I will admit to a fleeting fascination with Anton LaVey and his "Church of Satan" experienced during my younger, formative days. I found it amusing that "The Satanic Bible," LaVey's infamous treatise detailing his philosophy and various "magical" spells was published by Avon Paperbacks. I imagined the local Avon representative with the sprayed hair and the periwinkle pantsuit having it in special storage in a box in the spare tire well in the back of her station wagon. I imagined her requiring a password and a blood contract to view the book and any number of other dark goodies she would have stored.
I acquired, pored over, and secreted away a copy of "The Satanic Bible" at some point during my teenage years. The entire Satanic "religion" is based on selfishness, indulgence (basic human traits Christianity teaches us to hate about ourselves, according to LaVey), and concerning oneself with living as regret-free, experience-filled a life as possible, as this time is the only time we have. It doesn't believe in a literal entity called "Satan;" rather, Satan is representative of the darkness inside each of us. Just as God is representative of the light. It really isn't a religion so much as LaVey's personal philosophy, and many adherents to the organization claim as much. I found the work thought provoking and reasonable in its philosophical portion, and utterly hokey in the "magic spells" portion that concludes the book. I got the feeling that LaVey was nothing if not a masterful showman and knew that philosophy by itself is all well and good, but it's the smoke and mirrors that get people in the door.
Anton LaVey, sans devil horned cloak
In 1969, at the peak of the "movement," an enterprising filmmaker made a documentary on LaVey and the church. Consisting mostly of talking head interviews with LaVey himself, various members of the church, and neighbors of the legendary "Black Mansion" in San Francisco (really just an average single-family home, albeit one painted totally black - quite a statement amongst the legendary vividness of the city's "painted ladies") where the group held its meetings and rituals, as well as footage of satanic rituals that I find as corny now as I did when I read about them as a teenager, "Satanis/The Devil's Mass" proves that the more one learns about something, the less interesting it may become. Even all these years later, the mystery and mystique - the danger of this man and his group whose values so contradicted my upbringing - was enough reason for me to seek the movie out on Netflix (gotta love it) and give it a chance.
The "Black Mansion" in San Francisco - where LaVey lived until his passing in 2001, and demolished thereafter. Notice the garbage cans filled with Satanic trash.
LaVey strikes an imposing figure in photographs, since he is essentially black and white even in full color. Pale, bald, goateed, with a black suit and a "blasphemous" priest's collar, LaVey's face peering out of the back of "The Satanic Bible" held a queasy fascination. In movement, though, LaVey appears like a stereotype of the pudgy, hyper-intelligent loners we all remember from high school, albeit vastly more eloquent and charismatic.
As a philosopher, LaVey is compelling, articulately railing against God and the hypocrisy of organized religion. He seems like he'd be an interesting guy to shoot the breeze with or debate. As a group, though, the Satanists come across as "holier-than-thou" as many of the Christians that undoubtedly inspired their defection from God in the first place. They laugh about the small-minded "devout hypocrites" of mainstream religious society and congratulate themselves on their hipness.
In evolving the group from a loose coalition of "magical practitioners" to something more akin to, well, a religion, LaVey always seemed to me (even as a teenager) to have undermined his very thesis and mired himself in the hypocrisy he claimed to despise. And this "beast," once unleashed, seemed quickly to spiral out of the man's control - further research revealed the infighting and lack of organization that crippled the organization in the ensuing decades.
And the rituals - oh, boy, the rituals. LaVey in a cloak with plastic devil horns spewing incantations of darkness while his followers hope for stronger erections or for their enemies to develop warts while a nude 50-something woman sits placidly in the background serving her symbolic purpose as a human alter and a man dressed as a Catholic bishop gets his pale ass beat with a paddle...campy, for sure, but also just sorta pathetic.
I guess my fascination with men like LaVey lies not so much in what they say, but how effectively they are able to convince people to believe it. Satanism is just as hokey in ritual as so many other belief systems, and the adherents to it just as docile and hungry for someone else to make up their minds for them. And in the end, the man who united them all never claimed to be anything other than what he was - a carnival barker with a hatred of religion and a fierce way with words. In the end, that was enough. True, once he obtained the cult status he seemed to crave he didn't know what to do with it, but the fact he got as far as he did says more about the human condition than any religion ever could.
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