"On Saturday night," LaVey recalled in one of our long talks, "I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evaneglists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge 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 no matter how much it is purged or scourged by any white-light religion."
Though LaVey did not realize it then, he was on his way toward formulating a religion that would serve as the antithesis of Christianity and its Judaic heritage. It was an old religion, older than Christianity or Judaism. But it had never been formalized, arranged into a body of thought and ritual. That was to become LaVey's role in twentieth-century civilization.
After LaVey became a married man himself in 1951, at age twenty-one, he abandoned the wondrous world of the carnival to settle into a career better suited for homemaking. He had been enrolled as a criminology major at the City College of San Fransisco. That led to his first conformist job, photographer for the San Fransisco Police Department. As it worked out, that job had as much to do as any other with his development of Satanism as a way of life.
"I saw the bloodiest, grimiest side of human nature," LaVey recounted in a session dealing with his past life. "People shot by nuts, knifed by their friends; little kids splattered in the gutter by hit-and-run drivers. It was disgusting and depressing. I asked myself: 'Where is God?' I came to detest the sanctimonious attitude of people toward violence, always saying 'it's God's will'."
So he quit in disgust after three years of being a crime photographer and returned to playing organ, this time in nightclubs and theaters to earn a living while he continued his studies into his life's passion: the black arts. Once a week he held classes on arcane topics: hauntings, E.S.P., dreams, vampires, werewolves, divination, ceremonial magic, etc. They attracted many people who were, or have since become, well known in the arts and sciences, and the business world. Eventually a "Magic Circle" evolved from this group.
The major purpose of the Circle was to meet for the performance of magical rituals LaVey had discovered or devised. He had accumulated a library of works that descibed the Black Mass and other infamous ceremonies conducted by groups such as the Knights Templar in fourteenth-century France, the Hell-Fire club and the Golden Dawn in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. The intent of some of these secret orders was to blaspheme, lampoon the Christian church, and address themselves to the Devil as an anthropomorphic deity that represented the reverse of God. In LaVey's view, the Devil was not that, but rather a dark, hidden force in nature responsible for the workings of earthly affairs, a force for which neither science nor religion had any explanation. LaVey's Satan is "the spirit of progress, the inspirer of all great movements that contribute to the development of civilization and the advancement of mankind. He is the spirit of revolt that leads to freedom, the embodiment of all heresies that liberate."
On the last night of April 1966 - Walpurgisnacht, the most important festival in the lore of magic and witchcraft - LaVey ritualistically shaved his head in accordance with magical tradition and announced the formation of the Church of Satan. For proper identification as its minister, he put on the clerical collar. Up to that collar he looked almost holy. But his Genghis Khan-like shaven head, his Mephistophelian beard, and his narrow eyes gave him the necessary demonic look for his priesthood of the Devil's church on earth.
"For one thing," LaVey explained himself, "calling it a church enabled me to follow the magic formula of one part outrage to nine parts social respectability that is needed for success. But the main purpose was to gather a group of like-minded individuals together for the use of their combined energies in calling up the dark force in nature that is called Satan."
As LaVey pointed out, all other churches are based on worship of the spirit and denial of the flesh and the intellect. He saw the need for a church that would recapture man's mind and carnal desires as objects of celebration. Rational self-interest would be encouraged and a healthy ego championed.
He began to realize that the old concept of a Black Mass to satirize Christian services was outmoded or, as he put it, "beating a dead horse". In the Church of Satan, LaVey initiated some exhilarating psychodramas, in lieu of Christianity's self-debasing services, thereby exorcising repressions and inhibitations fostered by white-light religions.
There was a revolution in the Christian church itself against orthodox rites and traditions. It had become popular to declare that "God is dead". So, the alternative rites that LaVey worked out, while still maintaining some of the trappings of ancient ceremonies, were changed from a negative mockery to positive forms of celebrations and purges: Satanic weddings consecrating the joys of the flesh, funerals devoid of sanctimonious platitudes, lust rituals to help individuals attain their sex desires, destruction rituals to enable members of the Satanic church to triumph over enemies.
On special occasions such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals in the name of the Devil, press coverage, though unsolicited, was phenominal. By 1967 the newspapers that were sending reporters to write about the Church of Satan extended from San Fransisco across the Pacific to Tokyo and across the Atlantic to Paris. A photo of a nude woman, half covered by a leopard skin, serving as an altar to Satan in a LaVey-conceived wedding ceremony, was transmitted by major wire services to daily newspapers everywhere: and it showed up on the front page of such bulwarks of the media as the Los Angeles Times. As the result of the publicity, grottos (LaVey's counterpart to covens) affiliated with the Church of Satan spread throughout the world, proving one of LaVey's cardinal messages: the Devil is alive and highly popular with a great many people.
Of course LaVey pointed out to anyone who would listen that the Devil to him and his followers was not the stereotyped fellow cloaked in red garb, with horns, tail and pitchfork, but rather the dark forces in nature that human beings are just beginning to fathom. How did LaVey square that explanation with his own appearance at times in black cowl with horns? He replied: "People need ritual, with symbols such as those you find in baseball games or church services or wars, as vehicles for expending emotions they can't release or even understand on their own." Nevertheless, LaVey himself soon tired of the games.
There were setbacks. First, some of LaVey's neighbors began complaining about the full-growm lion he was keeping as a house pet, and eventually the big cat was donated to the local zoo. Next, one of LaVey's most devoted witches, Jayne Mansfield, died under a curse he had placed on the head of her suitor, lawyer Sam Brody, for a variety of reasons I have explained in The Devil's Avenger; LaVey had persistently warned her away from Brody and felt depressed over her death. It was the second tragic death in the sixties of a Hollywood sex symbol with whom he had been intimately involved; the other was Marilyn Monroe, LaVey's paramour for a brief but crucial period in 1948 when he had quit the carnival and was playing organ for strippers around the Los Angeles area.
On top of all that, LaVey was tired of organizing entertainments and purges for his church members. He had gotten in touch with the last living remnants of the prewar occult fraternities of Europe, was busily acquiring their philosophies and secret rituals left over from the pre-Hitler era, and needed time to study, write and work out new principles. He had long been experimenting with and applying the principles of geometric spacial concepts in what he terms "The Law of the Trapezoid". (He scoffs at current faddists who are "barking up the wrong pyramids".) He was also becoming widely sought as speaker, guest on radio and television programs, and production and/or technical adviser to scores of television producers and moviemakers turning out Satanic chillers. Sometimes he was also an actor. As sociologist Clinton R. Sanders points out: "...no occultist has had as direct an impact upon formulaic cinematic presentations of Satanism as has Anton Szandor LaVey. Ritual and esoteric symbolism are central elements in LaVey's church and the films in which he has had a hand contain detailed portrayals of Satanic rites and are filled with traditional occult symbols. The emphasis upon ritual in the Church of Satan is 'intended to focus the emotional powers within each individual'. Similarly, the ornate ritualism that is central to LaVey's films may reasonably be seen as a mechanism to involve and focus the emotional experience of the cinema audience."