s to 1990s were later released, The Devil’s Notebook (1992) and the posthumous Satan
Speaks! (1998). The voice piece of the church was edited from 1971–1975 by
Michael Aquino, an energetic serviceman who was to play an important role in the development of Satanism and a crucial role in the fortunes of the Church of Satan. This era also saw one of the more surprising developments of the church, when in 1973 Sammy Davis, Jr. became particularly involved, forming a friendship with LaVey and actively proselytizing for the church in Hollywood. Sammy made no secret of being down with the dark lord, eventually recording an album of diabolical tunes, Satan Swings Baby! (1974), including renditions of “Witchcraft,” “Sympathy For Devil,” and featuring the vocals and Wurlitzer organ of LaVey on “Devil in Disguise.”
The founding era of 1966–1975 represents the prime years of the Church of Satan. The Black Pope reigned over the first openly Satanic church in
history, even if it was a Satanic church that denied the existence of Satan. Though opponents lined up on all sides to discredit him or label him a char- latan and fraud, he had succeeded in establishing a unique organization and had become an iconic counterculture figure. His church struck traditional religious practitioners as one of the most troubling developments of the era, clear proof that a monstrous force for evil was at work in the world. More secularized figures simply saw it as an amusing entertainment and viewed its feeble pretensions of wickedness as little more than adolescent melodrama. A populist provocateur like LaVey is a rather poor terminus for the rich lit- erary and philosophical traditions he drew on but, thankfully, many were able to identify a ritualistic Satanic baptism with no particular theological significance as the attention-seeking stunt that it was.
Yet there would always be a small minority who thought that a Satanic church was the most splendidly outrageous thing possible. In an over- whelmingly Christian culture, what could be more rebellious? What could strike deeper at the heart of the dominant outlook than taking up its great- est enemy, Satan, as a standard? It was by no means an original idea, but what had worked for the Romantic poets and Hellfire clubs still worked for LaVey . . . to an extent. The organization was certainly dramatic and auda- cious, but, beyond a few newspaper headlines, small membership, and gen- eral notoriety, its successes were modest. What LaVey did achieve can be attributed to a combination of his charisma, colorful (if fanciful) history and personality, knack for self-promotion, and the immediacy of ideas that he promulgated.
The latter cannot be underestimated, for once modern Satanism ex- panded beyond San Francisco, the doctrines set forth in The Satanic Bible became the most frequent portal into Satanism. Indeed, the vast majority of people who have called themselves Satanists never met the creed’s founder. But if the history of LaVey and his church appears largely benign, it is the result of the frequent instances of amateur theatrics in the Church of Satan’s history. However, it is also necessary to consider the thought that buttressed the overblown rhetoric and sensationalist antics. And, as we turn to the ideas that LaVey promulgated the story becomes, by necessity, considerably darker. The very aspect of Satanism that LaVey wanted to be respected for is that deserving the sternest criticisms. If there is one thing Anton LaVey was correct about, it is that the ideology of Satanism warrants much closer atten- tion than it has generally been given.