LaVey, Faux Satanist

Anton LaVey wanted to be bad. Or at least he wanted people to think he wanted to be bad. It’s hard to imagine a greater cry for help than founding the Church of Satan and then attempting to take it legit. His story is pathetic but amusing.

LaVey started out as a circus roustabout, then moved into playing the organ for the big top, and even lion taming. When a lion took a bite out of his neck, he decided to look for alternative employment.

He knocked around California, working as a photographer for the San Francisco police. "I saw the bloodiest, grimiest side of human nature," he wrote. "It was disgusting and depressing. I came to detest the sanctimonious attitude of people toward violence, always ‘saying it’s God’s will.’" He became an autodidact of the supernatural, and on Walpurgisnacht, 1966, officially founded the Church of Satan. The church preached a faith in self-indulgence, in elitism, and libertarian values. It also surrounded itself with the trappings of traditional Satanism – pentagrams, "black masses," etc.

When Hollywood bombshell and Church of Satan member Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in a car accident, LaVey claimed that he had been cutting out her photo at the time, and accidentally snipped off the top of her head. But when Charles Manson’s pal Susie Atkins blamed LaVey for her descent into depravity and murder he completely disavowed her. Some Satanist.

The church claimed to support "evil," but what it really supported was heedless consumption and libertarian personal politics, adding a dark veneer spiritualism to California’s favorite mode of life. "Satanism encourages any form of sexual expression you may desire, so long as it hurts no one else," he wrote in The Satanic Bible (1969). No baby sacrifices. No pushing granny in front of the train. No real evil at all.

LaVey saw his Church as a liberating force from the puritanical impulses of Christianity. He preached self-expression and "finding your bliss," much like the mythographer Joseph Campbell. He had a flair for naïve psychological insight: "Sexual fetishes are probably the most Epicurean preference of the human animal," he wrote. "The smallest detail is of the greatest significance and there is little margin for error. In fact, there is less room for deviance in deviance than in any other human endeavor." He also wrote, "The highest of all holidays in the Satanic religion in one’s own birthday."

He could have been running EST sessions or hanging out with the Grateful Dead. The depths he truly attained to were those of omphaloskepsis.

LaVey succeeded in generating plenty of ink in the 60s, when spiritual ferment was big news. He played Satan in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). The film "did for Satanism what Birth of a Nation did for the Ku Klux Klan," LaVey claimed. And the church was officially recognized by the US armed forces when LaVey acted as a chaplain at a military funeral.

The Church experienced its high water mark in those early years and then declined. By the early 90s LaVey had declared bankruptcy. His books were out of print. LaVey himself occasionally referred to the church as "simply a living." He continued to cut a theatrical figure, sporting a cape, shiny pate, and goatee, and playing creaky organ music in his Victorian home. In recent years he released a series of recordings, including one called "Satan Takes a Holiday."

He even failed in death. While the Church claimed he died on Halloween, he in fact missed the date by two days. He said his epitaph should be: "I only regret the times that I was too nice."