Church of Satan history

The Church of Satan
—A Brief History—

by Blanche Barton ©2003
(condensed from The Church of Satan and with supplemental material by Peter H. Gilmore)

1. Modern Prometheus

Anton Szandor LaVey never expected to be the founder of a new religion, but he saw a need for something publicly opposing the stagnation of Christianity, and knew that if he didn’t do it, someone else, probably less qualified, would.

LaVey saw there must be a new representative of justice, someone who understood the torments of being human, who shared our own passions and foibles yet was somehow wiser and stronger. He began to realize that most of our progress in science and philosophy had been achieved by those who rebelled against “God” and the Church, or the dictates of conventional society. We needed a representative for that revolutionary, creative, irrepressible spirit within us. The single figure who fit the bill was clear to LaVey from an early point in his life; a deity whose rebellious, passionate nature had been described, either in awe or fear or both, from the dark beginnings of time.

Satan, by one name or another, haunted mankind, tempting him with sweet delights and enlightening him with blinding secrets intended only for gods. He was one who could be petitioned for powers of retribution and who gave deserved rewards. Instead of creating sins to insure guilty compliance, Satan encouraged indulgence. He was the single deity who could really understand us.

2. The Magic Circle / Order of the Trapezoid

From the early 1950’s, Anton LaVey explored some of these ideas, eventually gaining a reputation as a powerful black magician and San Francisco character. Others who felt aligned with his philosophy gravitated to him, gathering in his notorious Victorian “Black House.” In accordance with LaVey’s explorations of demonic geometry, they took to wearing an odd-shaped black and red medallion adorned with a bat-winged demon and formed a group called the Order of the Trapezoid, which later evolved into the governing body of the Church of Satan. Those who attended LaVey’s soirees always comprised an array of professions and pursuits: “the Baroness” Carin de Plessen—who grew up in the Royal Palace of Denmark, Dr. Cecil Nixon—magician and eccentric extraordinaire, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, as well as artists, attorneys, doctors, writers, and law enforcement officers. City Assessor Russell Wolden might share the room with Donald Werby, one of San Francisco’s most influential property owners; anthropologist Michael Harner with writer Shana Alexander. A ship’s purser might be seated next to a deep-sea diver, a dildo manufacturer next to a plastic surgeon. A famous tattoo artist, the grandson of a U.S. president, the owner of one of the world’s largest collections of Fabergé artifacts—all attended LaVey’s get-togethers. The field of fantasy and science fiction personages alone yielded the likes of Anthony Boucher, August Derleth, Robert Barbour Johnson, Reginald Bretnor, Emil Petaja, Stuart Palmer, Clark Ashton Smith, Forrest J. Ackerman, Fritz Leiber, Jr., to name a few, into LaVey’s circle of magical compatriots.

LaVey wanted to establish something new, not strict doctrines awash with attitudes of blind faith and worship, but something which would smash all concepts of anything that had come before, something to break apart the ignorance and hypocrisy fostered by the Christian churches. Something, too, that could free people to apply the black magic he and his Magic Circle were using. Anton became convinced he was learning methods to harness the dark forces which cause “a change in situations or events in accordance with one’s will which would, using normally accepted methods, be unchangeable,” as LaVey defines magic.

Anton expanded and refined his formulas for the Magic Circle rituals and began achieving precise results—professional advances, unexpected rewards, monetary gain, sexual or romantic satisfaction, the elimination of certain enemies—it was apparent to everyone involved that Anton had indeed tapped into that mysterious Dark Force in Nature.

There was the magic—and there was a workable philosophy to go along with it. It was a down-to-earth, rational, bedrock philosophy that emphasized the carnal, lustful, natural instincts of man, without imposing guilt for manufactured sins. To break apart the crust of stupidity and irrationality fostered over the past 2000 years, LaVey knew it was necessary to blast its very foundations. His ideas could not be presented as just a “philosophy”—that would be too easy to pass off or overlook. LaVey would blasphemously form a religion and, even more, he would call his new organization a church, consecrated not in the name of God but in the name of Satan. There had always been a Satanic underground, centuries old, but there had never been an organized Satanic religion, practicing openly. LaVey decided it was high time there was.

3. The Church of Satan

Anton knew the date upon which the first Church of Satan must be established. It would have to be during the traditional night of the most important demonic celebration of the year, when witches and devils roam the earth, orgiastically glorifying the fruition of the Spring equinox: Walpurgisnacht, the night of April 30th—May 1st.

LaVey shaved his head as part of a formalized founding ritual, in the tradition of medieval executioners, carnival strongmen, and black magicians before him, to gain personal power and enhance the forces surrounding his newly-established Satanic order. It was the enactment of an allusion at the end of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan: an incantation rejecting the Holy Trinity and the spiritual life in favor of one devoted to Hell and material pursuits.

Shaving the head is also traditional to the Yezidi devil worshippers as a rite of passage that the emerging adept must perform. The razor for this rite is washed in the waters of Zamzam, the subterranean well of Islam said to be the point of origin for underground streams flowing under the Seven Towers of Satan. The caverns beneath the Towers are supposedly tributaries leading to the place of the Satanic Masters, known as Shamballah, or Carcosa. Thus, shorn of his locks, he leaves the world of the descendants of Adam behind him. To make the ritual complete, LaVey declared 1966 Year One, Anno Satanas—the first year of the reign of Satan.

The Council of Nine, following the dictates of the Nine Unknown, was established throughout the world. Many significant writers have obliquely referred to this mysterious cabal—Shakespeare, John Dryden, Talbot Mundy, Richard Johnson—an archetypal formation which is reflected in the nine members appointed to sit in positions of absolute authority on the United States Supreme Court. The new Age of Fire had been inaugurated, and though the ceremony on Walpurgisnacht, 1966, was a highly personal, private one, LaVey would soon feel the tremors it was to produce.

“We blended a formula of nine parts social respectability to one part outrage,” says Anton LaVey. “We established a Church of Satan—something that would smash all concepts of what a ‘church’ was supposed to be. This was a temple of indulgence to openly defy the temples of abstinence that had been built up until then. We didn’t want it to be an unforgiving, unwelcoming place, but a place where you could go to have fun.”

And thus was initiated two revolutions which 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 of there and then), and pleasure instead of self-denial. Other ego-affirming, human potential programs like EST, drew from the ground-breaking attitudes and techniques of the Church of Satan.

4. Diabolical Endeavors

Within a year and a half of its creation, the Church of Satan had been the center of three separate media sensations that splashed front page headlines around the world. The first of these was the marriage of two of LaVey’s prominent members on February 1st, 1967. John Raymond, a politically radical journalist and Judith Case, New York socialite daughter of a well-known attorney, asked LaVey, their High Priest, to officiate at their wedding ceremony, blessing their union in Satan’s name.

Word got out and on the day of the ceremony, newspapers from California to Europe had more reporters and photographers than any event since the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge crowding the Black House to witness this supreme blasphemy. There was such a mob that police had to cordon off the area. Joe Rosenthal, who took the immortal shot of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima during World War II, was assigned to photograph the evil doings for the San Francisco Chronicle. The L.A. Times, among other prominent newspapers, devoted four columns at the top of their front page to one of Rosenthal’s pictures of the wedding. Most of the accompanying stories lingered on the naked female altar, the array of personalities present, and Togare, the Nubian lion, roaring from somewhere further inside the house. The press was delighted. They dubbed LaVey “The Black Pope” and clamored for interviews. While many of the early articles were published in men’s magazines because of the nude altars, mainstream magazines jumped into the fray as well. Eventually all the major magazines were doing in-depth cover stories on the rising tide of Satanism.

The rituals for the first year were largely intended as cathartic blasphemies against Christianity. Many of the elements were consistent with the reports of Satanic worship from the famous writings of diabolists, such as the description in Joris-Karl Huysman’s La Bas (translated into English as Down There). A nude female altar was always used, the accompanying music was a series of corruptions of church hymns, the cross was turned upside down, the Lord’s Prayer was recited backwards, mock holy wafers were consecrated by insertion in a naked woman’s vagina, whiskey was used instead of wine for Christ’s blood, holy water was substituted with seminal fluid in milk, and the names of the infernal deities were invoked instead of the Christian God. It was too much for some lapsed Christians to stand. Some would attend out of curiosity, only to find eustress quickly turn to distress, rush home and dig out their crosses to protect them from the devils they’d confronted.

After awhile LaVey got tired of simply mocking Christianity and decided to work up rituals which would be blasphemously positive and exciting. “I realized there was a whole grey area between psychiatry and religion that had been largely untapped,” said LaVey. He saw the potential for group ritual used as a powerful combination of psychodrama and psychic direction. Instead of just throwing off the bio-electrical energy and releasing it to be dissipated in the surrounding ethers, that energy could be structured, shaped, and directed to accomplish a specific goal. He didn’t want to do parlor tricks but real, applied magic.

LaVey decided the world was ready now for the first public Satanic baptism. People would be forced to see that Satanism is not drinking the blood of babies and sacrificing small animals. He declared, “Rather than cleanse the child of original sin, as in the Christian baptism imposing unwarranted guilt, we will glorify her natural instincts and intensify her lust for life.” Who better to be baptized in such a public ceremony than LaVey’s own three-year-old daughter, Zeena? With her soft blonde hair and engaging smile, she captivated reporters—such an angelic child to be dedicated to the Devil. While many Christian organizations and other “concerned citizens” were outraged at the spectacle, there was little they could do. Today, LaVey probably would have been charged with Satanic child abuse—there were no such legal avenues for religious hysterics in 1967.

A date for Zeena’s baptism was set for May. Photographers started showing up at 6 a.m., even though the ceremony wouldn’t begin for another 15 hours. One of the Church members, survivalist Kurt Saxon, designed and made a special amulet for Zeena just for the occasion. It was a colorful Baphomet with an ice cream cone, lollypop, and other things a little girl would like included in the circle. Her mother dressed her in a bright-red hooded robe and sat her on the edge of the altar while photographers from 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 a new mistress, Zeena, creature of ecstatic magic light...Welcome to our company; the path of darkness welcomes thee. Be not afraid. Above you Satan heaves his bulk into the startled sky and makes a canopy of great black wings...Small sorceress, most natural and true magician, your tiny hands have power to pull Heaven down and from it build monuments to your own sweet indulgence. Your power makes you master of the world of frightened, cowering and guilt-ridden men. And so, in the name of Satan, we set your feet upon the left-hand path...Zeena we baptize you with earth and air, with brine and burning flame. And so we dedicate your life to love, to passion, to indulgence, and to Satan, and the way of darkness. Hail Zeena! Hail Satan!”

The entire ceremony was designed to delight the child, welcoming her with sights and smells that were pleasurable to her. Unlike the Christian method of dunking already frightened children in water to baptize them, Zeena sat cheerfully chewing gum throughout the ritual, basking in the attention she was receiving from admirers and the press.

In December of the same year, Anton was approached by Mrs. Edward Olsen who wanted the High Priest to perform a funeral for her recently deceased husband, a Navy man killed in a traffic accident near San Francisco’s Treasure Island station. Both she and Edward Olsen had become members of the Church of Satan, despite his Baptist-oriented upbringing and his earlier membership in Youth for Christ. When he’d entered the Navy, seen more of the world and married a sexy brunette, he realized Satanism was a more realistic way of life. “He believed in this church,” said Mrs, Olsen, “and it is in this church that he would have wanted his funeral.”

Though the Navy officials were a bit nonplussed, they agreed to Pat Olsen’s instructions without much discussion, considering it their duty to comply with Mr. Olsen’s last request with dignity. There was a chrome-helmeted honor guard in attendance at the ceremony, standing rigidly at attention alongside the black-robed witches and warlocks wearing their Baphomet medallions. The sailors held an American flag over the coffin while LaVey recited a eulogy emphasizing Edward’s commitment to life in choosing to walk the Devil’s path. To end the funeral, the Navy guard fired three volleys with their rifles, and a Navy musician played taps after the mourners shouted, “Hail Satan!” and “Hail Edward!”

Even though the Archbishop of San Francisco was upset by the whole affair, immediately sending an outraged letter to President Johnson, most San Franciscans, including Naval officials, felt Olsen should receive the same consideration as any other Navy man. The response from the White House was actually quite fortuitous for the widow and her young son. Olsen, a machinist-repairman third-class was erroneously referred to by White House aides as “chief petty officer.” Mrs. Olsen was able to use those letters to file a claim for a posthumous promotion for her husband and receive higher survivors’ benefits. LaVey credits “demonic intervention” for Mrs. Olsen’s good fortune. Because of the sharp increase of declared Satanists in the military, Satanism was soon outlined as a recognized religion in the Chaplain’s Handbook for the Armed Services where it remains today, the description updated every few years by the Church of Satan.

Besides the weekly ceremonies, Anton conducted Witches’ Workshops and various seminars which attracted notable personalities from up and down the California coast. Jayne Mansfield, the sexy-sweet blonde bombshell famous for her stunning measurements and orgasmic squeal, insisted on meeting the Black Pope. LaVey and Mansfield hit it off immediately, each fulfilling a diabolical need in the other. Jayne became passionately obsessed with Anton, calling him several times a day from wherever she traveled, eventually applying for a driver’s license just to be able to drive to San Francisco unescorted by her persistently ubiquitous lawyer/boyfriend, Sam Brody. Jayne’s commitment to LaVey, and her dedication to the Satanic philosophy, continued until her death in June of 1967. The auto crash she died in also killed Sam Brody, who LaVey had formally cursed in response to Brody’s jealous threats and attempts to discredit LaVey.

The night of Mansfield’s death, LaVey had been clipping a Church of Satan news item from the German magazine, Bild-Zeitung. When he turned the item over to paste it in the press book, LaVey was shocked to see he had inadvertently cut a photo of Jayne on the opposite side of the page, right across the neck. Fifteen minutes later, a reporter from the New Orleans Associated Press bureau called Anton to get his reaction to the tragic accident. Jayne had been practically decapitated when she was thrown through the windshield of the car.

Madness rituals, fertility rites, destruction rituals, shibboleth rituals, and psychodramas in the form of Black Masses were devised for the 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 of necessary development, growth, and experimentation—as well as generating a pool of concentrated energy to draw from in later experiments

5. Media Circus

Once the Church of Satan started getting international press, local reports tapered off. While the San Francisco media enjoyed writing about Anton when he was a local eccentric—ghost-hunter, sorcerer, and keeper of lions and leopards as household pets—he was no longer fun when he became an internationally-recognized Satanist. People were beginning to take Satanism seriously. Magazine articles on cults and covens imitating the Church of Satan were suddenly springing up from New York to London. By the time The Satanic Bible was released in 1969, membership in the Church of Satan had already grown to well over 10,000 worldwide.

Articles constantly appeared in newspapers around the world as editors sent their reporters to find out why everyone was buzzing about this San Francisco sorcerer. LaVey and the Church of Satan got major coverage in U.S. magazines like Cosmopolitan, Time, Newsweek, Seventeen, even appearing on the cover of Look. Wax figures of LaVey were exhibited in a dozen museums in various parts of the world, the original cast at Madame Tussaud’s wax works in London. The first authentic Black Mass ever recorded, pre-dating the “Black Metal” bands by a couple of decades, was taped live at the Church of Satan in 1968, even before The Satanic Bible was published. Among LaVey’s flurry of radio and television appearances from 1967 to 1974, one particularly memorable performance was an elaborate on-camera ritual for Johnny Carson’s 7th Anniversary show, summoning success for the upcoming year.

Among the first articles written about the new High Priest of Satan was Shana Alexander’s “The Feminine Eye” column in February, 1967, then running in Life magazine. Titled “The Ping is The Thing,” the article opens by describing a ping that is often heard when idly listening to the morning news broadcast: “This ping seems to signal that something funny, or weird, or maybe even profound may have just occurred, although one is never sure.” Alexander then goes on to give a wonderfully engaging 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 on Satanism until its author, Arthur Lyons, wrote another book in 1988, Satan Wants You, which updates his first, providing fresh material on Anton LaVey and dispelling much of the claims of Satanic animal sacrifices and “ritual abuse” of children. Lyons’ evocative reporting and appreciation of the metaphorical aspects of Satanism provide a darkly enthralling vision of LaVey.

Newsweek magazine has done a few articles covering LaVey’s exploits. One from August 16, 1971, entitled “Evil, Anyone?,” was already raising questions about suspected “Satanic crimes” that have plagued LaVey from his organization’s beginnings. Anton’s answer has been consistent over the years: “Satanism,” he insists, “is developing two circles, an elitist group which I always intended my church to be, and the faddists who are becoming Satanists because it’s the thing to do.” Discovering that murder isn’t on Satanism’s list of required sacraments, diligent Newsweek reporters had to find something else to entice thrill-seeking readers: “Indeed, far from preaching sexual or political anarchy, LaVey describes his goal as the creation of 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 LaVey’s nude female altars (more than a few fetishists addressed their letters of inquiry to “the redheaded nude altar”), there were plenty of men’s magazines willing to cover the Church of Satan, jumping at the juicy, ready-made excuse for nudie shots. LaVey himself flashed his ample equipment in certain issues of Jaybird Journal and the like. Though most of the stories accompanying the pictures were limited to recounting ancient myths of devil’s orgies and naked, nubile acolytes tied to sacrificial altars, several were written by Burton Wolfe, who eventually wrote a much-needed biography of LaVey in 1974. Wolfe joined the Church of Satan for a brief period in 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 thoroughly enjoyed capers such as playing the role of the director of the insane asylum in the Madness of Logic rite.” Wolfe continued to fan interest in LaVey with articles up into the early 1980’s and, though he had to drop out of the Church of Satan because he felt it was evolving into a “harsh, vindictive, crypto-fascist style organization,” Wolfe wrote a comprehensive introduction to The Satanic Bible which served as the only reliable biographical reference on LaVey since The Devil’s Avenger went out of print, until the release of The Secret Life of A Satanist: the authorized biography of Anton LaVey.

While reporters had been relatively fair to the Church of Satan in the late 1960’s, LaVey saw a sharp decline in open-minded, objective reporting in the mid-1980’s. In 1984, he stated: “If real Satanism were allowed the kind of television time that Christianity has now, the kind of drawing out and patience that interviewers give sports figures, or the kind of coverage that a baseball game gets, Christianity would be completely eliminated in a few short months. If people were allowed to see the complete, unbiased truth, even for 60 minutes, it would be too dangerous. There would be no comparison.”

6. Hell on Reels

When Rosemary’s Baby was about to be released in 1968, LaVey, besides playing the part of the Devil, attended advanced screenings set up by the studio’s publicity department to elicit his observations as various religious groups previewed the film. It was, after all, a metaphorical as well as a very real offshoot of LaVey and the Church of Satan. (LaVey has said Rosemary’s Baby “did for the Church of Satan what The Birth of a Nation did for the Ku Klux Klan, complete with recruiting posters in the lobby.”) Taking advantage of the High Priest’s high visibility, small black buttons were passed out at the screenings which said, “Pray for Anton LaVey,” a variant on the “Pray for Rosemary’s Baby” buttons also being handed out as a promotional item. LaVey remembered the audience’s reaction to the ending of the film, when it clearly showed the Satanists had no intention of hurting the child, as everyone expected, but glorified it as the son of Satan. “People got very angry—stomping their feet and showing general disapproval. Sometimes the reality of Satanism is a lot more terrifying to people than their safe fantasies of what it’s supposed to be. For the first time, they’ve been confronted with a Devil that talks back.”

Besides Rosemary’s Baby, there were a few other films made about or including LaVey and the Church of Satan. Satanis, an extensive feature-length documentary on the Church of Satan was released in theaters across the country early in 1970, often playing on a double bill with another movie Anton appeared in—Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother. The ads for the film, showcasing LaVey’s scowling countenance, promised bloody, sexually-explicit rituals. In true William Castle fashion, serious cautions were included in the large display ads: “Satanis is the most pertinent, and perhaps the most shocking film of our time. But it’s definitely not a movie for everyone. If you choose not to see it, we will understand.” Today, Ray Laurent’s Satanis is a highly-coveted underground classic. Clips have been incorporated into several recent documentaries on the subject of witchcraft and the occult. It had long been the only footage of the Church available for TV producers to flash on the screen when describing the evils of Satanism. In more recent years, this has been supplemented by Speak of the Devil: the Canon of Anton LaVey, a feature length documentary produced and directed by Nick Bougas, notorious chronicler of Man’s dark side.

Sadly, several other foreign documentaries covering LaVey’s church—notably, footage by Germany’s Florian Fuertwangler and France’s Victor Vicas—never got American distribution. Different versions of Luigi Scatini’s Angeli Blanca, Angeli Nera, were released around the world, the American version titled Witchcraft ’70. The segment on LaVey and the Church of Satan was one of the few included in every version.

7. Lucifer Rising

Membership in the Church of Satan expanded steadily. LaVey tried to include visits with his constituents around the globe wherever he traveled, blessing them with papal visits to their grottos, where he was greeted with an excess of pomp and black capes. “It became rather embarrassing after awhile. I’d step off the plane and there they’d be, all huddled together to meet me in their black velvet robes with huge Baphomets around their necks. Many of our grass-roots people didn’t know much about subtlety then, or decorum. I was trying to present a cultured, mannered image and their idea of protest or shock was to wear their ‘lodge regalia’ into the nearest Denny’s.”

In the beginning of the church’s activities, LaVey freely printed his address and phone number on posters, fake folded money (to be left lying on the street as a promotional gimmick), and allowed reporters to print his address as they wished. “I don’t like to think I was naive during that period of my life. I just wanted the Church of Satan to be honest, open and above-board. I also had a dream of being able to work out of my own home, as most of my friends did who were writers or performers. I envisioned the pleasure of rolling out of bed and having your work right there waiting for you without having to get in your car and drive to an office or another location. I didn’t think that was unreasonable. But I didn’t understand then how treacherous people could be.” Afterwards, LaVey, like most celebrities, established living quarters around the world to which he retreated so that he’d no longer trapped by his own popularity.

After a few years, LaVey began cutting back on the administrative demands on his time, concentrating his energies on his own projects more than on public relations and personally ministering to his ever-increasing flock. Following LaVey’s plan, it was time to “stop performing Satanism and start practicing it.” The Church of Satan was having its desired impact on the outside world and LaVey wanted to encourage new directions among the members rather than siphoning off the best energy for compulsory performance of rituals. The period of actual above-ground activity confined to LaVey’s Victorian digs was relatively brief, but long enough to do irreparable damage to established religion. “After that original blast,” LaVey remembered, “there was no need for the ongoing public spectacle and outrage of an inverted Catholic Mass anymore. Christianity was becoming weaker every day. That was just beating a dead horse. There were plenty of other sacred cows to attack, and that’s what keeps Satanism vital and thriving.”

In 1970, rituals and lectures conducted by LaVey and open to the public ceased. All weekly public ceremonies in the Black House stopped in 1972. Responsibility for Satanic activities was shifted to the dozens of Church of Satan Grottos established around the world, with Central Grotto (as LaVey’s original Black House was designated) serving only to screen, approve and direct potential members in the Church of Satan.

By 1975, a re-organization had taken place and those few who were counterproductive to LaVey’s Satanic ideals, who were more interested in what Anton called “Phase One Satanism” (i.e., group rituals, blaspheming Christianity in a rigidly-structured, limited way) were phased out. With his intensely elitist attitude, Anton was incensed to see his creation degenerating into a “Satan Fan Club,” where the weakest, least innovative members were buoyed up with time and attention at the expense of the most productive, most Satanic members. At a time when other leaders might have turned over command to someone else in disgust, taking advantage of the more tempting doors then opening to him—acting, directing, more writing—LaVey was bound by the loyalty he felt for the organization he’d started. Consequently, LaVey devised a diabolical way to “clean house,” which eventually eliminated much of the dross and administrivia that LaVey felt was obscuring the organization’s true destiny. The Grotto System was loosely maintained but no longer strictly managed through Central Grotto. LaVey wanted his Church of Satan to evolve into a truly cabalistic underground rather than degenerating into a long-running public pageant or a “Satan pen pal club.”

Putting the brakes on the “lodge hall” activities, LaVey emphasized that a person’s status within the Church of Satan should reflect his status outside the organization. Highest ranking people in the outside world should hold a commensurate position within the group, since LaVey considered their material, creative or social success as the truest measure of magical prowess. Anton also shifted the organizational focus to those who could benefit the church in a substantial way through who and what they were, not just feeling compelled to spend large chunks of time with nonproductive “psychic vampires,” no matter how dedicated.

“There always has to be a fair exchange,” LaVey said. “I could see that many people were joining our ranks simply because it was a guarantee of friends, or because they wanted the glory of passing tests to earn degrees, much like the ‘Grand Poobahs’ who take off their robes and vestments and become another local nobody again outside their lodge. They were getting more ‘spook appeal’ out of being members of the Church of Satan than we were getting esteem from having them among our membership. As an organization grows, group activities only cause contention, drain vital energy that could be better applied elsewhere, and eventually become counterproductive. Teaching people that they’re all right and society is all wrong, that the only ones who really understand them and that they can relate to are within the group, is damaging in the long run. It only reinforces their own inability to deal with the larger world.

“I wanted to create a forum, a loosely-structured cabal for the productive aliens, not misfits who need to depend on a group. After the re-organization, I was free to be more selective. I would much rather attract and lend support to those individuals who use their alienation—just as most leaders are usually different or distinctive in some way. Groups encourage dependence on beliefs and delusions to reinforce their omnipotence. Instead of fostering self-sufficiency and honest skepticism, I saw my group lapsing into blind belief and unhealthy anthropomorphism. That’s not what I intended and I had to make moves to get the Church of Satan back on track.”

Of course, there were those who wanted to continue group activities. Rather than seeing LaVey’s change as moving the Church of Satan beyond the realm of a “cult”—where all activity is strictly dictated by a central figure—some members felt betrayed by LaVey for discontinuing their avenue for meeting others of like-mind. Of course, there were also those who simply felt “sour grapes” toward LaVey from 1966 on; who felt they could do the same thing only better. An ever-shifting spectacle of alternative groups formed and disbanded. Most of them took on a Laurel and Hardy-like “Sons of the Desert” quality and never seemed able to stick together for more than a few years, with infighting and jealousies insuring constant upheaval. Some have written disparaging remarks over the years which LaVey passed off as “absurdly self-righteous,” and many have assumedly thrown their share of “sour-grapes” curses in LaVey’s direction. To these “wannabes, shoulda-beens and parasites” LaVey considers himself “just an old spoilsport.” Sadly, even his own beloved daughter Zeena later joined such ranks.

At the same time, LaVey became more selective about granting interviews, since his doors were no longer open to anyone off the street who wished to drop by for his lectures. Because of this rather abrupt cessation of activity, rumors spread of the end of the Church of Satan and even of LaVey’s death.

8. Satanic Panic

During the 1980’s, the media worldwide launched a “witch hunt” which is now referred to as “The Satanic Panic.” It is usually acknowledged to have been seeded by Lawrence Pazder’s Michelle Remembers. This was a popular book which recounted the purported repressed memories of the author’s wife. Via hypnotherapy which he performed himself, the author dredges up the details of “Michelle’s” supposed experiences with a world-wide Satanic cult. Typical of the historical accusations made against the Jews by Christian zealots in earlier centuries, Michelle Remembers claims that devil-worshippers have a conspiratorial network dedicated to ritual child sacrifice and world domination, to which the author adds modern media “innovations” such as “snuff” films, drug cartels, and “kiddie porn.” A look back at this period shows how Christian evangelists jumped on the bandwagon, and Christian “therapists” began “finding” similar tales buried in the subconscious of their “patients.” The then-current talk-show/freak-show circuit found this to be a bonanza, and representatives of the Church of Satan carefully selected specific media forums to debunk the hysterical nonsense. In due course, the “Satanic Panic” was debunked like any other urban legend, but not before the most costly trial in United States history took place, persecuting several innocent individuals who ran a day school. Law enforcement agencies, skeptical societies, and sociologists subsequently examined this Christian-promulgated hoax and dissected its mechanisms. Now, courts of law are reversing decisions made against people who were accused by family and friends caught up in this Salem-like madness, and substantial financial awards are being judged against the Christian “therapists” who essentially brain-washed pliable patients into belief in false “ritual abuse.”

9. Ever Forward

From the 1980’s through the ’90’s, a new generation of iconoclasts sought out Anton LaVey. These people grew up knowing of the existence of the Church of Satan, and pursued all manner of expression inspired by LaVey’s philosophy, while reflecting their own natural perspectives. Individuals such as musician and prankster Boyd Rice, rogue publisher Adam Parfey, documentarian Nick Bougas, artist of bountiful beauties Coop, performance artist and film-maker Larry Wessel, radical Apache artist Steven Johnson Leyba, “misanthropologist” Carl Abrahamsson, horror publishers Peggy Nadramia and Peter H. Gilmore, and many other shadowy figures from the new counter-culture found the Church of Satan to be a fountainhead of philosophy that was in synch with their pragmatic views of the human animal. LaVey himself felt that he now had solid administration for his organization, particularly with the arrival of Blanche Barton, who became his “girl friday,” succeeding estranged companion Diane Hegarty. Magistra Barton would be his High Priestess, his biographer, his lover, and the mother of his only son, Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey. LaVey could now concentrate on refining his personal expression; he began recording his legendary keyboard sessions, now available on several CDs, and published, through Parfrey’s Feral House, several new books collecting his diabolical observations.

During this period LaVey also decided to revive the Church’s Grotto system, using the vision of hindsight to head off the difficulties which had arisen during the earlier attempt. That experiment continues today.

Anton LaVey died on October 29th of 1997, but he left behind the capable administration which had been working with him directly for many years, assuring that the Church of Satan would move forward according to his vision. High Priestess Blanche Barton was forced from The Black House by its owners, and it was demolished on October 17th of 2001, after standing as a haunted sentinel for several years. The Central Administration followed Magistra Barton to Southern California, until she made the decision to appoint long-time administrator and LaVey associate Peter H. Gilmore as High Priest on Walpurgisnacht of 2001. At that point, the Central Grotto functions relocated to New York City, where the current High Priest resides. On Walpurgisnacht of 2002, Magistra Barton appointed Peggy Nadramia, wife to Gilmore, to succeed her as High Priestess. Magistra Barton remains chair of the Council of Nine, editor of The Cloven Hoof, and pursues her writing as well as the stimulating task of raising LaVey’s son.

For Further Reading:

Blanche Barton. The Church of Satan. New York, NY: Hell’s Kitchen Productions, 1990.
(Presents a detailed history as well as historic images from the Church of Satan archives)