Anton LaVey: Self-Ordained High Priest of Satan
San Francisco, California hosted the infamous "Summer of Love" in 1967. It made the San Francisco Bay area a popular travel destination for individuals looking for adventure and curiosity, as well as others who wanted to experience the "Hippie" movement firsthand. It sounded like the year's biggest media event in the press.
Newsweek published a four-page, four-color spread titled "Dropouts on a Mission" on February 6, 1967. Time published "Love on Haight" on March 17, alluding to the now-famous Haight-Ashbury District. Then, on June 6, Newsweek's article "The Hippies are Coming!" appeared in newspapers.
Before long, the city's Hippie gathering was more than just a media spectacle—some even compared it to a pilgrimage. Eventually, the count topped 100,000, including children, drug dealers, tourists, journalists, the destitute, and people who were just curious and wanted to record the events.
However, for those inquisitive enough to continue beyond the "Haight," some were met with a completely different kind of sight. A Victorian home that is all black and stands out from every other home in the neighborhood. Anton LaVey utilized the house as the main office for his "Church of Satan." This haunting home was where LaVey held his Satanic rituals and seminars. Among the most well-known was the 1967 Satanic baptism of his daughter Zeena Schreck.
Those present at the baptism recount LaVey saying, "Hail Zeena! Hail Satan!" over the naked body of the woman acting as the "Satanic Altar."
The couple moved to San Francisco shortly after Howard was born. Here, LaVey's mother Gertrude took care of the family while his father, who worked in real estate and auto parts sales, worked. It appears that LaVey had a rather ordinary upbringing. Few things piqued his interest, except than taking an interest in playing the accordion, organ (which he is reported to have performed in a Baptist church), and oboe (which he played in the school band).
At sixteen, he had decided that traditional schooling was not for him and had made plans to drop out and join the circus.
LaVey left Mill Valley's Tamalpais High School. He fled and became a member of the Clyde Beatty Circus. Later on, he was employed by other carnivals. As a roustabout at first, and later as a calliope musician.
LaVey would later write that his experience working carnivals and tent-show revivals taught him more about human nature than anything else in his life:
“On Saturday night I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning . . . I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday night they’d be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian Church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man’s carnal nature will out!”
—The Satanic Bible, Anton Szandor LaVey.
Those who knew LaVey as a young man didn't realize how much of what they believed to be true was an exaggeration or outright falsehood until after his death in 1997. Although a large amount of LaVey's life has been chronicled, it appears that some of it was fabricated by the celebrity herself.It is a documented fact that LaVey went back to San Francisco when she was approximately twenty years old. Among other absurd claims, he claimed to have been a professional organist (at pubs, lounges, and nightclubs), slept with Marilyn Monroe, and worked as a lion tamer for the circus.
The following year, he married 15-year-old Carole Lansing, who became interested in his self-aggrandizement. Karla LaVey was the couple's first child, born in 1952.
LaVey enrolled at City College of San Francisco, where he studied criminology, to evade the draft for the Korean War. He never finished his degree, according to the records.
Nevertheless, he asserted that he was hired by the San Francisco Police Department and worked there for three years as a photographer. His other side gig was as a "psychic investigator." (Once more, there is no evidence that LaVey ever worked a day for the SFPD.)
LaVey and his spouse Carole separated in 1960. LaVey got close to self-described sorceress Diane Hegarty quite soon. Hegarty was LaVey's companion for 24 years, even though they never married. In 1963, Zeena Galatea Schreck (LaVey), LaVey's second daughter, was born.
Hegarty and LaVey would later co-found the "Church of Satan." Zeena Galatea, their daughter, would grow up surrounded by ritual, magic, and Satanism.
According to LaVey, on April 30, 1966, on Walpurgisnacht (the eve of the Christian feast day of Saint Walpurga), he ritualistically shaved his head “in the tradition of ancient executioners.” He declared the founding of the “Church of Satan.”
He proclaimed 1966 “Year One: the first year of the Age of Satan (Anno Satanas). Soon after, he changed his name to Anton Szandor LaVey and christened himself the “High Priest” of his new church.
It was later revealed that LaVey had actually shaved his head because he’d lost a bet. And he had made up the “ancient executioners” explanation years later.
To legitimize his new “church” and “religion,” LaVey began conducting religious ceremonies. Although he had no authority to do so.
On February 1, 1967, LaVey officiated the Satanic wedding of journalist John Raymond to New York socialite Judith Case. This received media coverage from both the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle, who referred to him as “The Black Pope.”
LaVey performed Satanic baptisms (including the first known Satanic baptism in history for his three-year-old daughter Zeena; dedicating her to Satan and the “Left-Hand Path”). For these, he garnered worldwide publicity. The ceremony was recorded and released as an LP, The Satanic Mass.
He also officiated over Satanic funerals (including one for naval Machinist-Repairman Third-Class Edward Olsen, complete with a chrome-helmeted honor guard). Now a master of PR, LaVey had the attention, and religious legitimacy, that he sought.
In 1969, LaVey published The Satanic Bible. This was a collection of rituals, essays, and commentary, It was derived from the many evenings spent discussing the occult and other esoteric ideologies with the “Order of the Trapezoid” (though he alone is credited with writing the text).
The Bible is regarded as the main source of LaVeyan Satanism and the philosophical cornerstone of LaVeyan Satanism.
The Christian Bible is revered by Christians as "sacred scripture," whereas the Satanic Bible is not. However, LaVeyan Satanists (there are other Satanic organizations) have given it scriptural status and consider it to be the final word.
Believers of LaVeyan may describe themselves as "atheistic Satanists." This is due to their belief that God and Satan are only personality projections rather than real, objective realities. They term them “benevolent and stabilizing forces in life.” Thus the primary aim of the Bible is to promote the virtues of exploring one’s own nature and instincts: essentially, finding one’s own “inner Satan.”
Divided into four primary sections (FIRE: the Book of Satan, AIR: the Book of Lucifer, EARTH: the Book of Belial, and WATER: Book of Leviathan), it is the NINE SATANIC STATEMENTS that perhaps best express the foundation of LaVeyan Satanism:
- 1. Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!
- 2. Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
- 3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
- 4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates!
- 5. Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!
- 6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic
- vampires!
- 7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than
- those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual
- development”, has become the most vicious animal of all!
- 8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or
- emotional gratification!
- 9. Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!
It was these principles that adherents of LaVey’s Church of Satan accepted as moral and religious truth.
In the early 1970s, LaVey began melding other philosophical influences into the ideology and ritual practices of the Church of Satan.
This included German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Russian-born writer/philosopher Ayn Rand, and the principles of Social Darwinism. The latter explored the biological relationship between natural selection and survival of the fittest.
He then wrote essays introducing reworked excerpts from Ragnar Redbeard’s Might Is Right. This text advocates amorality, consequentialism, and psychological hedonism.
He also “Satanized” versions of 17th Century alchemist John Dee’s Enochian Keys. This was an occult-constructed language said to have originated with the angels.
This resulted in two new books which dramatically changed LaVeyan Satanism: The Complete Witch and The Satanic Rituals. (Strangely, the latter book includes rituals derived from the work of fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft.)
Displeased with the unilateral doctrinal changes LaVey had instituted, in June of 1975, Michael Aquino, editor of the church’s newsletter, resigned as one of the governors of the Church of Satan.
He then formed his own theistic (deity-based) group, the Temple of Set. He took an unknown number of previously-loyal dissenters with him.
In 1980, the FBI interviewed LaVey. This was because of a connection with an alleged plot to murder Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy.
LaVey told agents that most of his church’s followers were “fanatics, cultists, and weirdos.” The agents reported that LaVey’s “interest in the Church of Satan is strictly from a monetary point of view.” They said that he spent “most of his time furnishing interviews, writing material, and lately has become interested in photography.”
In July of 1984, Diane Hegarty had a restraining order issued against LaVey. Precisely why is unknown.
LaVey began his third and final relationship in the fall of 1984 with 23-year-old Blanche Barton (born Sharon Leigh Densley). On November 1, 1993, Barton gave birth to a son, Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey.
On November 7, 1997, Karla LaVey held a press conference to announce the death of her father. Anton LaVey died on October 29 in St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco of pulmonary edema. (His death certificate, however, lists October 31, 1997, as the date of death.)
According to a family member, after LaVey’s body was cremated, a secret Satanic funeral attended by invitation only was held in Colma, a small town in San Mateo County, California.
In late November of that year, “the church” announced that it would henceforth be run by two High Priestesses of joint rank. These would be Blanche Barton and LaVey’s daughter, Karla LaVey.
Officially, Barton succeeded LaVey as the head of the church. But then in 2002, she relinquished that role to writer and church member Peter H. Gilmore.
On February 2, 1998, LaVey’s daughter Zeena Schreck and her husband Nikolas Schreck published a nine-page “fact sheet.” In this, they claimed that many of LaVey’s stories about his life had been fabricated.
Originally published in paperback by Avon in 1969, The Satanic Bible has had thirty printings. In 2015, William Morrow published a new hardcover edition of the book.
This combined the original text and The Satanic Rituals. It was marketed under a special arrangement by Rabid Crow Arts and Graphics. To date, the original Bible has sold over 1,000,000 copies.
In addition to The Satanic Bible, LaVey also published The Satanic Rituals (1972), The Satanic Witch (1989), The Devil’s Notebook (1992), and Satan Speaks! (published after his death), and Letters From the Devil (also published after his death).
Today, there are dozens of off-shoots of the Church of Satan, with as many as 20,000 practicing LaVeyan Satanism. Although officially, the “church” no longer exists.
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