The Cloven Hoof, Issue 130

The Cloven Hoof

Issue 130

My Beloved Comrade

Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey, founder and High Priest of the international Church of Satan, died on October 29th, 1997, shortly before 9 a.m. The cause of death was valvular problems associated with rheumatic heart disease, due to a "Fever of Unknown Origin" he contracted when travelling through Europe at the end of WWII.

Before founding the Church of Satan in 1966, Dr. LaVey had been a circus lion trainer with Clyde Beatty, a professional organist and oboist, a crime photographer, artist, hypnotist and psychic investigator. He owned a Nubian lion for over two years, which he kept in his infamous black San Francisco Victorian home. His newly-formed organization gained international headlines in 1967 with the first Satanic wedding. From the time The Satanic Bible was published in 1969 by Avon Books, Dr. LaVey spent most of his time making television and personal appearances, discovering that his philosophy-which blends mystery and pragmatism-attracted a wide range of creative and eccentric people. "The Black Pope", as the media dubbed him, was invited to act as technical consultant on many dark films, including Rosemary's Baby in which he also played the part of the Devil. He followed his first book with several others which have been translated into all major languages and defined the modern Satanic movement.

Besides his much-discussed romantic liaisons with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, Anton LaVey's circle of supporters and intimates have included Sammy Davis, Jr., and more recently Marilyn Manson.

For the past few years, Dr. LaVey spent most of his time in San Francisco. Until the end, he honored his life with product and vitality, dictating the direction of the Church of Satan, as well as writing, playing and recording, drawing and indulging as much as possible. There is an upcoming interview in SECONDS magazine pending and a new book, Satan Speaks, scheduled for release in Spring, 1998.

He is survived by his daughter, Karla, his 4- year-old son, Xerxes, his longtime companion, Blanche Barton, estranged daughter, Zeena, and grandson, Stanton.

BOOKS:

The Satanic Bible (1969)

The Satanic Witch (first published in 1970 as The Compleat Witch; re-released in 1989) The Satanic Rituals (1974)

The Devil's Notebook (1992) Satan Speaks (1998)

RECORDINGS:

"Honolulu Baby” and “Answer Me” (1993) Strange Music album (1994)

The Satanic Mass CD (originally released in 1968; re-released 1994)

Satan Takes a Holiday CD (1995)

This was the obituary we released to the press about a week after Dr. LaVey died, after he had already been cremated and memorialized in a brief, private Satanic funeral, according to his instructions. Obituaries are much like authors' blurbs, presenting as many facts as can comfortably fit in a few paragraphs. Cold, spare- destined to be read by many who have never heard of the deceased, filling the uninitiated in on his life as well as his death. The many articles that follow are not cold and factual. They speak as myriad, distinct voices, recounting tales of Satanic metamorphosis and paying homage to a man who has so deeply influenced so many thousands of lives. In all fairness, Dr. LaVey himself should have the first word on his own death, in this essay he wrote in 1995.

When I Died by Anton Szandor LaVey

Death was the most unmemorable experience of my life. On the 22nd of February, 1995, I suddenly and without warning, stopped breathing while I was finishing my dinner. It appeared I had died. As a matter of fact, I had. Blanche immediately began to administer CPR, while a friend called 911. The fire department came, along with the ambulance, and proceeded to bring me back to life, using electric shocks and other procedures. I had only been dead a short time, but was nonetheless clinically dead. After a semblance of life returned, I felt no sense of relief. In fact I felt no more than I did when I died. I felt nothing. In fact, I didn't even know I had died until several days later, in the hospital, when I was informed of the incident. Someone said, "Died, you know." My reply was, "I'll be damned."

By that time, unbeknownst to myself, I had been conversing with hospital personnel for several days about many unrelated things, death not being one of them. Though my speech was fanciful, it was coherent and articulate. I did not talk like a man who had returned from the dead, but one who thought he was in Las Vegas or aboard ship.

I remember experiencing absolutely nothing at the time of my death, nor anything until I regained my normal thought process at the hospital. No lights at the ends of tunnels. No profound exhilaration. No orgasm. No sensation of release nor relaxation. It was like going to sleep and trying to describe the moment you fall asleep. One says, "I fell asleep", not, "I remember falling asleep."

After the gravity of the event sunk in, it was suggested that I had undergone a remarkable phenomenon; one not normally encountered in everyday life. Later, someone ventured that as a religious leader, I could capitalize on my experience. I had already started my own religion and unlike all messiahs of the past, had clinical proof of my death and resurrection. My immediate thought was, "What experience? Experience, experience-I don't truthfully recall any experience." I know my advisor must have been thinking, "What's wrong with you? You should invent a good one. Think up something profound. I would."

Try as I might, I cannot even remember details of the events leading to my demise. An Everything I know has been related to me by others. It's not as though I even remember the sensations or events immediately prior to my death. The activities generally leading up to the event are foggy, as are most activities earlier in the day. A memory cushion seems to prevail as to the entire day, much as an unawareness of several days following my observable return to consciousness. There is no memory of everything going black in the middle of a sentence, or a spasm during swallowing. No surprises nor deviations from whatever I happened to be doing at the time. No remembrance of blacking out, seeing things blur, shortage of breath, strange shapes appearing, unusual ringing or sounds-nothing.

If the death experience is like that to those who look to it for some sort of significant event, I fear they are wasting their time waiting around and should accept their daily routines as far more eventful, however pedestrian, than anything Heaven or Hell or a conscious afterlife might have to offer.

It may be said that my own account is predicated upon my lack of faith, and that had I believed, things might have been different. To that, I can answer that I wanted to believe: to be able to see the future, visit with my past friends, torture my enemies, and haunt certain places. I'll just have to see. Maybe next time...

From Ruth Waytz:

Often before, and certainly now after his death, when people hear of my friendship with Dr. LaVey, they invariably ask, "What's he like?"

Beyond the obvious (he's not like anything), the most unexpected description I give is that he's really funny. I also say, of course, that he's also the most interesting, accomplished, diversified and riveting raconteur/trickster/dirty old man I've ever had the pleasure and privilege to know.

Maybe I should mention that I was introduced to the Doctor through other close friends, and that when I met him (although his reputation had certainly preceded him), I had read none of his work. In fact, it took me until two years later to read The Satanic Bible, partially because I didn't want it to be a bunch of crap I would feel compelled to pretend I liked when we met again. When I brought him a copy of The Satanic Witch and asked him to sign it, I was embarrassed to admit to him that I hadn't bothered to read it. "Don't worry about it," he told me. "It's just a book about you." But I did eventually read the books, and I remember calling up to the House, half elated and half relieved that I thought The Satanic Bible could just as easily have been written by me as about me. And The Satanic Witch? I read that one too, and found that it answered everyone who had ever looked at me and asked, "How did you get away with that?"

I don't suppose it's any wonder that Doctor's more amusing qualities have largely gone under-reported, although anyone reading The Cloven Hoof or The Black Flame would immediately and repeatedly recognize his funny bone protruding. And when the Doctor makes you laugh, it's no subdued theft of a polite titter behind a chaste hand-it's a knee slapping, squirt Pepsi out of your nose, rip your garter guffaw, which could quite possibly send you scurrying to the loo, piddling on the last leg of the trip.

In truth, I was lucky enough not just to know him, but also share my monthly visit with him, Blanche and Xerxes. Having him in my thoughts daily during his life certainly has not made it very comfortable for me to absorb the enormity of how much I will miss him in the days to come. No more pretending I don't notice him looking up or down my dress, no more picking a good spot for my unfortunate stocking rip (two new pairs of which I just had shortened so he could accidentally see above them), and never again feeling the .45 in his pants as he gives my ass a good squeeze hello and good-bye.

Maybe people are just not comfortable picturing the Black Pope and his organ, joyful, singing "Roly Poly" to his toddler son, or enjoying a few hearty single entendres with friends, but that's the way I know him. He's not some dumb figurehead leading a bunch of nincompoops, and he never deluded himself pretending that he was. Much clatter has been made recently that he was disdainful of his members, which is simply not true. He was able to recognize and acknowledge value in himself and others, and he allotted his time accordingly, which was bound to thrill some and piss off others.

Well, count me among the thrilled, to have had the time to see him for the Renaissance Man he truly was. And for those who would have us rush to fill his boots, I offer this, a favorite quote of his, from Disraeli:

"There are more old Fry Cooks who could be fine Satanic High Priests, than Satanic High Priests who can cook a good hamburger."

From George Sprague:

While browsing through the shelves of my favorite bookstore I was approached by an individual familiar with my Satanic affiliation. "Is it true that LaVey is gone? What EVER will you do?"

I was angered not so much by the stupidity of the question as by the inference that somehow my life should come to an end too, that my only reason to be was LaVey and the Church of Satan. How does one explain to the unwashed herd the difference between respect, loyalty, admiration and codependent, blind, hero-worship? How does one articulate the essence of discovering, even as a teenager, the works of a man who understood, recognized, organized, codified and synthesized that which we Satanists are born with? The answer is: You can't.

I have received honors and accolades in school, college, ROTC, my previous career as an Army officer and my present career as a stage magician. None compare to my appointment to the Priesthood by Dr. LaVey. The total surprise and thrill, the fact that this formidable, busy man wanted to share a few moments with me was beyond anything.

How to describe being in his company, undergoing his scrutiny? To feel his power, to understand this was not someone who you wanted to infuriate and, at the same time, to know that you were there because he genuinely wanted to see you? I was delighted when he met my lady, Shawna. I watched intently as he studied her, listened to her and judged her. And I was pleased that he liked what he saw, especially when she gave a demonstration of her passion, belly dancing!

How to explain the thrill of LaVey allowing me to use some of his music in my Halloween show because he felt the piece I was interested in belongs in a show like mine? Yes, I am fortunate to have witnessed Dr. LaVey commanding the keyboards. Intensity, mastery and vitality. His music evoked all the human passions and foibles. And his insights on the smallest details of music and how it relates to performing.... All this served to confirm all I knew and affirm all I didn't. The gates of future discovery were opened wide. I will miss him terribly.

So, what will I do now? The same as always-but with more intensity. I will pursue my passions, create, perform, and shun that which is not me. I will indulge in all I enjoy. And if I wake up to find I'm the only person left on Earth, I'll still be what I am, and always will be-the Devil's own. As such, I know who my comrades are. I cherish their presence and accomplishments and will be saddened when they are gone. Those who are not in this number should do themselves a favor: Get the Hell out of my way!

The Aristocratic Beast by Christopher J. Turner

I never had the honor of meeting Anton LaVey. Yet no single figure has inspired such devotion in my personal life as the founder of the Church of Satan. Dr. LaVey exemplified qualities that have been driven nearly out of existence in our "postmodern" wasteland. In an age where mythology has been rendered hollow and made utterly disposable, Anton Szandor LaVey fiercely held onto a dream simultaneously at odds with mass-market American culture and yet quintessentially American. "Rugged

individualism" is an empty term when thrown around by political conservatives, but for Dr. LaVey it was a moral imperative-the foundation of a dream where complacency and false brotherhood were discarded in favor of a dark mythos favoring the hidden ideals that are best exemplified by the icon he infused with living power-Satan.

While institutional religions face ever- growing cynicism and struggle to balance their checkbooks, Anton LaVey never compromised his vision in order to become a trendy pop-icon. Some tried to discredit him but few Outside dared examine the philosophy he organized. Thus he could never be purged from the public psyche the way cult leaders and politicians are. In this day and age such an approach to leadership is the most Satanic thing one could do and for anyone who understands the movement, it commands Honor.

While the idea of the "noble savage" makes for fine entertainment, I perceived Dr. LaVey to personify something stronger and more wondrous. I call this "The Aristocratic Beast" because I understand that Anton LaVey was a man of refinement and grace as much as he was a man of bestial carnality. And I believe this combination is both supremely admirable and indelibly Satanic.

The duality of our nature is not a struggle between opposing forces but rather a full embodiment of the human animal. To be bestial is a necessity that is considered “unseemly" by the "civilized" hordes. And being refined and aristocratic-upholding manners, reason and intelligence-is beyond the ability of those same hordes, leaving them only sterile mediocrity. It was Dr. LaVey's fusion of these supposed irreconcilables along with his prescient codification of magical formulas now being validated through science that drew me to want to strengthen his movement. And it is through us that his Will to Power will continue to lead the way against the rapidly deteriorating frailty that governs the herd. A final testimonial to his Will can be seen in that he continued publishing and creating right up until the end of his life. Most would have shut their eyes and begged

Dr. Kevorkian to come end their pain. For this, and all before, I hold Anton Szandor LaVey in High Honor as the Eternal High Priest of Hell and all that it stands for and against.

I thank Anton LaVey for his life and his work. Outside, the first rains of the season fall as I sit here listening to his touching rendition of "Hello, Central, Give Me No Man's Land" (my personal favorite of the lost songs he introduced me to). I take the focus and passion that Satanism has helped me channel and declare unflinching devotion to a movement truly diverse and inspiring which I am proud to help advance in his glory as well as my own.

Hail Anton Szandor LaVey and the passions he dared to embrace and uphold! SHEMHAMFORASH! HAIL SATAN!

From Al Dolfi:

Like some grazing animal of a Savannah herd, I would have run had Dr. LaVey approached me. But, knowing the nature of animals, he knew the value of waiting.

I first heard of The Satanic Bible while involved in a wicca group. The message there was clear: Stay away from Satanism. The more I heard this admonition, the more I thought: I need to search it out. There was something dangerous but potentially beneficial about Satanism.

I didn't think I knew any Satanists, and I actually was too timid to just go out and buy a copy of The Satanic Bible. While stewing, I happened across a copy of Blanche Barton's biography of Dr. LaVey. Her account put a human face to the subject and presented me with a hero.

I met Dr. LaVey through her book, and ever since I have felt that he was a friend. Having “met" him gave me the courage to undertake a critical piece of magic: "How to Become a Werewolf; The Fundamentals of Lycanthropic Metamorphosis; Their Principles and Their Application."

I read the ritual hurriedly, my breathing becoming rapid, my heart pounding. I was not even sure just what the reading of the procedure would do to me, much less its execution.

And then a passage embraced me and changed my halting behavior. Let me say it to you now: "If you are a habitual 'victim', it is wise to proceed with caution. Your desire to be frightened and its ensuing manifestations could impel you into a situation whereby you could be severely injured or killed. If, however, you are able to meet your fright-needs and exorcise them, then go on to the next step."

Maybe I was an habitual victim. The thought filled me with embarrassment and confusion. What followed from this man, however, was not judgment nor scorn or disdain. Rather, 1 felt gentleness and kindness and a concern for me, someone he had never met. My safety was important to him, even though I was a stranger.

The skittish beast took the sugar from an outstretched hand and allowed the intriguing figure to touch the fair skin.

From Ronald Adams:

It is with great sadness, and a tremendous sense of loss, that I heard about the death of Doctor Anton Szandor LaVey, and I send my condolences and good wishes to all who grieve as I do. He brought so much to my life, and his incandescent essence will always burn brightly in my mind filling me with creativity, magic and positive thinking. The world has lost a great leader, a multi-talented genius and a master "magician" who passed on "the word" to the populace to save them from apathy and negativity. He was a role model who taught us how to live our lives to the fullest, and to distance ourselves from the hypocritical so-called world religions who blindly follow a fearsome revengeful god. The Satanic doctrine of strength, fearlessness and creativity, and following man's natural instincts, has since time immemorial been the foe of these world religions. Indeed it is time that the so-called "Ten Commandments" were replaced by "The Nine Satanic Statements" penned by our great leader. However, I take comfort in the knowledge that the Church of Satan will continue to flourish and spread his immortal words of wisdom to an awakening world population.

I was first introduced to the philosophies of Doctor Anton Szandor LaVey over twenty years ago. I was on holiday in Italy with my wife and children, and we were on the beach facing the bright blue sea. Through half-closed eyes I watched my children running and shrieking on the broad expanse of golden sand. My wife was reading one of her lurid women's magazines and, as usual, I was becoming restless with so much inactivity. I decided to go for a walk along the picturesque seafront shops, and perhaps sit for awhile and nurse a cold beer as I watched the world slowly walk past me. I found a tiny book shop in the shadow of a brownstone Catholic church, and I entered its cool interior in the hope of finding some books to fire my imagination. The shelves in the front of the shop were full of all sorts of books, but to my chagrin they were all in Italian. I drifted towards the rear of the shop, and found several shelves that contained books written in the English language. They were mostly romantic novels, but there were a few science fiction books on a lower shelf. Sandwiched between a couple of Robert Heinlein books was a book called The Satanic Bible. The title intrigued me, and 1 removed it from the shelf. I thumbed through it and saw that it wasn't a work of fiction, but a book about a philosophical doctrine by a man called Anton Szandor LaVey. The striking photo on the back cover depicted a strongly handsome shaven- headed man, sporting a goatee beard, with piercing eyes that seemed to glint with dark humor as 1 walked to the proprietor to pay for the book.

The Satanic Bible was my constant companion for the rest of my Italian holiday, and 1 read and re-read the words of wisdom that Doctor LaVey had written. It was as if a door had opened in the top of my head and let in a blazing light of truth and wisdom. All the feelings and beliefs that I had since I was a tiny child were suddenly coalesced into something tangible. One passage in particular sprang out from the pages:

"There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity! Choose ye this day, this hour, for no redeemer liveth!”

The Satanic Bible changed my life, and when I returned to England I wrote to the Church of Satan and set in motion the administration to become a member of an elite group of people who follow the only true and logical path that the world has ever known, and will ever know.

Doctor Anton Szandor LaVey was my mentor and the source of my Satanic enlightenment. I softly whisper a sad "farewell” Into the still air as I end this tribute to him. On some moonlit clear night, I will look to the star- sprinkled skies over England and see a fiery comet with a red tail, like a demonic cloak, flowing behind it. And I will recognise the wonderful flamboyant devilish being who hurtles through the atmosphere around this crowded ball of mud, chuckling wickedly as he searches for souls to save from hypocrisy and apathy.

From Charles Steenbarger:

Like most of you, I am deeply saddened and shocked by the news of the passing of our esteemed High Priest. It is indeed tragic that a man of such skill and courage has to leave us. But we should not falter in our efforts to perpetuate the earthy principles and ideals, all of which express the power and courage of his dark spirit.

I just experienced this unusual man when he visited our grotto in the Denver area. Our members were so impressed by his commanding, Satanic appearance and demeanor as he honored us with his participation in our ritual. I have only the fondest memories of my visits to the charming city of San Francisco where I was privileged to benefit from his brilliant counsel.

We must not believe that he is totally gone. We can perpetuate his existence by incorporating within ourselves the spirit he shared with us and also his earthy wisdom and the Left-Hand Path. We owe it to his memory to do just that. I offer you this as an expression of my feelings upon hearing such sad news:

My ordinary mind is far flung behind me As I contemplate dark thoughts in unstirred solitude

And experience the rays of power Stemming from the Baphomet While wooing the demons waiting In Hell's caverns.

My beloved friend is gone. Left alone and cold.

But knowing he lives within me Consoles my own dark spirit.

A True Immortal by Vince Crowley

There have been many influences in my life, but Anton Szandor LaVey has been biggest. He presented a philosophy and lifestyle that was already a part of my being. His invocation of authentic Satanism truly helped me resonate to my true nature. The Satanic Bible must be the most important conjuration in this millennium. And Dr. LaVey was just as important as a Satanic leader and figurehead.

Many people have tried to tarnish his devilish reputation by spreading false accusations about his sincerity about the un-religion religion he founded in 1966. Well, if he was a con-man, he sure did create something that snowballed into a thriving movement. Jealousy, stupidity, and narcissism are the traits of his enemies. Unfortunately for them, we are here to continue the legacy he left us. As long as one of us "Satanists" are still breathing, Satanism will be alive and well.

Even though I was a great admirer of Dr. LaVey, I was not a LaVey worshipper like some of the drones out there. I don't think Dr. LaVey wanted to gather sheep. In my eyes he wanted to be aligned with an elite pack of wolves. So now that he has passed away, we will see who were really his comrades.

One of the biggest honors I have received was being promoted to a Magister of the Church of Satan on March 28th, XXXI A.S. It showed me he appreciated the work I had been doing with my band, Acheron. Even though it wasn't his kind of music, he still saw it to be Satanic. I'm sure bands like The Electric Hellfire Club, Marilyn Manson and King Diamond feel the same way I do. Dr. LaVey knew who was real and who wasn't.

My main instinct is to keep the Black Flame of Satan alive within my existence. I still plan to be an active member within the Church of Satan, as I always have been. Blanche Barton is a strong, motivated woman who has what it takes to keep Headquarters going. We all need to show our support in these times of grief. Remember, don't mourn Dr. LaVey's death, rejoice the life he indulged in. Not too many people can remain immortal, but the Black Pope's legacy will live on. Hail Satan! Hail Anton Szandor LaVey! We will all meet you in Hell, dear Comrade! Ad majorem Satanae gloriam!

Promethean Prophecy by Stefan Alexander Blacart

In disbelief and high skepticism I ferretted- out a growing pile of gloomy informational proof of the dread thought which was fast becoming an all too tangible and horrible reality. I cannot quite describe the abysmal sinking of my black heart when I was finally forced to accept the cutting revelation: “Anton LaVey is dead.”

I do not need to delve into the countless praises and complimentary declarations on the man who brought diabolical thought and action to a world primed yet unsuspecting of its arrival and continuous spread like a wild fire with direction and purpose since 1966 c.e. For over thirty years the portal which he opened has spewed forth dark power and Satanic influence dispersing throughout the world and drawing together the forces of a plan to renovate society and cleanse through black flames.

What I do wish to convey is the obvious (which is sometimes the most sadly neglected): His death is not a downfall! It must be reflected upon as a catalyst for an unprecedented surging forth of Satanic might!

I know the multitude of folks who are likely to be pleased if not mistakenly "relieved" at his passing. They think it's over. It is not.

I, for one, am not amused. I'm pissed. I hold a grudge. Not only are his inferiors alive while he is now not. Not only are they still teaming over the Earth, muddling along in useless lives while his invaluable existence has been cut short. They would have the audacity to revel in his demise and smirkingly, derisively snicker that the proverbial head has been lopped off the hated snake. I, however, at the same time snicker to myself at their expense. I perceive (as I am sure that we all do) that a final proclamation is issuing from beyond the veil of physical death. From the famous Star Wars dialogue of, "Even as you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!", so shall Anton LaVey's Satanic legacy be felt manifold by the world!

So raise a glass and sound the bells! Let's make this place a living Hell! Hail Herr Doktor: Anton Szandor LaVey! HAIL SATAN!

In My World... by Dominion

On November 12th, 1997, my friend and editor of Diabolica, Azazel, called me and said, "1 guess you've heard the news?" I could hear in his voice such sadness. When my answer was a negative he told me to sit down. In my mind I knew that Anton LaVey had died. I didn't want to believe it so I let Azazel say it. My heart broke. I couldn't think. It had happened several days before and 1 had no word of it. I didn't even know he was ill. I felt ashamed as a Grotto Master to not have been aware of the Doctor's condition. I cried for a long while. I regret not having met him to thank him for the new life he had given me.

Doctor LaVey gave each of us the ability to define our needs for happiness as well as the conscious ability to know we deserve all of what we want out of life. He separated the weak from the strong with a single label; Satanist. I always saw him as a father figure. He was strong and direct and tenacious and I loved him.

Ms. Barton is also a guiding light for me. I owe much of my strength to her as well. It is because of Ms. Barton that I decided to become a Grotto Master. I think of the times she wrote to me. never mentioning the Doctor's health, telling me to stay strong. I think sadly of her selflessness in that respect. I can imagine how trying things were and are for her now in coping with administrative duties. I wish I could have done something to make things easier for her.

The time has come for sadness to turn to strength. Doctor LaVey made damned sure that Church of Satan Grottos were independent. He taught us the importance of relying on ourselves first and looking to our brethren for overall achievement rather than coddling us. He gave us a template in which to carry out our lives as achievers and as soldiers. He'd kick us in the ass if we went back on all we had accomplished!

I look forward to the new challenges that will undoubtedly arise in respect to his death. I am well aware that I will be questioned at some point as to the validity of our Founder's beliefs and whether mine are relevant anymore. Just some of those stupid questions from the herd. After all, in their minds Anton Szandor LaVey is to us what Jesus was to them. We are not sheep, though. We are aware of the real world and what it takes to survive.

No doubt the herd will take the Doctor's death as a sign that their god is winning and the Church of Satan is at an end. Won't it be a surprise to them when they find that we have grown much stronger in his passing?! Just the thought empowers me.

In view of Greater Magic-we now have a more intimate link to The Man Downstairs! Let's be sure we keep in touch with that link. Enjoy what you have done for yourself in life and go for more. Turn off the TV, go to your self-defense classes or the shooting range, and for Satan's sake-read your Satanic Bible!

Thanks for the Leopard by Michael Rose

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;

He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

All other Life is living Death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell,

A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a

tinkling of the camel-bell.

The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi Book VII. Verses XXXVII-XXXVIII

Those words provide a suitable epitaph for Anton LaVey. Truly, he lived and died nobly. He lived the only kind of life worth living, keeping always his "self-made laws”.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Dr. LaVey. If I had, I might be able to relate some anecdote about him. As it is, I can only try to convey some of what Dr. LaVey meant to me, and what this tragic loss means to me as well. When I first learned of his death, my first reaction was just a sort of empty feeling; a sense of numbness. This quickly gave way to anger. Hell, I'd been robbed. I had harbored a desire to make it out to San Francisco to meet the Doctor one day. Now, that day would never come. Selfish? Yeah, so sue me. It was a few hours before this anger, and personal grief, gave way to a sense of compassion for the loss felt by those closest to Dr. LaVey. But alongside this grief grew another feeling. A strengthening of my resolve to carry on Dr. LaVey's legacy.

There are those who say that the Church of Satan was just a personality cult. They believe that without Dr. LaVey's leadership it will dwindle and disappear. We will prove them wrong. In his essay "Misanthropia", in The Devil's Notebook, Dr. LaVey said, "I will never die because my death would enrich the unfit. I could never be that charitable." While Dr. LaVey could not follow through on that promise, we can keep the unfit from reaping the rewards they anticipate, by keeping Dr. LaVey's legacy alive within us. Mah Dengue Truly, this is the Church of Satan's darkest hour, and its greatest trial lles before us. If we ot remain true to our Satanic ideals, and transmit® them to those who follow us, as Dr. LaVey did for those who followed him, we can ensure that Dr. LaVey's name will live forever. I think that he deserves immortality. It's the least we can do for him after all that he has given to us. 20 noy inthe

I am reminded of another verse from The Kasidah: "While reason sternly bids us die, love longs for life beyond the grave. Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears for Life-to-be shall ever crave." (Book VIII, Verse V) While the hard-nosed rationalist in me knows that Dr. LaVey is gone, the romantic in me clings to the idea that in a burlesque house located on a perpetually rain- slicked street in a seedy neighborhood of Hell, Dr. LaVey is giving nightly demonstrations of his keyboard virtuosity in the pit while at his feeton Togare sits, happily reunited with his master, and voluptuous demonesses, who look suspiciously like Coop's devil girls, bump and grind lasciviously onstage.

Oh yes, about the title. It refers to a story I had wanted to tell the Doctor one day. When I discovered The Satanic Bible, my vital energies were at a pretty low ebb. All my life I had been alone, utterly cut off from others who felt like I did; my education, such as it was, failed to expose me to the great Satanic literature I later learned about through the Church of Satan. Between all of these things, the Beast within was growing steadily weaker. When I read The Satanic Bible, it was an invigorating experience. I was no longer the wolf without a pack. I had found my pack, and they were called Satanists. I went to sleep after finishing the book and as I slept I had a dream. In that dream, I was sitting in an empty room, staring into space, when there came a knock at the door. I opened it, and there stood Dr. LaVey with a leashed leopard. He said to me, "I think this is yours," and reached down to unfasten the leash. The leopard trotted to my side, sat down and nuzzled my hand. In that instant, I knew that the leopard and I were one. So, this is one way that I'm thanking Dr. LaVey for giving me back my inner beast.***

I have never felt such a loss, but I will persevere, as will we all. After all, we are Satanists.

HAIL ANTON SZANDOR LaVEY!

HAIL SATAN!

Incessant Satanic Ideals by Lydia Gage

Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey lives on forever, for he is now immortal. We, as Satanists, must dwell on the continuation of his ideals through Satanism, his philosophy. I speak for many when I say that I had always been a Satanist but did not have a name for my philosophy until I found in Satanism as espoused by Dr. LaVey. LaVey stood proud and brought pragmatism and power to thousands of individuals through his writings. He urged us to become our own gods. We have learned to promote our own hedonism-remembering that It is the Self who must be pleased first and foremost, always. We learned that most vink fulfillment in life comes from pleasing ourselves and those we love, and in not letting psychic vampires steal away with our power, drive and ambitions. We have learned to become strong in all we do. Whereas many of us knew this, we did not necessarily put these ideals into practice until we felt the strength of LaVey's words echoingsver inside, and acted upori them: I personally owe my espassion for life to Dr. LaVey. Until Satanism, I did a lot of wishing. Now I act upon my desires; and, through my works, please my Will-thus fulfilling my own happiness. We must march forward waving the Satanic Banner calling out to the bot strongled as brou cunhad

Listening to Doctor's album, Satan Takés a Holiday, fills me with emotion; it brings me back to a special laboratory I visited not all that long ago. A place where I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with the most charismatic, warm, passionate man I have ever met. Those memorable hours replay in my head over and over-I wish I could express the joy they bring me. I feel at bes extremely fortunate to have met the Doctor: bun personally His laugh, his smile, his eyes, his music-his philosophy. He empowered me, and I truly love him for all he has brought to my life. Doctor inspired me to become my own god, and so I have. But Doctor shared my Olympus-and all the gods left behind in his absence are sick with th sadness. This pain will never go, but neither will my cherished memories of the Greatest Man ever.

I was pleased that Blanche foresaw the power of the pen and decided to publish a commemorative issue for Dr. LaVey. I had mentioned to Peggy Nadramia during a phones te conversation that I felt many Satanists would exorcise their pain of Doctor's death through their writings. This, for me, is the best way to grieve. It is also, however, the best way to carry on. I am sure there are many of you who can agree that there is great power stirring in the air. Doctor is not gone; he is pushing us on-even from beyond. I can feel his presence and a great surge of energy running through my body. My close friends have also witnessed this power, and have produced pieces that surprised and pleased me when I read them. Passionate writing. It is not that I didn't think they were capable on the contrary, I hounded them many times over to write more. It's that there is a shared enthusiasm we all seem to possess that is propelling us onward. My friends' works are good, possibly better than they have ever been-obviously influenced by Doctor's death. We have all sat and discussed just this-our shared feelings over this sad event. But, more importantly, we discussed our future plans and goals which will further the Satanic Movement. We have gained strength through our pain, and we are ready to fight! Continuation is essential. Hail LaVey! Hail Satan! And, in Doctor's immortal words, "More power to your big fat asses!"

"Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint”: The Legacy of Anton Szandor LaVey by Kevin Shelton

In a world whose Holy Grails have become victim status and unearned esteem, it takes the utmost courage to be a curmudgeon. Anton Szandor LaVey possessed such courage. In America-home of the dumb-ocrat and the leveller-he dared to incarnate the Mephistophelian spirit of denial. For him, it was paramount to annul the vile marriage of Mediocrity and Pretentiousness that has dominated our century.

The founding of the Church of Satan both sounded the tocsin and injected the toxin that was to mark a true New Age. This New Way would be one of Hegelian inversion, of ruthless standards, and earned esteem, an age where magical accomplishment would mean clarity of perception and concrete achievement, not the onanistic "mastery" of Kabbalistic gibberish. How the occultnik mediocracy must have gnashed their teeth in 1969, when The Satanic Bible snapped their flaccid "wands of power" in half, and revealed their robes to be of the same precious fibers as the emperor's new clothes!

Most importantly, Anton LaVey invited unpopularity by taking seriously Goethe's warning that we should not let ourselves "dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, can be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few." So, let the Sandbox Satanists, who confuse their puerile temper tantrums with "evil", revile the memory of Anton LaVey: such outbursts shall glorify their object.

A paradox? Yes. Anton LaVey knew better than to court popularity from either side of an irrationally dualistic, flesh-hating world. He knew that dialectical reason-the "Third Side"-offers our greatest hope of reuniting man and animal, mind and nature, reality and imagination. For that insight, and for his incessant efforts to realize it, we owe him our profound gratitude. Meanwhile, as I prepare to continue my work, I see in my mind's eye Anton LaVey officiating at the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. He is laughing.

In Tribute by Robert A. Lang and Diana DeMagis

Many wondrous men and women throughout history have been influential to our personal life. These people have stimulated us, influencing us to achieve and create, conquer and destroy, and above all to live and love life. Alexander the Great, Vlad Tepes, Nero, Cleopatra and Rasputin are but a few. Personalities such as Edward G. Robinson, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe and Vincent Price. Writers the likes of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Allen Poe, Nietzsche and Mark Twain. Surprisingly, as great as these icons remain, we cannot profess to actually love them. After all, we did not know them on a personal basis. Why is it then that upon hearing the news of Dr. LaVey's death, we experienced such an abundant sadness and feeling of deprivation? Why did my mate and I shed those tears? Why are we writing this? The answer is...we loved Anton LaVey, a man we never met, yet felt as if we knew.

Few have had the capability to be so loved by strangers, to touch other peoples' lives the way he has ours. To bring past and present together by preserving that which he held dear to him. A true ecologist.

Anton LaVey was no stranger to me. I raised myself on his philosophy since I was in my early teens. His stimulating books, essays, music and videos tempered with his wonderful sense of humor provided me with different insights while maturing and encouraged my creative and analytical mind, like fine-tuning a delicate instrument. As Alexander the Great said of Aristotle, I say, “Pater meus me dicabat, Anton LaVey me dicabat bene!”

The encountering of some truly magnificent people, who have become our dearest of friends, were the result of affiliation with the Church of Satan (Doktor's brainstorm!). Throughout the years, they have been a source of what we like to refer to as a Satanic Fix: providing encouragement, help and inspiration in our continuing endeavors, and the sharing of ideas, interests and hobbies alien to that of the herd. A true Caball

As an exemplar, Anton was King of his kind. He lived a lifestyle we strive for. He alienated himself from the rush and quell of humanity, making a living from his own creations. As a result, he was able to subject himself to an environment of his choosing. He influenced history and built an immortal empire. A driving force within all Satanists.

Many of our primary goals have been accomplished through application of Satanic philosophy; goals that may not have been so easily obtained had Dr. LaVey not packaged it up so neatly and appropriately. We have much fun upholding and standing at the battlefront of the Satanic Empire. The Church of Satan has enriched our lives and provided Diana and I with a common bond many partners can only dream of having.

These are the words we would have liked to say to Dr. LaVey personally; instead we say them to the part of him that lives within all of you!

The night we heard of Doktor's death, Diana and I brought outdoors Satan Takes a Holiday, turned the volume loud and took a walk in our forest. It was foggy and the red pulsing lights from the twin radio towers provided a film noir ambience as Anton's keyboards resounded throughout the trees. We held hands, laughed, cried, celebrated his life with a toast of our favorite wine and, when we emerged, we were inspired more than ever to work towards our future. Hail Anton Szandor LaVey! Long Live the Satanic Empire!

There remains a fine line between love and hate. We can also hate those whom we have never met. Those whose insecurity makes them vile. Those who would ride on Anton's coattails even in death. Those who have been failures at all they have attempted. You have failed again! You know nothing of loyalty and love. Unlike you who would try to mar his name, Anton LaVey is a success. You will be trampled under all of our cloven hooves! Lex Talionis! Hail Satan!

Anton S. LaVey in the Minds of Many by Curtis M. LeBlanc

I know someone who told me once that when they were young, they had a horrifying dream about seeing a face on television that looked like the Devil. The fire-lit face was speaking to her, asking her to go to Hell. Since this caught my Interest, I asked her to describe the face. She described it in much detail, including a golden ring in one ear, When I questioned whether she had ever heard of Anton LaVey or had any idea what he looked like, she resolutely denied it. "Nope, never 'eard of him." I ran through the graveyard, jumped over the river, pushed through the pricker bushes, swung open the door to my cabin and brought back a copy of Satan Wants You by Arthur Lyons.

“Is this similar to the face you saw in the dream?" I asked, holding up the cover.

"I don't believe it," the astonished girl exclaimed. “That is him!”

Anton LaVey will live on in the minds of many. As the story shows, he'll live in some minds who aren't even aware of it. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? HAIL ANTON LaVEY!

From Debbie Goad:

Anton LaVey was interviewed for Answer Mel's second issue in 1992. I found Anton to be a witty conversationalist and extraordinarily personable individual. At one point during the interview, I was alone in the room with the Doctor. He had a real strong presence. I asked him the first thing which came into my mind, "Do you believe the spirit lives on after death?" His reply was, "If it's a strong enough soul, the spirit will always be remembered." Later on in the evening, he entertained us with his fabulous organ-playing. It was a truly beautiful and magical night.

Besides Anton LaVey, several other people whom have crossed the pages of Answer Me! have passed on-Iceberg Slim, Tim Leary, Donny the Punk, El Duce, and Kurt Cobain-in an indirect, but mentionable way.

In 1997, I myself went through ovarian cancer and a divorce. Life marches on and with it, many changes. But I hope when my time's up, I join all of my friends in the Hereafter, and in the background I see Anton happily playing his organ.

Anton LaVey-Rest in Peace. I love you.

My Cherished Friend by Margie Bauer

My fascination with Dr. Anton LaVey began when I was sixteen years old. Through a friend, I was introduced to two books: The Devil's Avenger by Burton H. Wolfe, and The Satanic Bible (This author needing no introduction, I hopel). Though I had long had an interest in and attraction to the occult and other things dark and mysterious, these works were to be my first introduction to Satanism, and, as it turned out, an important catalyst in my life.

I began reading The Devil's Avenger and couldn't put it down. My romantic imagination had been aroused by this man who led such a diverse and interesting life-from oboist for the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, to carny and lion- trainer to circus and burlesque-house organist, to police photographer and psychic investigator, and, finally, the founder and High Priest of the Church of Satan. I wanted to find out more about the philosophy itself, and in quick succession devoured The Satanic Bible, The Satanic Rituals, and The Compleat Witch. By the time I had finished, I knew I had found "it". It was as if someone had taken all of the things I had always felt, written them down, and given it a name. The idea that someone else thought the same way I did was a revelation. LaVey's philosophy made sense to me because it was-more or less-my own philosophy. By putting the things I had read about into practice, my efforts soon produced tangible results. To my vast delight I had found not only a philosophy that I could apply successfully to real life situations, but also a form of magic that

actually worked. Though I was enthusiastic about my newfound religion, at the time I did not seek official membership with the Church. I felt very strongly that this was a formula that I could use on my own for personal success, and being very much a loner and non-joiner, it was, then as now, not that important for me to work with others. Be that as it may, I still felt an intensely strong connection with the organization-I guess you could say it became one of my obsessions-and I collected anything and everything I could find about it.

Looking back now, it's interesting to remember the many times I crossed paths with Anton LaVey in the eight years before I actually met him-two of those times ending up face to face-but out of respect, I kept going on my way, not wanting to disturb him, and too surprised at seeing him to know what to say anyway. But I often thought how nice it would be to be able to meet and talk with this man who, through his work, had played such an important role in my life.

One night-April 11, 1995 to be exact-I was sitting at home alone and out of the blue felt inspired to write to him, to thank him for his books and to tell him what a great inspiration he was to me. Of course many of you are probably aware that April 11th is Dr. LaVey's birthday, but at the time I wasn't. (When it was brought to my attention later, I found it to be a curious "coincidence"-just the first of many that I was to experience during my later association with him.)

In any case, I didn't mail the letter. Instead I put it away in a drawer, where within the next few days it got shuffled in with all of my other papers, and then forgotten. It wasn't until three months later when I got the urge to sort through my things that it turned up again. I was on the verge of just throwing it away since it had been so long since I'd written it, but something stopped me. I decided to send it anyway and, as an afterthought, wrote an inquiry about The Cloven Hoof-a newsletter someone had told me about-on a separate sheet of paper. I also decided to include my phone number. Little did I know the results this little magical working would produce, for I didn't even recognize it as such at the time.

But magical working it was. Three days later, there was a message on my machine from Blanche Barton telling me how much she and Dr. LaVey had liked my letter, and asking me to give her a call. Indulge me for a moment if I sound a bit dramatic, but even now I remember exactly how I felt as I listened to that message. There is a certain feeling that I get when I know that a significant moment in my life is occurring, a kind of intuition that I have, and whatever it is, it's never failed me. This, I recognized, was one of those occasions. Anyway, I did call her back. We talked for awhile, the conversation ending with an invitation to come over next time I was in the area. Being the Satanic witch that I am, of course, I made arrangements to "be in the area" within the next week, the opportunity presenting itself in the form of a friend who just happened to be going out of town suddenly and needing someone to keep an eye on his place while he was away. So I, of course, made myself available. I could think of little else except for how it would be to walk into that house which had become such a legend to me.

Well, I can tell you that it was certainly no disappointment. It was everything-and more- that I had always hoped it would be. The following morning around sunrise, I floated home, full of an evening of fascinating conversation, jokes, old movies, and music. I felt that I had found "my kind", and I knew that I was going to have to find some way to make myself useful around there. It became important to me to help in any way that I could that would further the goals and ideals of this remarkable man and his organization. And as it so happened, I got just that chance. After several more of these nocturnal visits, it was decided that I should come over on a regular basis, my role becoming that of protegee and an administrator for the Church of Satan.

Let me say in advance that if my impressions of Anton LaVey seem to contradict. each other that's because he truly was a "Man of Mystery". Over the three years that I knew him, the more he revealed of himself to me, the more of an enigma he became. He was an amazingly talented and intelligent man, gentlemanly, charming, funny, at times exceedingly modest, and -dare I say this?—even sweet. Yet he was equally selfish, angry, opinionated, and, as a teacher, extremely demanding. His ability to integrate these seemingly incompatible elements of his personality was, I believe, one of the secrets of his great personal power-he was able to do it in the same way that he was able to make a religion of earthly success and fleshly pursuits. His philosophy was so material that it became spiritual. This integration of opposites-for example, the combining of our base animal instincts with our so-called "higher" intellect-is at the very heart of the Satanic philosophy and is, indeed, the essence of true magic. After all, the Devil has always been the master of contradiction, presiding over a realm where pleasure is pain, up is down, slavery is release, and the light of truth is found only through immersing ourselves in our own inner darkness. In his role as the Devil's chief representative, then, it is only fitting that Anton LaVey should embody this concept of duality so well. (He had so many of the classic characteristics of the archetype he portrayed that he could sometimes cause one to speculate as to whether he wasn't actually the Devil after all!) But, in all seriousness, certainly I never underestimated him. I did and still do believe that he was a man capable of just about anything. Yet, when I remember him now, I think the thing that characterized him most was his humor. It was one of the things I responded to most strongly even before I ever met him. Here was a man who had seen so much of the dark side of human nature, who really did know what secrets lurked in the hearts of men, and who had been through so much in both his personal and public life-yet he still had humor. And the most wonderful thing about it was that there was always something to be learned from his funny stories and parables. A joke was never just a joke, but served in a lighthearted way to drive home a point which he was trying to make, with a punchline that would stay with you even after you could no longer remember the rest of the joke. He taught me many things through the magic of laughter.

My memories of time spent with him are indelibly imprinted on my mind. Being able to remember laughing with him over a funny story he told me, a conversation we had, or one of the many beautiful songs he played for me on his keyboards, serves to comfort me in the difficult time since his death. And yet being a Satanist I am essentially selfish, and it is this selfish part of me that wishes that he could have been around for much longer, so that I could have the pleasure of even more time in his company. To me, that's the hardest part, that knowing that someone you loved and were close to is gone that you will never again get to see them or touch them or hear the sound of their voice, that this unique being that was your friend is no more. One of his sayings that comes to my mind now is that a person is only as important as they make themselves to others. Well, in accordance with his own standards, then, Dr. LaVey was very important indeed, and there will never be another like him. By his very existence he made a difference in this world-he was a living example of his philosophy. He really did practice what he preached, and expected no less from those he allowed close to him. In him I found a true teacher and friend, someone who cared enough about me to take the time to reveal me to myself. That is the most wonderful gift I have ever been given, and I will never stop missing him. He gave us all so much.

Though I am greatly saddened, I feel more driven and determined than ever before. His death has caused me to think of my own mortality, to reflect upon what I have done in my life, and what I still want to achieve. The fact of this vital man, so full of a passionate love for life dying so suddenly once again brought home the realization of just how brief and precious our time on this earth truly is. Since he's been gone, I find myself even more sensitive to the beauty and pleasure in my life, feeling these things even more deeply, as if doing so not only for myself, but also for a friend who no longer can. So in a way, even through his death he has continued to teach and inspire me to the fullest experience of my life.

Finally, it is Dr. LaVey's personal power and the work that he accomplished in his life that will allow him-through us-to live on after his death. The Church of Satan will endure because those of us who are dedicated and sincere in the pursuit of happiness and success in our own lives will make sure that it does. This is now the time when we must re-dedicate ourselves to our selfish endeavours, to further our own aims and by doing so, furthering Satanism. The strongest among us now carry Satanism into the future. And I predict a glorious future indeed, in this, the best of all worlds, World Without End....

HAIL ANTON SZANDOR LAVEY!

HAIL SATAN!

From Clifford Case:

I first became aware of Doktor LaVey in 1969 when I was off Yankee Station, Viet Nam, in U.S.S. Hancock CVA-19. I picked up a copy of Knight magazine and read an article by Burton H. Wolfe about a guy who had really gone beyond the pale and created Milton's Pandemonium called the Church of Satan and himself the High Priest. What really got my attention was the Nine Satanic Statements, especially the 1st and 8th Statements. Satan represented indulgence; lust, sloth, anger.... Boy, that was right up my alley. Sailors, for the most part, are an immoral lot when it comes to wine, women and song. I sent for a copy of The Satanic Bible and read it during the nine-month cruise. Now this was a religion I could really get into. I became a member in 1970 and began wearing one of Kurt Saxon's Baphomets. I like the idea of the Goat of Mendes as a symbol of lust superimposed on the pentagram.

In the '70's, I began looking up and tracking down the people listed in the dedication of The Satanic Bible. While in London, I acquired a copy of The Satanic Bible with the red serpents on the cover. I had read The Compleat Witch and thought those views of the world, of men and women, were written by a shrewd observer and a profound thinker: Doktor LaVey. I found the extensive Satanic bibliography a treasure-trove with which to continue my education in Satanism. I picked up Colin Wilson's books in London and a case of Drambuie in Scotland, an elixir I still use in my coffee. Doktor LaVey's sinister philosophy afforded me many pleasurable hours of reading while at sea.

In 1975, I moved from New England to San Diego. I made an appointment to see Doktor LaVey at 9 p.m. one misty evening. I was greeted at the door of the Black House by a scowling saturnine persona, the mystificateur Himself. As I came under his coldfire scrutiny of a trained eye, I fully expected to be ushered out the egress after a brief conversation as I thought he had other devilish business to attend to, considering me being in my Navy uniform (Goodguy Badge) and rather hidebound with rules and regulations and policies. As it turned out, it was my felix culpa. He was fond of the sea and ships. We sat around a tombstone coffee table and talked turkey while we swigged from a bottle of Wild Turkey. I seemed to have touched some responsive chords on a visceral rather than intellectual level. Seamen, as a class, from the wild life they lead and various other causes, needless to say entertain the most liberal ideas concerning morality and the Decalogue. We take our own views on such matters, caring little for the theological or ethical definitions of others concerning what may be criminal or wrong.

On past the witching hour, the Doktor spoke his sinister verbal magic. He superimposed the American Gothic Dream over the American Tragedy, expressing his disaffected vision of life, his disgust for people, a shuddering disgust, yet patient, half amused. His face reminded me of a resigned Mephistopheles who had discovered the absurdity of the Divine order but has no wish to make improper use of his discovery. Human imbecility was the burden of nearly all that he said while a faint twinkle of amused wonder lit up his eyes. He revealed society as it is, with

blasphemously horrible glee and sadistic joy. He said every man of genius is a stranger on Earth, unlike other men, seeing everything as if from a different angle, mirroring the world in his mind as in those carnival mirrors which distort absurdly all who approach. No one ever had a keener sense of the distressing absurdity of human affairs than Dr. Anton. He lampooned sacred cows left and right. He had nothing but contempt for the mangy flock of mediocrity, yet his genius drove him to describe its crass ugliness in phrases of incomparable accuracy and purple prose. I spent timeless moments as the High Priest, the accredited interpreter, the distiller of its quintessence, revealed Satanism through his intense vision of the modern world. Dr. LaVey unites to the endowment of a painter the power of a rare spycologist, superimposed upon a lycanthropic nature.

During the long night of sea stories and beguiling talk, his eyes seemed to burn with this hard, gemlike flame. He explained various techniques of Lesser Magic for my edification. He said people are always trying to read you, psyche you out, figure out where you are coming from. Lesser Magic allows you to blind-side them every time, then lead them down a blind alley, to boot. That way we each receive our just desserts. All the while, with a sardonic smile, he revealed the joy of Satanic schadenfreude.

As dawn approached, he concluded our tete- a-tete with the most effective Satanic rule: “Forget about morality, ethics, justice. Just remember, there are no rules!" I had always heard of the old cliches like "The exception proves the rule”, “Rules are made to be broken", bend the rules, etc., etc. But now, Shemhamforash! There are no rules!

With this shibboleth in mind, we drank a toast to the Dark Force. "Hail Satan!"

I gathered my coat and hat and stepped out of the dark hallway into the brisk early morning. I felt like I had just met Rasputin, Pan, Darth Vader and Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, all rolled up in one. Which, to my mind, made him appear like a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma. If he had not existed, no one could have invented him. I felt his sinister philosophy of Satanism adroitly separates the sheep from the goats. He provided me much food for thought and action. He enriched my existence and appreciation for life far beyond all others. For this I am forever grateful.

Life is the great indulgence. Although Doktor Anton LaVey has cashed in his chips, somehow, I don't think he is abstaining from anything.

Requiem to LaVey by Vjestica

Anton Szandor LaVey. Never met the man. So what gives me the right to write anything about him? Because he influenced-changed, actually- my life through his teachings, his wisdom, his spirit of fearlessness and the love of challenge. Although my husband has been a Satanist since he was a teen, I fought against the teachings of the Church of Satan for years, despite the fact that I was a very discontented and disappointed Xian. I kept hoping "the Church" of my childhood would get better. It didn't.

I was, like so many people, sucked in by the myths of what the word "Satan" supposedly meant. Words are extremely powerful tools, as Dr. LaVey well knew. The word "Satan" conjures up....what? Animal-even human-sacrifices. Kidnappers. Drug doers and dealers. Blood rituals. Evil-doers. Maladjusted, sick, twisted, emotionally and mentally ill people who are barely making it outside an institution. Lost, pitiful souls, longing for mercy and redemption but without the spiritual strength to gain it. Every "B" grade movie tells us that's what a Satanist is. And every "B" grade movie also tells us that Good will overcome; that angels and god and the blessed ones of Christ will eventually triumph over Evil.

But, finally, I began to examine words for exactly what they are. I think what finally spurred me on is that I am white-my best friend of more than 20 years is black. One day I began talking to her about what words mean and how they are effectively used as negative triggers by those who manipulate and control without real leadership. What does "nigger" conjure up, for instance? Black (in body, heart and mind), stupid, barely human, large, brooding males with rape and killing on their minds.

My friend, Sandra (a devout Xian, by the way), began to agree with me. Sandra and I also began to discuss other words, like "mentally retarded", and what they conjure up in people's minds and the consequent misunderstandings and damage done. Her daughter--my "goddaughter”-is mentally retarded. She is not incompetent, ill- mannered, stupid or unable to care for herself. She is merely not registering as "normal" on so-called IQ tests. Does she need special help and guidance and attention? Sure. But, a lot of "normal" kids could use that too.

To be frank (and I usually am-a fact which most of my Xian, and some of my Satanist, friends are not crazy about), the first book I read (or started to read) about Satanism was a disaster. I began with a copy of The Satanic Witch which contained a forward by Zeena LaVey. Her lifestyle struck me (I was, at the time, a counselor) as going nowhere, and she came across as an emotionally troubled and possibly not very bright young woman with a skewed set of priorities and no tangible goals. Consequently, I read no further than her remarks and promptly put the book-and Satanism-away for another two years. Finally, in desperation after yet another fruitless and frustrating attempt to rejoin the Catholic Church, and finding that I simply could not reconcile myself to endure even one more Sunday, I picked up The Satanic Bible and began reading.

What a tremendous relief reading The Satanic Bible was; it made me realize that I was not alone in my thoughts. I realized there were many others, indeed an entire religion, that saw the world as I had always seen it; the Alien Elite of the Church of Satan.

In that one book, LaVey said everything I had been thinking for many years; that many people are just simply a waste of air. Not that I would-or ever have, or would ever bother to-harm anyone physically. Most people are so full of self- hatred and are so self-abusing and blind to life's realities, that one need do little or nothing to them, for the most part, to ensure that they will have whatever ills they have wrought visited upon them tenfold. I think that this "well-known secret” is the source of the old saying "what goes around comes around”.

Only about a year after I began to really become absorbed in and follow the teachings of Dr. LaVey, I was called to active duty by my Army Reserve unit and sent to Bosnia. As a part of the "pre-deployment" process, I had to declare my religion formally. There were many options open to me, one which would be forever on my personnel file and with me at all times on my dog tags. I certainly could have said "no preference"-many people do-but I knew that then if anything were to happen to me, a Xian minister or priest would be called, and I did not want that anymore. By then, the Xian myth had become abhorrent to me, and its teachings were so downright silly (to say nothing of totally meaningless) to me that I shuddered at the thought that I could be somewhere in a foreign land, dying, with some self-righteous strange man or woman standing over me murmuring absolutely stupid shit and dumping oil on my head in some attempt to "absolve me of my sins” so that my “eternal soul could go to heaven”.

So I chose to declare my affiliation with the Church of Satan. Three fellow unit members were mobilized with me, and expressed their concern about this, having based their sole knowledge of Satanism on "B" grade movies, ridiculous talk shows, and tabloids. I gave each of them the military's approved U.S. Army Chaplain Corps' guidance on the Church of Satan. The two who went to Bosnia with me each kept a copy of it, so they'd know what I'd want done if something were to happen to me. They were never concerned or frightened about my religious affiliation again, and, in fact, defended me unbidden (and probably more vigorously than I would have myself) if anyone so much as questioned my right to be a Satanist.

Since I obviously was not going to go to either the Xian or Jewish religious ceremonies, I practiced my religion, openly, with a small altar my husband sent. This frightened some, enraged others, confused most. There were those who felt the "people in command" should not allow me to openly display my faith. However, those in command knew better, and would never have risked violating my religious freedom, whatever they thought of it.

That's where I think military and civilian life are different-the military being preferable if you are a member of a non-Xian religion. High ranking military officers and non-commissioned officers will not jeopardize their careers to challenge anyone's right to practice a legitimate religion, regardless of what they may think of it.

Many hinted (and some told me outright) that I was jeopardizing my military career (which I had spent twenty years building) by being so open in my allegiance to the Infernal Empire. I was given all sorts of dire predictions of what could happen if I didn't wise-up and "get with the program". But I stood my ground. And, as it turned out, in addition to the "typical" medals that virtually everyone received, I was also given the Army Commendation Medal for my service in Bosnia. And, far from a career in ruins, I have since been sought out by the officers I served under in Bosnia for additional duty tours, because they know I get the job done.

And as for those individuals who went out of their way to cause trouble for me because of my faith, well, at the end of the day, it's their careers that lie battered or broken on the ground.

And so, I have Anton Szandor LaVey to thank for giving me the courage to believe as I must, and never flinch from those beliefs regardless of what those around me think or do.

Did Anton Szandor LaVey Die? by Nemo

There is a rumor being spread by fools that the founder of the Church of Satan, the creator of modern Satanism, the author of The Satanic Bible, The Satanic Rituals, The Satanic Witch, The Devil's Notebook, musician, composer, lion tamer, showman, magician, bon vivant, and expert commentator on the human situation (to name but a few of his interests) has died.

Nonsense!

What is death? Is it the cessation of the breath or the discontinuation of the heartbeat? Is it the quieting of the brain or the dissolution of the physical frame?

For the average man or woman, this is the case. Death comes to the mortal whose ending in the physical is followed by the fading of memories in the few who remember until, in a generation, the name is lost to meaning and the life is as if it never was, forgotten through its mediocrity.

LaVey.

This can never happen to Anton Szandor

Why is this so? It is so because there have been so very few in the history of mankind who have spoken the truth clearly and without compromise, and none so clearly as our High Priest.

In writings which shall never die, the Black Pope spread his description of the truth of life as it is. In a culture burdened with hypocrisy and self- deceit, Anton Szandor LaVey penned the simple truths regarding the carnal nature which makes up the human beast.

He glorified pleasure. He condemned pain. He exalted reason. He practiced what he preached.

How many men have created worldwide religions? Gautama Buddha, Lao Tse, Yeshua the Nazarene, Mohammed. And now Anton Szandor LaVey.

How many religions are based on self- evident realities of life and not on superstitious beliefs and self-delusions? Only modern Satanism. Only this creation of Anton Szandor LaVey.

And when our children walk the ruddy sands of Mars, and when their children cross the starry abyss across the heavens to walk upon worlds yet undreamed of, the religion which worships the true nature of man will walk with them. The popular faiths of the present day will have faded as the memories of Mithras, Bacchus and Osiris have faded, while the ever-living one true religion of carnal man will shine and drive.

No, Anton Szandor LaVey is not dead. His words and his vision are forever. And if there is any meaning to what it means to be alive, it is that one's vision and will should endure.

It is clear that by his will and his vision, Anton Szandor LaVey is immortal. Only those who cling to the dead can die. By his will and vision, Anton Szandor LaVey shall live forever!

The Great Szandor by Thorne

How did he find us? As phantoms of forgotten possibilities crouched in dark corners, creating fantastic universes of strange and epic beauty, from odd bits rescued from humanity's scrap heap of taboos and once-was's, geniuses masquerading as fools and freaks, adventurer outcasts or whorey-temptresses who, despite our apparent talents and magnetic charm, just didn't quite fit in with the herd. Often our very existence excited fear, jealousy or closeted lust. Many of us fought this ostracism by either cowering or striking out in violent confrontation, which only served to alienate us further.

Few through the ages have successfully crossed this social abyss. Fewer still have left much behind in the way of a realistic philosophy. Either they lacked courage, couldn't be bothered, or did not possess the articulate nature to pull it off.

Then came a time of great change in the world, when spiritual, political, sexual and every other social idea was to be put to the test. Humanity was at the crossroads and ol' Scratch arrived in style (of course) to make deals. Like a lightning bolt he rode in, exposing the dark side of man's nature. And like Mr. Wonka, he pushed every button ('cept one, he left that for you and I).

With circus tent and whip in hand, he called the world's attention to center ring. The great Wurlitzer blazed, the big cats poised awaiting his command, he donned his costume horns, spoke the charm of making, and while his nude witches performed the dance of misdirection, a gigantic mirror was hoisted to reflect all of humanity. And like P.T. Barnum before him, he took the suckers for suckers and, for the brave and sensitive, he jimmied the locks of a door to the unknown worlds within us, unveiling a realm of childlike wonders, a tantalizing paradise of strange and exotic creatures that defled explanation, a world where sensitivity and ferocity worked together to define an aesthetic philosophy for living. A life full and sweet and strong. Aware of the dangers and breeding courage and conviction, seeing life's dynamics as a splendid adventure, for bold and vibrant children. For he loved children and animals and music and films and beautiful women and freaks and eccentric geniuses, people who tried and tried and tried and, not heeding the jeering- masses' finale, succeeded in redefining their universe. And perhaps there are not enough trees to supply the paper necessary to mention the things which irritated him. But I believe his rantings also gave him pleasure, and the fire and distinction to lead the life he loved very, very much.

A legend in life

A legend beyond

Life everlasting,

World without end.

My father, my friend.

And although we never got the chance to meet,

You were my silent voice Aloud.

Anton Szandor LaVey: Meetings With a Remarkable Man by Michael Jenkins Moynihan

The shadowy legacy Anton Szandor LaVey leaves behind inevitably confounds any brush strokes used to paint a picture of him, just as he always did to those who tried to tar and feather his name. Indeed, it is impossible to adequately describe his personality and deeds. I consider myself lucky to have had the fortune to meet the good Doktor on a small number of occasions, and these confabulations will always shine in my memory, I would never claim to "know" LaVey, only to have enjoyed the pleasure of his company- all too briefly at that. But one thing I have realized after meeting him is that he is just as equally misunderstood by many who claim to be "Satanists" as by those who vilify LaVey for his own Satanic philosophy.

I can understand well why some dynamic, independent, and perfectly sensible people might scoff at the idea of Satanism; I used to do so myself. Having never acknowledged Christianity in the first place, it is no wonder they feel little need for Satanism, especially as its most visible adherents often seem endlessly comprised of alienated teens or brash rock'n'rollers. If these scoffers had ever happened to sit down next to LaVey in a tavern-not recognizing him, and thinking him no different from any other stranger-and strike up a conversation, the subject of Satanism probably wouldn't even rear its head. Talk could range from that of cars, food, curious customs and human behavior, to love of animals, music, or forgotten lore of yesteryear; the conversation might even broach upon the supernatural. Chances are they would remember it as a meeting with a charming and unpretentious fellow, possessed of a noir gleam in his eye and a penchant for off-color humor. They would recall him as one of the few people they'd met who seemed to truly know the score: aware of the highest and most god-like aspirations demonstrated by exceptional personalities, but equally cognizant of the vast, turgid, and miasmal pits that most of mankind will forever wallow in, be it mentally or physically. No starry-eyed dreamer would he reveal himself as, rather one who knows that it has always been only a select few throughout history who were ever really endowed with the ability of reaching the stars-literally or metaphorically. Such scoffers would have deeply enjoyed conversing with this old curmudgeon who called himself "the Doc," and would hope that they crossed paths with this astute stranger once more, for genuinely wise men are few and far between on this earth. When reflecting on their meeting, the word "Satanic" might never even occur to them. And that, in fact, is the most sinister thing of all.

Just as Nietzsche cast a cold light on the abyss between Übermensch and "human, all too human" in the Nineteenth Century, LaVey is one of the most unforgiving and shining realists of the Twentieth. Reality is a bitter pill, and both pie-in- the-sky Christians and nose-in-the-dusty- grimoire occultniks can expect similar gastrointestinal trouble at some point as it makes its way through their system. Those who refuse to face reality, oblivious to their own interminable foibles and mishaps, were once summed up aptly for me by LaVey as akin to the man who's jumped off the roof of a twenty-story building, and can be heard exclaiming as he flies past the 3rd floor windows, "So far, so good!" Accused of spreading the most dire diabolism to the masses, in truth LaVey was simply handing out high-voltage bullshit detectors. For those who misunderstood him and what he offered, sooner or later they'll embarrassingly find themselves sitting on a 99¢ whoopee cushion.

I raise a toast to the man. May the glasses clink down below.

Reflections from the Second Generation by Phantom

"The infant is learning to walk, and by the first Working Year of his age-that is to say 1984-he will have steadied his steps, and by the next-2002-he will have attained maturity, and his reign will be filled with wisdom, reason and delight." -Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Rituals, 1972 c.e., p.220.

I am what Dr. LaVey has referred to as a Second-Generation Satanist, born during the tumultuous summer of Year IV (1969 c.e.). Two years after the so-called "Summer of Love", darker times were upon the naive youth of the day and the powers unleashed by the good Doctor in 1966 c.e. were beginning to have their effect. The ever- widening culture gap, sexual revolution, influence of music and drug culture and overall questioning of authority and religion was reaching a fever pitch. That year, men had touched the moon for the first time, the Manson killings had horrified America and the music festivals at Woodstock and Altamont exposed the youth of their day more as victims of their culture rather than propagators of some new "age of love". Within two years, numerous rock stars revered as Gods succumbed to the vices they preached as evidenced by the deaths of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, etc. Youthful innocence had perished. In December, 1969 c.e., The Satanic Bible was published, and future generations would never be

the same.

Like most Satanists I was drawn to the dark side from a young age. However, being raised and confirmed as a Roman Catholic (an indoctrination process lasting 13 years), I admit that when I got my hands on Dr. LaVey's long sought-after "forbidden" Bible at age 15, I was perplexed. Where were the blood rituals, human and animal sacrifices, destruction of churches, etc.? Not that I had any intentions of performing such acts, but my curiosity was peaked. Wasn't this what Satanism was all about? Alas, I was taught Christianity too well. This was also during the 1980's, a time when Christian Satanic metal (Slayer, Venom, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, etc.) was at its zenith, along with allegations of repressed memories of ritual slaughter, "Satan-inspired" backwards masking on records, and other Geraldo- like hysteria. The Satanic Bible intrigued me though, for it was truly blasphemous in that it attacked all of the sacred cows of society, not just the pathetic remnants of Christianity. I re-read it and began to realize that Dr. LaVey's brand of Satanism was far deeper and more profound than any of the New Age religion or eastern philosophy books it had wrongly been shelved with at the bookstore. Here was bedrock and, more importantly, it worked.

I had read Burton Wolfe's introduction to the Bible which gave a brief summary of LaVey's life through 1976 c.e, and I couldn't help but wonder, did the Church of Satan still exist? Did LaVey practice his religion anymore? I could locate no information on the subject despite my frequent searches. Adding to my frustration were several so-called occult books which definitively stated that the CoS had broken up in the mid- 1970's after LaVey deluded his flock for easy cash. Although I ignorantly believed such lies, I still

I could not hide my enthusiasm that I had finally found someone who felt the same as I. What

Dr. LaVey had written was an inspiration to me, and I decided to continue my study of his works whether the CoS still existed or not.

By the time I was a senior in high school I became more open about my newly "discovered" religion. As co-editor of the school newspaper, I started my own quote of the month section, liberally sprinkling in passages from Dr. LaVey. I was also finding more LaVey material. A book search at the local library lead me to an original hardcover version of The Compleat Witch or What To Do When Virtue Fails, which I fondly recall receiving dirty looks for while carrying around school. Next followed The Satanic Rituals, which solidified my great respect and admiration for Dr. LaVey. Not only did his writings demonstrate his supreme intelligence and biting humor, but his emphasis was always on magic that produced results in the real world. It was precisely this form of dark pragmatism which I continually sought to apply in my everyday life.

Although I still had much evolving to do, my application of Dr. LaVey's teachings produced immediate and dramatic results. To coin a phrase from Herr Doktor, I was traumatizing all the right people. I took delight in my own alienation and the frustration of others who tried to pigeonhole me into one of the mindless cliques of that time. What appeared to others as odd and contradictory- dressing in black, having extensive knowledge of both classical and death metal music, expressing a fascination with serial killers and mass murderers, yet being a writer and editor for the school paper, a voracious reader, a musician, a Varsity athlete and a member of the Honor Society-made perfect sense to me in my Satanic world view.

It was during my college years that the Arthur Lyons book Satan Wants You was released which provided an excellent chapter on the Church of Satan and gave an update of Dr. LaVey's life up to that point. To say I was pleased that Anton LaVey was still vigorously at the helm of the Church and had in no way recanted his beliefs would be an understatement. It was also around this time that The Satanic Witch was re-released from which I finally obtained the address of Central. After writing for more information, I was impressed to find out that unlike your typical cult or fringe group, there were no rituals or grottos I was required to join, no contacts I had to make, no monthly or yearly dues to pay and no strict title system to compete and fight over. Within weeks I became an active member, although I felt little desire to make contact with others in the CoS. Satanism had worked for me and that's all that mattered. I was simply gratified that I could finally thank the source for such inspiration and unleashing my potential. My membership was simply a way of saying thank you, making a rather small donation and giving credit where it was due.

My learning and understanding of contemporary Satanism deepened dramatically with the release of The Church of Satan and The Secret Life of a Satanist by High Priestess Blanche Barton in 1990 c.e. These books confirmed my strong hopes of what the CoS was all about and Dr. LaVey pulled no punches in declaring that the Church was more discerning in that it now sought "a few good members" who could accomplish things in the real world rather than those who would waste time arguing over the proper pronunciation of a magical entity. However, despite my confidence and enthusiasm, I encountered much ignorance and intolerance for my relatively open beliefs while at college. Attempts were made to sabotage my friendships and reputation by the rumor that I was the resident "devil-worshipper" on campus. Rather than sink to the level of such slimeball tactics and engage in mindless, unending debate (as is too often seen currently on the Web), I took Dr. LaVey's advice to demonstrate my superiority and leadership abilities by frequently making Dean's List, graduating cum laude and by winning election and/or appointment to such posts as president of the honor society, editor of a literary magazine and station manager of the campus radio station. Sure, I hadn't taken over the world, but I had succeeded at what was available to me at the time, which was more than 1 could say about my limp critics.

Soon after graduation I was fortunate to obtain back issues of The Cloven Hoof through the Aes-Nihil catalogue which included substantial portions of TCH published in the 1970's and '80's (later that same year much of the same material would be released as The Devil's Notebook). After reading the voluminous collection, I was again struck by the high intelligence, humor and acute perception and knowledge of human events and foibles Dr. LaVey demonstrated month after month, year after year. For all the criticism Doctor has received throughout his life (and, inevitably, after his death), his writings demonstrate that he was indeed the most knowledgeable and highly evolved Satanist to date and that he earned the title of High Priest by his continued accomplishments. Incidentally, back issues of TCH during the so-called schism period of the mid-70's revealed both Dr. LaVey and the CoS in good spirits and as strong as ever. One must keep in mind that Dr. LaVey, as the accuser, had many enemies as was and still is demonstrated by the barrage of critics who continually try to contradict and disprove the minutiae of LaVey's life. There are those who actually think that by calling into question what circuses LaVey worked for or what famous starlets he had affairs with will somehow detract from the greatness of the man. Unfortunately for them, Dr. LaVey's legacy will remain intact for all eternity in "the brains and sinews of those whose respect he has gained", as the founder of the most powerful and enduring religion on earth.

What was Dr. LaVey's message to myself and others of "Generation 666"? Work. Work hard. Use your alienation and individuality to produce unique and innovative creations which will force the masses to acknowledge the superiority of Satanic thought. The only things accomplished by such Christian tactics as desecrating cemeteries and churches or harming innocent animals is jail time and/or a permanent police record, the destruction of your reputation and the misrepresentation of contemporary Satanism. Resist the temptations of TV and ear-splitting, mind-numbing music. Think, read, study, listen, perceive, sensitize and, most important, live! Keep in mind at least two of the Satanic Sins: Counterproductive Pride and Lack of Perspective. Sure, in an ideal world one can dress in black leather from head to toe everyday, drive a hearse with Baphomets painted on the hubcaps and live in an ancient, haunted castle with secret passageways while creating diabolical works. For those of us not born independently wealthy, however, one must succeed in the real world first. And if that means trading in the black t-shirts, chains and leather pants for a sport coat and suspenders, so be it. If you must work a menial job to support your pursuits in art, music, writing, etc., take pride in your work, knowing there is a higher purpose involved. If you must go to college and/or graduate school for 2,4, or 10 years to obtain your goal, do it! Don't bitch and moan that you must hide your beliefs in the meantime or risk ridicule. We are not martyrs. Leave that for the Christians. Succeed. Rise to the top of your profession. It may and probably will take years to get to the top (remember perspective), but once you're there you make the rules. Then if you want to reveal you're a Satanist and a lifelong CoS member, more power to you. My three years of law school were trying tests of both my knowledge and tolerance level with the herd. However, by applying the principles set forth in the aforementioned texts, I became stronger as a result. Was it easy "sacrificing" three years of my life watching others earn money and seemingly enjoying life while I remained buried in some corner of a library reading obscure legal cases night after night? No, but perspective was key, knowing that once I accomplished my goal I would

1 immediately enjoy the fruits of my labor, no matter how far off it seemed at the time.

Will Dr. LaVey's message be lost upon the youth of the new millennium? Hardly. While his physical presence will be sorely missed, his timeless wisdom and expert teachings will reach generations to come. As has been said many times, Dr. LaVey's passing is a tremendous loss of a great, fascinating and talented man. In a world with so few heroes and role models, he will remain one of mine. Not only was he a pioneer who paved the way for the Second-Generation to continue to progress, but the ideas he mightily put forth into the ethers will continue to live on through the Iron Youth of the future. While I selfishly mourn the loss of one who inspired me to achieve, we should be consoled by the fact that Dr. LaVey was around long enough to witness the "salad days of Satanism" as he often referred to them. He saw the explosion of books, music, grottos, web sites, magazines, TV specials, etc., dedicated to the religion he began over 32 years ago and which gave credit where it was rightfully due. He no doubt understood that the future burns bright indeed. Though I never had the pleasure of meeting him personally, he has had a powerful influence on my life which will not be forgotten. For this I am eternally grateful.

Farewell, our Black Pope. Though your flesh has expired, your many works shall live on forever... Hail Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey! Hail Satan!

Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey My Friend by George Natanson

No, I am not a Satanist...

...although Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey once spent a goodly amount of time trying to convince me I was a Satanist, unaware of the dark blessing which had been bestowed upon me. He had reason for his assumption. I am a journalist and, as Dr. LaVey used to argue, it is a given that all news people are automatically Satanists being cynics, disparagers and skeptics generally believing in nothing, which is the reason they become newsmen but, conversely, is the reason I am not a Satanist. I once served as his acolyte celebrating a Black Mass, and he did appoint me honorary bishop and my wife an honorary witch. I've always felt akin to Faust.

But far more importantly, I am privileged to be considered a friend, a term I highly value, of Dr. LaVey who hereafter shall be referred to as Anton precisely because we are friends.

I was a foreign correspondent for a major U.S. television network covering Latin America from my Mexico City base when I first met Anton two decades ago.

And therein lies a tale...

We met in Mexico on a transplanted Hollywood movie lot on the windblown, bleak Mexican desert in the state of Durango. The hour of the meeting, suitably enough, was near midnight.

It was hellishly cold that night, the desert wind whipping up tiny whirlpools of sand stinging the eye, chafing the face. Damnedly dark, no moon, star clusters did cast faint glows, their delicate rays impotent attempting to penetrate the deep shadows macabrely dancing about desert sand dunes and agitated tumbleweeds racing to escape torrid movie spotlights radiating auroras of relentless glare sweeping over the desolate desert. From time to time the incisive rays picked up tiny spectral figures scurrying about among the Hollywood location set pursuing their disquieting business creating false reality.

Two days before my editor had called from New York: "Get your ass up to Durango," he shouted. "Find out what the hell some movie company is doing, announcing that they've hired the Devil as technical director on some film they're shooting."

Durango was famed for having been invaded by Hollywood. The entire state had long since been converted into one huge sound stage. Movie magic touched everyone, town people, ranchers, just plain folks, Mexican cowhands, blue-eyed immigrant Mennonites (a blessing to directors shooting Americana), women, children all becoming professional extras making welcomed bucks.

The film that excited the network foreign editor was The Devil's Rain, said by the critics to be an "offbeat approach to a story of devil

worshippers." The picture was directed by Robert Fuest starring Ernest Borgnine, Ida Lupino, Eddie Albert. John Travolta was making his film debut in a bit part.

If the critics considered the movie offbeat, so too did I consider the assignment, albeit intriguing. Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey listed in the credits as technical director was not precisely the Devil. He was the next best thing, an expert on Satanism, an illuminate in Satanist circles, founder of the famed Church of Satan in San Francisco.

I knew nothing of Satan except that God having created man in his own image, it necessarily followed that He created Satan, a creature who could take the blame for all man's misfortunes. God wasn't likely to blame Himself.

Satanism for me conjured up all the usual stereotypes, literary Fausts thwarting the Evil One, devil worshippers feasting on babies, macabre midnight dances around bonfires, The Crucible, bewitching and alluring sexual naughtiness.

I'd never heard of Dr. LaVey nor the Church of Satan whose congregation I later learned included famous names in the artistic and political world. Good Satanists all.

It never occurred to me I was walking through the desert that night to meet a man who would become a firm friend. I never fully agreed with Anton's theology, if that's the word, but our friendship never died...as Anton has not.

I was accompanied by a P.R. flack who from time to time produced a welcomed bottle of tequila. His incessant chatter updated me on uninteresting gossip, the film, the stars and crew, the motel and meals. About Anton he had little to say, "He's really weird. Got some crazy idea about devils. Keeps to himself. A nice guy. I like him."

He added that most everyone on location referred to Anton as the Black Pope having to do with the black he always wore, no resemblance to the Company of Jesus intended. However, the Jesuits being considered the intelligentsia of the Roman Catholic Church, Anton would have been a welcome addition.

I asked why shoot a scene at midnight. Why not seven p.m. or eight. Some reasonable hour. The reason, I was told, midnight is usually associated with the Devil. The scene called for a number of misbehaving devil worshippers to be melted down by Satan with the help of special effects. It was Dr. LaVey's job to see that the scene would go as if the Devil Himself were present. Midnight would add to authenticity.

I first saw Anton at a distance, standing alone, his feet firmly planted on what the tequila and my imagination told me was an obscure corner of a middle eastern desert, the Prince of Darkness betting with God that Job would cave in. I looked

up at a tall, six-foot plus, slim, sculptured body of a man peering defiantly into the blackness of the night, challenging the wind and spirits hovering in the darkness.

And black was his dress. The turtleneck sweater, black. Tight fitting pants, black. Highly polished boots, black. He turned when he heard us coming, arms akimbo, legs spread, body rigid. No hat, the smooth skin of his head unmarred by a single hair. Piercing black eyes framed by a staid and solemn face stared intensely into mine holding me transfixed for a brief eternity. Racing through my mind was the thought...if soul I have, this guy is looking directly into it.

The P.R. guy acted as Master of Ceremonies. Holding back a grin, "Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey. The Devil Incarnate."

Under other circumstances I might have politely chuckled at his P.R. wit. Actually, I was a bit psyched-out. The evening had been spiked with ample tequila, the dinner conversation ran to devil worshippers, Satanic themes, engrossing talk of the man who laid no claim to being Satan but left no doubt, as far as I know, that he was Satan's Vicar on earth.

With all this the day quite literally culminated on my finally seeing Anton. I felt I'd been served a cocktail mixed in hell. Yes, I was a bit psyched-out.

But, happily, everlasting fire and brimstone were not for me, not on that night anyway. The P.R. guy holding back a grin, broke the spell announcing, "Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey. The Devil Incarnate." Anton thrust out his hand smiling, his voice, as expected, rumbling up from the depths, "Hello, I was told you were coming just to talk to me. Good to see you."

The shoot lasted until five a.m. We talked over breakfast and through the morning while my camera crew chased around getting footage. Later, an on-camera interview with Anton. I pounded out a decent script...and collapsed.

From the first moment of contact, I realized I was working with a sagacious, astute intellectual who wasn't playing games. Throughout, Anton was courteous and patient. However condescending and smart-ass my questions, which I confess were formed out of ignorance and prejudice (defined as adverse opinion based on preconceived judgment of something I knew nothing about), he refrained from replying as if to a ten-year-old child. Given what he stood for, the man who established the Church of Satan worldwide was, after all, accustomed to dealing with presumptuous, arrogant reporters.

By now I was intrigued, deciding to stay on for a few days to pursue the matter further. Anton was pleased when I told him, perhaps delighted with the prospect of snaring a recruit. He proved to be persuasive and I might have succumbed had it not been for my confused and unsettled youth. My father, a Jew whose religious identification was vague if at all. My paternal grandmother, a fervent orthodox Jew. My mother a Roman Catholic but, like father, of little religious persuasion. My maternal grandmother, a fervent Catholic. Many years of battle ensued. At stake, a Chassid student, or, a devout seminarian. My mother and father declared no contest in the struggle, happy they were in their world of show business.

But neither grandparent emerged victorious. Instead, the intense chaotic religious rivalry led an exhausted, disconcerted youth to enroll in the School of Thomas, a life-scholar dedicated to the pursuit of Doubt...which logically leads to the practice of journalism. With his mind thus opened, the sowed seeds of doubt harvested what he liked to call his Catechism of Quandary questioning the existence of an omnipotent deity. the reality of faith and a myriad of other ambiguous theological puzzles. Not the least of these, if the presence of an almighty god is questioned, does it not follow that the reality of devilry must equally be rejected? Thus, I could never fully agree with Anton. I could never match his religious fervor.

A lifetime of wanderings in my profession spiked with curiosity of spiritual matters, has brought me in contact with priests, evangelists, rabbis, gurus, mullahs, wise men, scientists, even politicians informally discussing spiritual matters. (A Bolivian dictator following a particularly bloody military coup thanked God profusely for His help.) Now, for the first time, I had access to the High Priest of the Church of Satan. Would I ever find a more authentic Devil's Advocate?

I spent three intellectually exhilarating days with Anton, engrossing conversations interrupted only when he had to break away to advise the film's director on how the Devil would react to whatever his worshippers were up to.

Anton was a storehouse of knowledge, quite esoteric but credible. He was philosopher, writer, poet, theologist, demonist. He quoted with ease from the world's sacred books, Christianity's New Testament, Judaism's Tanakh, Islam's Quran, Buddhism's Dhammapada, the Hindu Rig Veda, and, of course, his own Satanic Bible. He was quite adept at taking my arguments, twisting them around to laughingly prove I was a Satanist.

At meals with the film's stars, director and other notables, heated arguments were inevitable. Satan was our unseen guest. For all the Hollywood fame about the table, it was fascinating to be seated with the Devil's ambassador, Anton Szandor LaVey.

Mexico is a nation of mysticism. It occurred to me Anton would enjoy a visit to Mexico City on the completion of the film. He came expressing festive delight, armed with penetrating curiosity. Together we explored the mysteries and exceptional beauty of the Aztec capital.

We traveled one day outside Mexico City to the ancient, 2000 years-plus old city of the gods, Teotihuacan, the largest and among the oldest pre- Columbian ruins in the Americas. It is said the history of Mexico began in Teotihuacan, in the shadows of the Pyramids of the Moon and Sun.

Seat of the gods? Many believe so, especially the descendants of those who once inhabited the ancient city and today live in the surrounding valley. Walking the length of the Avenue of the Dead to the Palace of the Quetzalpapalotl ("Quetzal-Butterfly") we wondered half seriously if the gods might communicate with us. We climbed to the top of both the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun viewing the valley below us where the great rain god Talco watched over the land to provide the bountiful harvests.

Judging by the number of artifacts Anton bought up, it seemed as though he was determined to transplant Teotihuacan to San Francisco. I would guess it was a collection representative of all the phases of Teotihuacan over its several thousand years of silent history.

I wonder if there still might be among the Teotihuacan memorabilia Anton took home with him a small object given him by a little boy, an obvious descendent of the original inhabitants of this land. We were about to leave when this seven- or eight-year-old approached us with small replicas of the ancient gods neatly displayed on a tin tray. Speaking rapidly, he assured us they had been dug up from around the area and were therefore authentic having been made by the ancient people.

As Anton spoke no Spanish, I interpreted. At that moment a passing official seeing two "gringos", remarked in Spanish, "Careful," pointing to the objects held by the boy, "they're fakes. Made yesterday."

Anton thanked the man for his concern but added, "Not fakes at all, really. This little boy, his father and all others who worked yesterday or whenever to make these relics are probably the sons and daughters of the ancient peoples who built and lived in this city. Objects made by these same hands can't be fakes.”

I translated. The little boy listened. The official smiled and walked on. The little boy looked up at Anton and said in Spanish, “You said something about my father, no? Thank you, sir. My father is a great man. Take this!" thrusting a small object into Anton's hand, running off leaving Anton holding a small likeness of a Teotihuacan god. What can I say except that a beatific smile came over Anton's face, one simply not in keeping with the popular image of Satan.

Le Messe Noir

Word circulated through a Mexico City contact that Anton was in town; people called wanting to meet with him. Satanists all...Mexican artists, entertainers, intellectuals, and an occasional political activist. Among the latter, an extraordinary lady, wealthy, invited us to her home on the outskirts of the city, a home overflowing with colonial antiques, priceless objets d'art, and, a rare oddity. Our lady's devotion to Satanism was in-depth. She received us in her drawing room standing before a gold-plated repulsive sculpture of majestic proportions taking up one whole side of an otherwise well-appointed

room.

Satan!

Grotesque is a kindly word to be applied to the seven-foot beast-like teratold. No other term so aptly describes this apparition, haunter of children's nightmares. The hideous horned head thrust forward, the eyes protruding from depths leering out of Armageddon. Thick, muscular gnarled arms reaching out to grasp in tight embrace whoever, whatever ventured near, its elephantine body hunched over, ready to spring.

Deep from within its darkened thighs stemmed a gigantic two-foot long pulsating, or so it seemed, monstrously hardened sex organ on the head of which perched two tiny horns.

Its dominance was hard to ignore. Invited to meet with Anton that afternoon were several lady friends of our hostess. Satanist shop-talk followed, I translating, at times tripping over unfamiliar words and phrases akin to Satanism. The women implored Anton not to leave Mexico without celebrating a Messe Noir. Actually he needed little persuasion. Turning to me, he asked that I be his deacon (I'm tempted to say altar boy). "I'd be delighted," answering with the warm glow settling over me by the fine wines being served. I warned, however, that being ignorant of the Black Mass, I would have problems translating. Anton saw no problem. He would be patient; he would guide me.

Three of us would participate, the third being our hostess happy to be the nude human altar as stipulated by ritual. The Mass would honor His Lordship Lucifer under whose imperious eye the preparations were made.

A date was set, evening, three days hence. Time was needed to gather black candles, a thurible, gong, chalice and other implements. An ample congregation would be present. The Messe Noir would be celebrated in the flamboyant drawing room, a couch so placed before Lucifer that our human nude altar could lie comfortably under His over-sized genitalia.

The Messe Noir celebrated that evening was essentially the same as that described in The Satanic Rituals, the few changes and exclusions not altering the essence of the ceremony. I'm sure readers of The Cloven Hoof need no detailed description of the Black Mass. I limit myself to highlighting several incidents, one in particular, which left on me an indelible impression. And to which I take a holy (or unholy?) oath to be the truth.

Thirty-odd invited guests assembled on the appointed evening. Anton wore a red cape with a white fur collar, I a hooded black robe. The couch under the testis had a red covering. The hour approached, our lady entered the salon wearing a mink coat, standing before the couch she disrobed, revealing a lovely naked body. Aware of her own beauty she poised briefly before gracefully reclining onto the couch crossing her arms over her full breasts accepting in each hand the lit black ritual candles I brought to her.

Under any other circumstances the sight of that lovely naked body, the smooth rounded hips inviting ecstatic joy, would have set off erotic sensitivities. Stupid fantasies swept my mind. Carpe diem. A wistful wish that this Messe Noir were but a Saturnalia. Get thee behind me, Satan. No, I couldn't possibly have thought that, although perhaps I did. I was, in a word, scared.

That the Black Mass was no less reverent than a Christian service to those present I have no doubt. I believe they believed that Satan was out there somewhere waiting to be called. I make no attempt to define Satanism but I could not help but be profoundly affected by the heavy atmosphere of Satanism that settled upon us all that night.

Along with my doubts of Christianity and other theologies, it follows I would also doubt Satanism. If I interpret Anton correctly, neither God nor Satan can exist one without the other. Satan serves as a useful scapegoat for man's misfortunes. Yet, Christian beliefs drilled into me in my youth do not die easily. Was I committing Christology's most dreadful crime, blasphemy?

I was snapped out of my phobic reverie by a snap of Anton's fingers. Time was out, the Messe Noir would begin. I was to serve Anton, the celebrant, and translate his English recitation into Spanish. The Latin and Sanskrit would have to do for themselves.

All lights were extinguished except for the candles and one small wall lamp with a single candle-like bulb casting a dim glow but a few meters from where Anton officiated. Berlioz' Danse Macabre played softly in the background. 'Anton's resonant voice intoned the prescribed words. He had that evening provided me with a hastily written English script of the litany which I attempted to translate as we went along. I stumbled frequently, as when Anton proclaimed in a thunderous voice what I imagine is the Satanist creed, a part of which I recall. I paraphrase, it's been a long time: Satan-Lucifer rules the earth, we honor Him without reservation in exchange for having our desires and endeavors fulfilled.

My thoughts ran to Faust.

I ran into another problem attempting to translate the Messe Noir version of the Lord's Prayer with its twist to it.

My heart jumped to my throat when Anton raised the chalice with its wine, his offering to Satan, turning abruptly to me, thrusting the chalice in my face: "Drink!" he ordered. I did.

Came the moment when he raised the ceremonial knife over his head, pointed down at the breast of the naked altar...suddenly plunging it swiftly toward her midriff, stopping just short of ravaging the smooth, tender, soft, morina-toned skin.

She gasped.

So did I.

Then the crisis, the phenomenon as I prefer to call it. It occurred at the end of the Mass. Anton, his hands clasped, arms at length above his head, his stentorian voice reverberating off the walls calls out, “AVE SATAN! COME TO US FROM THE FOUR CARDINAL POINTS OF THE EARTH. AVE SATAN." I translate.

Response in Spanish from the assemblage: "AVE SATAN-COME TO US." 1 translate. Anton: "AVE SATAN-COME TO US-COME TO US FROM THE EAST...FROM THE SOUTH...FROM THE WEST...FROM THE NORTH...AVE SATAN, COME TO US." No further need of translation.

Response: "AVE SATAN-COME TO US." Anton: "AVE SATAN-COME TO US." At which point Satan came!

(It is from here that I take my oath. This is what I am consciously aware of what occurred; witnesses concur.)

...A series of loud, sharp, piercing cracks. Flames shoot out from the small wall lamp, streaks of flame from the upward-pointed socket. The flames blaze out, the sound louder, cracking, sizzling. Streak after streak. Seconds explode into timelessness.

Anton and others rush to quell the flames. Everyone except me. I am transfixed, my imagination dances away into the netherworld.

(From here I step down from my oath.) Looking back at when all hell quite literally broke loose, I've wondered if I really did at the moment of the flames, hear a raging, beastly snarl behind me. Did I really hear the Lord of Darkness shake loose his bindings, his gigantic feet thumping across the floor, swooping down to clasp the exquisite nude altar to his loathsome body, whisking her away to his lair beyond the depths of the River Styx?

I turned. Lucifer was still there glaring at me from the darkness. Only she had disappeared. But not forever. I later saw her...fully clothed (sigh).

Satan? Short circuit? Someone playing tricks? I doubt it.. I would have had to know. I was the only bilingual.

Since then, I've tended to think myself more the humanist...at least I can doubt without sinning.

Anton, however, was never at a loss. He came to me later, his eyes aglow, “Did you feel His strength?"

Anton Szandor LaVey by Peter H. Gilmore

His name rings out-a clarion call to those who recognize their true nature, the human animals who are proud to call themselves "Satanists". He was a man who looked, and saw, and acted upon that knowledge. His great genius was to weave together seemingly disparate threads from many cultures and times, as he recognized them as emanating from a single, caliginous source. His powerful intellect and fleshly intuitions guided him to create that dark tapestry, shot through with flaming highlights and silver lightning bolts, whose substance comes from the very Lord of the Inferno Himself. Thus Anton Szandor LaVey was compelled to forge the first church in Western history to be consecrated in the name of Satan, and thereby he shouted proudly to the world that the Left-Hand Path was his course, and he would take it further than had any of those who came before him.

He made it possible for us, his kin-for Satanists are born and not made-to know and embrace our true legacy, that of the great men and women in history who were inspired to pioneer new realms of understanding. They used the great key of doubt to ask the questions left unasked, to travel to the lands, both physical and conceptual, which had remained previously unexplored, and thus forbidden to all but the bold.

Anton LaVey was one of these bold animals, complete in his understanding and brave enough to stand before his fellows and challenge the hide- bound platitudes that bind the complacent masses. His wisdom was not meant for all, as many are not born burning with the ardor of the Black Flame within. He knew that such will always seek after the false spiritual realms in an effort to fill that emptiness which gnaws them from within. He warned his fellows to beware, for we are few and they are many, so we must walk with care amongst these living dead.

LaVey saw one of the fulcrum points upon which the conceptual weight of the world finds balance, and he knew how to push, altering the course of perceptions in a way that will have repercussions for millennia. He was truly a titan among men, and though we are the poorer for no longer being graced by his personal presence, his burning ideas have a life of their own that is crystallized in those who know that it is their Will to continue along the trail which he blazed with such brilliance.

He was gifted beyond what is normally considered a standard for excellence, being able to turn his hand to many arts with a deftness often only attained by dedication to but one muse. He left a creative legacy that enriches us, and he lived his life as the true exemplar of all that he extolled- pursuing his pleasures without stinting, while producing works only attained through the most vigorous self-discipline.

Anton Szandor LaVey touched many of us, and most particularly those who had the great privilege of being welcomed into his personal circle. But he will continue to touch many, even generations yet to be conceived, for he captured parts of himself in his writings, his music, and his videos, that will galvanize all true Satanists to stand forth with might and Understanding, dual weapons which cannot fail to bring victory.

We owe him our gratitude for opening the adamantine gates of Hell itself, giving form and structure to a philosophy that names us as the Gods that we are. His ultimate blasphemy against the puling sheep was to shatter their idolized dictum that all men are equal. His comrades, living as true Devils, would thus exercise their faculties to judge and be judged in all that they do. He dethroned the external saviours and championed responsibility for all consequences, perhaps the most frightening principle in a world wherein none are held accountable for their actions.

The Church of Satan is a tenebrous cabal of those who work to continue human society's momentum along the vector set by Anton LaVey. And it shall remain the treasured domain of the imperious few, the mighty-minded who live by their own blood and brains-who sail the ebon river into the bourne of darkness which welcomes only those who bear the blazonry of almighty Satan upon their very souls.

Anton Szandor LaVey, we salute you! Upon our faces we bear the humorous smile of privileged information, the outward ensign of our tribal bond with thee, who wore this ironic standard so very well. You are forever in our hearts and minds. Hail Anton Szandor LaVey! Hail Satan!

From Gregg Turkington:

One thing that slips through the cracks when lists of LaVey's accomplishments and charms are being read, is his encyclopedic knowledge of esoteric, forgotten music. From an early age, LaVey was sharp enough to pick up oddball items as they were being released and his collection is a treasure trove of worthwhile obscurities. Many long-forgotten songs lived on not only in his collection, but in his memory-the Doctor could always be counted on to dish up his own great renditions of hundreds of songs, on the spot, for those fortunate enough to be in his kitchen (where the keyboards were kept) at 3 or 4 a.m. (This knack for gathering up hidden gems, of course, extended on to films and books as well.)

I'm just glad that I was able to be involved in bringing some of LaVey's home recordings to the public. I particularly had a fondness for his vocal stylings: unrefined and a little croaky, but full of personality and dramatics. Most of his recordings were first or second takes, with no keyboard overdubs.

It is a terrible loss. He was an incredibly sharp, witty, creative man with many facets and talents in addition to those generally known to the Satanic community.

Traditional eulogy, translated and submitted by Tani Jantsang:

Oh Master of words, Anton Szandor LaVey, the world is joyful at their hearing and thus do all who hear become attached to you. We are respectful. Many flee and hover here or there, but there is a perfect Beingness that offers you homage.

Fools cannot understand how a living

entity can quit the body but one whose eyes are trained in Knowledge can see this. For one who has taken birth, death is certain and for you who have taken death, birth is certain:

"You knew me as the Unborn One, the Beginningless, the Dark Force that permeates and motivates all of Nature: the Lord of the World. As such, you were undeluded. The splendor of the sun you knew is due to me. How I enter each planet and by my Will they stay in orbit: I supply the Flame of Life. The cosmic order is under me as is the whole of cosmic annihilation; I am All Devouring Darkness and the Generator of All That Is. I pervade.

"Among the Daimoni you are the devoted High Priest.

"Now that you have quit your body, remember me: you will attain my Nature.” HAIL SATAN!

Ode to Satan by Adam Parfrey

A great admission. I admired Anton Szandor LaVey for his individuality and talent far more than the codification of his ideas for the benefit of followers-and detractors.

Don't get me wrong. There are very few things Anton wrote, said, or codified with which I disagree. But those who require lawbooks to follow in order to regiment their lives are not the sort of crew who seem to have many ideas of their own, or are bursting with creative spark. In retrospect, it's obvious that Anton was more keen on meeting actual accomplished individuals than soporific suck-asses.

Anton epitomized the sort of individual no longer created-what the British once revered as "eccentric" because of their refusal to follow the mainstream lifestyle or belief system. He was the Last of the Independents.

Now that the politically correct multinational multicultural New World Corporate Order has come to exist, Anton LaVey should be revered and respected as a now-vanished breed. His ideas and writing inspire, but I think I'll miss him much more as a person, as a being, than a shepherd of followers.

Outside of my father, I've never missed the passing of an individual so much.

So Long, Doc by K.S. Anthony

Anton Szandor LaVey came from and lived in a world that I long for, catch glimpses of, and have even visited, but missed by forty years or more. Whatever attempts I have made at staying in it have fallen apart. How? People infect it. The modern replace the archaic. Worst of all, whatever friends you make from that time die sooner than you are ready for them to. The old make way for the new and the new don't know shit from shinola. It's the affliction of the age: we are surrounded by stupes, chumps, and loud-mouthed assholes.

Doc LaVey was indeed the last mystery man. We'll never see another like him. He was all the things I wanted to be as a kid and possessed all the truly occult knowledge I began to glimpse as an adult. There are some things in his books that are not printed in ink but can be read nevertheless. While others look for secret wisdom in paperback Necronomicons, some of us find our wisdom from the places and people that most people find terrifying, or worse yet, out of style. I was lucky enough to have been brought up by literate, intelligent parents who exposed me to a wide variety of characters to whet my appetite for the one, the great magical teacher: hands-on experience. Doc LaVey knew a thing or two about experiencing life and saw more of it in 67 years than some people would see if given a thousand lifetimes. I think of what my father once said to me when I was 14 or so: "Son, in this life, live and live dangerously." I certainly try to. With heroes like Doc LaVey to look up to, I don't have a choice.

I've done all I can to find the remnants of the hard-boiled world Anton LaVey has lived in and talked about. It's where I feel at home. I'm not talking about artifacts or antiques. I'm talking about the cold, dark alleys that even junkies stay away from, the smoky bars where yuppies and trendy proles don't dare venture, and the sleazy backstreets that will eat you alive if you're not keeping your good eye open. In the best of these places, I'm an old friend, recognized as the kid who used to come around everyday and wait outside for the bar to open. I'm remembered as the dumb shit- who couldn't change a keg without ending up covered with beer; the kid who would run errands for the old man and get paid in booze. I can walk in the rain and the cold, truly intoxicated with my surroundings. I'll watch the hookers and the people going in and out of restaurants, wondering who they are and where they're going. In the end, the names all change and all the old faces go away and never come back. In the end, I'm left with stories that no one cares about. In the end, I'm left looking for the dreams that people seem to forget about and leave behind. I would've liked to share a few with Anton LaVey. I suspect he might've had some stories of his own, and some idea of where those dreams go.

One of these nights, I hope to find that barroom full of dreams and memories. When I do, I'll raise a glass to Anton Szandor LaVey and buy my rounds, not forgetting the goateed fellow in the corner with the curious bulge under his jacket.

So long, Doc. You are sorely missed.

The Nicest Man I Ever Met by Larry Wessel, Purveyor of Fine Whoopee Cushions

There I was, standing on the sidewalk on a cold damp San Francisco night. I wasn't just standing on any old stretch of sidewalk. I was standing directly in front of the Church of Satan! I didn't want to be late so I arrived fifteen minutes early. Pacing back and forth under the street lamp, I stopped occasionally to stare up over the barbed- wire fence at the old dark Victorian. I noticed thousands of sharp nails jutting out from every square inch of its rooftop.

I was carrying two presents that I wanted to give to Dr. LaVey on the occasion of our first meeting. Each gift was wrapped in purple and black op-art paper with big black ribbon bows. I checked and re-checked my wristwatch. 10...9...8...I straightened my tie...7...6...checked my fly...5...4... took a deep breath...3...2...1...I pressed the buzzer at the front gate. Just then a white van pulled up and parked behind me. I turned around and the front passenger-side door opened revealing the man who I came to visit, Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible. He quickly stepped up to greet me. "Larry! At last we meet!!" Grinning from ear to ear, Dr. LaVey introduced me to Blanche Barton, to that handsome little devil, Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey, and to Tony, his "Major-domo".

We walked up a flight of stairs, entered through the front door, and proceeded down a long pitch-black corridor leading to the Doktor's library. Once inside the library, Dr. LaVey, Xerxes, Tony and I sat down and Blanche went into the kitchen to brew up some delicious coffee. Dr. LaVey started off the conversation by thanking me--- "Thank you for sticking your neck out, Larry." He was referring to Nick Bougas' great "Speak of the Devil" documentary. he said that I managed to "sum-up the entire philosophy of Satanism" in my segment of Nick's film. He particularly enjoyed my use of the word "irk”. I testified in “Speak of the Devil" that I often used the Destruction Ritual as outlined in The Satanic Bible to get rid of those who irked me. He said that the inclusion of the word "irk" in my vocabulary gave him no doubt of my superior intelligence. Needless to say, we were fast becoming the closest of friends!

I handed him the first of the two presents I brought for him. He opened it very carefully and examined the label on the 78 rpm phonograph record. It was "The Darktown Poker Club" by Phil Harris. He was obviously delighted! He said that he had met Phil Harris on the set of the Steve Allen Show where they were both booked as guests. He presented Phil Harris with a Church of Satan membership card backstage. Phil was elated! He told Dr. LaVey, "I'm a born Satanist!"

The second gift that Dr. LaVey unwrapped was a remote-controlled electronic Whoopee Cushion. The R.C.E.W.C. comes in two parts. The first is a small black box that is placed underneath the victim's chair. The second part is a remote control button that can be secreted in one's pocket and pushed from a distance of up to 50 feet. When the remote control button is pushed, the black box emits a sound better imagined than described. Dr. LaVey laughed and laughed as he continued to make the little black box fart. A couple of weeks later I got a call from Harvey Stafford who told me that while sitting on the couch in Dr. LaVey's library, fart sounds were being emitted from underneath his seat making him very embarrassed and uncomfortable!

I told Dr. LaVey that I too was a childhood customer of the wonderful Johnson-Smith Catalogue. I had also been a teenage employee at a little novelty emporium in my hometown called "The Mad House". I told him that at the age of eleven I had a sixth-grade teacher by the name of Mrs. Bernard. Mrs. Bernard was a very dull and boring teacher. On Fridays and rainy days she would “treat us" to grueling slide-shows of her European vacations. Every other slide featured her buck-toothed, flat-topped and freckled son, Jim. "Here's Jim in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa," she would say. "Oh, here's Jim in front of the Louvre," ad nauseum. Well, the whole class dreaded rainy days and Fridays! I took up a collection of lunch-money change and after school I visited The Mad House, the novelty-shoppe that I would later work at as a teenager. I purchased a Whoopee Cushion and brought it to school on Friday morning. At recess before the last class of the day, I snuck into Mrs. Bernard's classroom, inflated the Whoopee Cushion and placed it under the pillow on her chair. The bell rang and within five minutes Mrs. Bernard's classroom was filled to capacity. The whole class was in on my prank! After writing some nonsense on the chalkboard, Mrs. Bernard slowly sat down in her chair unleashing that horrible noise better imagined than described! The classroom erupted in laughter. There was only one person not laughing: Mrs. Bernard! Her face turned a deep shade of crimson as she awkwardly removed the deflated Whoopee Cushion and proceeded to cut it into long pink rubber strips with her oversized pair of scissors. She said that no one would be allowed to leave her classroom until someone confessed. Nobody said a word. Not a single snitch! We all stayed in her classroom until about fifteen minutes passed the tolling of the last bell. Mrs. Bernard finally gave up and let us all leave. She never showed her boring European vacation slides again!

Dr. LaVey asked me about what I was working on and I told him that I was in the process of editing Taurobolium, a documentary about bullfighting shot entirely in Tijuana, Mexico. He told me that he considered himself to be a very serious aficionado and that he attended his first bullfight in Tijuana at the age of twelve. His favorite matador was the great killer of bulls, Juan Belmonte. He said that he was particularly struck by the beautiful music of the bullring, the pasodoble. He told me that when he took over as the regular calliope player at the Clyde Beatty Circus that it was these bullfight pasodobles he heard as a child that he would play for the big cat acts. One of the great circus performers that he accompanied on calliope was Hugo Zachinni, “The Human Cannonball". He said that halfway through the show, an enormous cannon would penetrate a wall of curtains and point itself directly at the circus audience like some gargantuan steel penis and remain there for the entire intermission for everyone to contemplate!

The conversation returned to bullfighting and Dr. LaVey told me how disappointed he was that Barnaby Conrad's El Matador Saloon in San Francisco played host to only jazz musicians. El Matador was a museum of tauromaquia but lacked one element in order to make it a total environment: the music of the bullring! Dr. LaVey said that he offered to play organ interpretations of this music but Barnaby turned him down (Barnaby didn't know what he was missing!). Blanche brought us a tray of chocolate cookies and hot coffee in black mugs decorated with Baphomet sigils! We adjourned to the kitchen where

Dr. LaVey had set up his racks of synthesizers. He immediately launched into a forty-five minute medley of bullfight pasodobles! No sheet music was to be seen. he did this all from memory. His music was so evocative of the good times I had in Tijuana that I was moved to tears.

He also played an incredible version of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", "Danse Macabre" (my favorite), the girlie-show classic "Jungle Queen", and the theme songs to the films Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Viva Max! Again, Dr. LaVey was evoking more beautiful memories. I told him that my father's two favorite films were Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Bullfighter and the Lady. I said that although I had seen the John Huston film a hundred times that I had never seen Budd Boettcher's The Bullfighter and the Lady. Dr. LaVey told me that he just happened to own a copy. He asked me what my plans were for the next evening. I told him my schedule was wide open. He suggested that I come over earlier the next night and that he and Blanche would take me out to Joe's of Westlake for dinner and then we would return to the Black House for a screening of the film. After hugging Blanche goodnight, I walked down the stairs into the cold morning air. It was daybreak. Time flies when you're having fun! I had just spent the last ten hours with Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey!

The next night, Dr. LaVey wanted me to read something that he had just written. It was an essay about the remote-controlled electronic Whoopee Cushion that I had given him! He told me that it was to be published in a book whose title I must not reveal. The essay detailed all the battles and wars in history that could have been won through the deployment of the remote-controlled electronic Whoopee Cushion! It was classic incendiary LaVey laced throughout with his peculiar brand of gallows humor. I felt honored to be the one to have inspired this beautiful tract.

We had a delicious meal at Westlake Joe's and in between bites of petite filet mignon, Dr. LaVey talked about the Midnight Spook Show circuit and the pleasure he would derive from dropping wet spaghetti from the balcony of a darkened movie palace onto the heads below while yelling in a creepy voice, “Worms! Worms!!" He would then drop grapes and yell, "Eyeballs! Eyeballs!!"

We returned to the Black House to watch a videotape of The Bullfighter and the Lady. This is the film my father has been raving about for my entire life and here I was at the Church of Satan seeing Joy Paige for the first time! Although this film stars Robert Stack and Gilbert Roland, it is Joy who steals the show and stole my heart! Joy was Jack Warner's (the movie mogul) daughter and he forbid Joy to ever appear in another picture. The Bullfighter and the Lady was the first and last movie she was ever in. Tears welled up in my eyes at the end of the film and I looked over at Dr. LaVey and he too was overwhelmed by this beautiful 1951 film-noir classic. We entered the kitchen where he performed another wonderful concert on the keyboards. At the conclusion of the concert, there was a surprise in store for me! I was presented with a Church of Satan membership card and was given the choice of a Baphomet medallion or Baphomet lapel pin. "I prefer the lapel pin," said Dr. LaVey. "It reminds me of a Masonic Lodge pin." I chose the lapel pin. I was now a card-carrying member of the Church of Satan! After this incredible time spent with Dr. LaVey, I felt a deep sadness on Highway 5 as I was leaving San Francisco behind me. A few months later, a plain manila envelope arrived in the mail. It had a San Francisco return address I didn't initially recognize. I opened it up and pulled out what appeared to be a diploma. At the top was an embossed upside-down pentagram pierced with a lightening bolt-Dr. LaVey's personal symbol! In the upper left-hand corner of this certificate is printed, "From the office of Anton Szandor LaVey". In bold letters down the center, it reads: BE IT KNOWN, ON THIS DAY, OCTOBER 1, XXIX, LARRY WESSEL HAS BEEN APPOINTED TO THE OFFICE OF PRIEST OF THE CHURCH OF SATAN AND IS EMPOWERED TO ACT IN THAT CAPACITY. It is signed: ANTON SZANDOR LaVEY.

This certificate hangs proudly displayed in a garish Baroque-Roccoco frame above my videotape editing console. It is there to remind me of my friend from the darkness, the man who shares my views, cage boy and roustabout, lion- tamer and calliope player, funhouse blow-hole operator and hypnotist, burlesque organist and the first registered Theremin player in the city of San Francisco, photographer of cheesecake and crime scenes, psychic investigator and ghost-buster, magician and lecturer, founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible, and the nicest man I ever met...Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey!

From Carlos Romero:

Remember 1968? In Viet-Nam the Communists had launched the most intense attack of the war against the American troops and our valiant soldiers had not only repelled the many- fronted attacks, but had defeated the enemy.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., it was a time when cowardice and draft-dodging was fashionable; facing one's obligations and facing danger was avoided and was acceptable behavior.

Viet-Nam veterans came home to a whining populace that either did not care for or was against them and publicly showed their lack of appreciation. This setting caused many of our veterans, including me, distress and even depression.

Fortunately, I was born a Satanist and when I returned from overseas, I heard that a book, The Satanic Bible, had been published, obtained it and read what Anton Szandor LaVey had masterfully put down on paper. His book was just what I needed to retain sanity and strength in a sick society. More than defining Satanism as a religion, LaVey provided us with a guide to strengthen the will, a blueprint for social conduct and behavior that so much applied to Viet-Nam veterans that I often wondered if LaVey had us in mind when he wrote The Satanic Bible.

For your wisdom, your guidance, your strength and Will, on behalf of my fellow veterans I bid you, Great Master, a successful voyage across the river Acheron and a pleasant stay in the Elysian Fields. Take your rightful place next to the throne of Satan and with Him walk about the Earth to continue guiding us, your faithful disciples. Give us the will to continue your mission and to support the Church you founded. Hail Anton Szandor LaVey! Hail his Church! Hail Satan!

From Kurt Kalivoda:

I never had the chance to meet Dr. LaVey. It was my hope to remedy that in the future; this is no longer possible. I will satisfy myself with his writings, interviews and talking to those who had met him.

Dr. LaVey truly set himself apart from any other magi who had reached international/ historical prominence. He told the truth when it came to magic. People are no better than a bunch of cows grazing in a field. He was the first Satanist who ever stood up, revealed himself to the world and said, "Deal with it." I believe Anton LaVey truly opened the Gates of Hell in 1966. The effects of the spell he wove will be felt many years to come.

It now falls upon us, his successors, to keep alive his vision. As Dr. LaVey knew, the test of any organization comes when its leader is no longer around. We are about to head into the deepest levels of the pit, and it is here that many will fall by the wayside. It will be the Hardcores who will keep the Church alive.

I will remember the High Priest by adding his name to the four Crowned Princes of Hell, Dr. LaVey being the fifth point completing the points of the pentagram. Long live the memory of Anton Szandor LaVey.

He Lives by Rexxar Dracula

He was our chief; not a ruler, a leader we chose to follow. Our medicine man, sorcerer supreme, the shaman who showed many the way to the spirit world and safe passage back. The creator of our tribe, founder of our ways. Many learned much from him, some growing their wings to form kindred nations. How many enemies slain by this mighty warrior and gentle man?

He lives when the gong is hammered in the glow of the black flame. He lives when we rejoice in celebration, and when the curse is cast. He lives in our minds and hearts each time he is remembered.

Hail Anton! Though you live on, you are deeply missed. Rege Satanas!

From Devin Bast:

It's difficult to write my feelings down for someone I've never met. I can say that at first, I was pissed off that he died; I really wanted to meet him. But unfortunately we can't always get what we want. Kelly and I were talking about it the night we found out and we felt as if we'd lost a friend. I thought about it and realized that I did know him...through his books and his writings. I know that it will never come as close as to speak with him face to face, but it will have to do. I had the brief pleasure of sharing a dream and a vision with someone that dared to defy the standards and slaughter sacred cows. Now, I have the distinct pleasure of carrying on that dream. I remember a man of strength, determination, and a blazing spirit that wouldn't let anyone get the best of him...and that's how I care to remember him. He didn't take any shit from anyone and always seemed to speak his mind, which to me, are very admirable qualities in a human being. True signs of strength and honesty, at the cost of being despised for being cruel or unkind.

Hall Anton Szandor LaVey! Hail Satan!

LaVey by K.R. Bolton

For most, an introduction to Satanism begins with LaVey, and more specifically, with his Satanic Bible. LaVey was the first to make Satanism readily accessible to all those who wished to follow the dark path.

As an acute observer of human nature and an accomplished showman, both attributes along with an incisive intellect, enabled him to utilize mainstream outlets for heretical ideas which would have been, and largely still are, denied to others. Few other than LaVey have been able, for example, to induce mainstream publishing outlets such as Avon to publish the basics on an array of ideas such as Social Darwinism and elitism, abhorrent to what is today referred to as the "politically correct". Indeed, while The Satanic Bible has remained a bestseller, other philosophies and writers-their ideas not necessarily less sound or well-articulated-have at best been relegated to obscurity by the Orwellian censors who infest all the media of mass communication and entertainment. By utilizing the irresistible selling power of Satan, LaVey dangled a bait in front of the liberal Establishment which, ultimately driven by blind profit, it was not able to resist, despite the horror it feels towards many of the views articulated by LaVey,

For what my opinion might be worth or otherwise, and realizing this might be offensive to many of LaVey's adherents, I frankly feel LaVey's chief merit as a philosopher was not as an original thinker, but as one able to synthesize otherwise diverse strands of thought and represent them as a coherent and relevant philosophy which he called Satanism. His approach was-either intuitively or consciously-dialectical. In recent years he started to call this dialectic the "third way"; a term which, probably unknown to him, had been current for several decades among certain anti-democratic, Nietzschean intellectuals in Europe. LaVey at the time wrote to the effect that there are two sides to every issue-then the Satanic side. Such a dialectic gives an added dimension, a new perspective from on high, to those who become adept at utilizing it to analyze and resolve any issue.

As a synthesizer of numerous great thinkers, LaVey also served to popularize and re- articulate in a more readily comprehensible and accessible manner, the ideas of such preeminent heretical thinkers as Nietzsche; and Arthur Desmond (Ragnar Redbeard) of Might Is Right notoriety, incorporating a section of Redbeard's hitherto forgotten classic in The Satanic Bible and recently writing an introduction to a new edition of the Redbeard classic.

Whatever route one's conception of

Satanism leads to, even Anton LaVey's detractors within Satanism itself cannot deny his enduring legacy.

My Friend by Jeffrey Nagy

My friend died. A man who was my mentor,

a father figure, and an endless source of inspiration, now forever physically gone. I'm angry, sad, and mortified. I am glad that whatever pain he was in is over, but I'm selfish and I miss Doc. I will forever cherish the time I spent with him, and miss the upcoming future without him here.

I consider myself lucky to have been included in his intimate circle of friends. He made me feel (for legitimate reasons) a person straight out of his time of choice: the mid-1940's. It's experiences and feelings such as these that can never be duplicated, only remembered. His religion, his music, his books, his aesthetics, his jokes, and his unswerving commitment to the aforementioned was awesome to be a part of firsthand, and these things, thankfully, will forever endure. However, his physical absence is hard to bear.

I never set out to do a project hoping to please Dr. LaVey with the outcome, but when it did please him, I gained an extra feeling that what I accomplished meant just a bit more. It will be the times when I'm proud of something I've accomplished that I will miss that extra pat on the back. That extra recognition from such an important character is something I cherished. But I have to realize that I gained his friendship and my status within the Church of Satan by what I did myself, for myself, with only myself to please. If I continue with doing things in this manner, I know I can measure myself accordingly.

In late November, my wife and I went to see Blanche for the first time after Doctor had passed away, and I have to admit, I kept expecting (maybe needing) to see him make one of his grand entrances, but it was all for naught. Doctor's ashes lle resting atop his altar with a very professional picture of him and Boaz resting in front of it (the one used for that poster a few years back). I'm sure that's where he belongs. I also have to admit that Blanche had a somewhat different look in her eye, not just from the loss of a loved one, I know that look. It was almost as if I were, at times, gazing into Doctor's eyes.... I'm sure it was from all the intimate time she'd spent with him over the past years.

I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what Doctor would have wanted us to feel or do in this tragic event, so I can't close this with some infinite word of Doctor's wisdom as a cure-all. He may have wanted us to try to put his death aside, but I still cry. He may have wanted us to push on, which I'm actually starting to do, and I hope you do the same. I do know that over these same years I knew Doctor I got to know his family (including friends) fairly well, and I support them 100% in this particularly trying time, and this includes most wholeheartedly his soul partner and our High Priestess Blanche Barton, and his son, Xerxes. They are part of his legacy and I now stand proudly behind them.

I have a picture of Doctor and I that was taken in the Purple Parlor some six years ago that I keep on my desk in my bedroom. It has always served as a signal that I must be doing something right; it has become almost talismanic for me. That's magic. So was Doctor. I miss my friend....

Hail Szandor! Hail Satan!

From Deirdre Evans:

"It's hard to imagine living in a world without Anton LaVey in it," I said to my love, Chris, on learning of his death. I was born in Oakland during W.W. II and grew up in San Francisco's Richmond District. I always related to Anton LaVey's tales and his philosophical musings. I've always wondered if our long propinquity caused us to develop similar wave lengths. Although it would be many years before we met, I can't help but wonder if living in the same area for so many years caused our thoughts to converge in many ways.

My earliest years were largely spent roaming the corridors of the old Montgomery Block building, affectionately known as the “Monkey Block” by the denizens of The City. It was a moldering old building filled with fascinating people that stood where the Pyramid Building stands now. My favorite route through the artist and writer-haunted interior included the apartments of Polly Goforth Lamb, Bob Johnson, and a woman I knew only as "Cat Lady" who's living quarters sprawled through the shadowed basement which she shared with her, seemingly, hundreds of cats. Fascinating as "Cat Lady" was to me, I was equally entranced by Bob Johnson. My mother would meet at Polly's with her friends. They had formed a group they called "The Ladies' Club". They dressed me in silk kimonos and initiated me into their circle. They were very kind. But, inevitably, their adult conversation would soon have me seeking adventures elsewhere. Bob Johnson could really communicate with very young children. His intricately carved and mobile Carnival was a wonder of the world to me. I stared at it for hours as Bob regaled me with carny stories. No doubt they were much expurgated for my pre- school mind. But I was always intrigued and never felt patronized.

I met a lot of interesting characters in the Monkey Block, but Bob Johnson got most of my attention. His tales were bursting with enthusiasm and humor. I might have met the young Dr. LaVey then, at Bob's. I honestly can't remember. But it was during the same period he later wrote about hanging out in the Monkey Block with Robert Barbour Johnson, the science fiction writer who carved such an intricate and magical Carnival. When I later met the Doctor, he remembered my mother and Polly from those days.

I grew up in the Richmond District and was sung to sleep by the lonesome moan of the foghorns on the Bay. And, later, the somehow soothing sounds of Togare, the Doctor's lion, became part of the symphony that made me feel at home.

When I finally met Anton LaVey after years of admiring his style at a distance, it was the mid- Eighties and my darling Chris was "The Devil's Meatcutter" at Phil Lehr's Steakery. I was struck by his old-world courtly manner. Later, when invited to his house, meeting Blanche and later Xerxes, I was impressed by his fine intelligence and sense of humor. The warmth of the house (which in some ways, reminded me of our own hellhouse), and affection between the Doctor and Blanche was inspiring. If only more family values were so Satanic, the world would be a better place. I am very sorry I didn't have more chances to get to know them better.

Which brings me full circle back to what I said to Chris when I first learned of the Doctor's death. "It's hard to imagine living in a world without Anton LaVey in it." But, as he lit a bright black candle to illuminate the darkness through his life's work, I imagine the world will be brighter and warmer for his brief presence. Hail Dr. Anton LaVey.

Anton LaVey: The Transcendence of Fear by Chris Trian

It's time to come clean. I used to be scared to death of Satanism. Like all the other sheep, I believed what I was told. I even used to be frightened of Anton LaVey! As I held my Satanic Bible (its first printing) and stared into the eyes of the dark bald man on its back cover I thought: "Man, this guy is DANGEROUS. Listen to him and I'm doomed...somehow."

Well, that was then and this is now and I'm a Priest in the Church of Satan...and I have recently heard that Anton LaVey is dead. In the period between then and now, I have vanquished so many REAL threats, genuine terrors, small quirks of fate, which if un-checked, would have festered like gangrene in a Hemingway novel. And the notion that I was once scared of this man, who was such an influence on my life, seems as far away as when we lived in trees and ran from jaguars and panthers. But in the jungle of life, that is how it goes with fear.

Deirdre and I had dinner a couple of times with Blanche and Dr. LaVey. Once, after Xerxes was born, we went to Joe's of Westlake. Afterwards, back at the "Black House", we joked and talked until the wee hours. But I really can't say I knew Anton LaVey the MAN. I FELT extreme kinship with him. But as anyone can attest who knows the difference between the cheerful Chris Train who parades outside his lair, and the private, angry one inside who crouches in darkness, how a person "feels" on a social call can be as misleading as soap.

Nonetheless, I knew the essence of the man, the gestalt. He was very much about courage and the transcendence of fear. Look at where he got his training. Not from a book, but from the carnival, the police beat, the wild animal ring.

Fear is the strongest motivator for the human being. Our greatest weakness, our greatest source of strength. We have fear in our genes and we can't wash it away. if we blow up the planet it will be out of fear. Paradoxically, if we are motivated to save it, by Satan's Cunning, fear will appear to be the PRIME mover.

Still, I have felt the paralysis of binding, irrational terror, that which preempts a state worse than pain or death. Society has been in the grip of this terror since its beginning. An entire nightmare world of metaphysical spider webs has been maintained to perpetuate it. And a new fear has risen to shake us out of it. This fear is that we may just cease to evolve.

When Anton LaVey embraced his fear and walked into the wild animal cage, an understanding of a METHOD was codified. He perceived that this method, if applied to the ills of the world, could effect the correct mass fear transcendence, and allow PROGRESS to occur. Because the mechanism was desperately bogged down in the sludge of fear upon fear upon fear.

Invert opposites. Walk into your fear, don't run away. Make Satan your friend and terror your ALLY. These are not new notions in the world. But a CHURCH dedicated to fearlessness IS.

Personally, I don't CARE what color underwear Anton LaVey wore. If he had intended me to know the gory details of his personal psyche, I would have known them. And yes, he was a nice guy who was very cordial and played the organ for you. But I would have gotten the MESSAGE of the man if he was Attila the Hun.

"Always look at the big picture," he said. Was Anton LaVey the big picture of himself? Yes he was. Nor have I ever heard of his taking a stand that was against his ideal. Thus, he was “larger than life", and crossed the barrier of death in the only way possible...as a messenger from the future. The bearer of an IDEA.

An idea, and perhaps more importantly, a STYLE that I see affecting people who wouldn't know Satanism from a cold fried egg on a plate. A catalyst that affects the way people THINK.

This is my portrait of the Anton LaVey I knew. And yes, he liked his steaks bloody and his women sweet and he could make big cats purr like kittens. He could make many things happen because he was a real MAGICIAN in a world stacked like cord-wood with occultists. He was, BY NECESSITY from the Carnival. Because humor is the essential ether of the magician.

And yes, again, Anton LaVey was FUNNY, He HAD to be funny or IT never would have worked, the "great gimmick”, his amazing fear- transcending act. But the humor of the man is a whole other essay, for another time.

Satanism or LaVeyism? by Bob Johnson

Whenever the leader of a powerful movement or religion dies, its followers inevitably call for the deification of the passed one's image. Call it martyrdom, call it mythology or call it what it really is-an attempt to mystify the world by creating a spiritual leader (albeit a dead one) who lives on (sound like Xianity?). The spiritually disenfranchised throngs like to think their guru's in a never-never land they can cling to as “their own" in order to get that comfortable feeling of "good ol' time religion”.

Well, I'll admit that when I heard of the passing of Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey my initial reaction was that Satanism should do something special to immortalize its founder, leader and guiding High Priest. I thought about suggesting huge memorials, special edition Satanic Bibles and publications, memorial musical scores and perhaps an entire opera dedicated to Doctor. But what grabbed me most was the idea of changing the concept and philosophy of Satanism to LaVeyism. After all, hadn't Dr. LaVey created the tenets of modern-day Satanism and propagated the faith? Hadn't he written the manifesto we all hold so closely? Instead of calling ourselves Satanists, we would be LaVeyists, and forever keep Doctor's spirit alive in our minds and in the minds of the masses. Instead of quoting The Satanic Bible we would call the teachings the passages "according to LaVey",

This epiphany brought me back to the first meeting I had with Dr. LaVey during an interview I did with him for High Society Magazine. I recalled that when I met him at the Black House I was at first apprehensive, then comfortable and ultimately awe-struck to be in the presence of a man who was able to codify the true nature of man and at the same time be a "regular Joe" who liked fat-assed women and meat and potatoes. Dr. LaVey never asked me to become a Satanist, and as is true of most of us, I was born into it anyway. But rather he showed me what a Satanist is in the real world-how he acts, what he thinks, how he gets in touch with his dark drives and takes the name of Satan as the archetype who represents the other path. In short, he brought forth what I was feeling all of my life, but never knew what to call it. I knew I despised herd mentality, but Doctor gave me the wink and nod!

So, a man who can have me remember his teachings from The Satanic Bible in times of personal doubt and self-introspection years after I originally met him, made me want to make this man a god who lives on forever! But then aren't we all supposed to be our own gods? And although Doctor was a superior man, a self-centered man, and a kick-ass rebel in his own right, he never portrayed himself as divine or a messenger of our Infernal Majesty. Anton Szandor LaVey was no bullshit-love him or hate him-he was part magician, part huckster, part philosopher, and of course, part devil. Change Satanism, the cornerstone of common sense in this screwed-up world, to LaVeyism and worship a dead guy? Nah, I don't think so. Doctor would surely turn over in his grave.

From Robert St. Mary:

Thinking about what to say about the passing of Dr. LaVey, a man that has meant so much to so many. Evil, friend, lover, the enemy, thinker, musician, the most dangerous man in the world, and philosopher. And what kept echoing in my head is a quote from Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 French New Wave film Breathless: Reporter: "What is your greatest ambition?" Writer: "To become immortal...then die!" Hail Satan!

Hail Anton!

A Tribute to Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey

by Boukman

"Wonders are many," writes Sophocles, "and none is more wonderful than man." This is a fitting epitaph for Dr. LaVey and his work as High Priest of the Church of Satan. He challenged us to grow, and to be strong and brave and true.

Human beings are wonderful creatures. We create mighty works of science, art, and literature. Like Nimrod of old, we dare soar into the heavens. We probe the deep recesses of the earth, unafraid of the darkness, challenging the forces of nature to reveal their secrets.

Yet we humans are equally wonderful in our desire to be mollycoddled and fooled. When we are afraid, we give over our power and resources to witch doctors and snake-oil salesmen who, in exchange for vague promises of happiness in the hereafter, teach us to forego happiness in this world and love our enemies.

Dr. LaVey challenged us to reclaim our power and resources. We humans made the gods and the devils in our image, not vise versa. So, we are the real gods and devils. We do not need any priests, shamans, witch doctors, or magickal circles to stand between us and the forces of our own nature. Forget the world to come! Live a full life in this world. Furthermore, "Hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, SMASH him on the other!; smite him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law!"

Dr. LaVey is dead: “Only against death shall" man "call for aid in vain" (Sophocles, Antigone). His ideas, however, live on. He eschewed both the radical right and the radical left, making the Church of Satan a "big tent" in which all diabolical persons are welcome. "I figure If people want to be part of this movement they'll have to lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. We don't have room for factions. We have to be like a nest of rattlesnakes-unsavory characters bound together for mutual benefit." Wherever any human being struggles against mediocrity, hypocrisy, and oppression, Dr. LaVey will be there.

Hail Satan!

Hail Dr. Anton Szandor LaVeyl

The Debt I Can Never Repay by Azazel

In the spring of 1985, I was approaching my nineteenth birthday. I had attached some magical significance to my birthday that year because my birthday is on the nineteenth of May and I would be nineteen; nevertheless, I had no idea how significant my birthday was going to be that year. It would be the crossroads of my life but to fully understand the implications of the change, you must first understand who and where I was before that day.

My life had taken one bad turn after another. During my formative years I had endured a physically abusive welfare mother, molestation at the hands of foster parent, and abandonment. I was, essentially, an orphan raised by the state. My circumstances led to disaster and, as spring approached, I found myself with no direction, no goals, and happiness in this life seemed alien to me. I was an extremely troubled young man and, barring a dramatic change in my life path, I probably would have been dead (or in prison) inside of three years. It was the last day of April; I had just been released from jail and my life was about to take that dramatic turn.

It started with a relatively unimportant decision: "Do you want to go to the mall?" My roommate was headed out to the mall to buy a new pair of jeans and, since I had nothing better to do, I went with him. As had been my habit at the time, when I went to the mall I always went to the bookstore. There I picked up a copy of a daily horoscope book, turned to the current date and read, "Your interest in the occult will be exceptionally high today...after years of searching, you shall find the truth you have been looking for." Then, as I placed the book back, it happened. I noticed the small black book next to it on the shelf. The book was The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey. Curiosity prevailed and I picked up the book and shoplifted it out of the store (I was too embarrassed to buy it).

As soon as I got out of the public eye, I hungrily pulled the book from my coat pocket and began reading. Over the next few weeks I must have read that forbidden tome at least ten times; I simply could not stop myself. The personal views and beliefs that I held, which had been so rare, were described therein. Suddenly I had a label for them-Satanism.

My life, as it had been, was over. My lack of focus would soon be replaced by the self- determination I needed to succeed and the self- realization that I was a Satanist and not alone. On my birthday I declared myself, privately at first, a Satanist and took the name Azazel. Slowly, my life's momentum began to change from a path of self-destruction to one of self-appreciation. Since that time I have graduated from college, started a family and, in general, gained direction and happiness in this life, instead of "spiritual pipe dreams". A man I had never met had become my surrogate father, teacher, and spiritual advisor rolled up into one.

Nine years later I was able to meet Dr. LaVey and personally express my gratitude; it's not often that you have dinner with your hero. I, however, was still bitter from the disappointment of my family during my formative years. I asked Dr. LaVey how he dealt with those who had betrayed him and he imparted these few words of wisdom, "Living well is life's best revenge." My life has grown into success while my family has fallen into poverty and despair. Now I have become both the black sheep and the envy of my family. Revenge has truly been sweet.

Now, the Satanic revolution permeates society (from the images of blasphemy on MTV to promiscuity of sexual relationships) and continues to grow into every facet of American culture; meanwhile, Christianity is in its final death gasp. Soon television, which has recently declared war on religion, will completely replace Christianity and the religions of the masses, just as Dr. LaVey had predicted. Comments made about god on television in the last few years would have been unheard of in 1985, much less 1966! Our social values, aesthetics, and ethics have become the mainstream; meanwhile, Christians (and their values) are labeled as kooks, fanatics or worse.

Some, including myself, will grieve the death of Dr. LaVey but we should also celebrate his life and the change he wrought upon our society since Walpurgisnacht 1966. His immortality is secured, not in some mythical afterlife, but in the living memory of all his children. Now it's up to us. HAIL ANTON! HAIL SATAN!

Farewell to Anton LaVey by Hr. Vad

Given the odds back in 1966, would you have bet your money that Anton LaVey would succeed at his daring adventure? Given the enormity and difficulty of the task he set himself, one would have expected him to fail. And a lesser man would have done sol

I shudder at the hypothetical idea that Doc might have been anyone from a Nazi to an ex- Christian minister gone insane. Had Anton LaVey been anyone besides himself there is no telling where modern Satanism might have been today.

On the contrary Doc managed, in his own strange way, to correctly identify both the tradition of Satanism as well as give it new relevance within the 20th century. In my own study of Satanism, I've seen Doc's ideas turn out to be correct again and again. Sure, he was not perfect, but I think he got it right where it counted. Take for example his notion of the "Left-Hand Path": Doc didn't just invent that term, but as it turns out it is perhaps the oldest traditional kind of Satanism he's referring to here. "Left Hand Path" has specific meaning, and Doc defined it correctly-but this is just one small example.

Though I never met him I still feel I knew him better than my own father who "a loving, Christian God" supposedly took away from me when I was a child. My impression is that the undisputed father of modern Satanism was a real person-even so he was a rather unique go at the type. I am very happy that such a remarkable man spearheaded our movement.

I have only seen Anton LaVey live on the video Speak of the Devil. This has meant that whenever someone mentions “Anton LaVey” I invariably think of this interesting man sitting at his keyboards, smiling that sly smile, while doing a drum rhythm with only three fingers of his left hand. If tears fill our eyes now, it is only because you made us laugh so heartily while you were here-outrageous as your humor might have been.

Thanks for the show, Doc! Rest assured that your efforts will never be wasted.

"I was only trying to cheat death. I was only trying to surmount for a little while the darkness that all my life I surely knew was going to come rolling in on me someday and obliterate me. I was only trying to stay alive a little brief while longer, after I was already gone. To stay in the light, to be with the living a little while past my time." -Cornell Woolrich, used as the frontispiece for his short story collection, Nightwebs.

Anton Szandor LaVey by Chris Trian

It's not about evil. It's about the Carnival

in your pajamas.

Are you wearing any pajamas?

What color are they?

It's not about death. It's about

the two headed midget who lives next door.

She has a fetish about you.

She knows

you have a fetish too.

What is it?

It's not about darkness. It's about

the Hall of Mirrors in the Fun House.

Your laughter echoing forever.

The chords on the

organ

swell.

A haunting,

haunted, melody stirs

in your blood.

Where

have you heard it before?

Gunfire!

A woman screams. A body slumps

to the pavement at four a.m.

in the rain.

Is it yours?

Are you sure?

It isn't about evil. It's about longing, and a gold tooth,

a pirate's smile,

a purple smoking jacket

on

fire

with

life.

It's about life,

and longing,

for life.

And it isn't for normal people.

But then,

have you ever known

a normal

person?

From Doran Wittelsbach:

The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart, With sorrow where all was delight.

-Stephen Foster, "My Old Kentucky Home"

As devastating as the Doctor's demise is, what is even more shocking is that this man ever walked the earth. He was and is a magical, mythic figure. A real larger-than-life character.

Anton LaVey and Irving Berlin are two of the twentieth century men I admire most. Both were self-made (and self-invented) men. Mercurial night creatures. Immensely talented. Berlin, of course, was a songwriter. That's about it. The High Priest, on the other hand, seemed to excel at numerous things.

Prime in my mind is his skill as a musician. He (along with Tiny Tim and lan Whitcomb) probably had the most extensive song repertoire of the obscure and the beautiful. The Great Szandor could play everything from well- known standards like Gershwin's "Stairway to Paradise" to obscurities like Al Jolson's "Who Played Poker with Pocahantas (When John Smith Went Away)" to (a Mrs. Millerized version of) "Downtown". You just couldn't believe that all that rich sound was being conjured. He loved these songs, therefore he played them "straight", without slathering on swing/jazz embellishments. Yet he added such intensity-his playing was straight, but supercharged. He was the ultimate one-man-band.

I will also remember his skill as a magnetic storyteller. He would go back into his memories, his eyes would sparkle, and he would regale his lucky guests with tales of his high (and low) adventures.

Then there was his skill as a writer. It is a common experience of those who have read The Satanic Bible to say "Eureka! This book is stating what I already know, distilled down to the most potent points." The Doctor did what the Devil has always done: clinically observed the human race, cutting through the fog. He had more right to the title "Doctor" than the “degree on the wall" crowd who earned theirs by rolling academic excrement into little balls.

The High Priest is one of my all-time heroes. His heroes would have been proud of him and his exploits. Look at the names on the dedication pages in The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals: H.P. Lovecraft, Mark Twain, Fritz Lang, W.C. Fields, Howard Hughes, Boris Karloff, Federico Fellini, Friedrich Nietzsche. Anton Szandor LaVey is an equal to these rogues and giants.

To me, the most meaningful part of the LaVey philosophy is the emphasis on Total Environments and anachronistic living. The High Priest successfully isolated himself from the t-shirt and dungaree masses, surrounding himself with people and objects that were full of magic. The world be damned.

As society degenerates further, as the slovenly masses grow ever more slovenly, I predict that anachronistic style, music, and environment will be a prime refuge for those who still have venom, vision and romance. This will be Satanism in action. And for this elite, one man will always be the High Priest: Anton Szandor LaVey.

From Laurel Wittelsbach:

Being an only child and born a redhead on top of that gave me a different outlook on the world from the beginning.

I had plenty of time spent alone developing my own thoughts. My interests were decidedly darker than my classmates. My parents divorced when I was eight years old. My father fought for and was granted custody of me at a time when that just did not happen, especially being that I was his daughter. He was a wonderful, loving and supportive father. Unfortunately the parents of the few kids I called friends did not want their kids coming over to a house with no mother. I became more and more interested in things that most other people would find distasteful. I called Boris Karloff my boyfriend. 1 would go to the library and look for biographies on the people that were considered eccentrics. These were my inspirations and teachers along with my father. Like the Doctor, I considered school to be complete crap. My time alone, reading about these unusual people, made me feel less alone in the world filled with shit people.

My father was born on March 24th, 1930, just two or three weeks from the Doctor's birth. He had many of the same loves and memories that the Doctor had, being of the same time in history. He would share memories of how music sounded, how men and women dressed, how to get what you wanted out of life, how to protect yourself from danger. My father was my best friend. I always enjoyed listening. I affectionately remember the many beautiful gloomy days that we spent feeding birds in various parks.

I moved to San Francisco about ten years ago, not so I could “commune" with people, but so I would be left alone, so I could work and look the way I wanted to without dimwitted people loudly mocking my attire. I really identified with the section in Miss Barton's book when the Doctor says he did not dress to draw attention to himself; he wore what he felt comfortable in.

I had been living in S.F. for 4 years before I had really come to know about Dr. LaVey. I had acquaintances who would occasionally mention his name. I did not pay much attention because the people who spoke of him that I knew in pässing were not very interesting. The City is chock full of "spirituality" types, but I wanted no part of it. I equated the "occult", candle-burning, chanting types with Star Trek lovers. I always felt that you didn't need props or poems to cast a spell. You just needed your thoughts and deeds.

A few years later I came upon The Compleat Witch. There was so much common sense packed in those pages, things that I had already been doing my whole life, things that my father had taught me about men. This is always my reaction to the Doctor's writings: He talks sense. I feel fortunate to have learned about Anton LaVey. I could sense that he was genuine, that he was truly an Other.

My dear father died of a heart attack in 1996. Along with my father, Doctor LaVey will be in my heart and give me strength through the rest of my life. The last time we visited the Doctor, he went down to the basement through the trick door in the fireplace. He retrieved a bundle of old photographs which we passed around, with him fondly remembering different eccentric characters he had known. I will always cherish the time I spent in the Doctor's presence.

As we left the Doctor that last time, he pulled me to him in such a comforting embrace. My heart goes out to Miss Barton, Xerxes, Karla and all those who shared in the great man's life.

Anton Szandor LaVey: Supreme Creator of the Satanic Era by Mallare

No man deserves more credit, appreciation and recognition for his teachings than Anton Szandor LaVey. Throughout his life, LaVey fought for such admirable causes as the destruction of stupidity, hypocrisy, mediocrity, and repression. He taught about past music, art, and movies through his writings. He preserved knowledge and subjects of discussion that were on the brink of extinction or neglect-Might Is Right, The Command to Look, Freaks, Lovecraft, Nietzsche, Twain, London, Hecht, J. Mansfield, M. Monroe, No Bullshit Music. He motivated his disciples in their search for knowledge by throwing obscure names here and there-Bernardino Nogara, Hugo von Castiglione, Barnabas Saul, Terrazina, Scoremanship, The Bizarre World of the Peeping Tom, "Devil's Question", The Puritan, and so on. He exalted the Satanist-a highly evolved individual that is honest enough to admit his imperfection, that can see through the bullshit, and that prefers to think for himself-in all his plenitude. His Satanic Bible has become a classic, and we-Satanists-owe him much inspiration. A natural genius, his accomplishments in life are plenty, varied, and ahead of their time. The herd is not prepared, much less appreciative, of some of his creations like Total Environments, Artificial Human Companions, Satanic Magic, Lex Satanicus, Shibboleth Ritual, and the "Hymn of the Satanic Empire".

LaVey is the absolute creator of the Church of Satan, and Satanism as an established and recognized religion. In fact, he is the harbinger of the Satanic Era and the New Order-that is, a new or revised system of operation, plan of attack, or the like-by which Satanists live. Walpurgisnacht, 1966, marks the Year One, Anno Satanas, the beginning of the Satanic Era, the pivotal point from which the imperatives of indulgence, wisdom, reason, delight, beauty, lex talionis, vitality, achievement, natural selection, might and everything Satanic must emerge.

Satanism is the quintessence of life. LaVey intended Satanism to be in accordance with life principles. His Satanism makes sense. For this reason, there are more and more people that are considering Satanism more seriously now. Those who think that Satanism can be destroyed are mistaken. Not even so-called religious people can do this. For example, in a holy war the parties involved are indeed practicing Satanists who hate and kill their enemies! This happens all the time among the Jews and Moslems who claim to be anti- Satan.

Upon first meeting "the Doctor", as those close to Anton LaVey preferred to call him, I knew that we were going to get along pretty well. We did. There was an immediate rapport between us. I wasn't afraid or nervous about meeting him. Actually, I was rather expectant to let LaVey know that this Mexican understood his philosophy, and to a certain point, even understood him. That this Mexican had made a conscious choice to understand Satanism. That this Mexican, in a period of about three years, had searched out, obtained and studied the extensive bibliographies of The Satanic Witch, The Church of Satan, The Secret Life of a Satanist, and everything pertaining to LaVey, Satanism, and the Church of Satan. LaVey turned out to be what I expected of him. He was an extremely sensitive, charming, perceptive, cultured, loving, complex and sophisticated man. Being highly evolved, he combined extreme qualities in his personality. For example, he could be equally brutal and sensitive, he could equally enjoy carnality and intellectuality, he could engage in base passions and still remain a gentleman. It is for this reason that the herd, and those with inferior abilities to think, dismiss him as a "charlatan", as "the most dangerous man in the world", and so on.

Meeting LaVey remains the most interesting experience of my life. We talked of Pancho Villa, revolutionary leaders and their immortality, the importance of music for magical success, his experiences in Tepoztlan, and secrets behind The Satanic Witch. We enjoyed dinner at a local restaurant, and at this time, the whole atmosphere became like a "trance". An unknown man sitting across from our table persistently stared at all of us: Anton, Blanche, Cathy, Xerxes and myself. Poor soul. The Doctor noticed him staring at us and mentioned something to me discreetly. I turned to see him and he became a little bit afraid and nervous. He started putting bigger chunks of food in his mouth, as if trying to finish his meal quickly and leave. We continued our conversation and the next moment I turned to see the unknown man-he had vanished. Funny, ain't it? Back at the Black House we watched Perdida, a Mexican musical. By music time, LaVey played a wide selection of bullfighting music, "Taboo", "Besame Mucho”. He surprised me by playing songs that only Satan could know of. He would play the songs that I was thinking of, as if he were reading my mind. At this time the second "trance" occurred. It was a truly magical experience. Everyone in the kitchen-the music room-was part of the concert. Our energies had been synchronized. A little before sun-up, the magical experience had ended, but I knew that I had made a friend, and that I had made a good impression upon Anton LaVey. Subsequently, he would ordain me as a Priest of the Church of Satan.

With all certainty I can assure you that Anton LaVey has achieved immortality. He certainly fulfilled his ego during this lifetime. In fact, his true superiority comes from the fact that he lived the way he really wanted. How many people can do this? With his magical hands he molded his own life. He orchestrated his life as Reinhardt would direct a play. I exhort all Satanists to be loyal to the Satanic mandate; to keep Satanism in perspective. We are creating a hell of a change in history right now. The vines of Satanism spread like electric wires throughout the world, and when the herd realizes it, they'll be electrified!

In the meantime, live, create, and rejoice. LaVey would be proud of you.

Sing of joy! I want to wreathe you

With every flower so that you may celebrate Joy, Joy, Joy

This magnificent giver!

Sing of the immense joy of living,

Of being strong, of being young

Of biting the fruits of the earth With firm, white, voracious teeth...

-D'Annunzio

Long live Anton!

Long live Satanism and the Church of Satan!

What Now Old Lion

by Chris Trian

What now old lion, old friend?

What now old wolf?

And what of the pack

when the leader is gone?

When I heard (a week late

due to hiding from the news)

that YOU of all people had died, I was not surprised.

I knew somehow that you were ill.

A few moments after I heard,

I conjured you in my mind.

You said three things,

and that was that.

Naturally, you kept it simple.

Now, I don't believe in

"life after death".

Hell. There's not much evidence

of life BEFORE it.

So I assumed I was talking to myself.

But the you of memory said: "Death's o.k., Chris." ...and "Think for yourself."

That was probably all,

but I asked: "What of the Church?” To which you replied simply: "Business as usual. See ya.”.....

What now old lion?

In the jungle of the world we each is Satan,

each OUR OWN leader. This is the meaning

and our common/un-common understanding.

What you started

can not be un-started.

It was the real thing, the opening of a door.

And like the perfect card trick

that no one remembers seeing, it will be done

and done and done

in card rooms

until the next card shark of time swims, teeth gnashing, by.

"They" will say

that it was not serious

because it was CARNY.

But that is precisely WHY

it was serious.

Will is worthless without humor.

The understanding of this

is the magic of our time.

The Great Szandor by Nikki Nine

He appeared as I searched for real magic and a philosophy without hypocritical mysticism. And when I found The Satanic Bible, I knew then my search was over.

My love for him grew into a fire that raged hotter than any pit in the deepest of Hell. His magic was my magic, and his thoughts mine. He was everything I dreamed of, yet he was still much more. He was the most intriguing and extraordinary man to walk the Earth.

My passion, respect and love for him runs deep within me, for he surpassed any fantasy I could ever have dreamed up. His music, the most magical sounds to ever fill my ears. His compassion, love and understanding of animals was a passion we shared. His philosophy and religion sharpened my focus and skills. He

enlightened me, taught me many wonderful things and we shared a passion for the Dark Side.rospero to I was fortunate enough to meet and thank him for all he had done, a dream of mine for many years. He was everything he claimed to be and more. To gaze into his eyes was entrancing, to be held in his arms, Intoxicating. The experience was the highest moment in my life, my dream come true. He saw inside me and knew he taught me well. He could see the Black Flame that burns strong within me, a born Satanist. His acceptance of me, and casual glances up my dress, filled me with a feeling of accomplishment and joy greater than ever before, I had fulfilled a destiny. bownquitas

When I was told of his death, it was far more than devastating, and I'm sure the pain will never pass. My passion, love and respect for him grows more everyday, and I shall keep his immortalet. spirit vivaciously alive, for I will live my life to the fullest, and I am proud to be a Satanist. He will be greatly missed, the great Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder of the infamous Church of Satan, and my heart aches because of his absence.

From Amy Bugbee:

Having grown up with absolutely now! religious persuasion, it has always amazed me the things that people believed in for god. I've never been baptized, never been to church. My older. sister had gone once when we were little. Sheet fainted, and when she fell over she bashed her chin on the pew. The bruise lasted for weeks and warranted x-rays, so the whole "church thing" sounded way too dangerous to me.

My mother bought me a Satanic Bible when I was a teenager. It seemed a natural progression, starting from the Agatha Christie novels my...... mother had read to me as a child to the many books I read on UFOs, religion, ESP and ghosts. The Satanic Bible was the first thing I'd read that articulated so completely my own thoughts about life, death and religion. I was so amazed when I read it, that I read it again, and then tried to convert every kid I knew.

I even erected a pentagram that stood over six feet tall, to celebrate my discovery. My too- kind instructor sat nervously by as I figured the angles, sawed the wood, hammered and glued it together, covered it in pounds of plaster, and finally painted it black. Unfortunately, the weight and size of my monstrous monument figured a problem on its trip home and it didn't fare well.

Even so, it stood proudly on our front porch, damaged and deflant, for at least a year, until my father tossed it off of our back porch in a

"cleaning" frenzy. Amazingly, it fell to the ground with one of its points driving straight into the dirt-like a meteorite! It stood for years afterward as our Satanic rose arbor. It was perfection!

Though it may seem odd to reflect on my own life as a memorial to another, it is the only way I can begin to explain the impact that Anton LaVey's work has had on my life. Without the warmth and encouragement I found in The Satanic Bible. I might not be as secure in the knowledge that my path in life is truly right. Many would say that my entire life has been wrong, but I don't⠀⠀ know many other people who remember their c childhood as fondly as I do, or have such an od optimistic view of life even in the wake of adversity. And I owe a great deal to The Satanic. Bible for the strong sense of purpose and fate I feel in my heart. wurved varite boligud one town. Bergs

It is this sense of purpose and fate that brought me together with my husband, Shane, our work, and to the reprinting of Might Is Right. IA could not be more proud to have taken part in the republishing of Might Is Right, and especially for giving Anton LaVey his rightful place at the bell forefront of the project. It was that book that put us in the parlour of Dr. LaVey one spring night.. ⠀⠀ bringing me full circle, and face to face with a man that I had forever admired and revered.

The visit was inspiring and convinced us that our dreams of the Expo of the Extreme could and would become reality-a huge celebration of the darkest minds of music, literature and art, brought together for the first time ever. The mor ultimate culmination of might and mind, ash celebration of Satanism, and it is the most terrible irony that the man who had inspired us so to do it, and inspired so many of the minds that were m destined to be together there, would pass from life just two days before this event that was practically in his honor.

And Anton Szandor LaVey taught a final lesson--that immortality isn't about each success or failure. It is the sum of what we make of each day of our life.

Satanism-High-Brow and Low by Philip Marsh

Goethe's character Faust said that consorting with demons was a habit hard to break. People who knew Anton LaVey must have felt this about him too. I never knew him personally, but I have found what Faust said of demons to be true of many of Dr. LaVey's allies and followers.Wh

If we inquire as to what Faust found so beguiling about demons we may find clues to what made Dr. LaVey so alluring to people from so many different walks of life. Traditionally, demons provided intense entertainments, deep ANDY BONA inspiration, and productivity. There are celebrated cases, such as architects and engineers who sought demonte aid in finishing bridges and ironworks. Such Teufelsbrueken or “Devil's Bridges" were exceedingly numerous in Germany before the damage wrought by two World Wars. Another famous case: the twentieth century mathematician Ramanujan, born in a South Indian county seat whose name means “Wet Skull", who credited his unsurpassed ability to navigate the dense shoals of symbols in modern texts on the integral calculus-to the bewilderment of European professors-to his tutelary deva Namagirl, whom one Englishman called an "aboriginal demon and devil."

Not the least interesting case was Robert Graves, a professor of poetry at the University of Oxford in the early 1960's, author of I, Claudius and over one hundred other books. There is the strange case of his remarkable book The White Goddess. He attributed finishing it to a small West African brass paperweight he obtained from a London dealer. It was in the shape of a humpback playing a flute, and it sat beckoning to him on his desk and, Graves attests, forced the Devil into the work. It "would not give me peace," as Graves put it, until he had "given the Devil his due”.

In this and countless other examples from art as well as science-cases renowned, obscure or unknown to the world-one can discern many of Dr. LaVey's refrains. Note, for example, how demons or the Devil help one finish something one has already begun. They do not enable anyone to accomplish something beyond his wildest efforts or abilities, which is the advertisement of saviors and miracle-mongers. The concentrated appeals of the latter to the vain and delusionary were perennial thematic materials for Dr. LaVey. Note too that--to use the blunt and somewhat nebulous, understated journalese in which the wire services and others have paraphrased LaVey-the Devil is "motivational”.

One more case deserves special note: the founder of modern organic chemistry, Kekule, who said he learned of the ring form of carbon-which was the solution to all the puzzles of his day in organic chemistry-when he dreamt of a whirling serpent devouring its tail (the so-called "worm Ouroboros"). This deserves mention because many people would say it was just Kekule's "unconscious mind" that produced this. Many would say this even though they believe that the inventor of the idea of an unconscious mind powerful enough to create such ideas (Sigmund Freud) was a pseudo- scientist. This is the view of Freud, for example of A. K. Dewdney, author of the recent book Yes, We Have No Neutrons. For such thinkers to go to this length, i.e. to accept the postulate of a "pseudo- scientist" as an explanation, rather than a demon theory, is really an inadvertent confession of the their ignorance. They feel that a demon theory is less tenable, and that Freud's postulate is better than none. Yes, they have no explanation, and their case really relies for its force on the general, commonly-accepted but nonetheless obscurantist or even mystical idea that "the human mind is complex and mysterious".

If it is not the unconscious, but demons instead, what might they be made of? Highly organized states of neutrinos that can pass right through the Earth at will? Or maybe in this case, yes, we have no neutrinos, and demons don't exist after all. I do not know whether the demons, ranked so exactingly in grimoire hierarchies, are supposed to be made of the same stuff as those sacrificed to by the African nganga or “witch- doctor", or the same stuff of which the Chinese Kuei is composed, or the Pythagorean daimones I wrote about in a lengthy monograph in The Black Flame. I am almost sure that none of these species have chromosomes, so either Rosemary's Baby was supposed to be a haploid organism, i.e. it had only one (maternal) set of chromosomes-which is not impossible, since many plants are haploids-or else there are supposed to be plenty of "old" satyrs like Dr. LaVey wandering around on and off movie sets who doff their black capes now and again to service women with special cravings.

My concept of diabolism may have been broader than Dr. LaVey's, but it is not purer. He belonged to the unadulterated tradition of Western mediaeval diabolism. It is an authentication of his open-mindedness, therefore, that he so favorably read my above-mentioned monograph on the Pythagorean mathematikoi, their use of the pentacle, and their thanks to demons for inspiration and ideas. It is the latter type of diabolism that I lump in with other forms of "high-brow" Satanism. LaVey's Satan was purer, and that is what drew the public toward him, fascinated or spellbound, or drove them away-alarmed and aghast.

People who were drawn to LaVey sometimes turned against him because they sensed in him correct instincts which caused him to withhold as much as he divulged. They hated this. They also hated the fragmentary nature of what he said and wrote, the character of which seems to be determined by LaVey's mere moods of mind. They prefer the false, unsatisfactory bridges that dogma and cant erect over deep gulfs of uncertainty and dark chasms of ignorance of Nature and of what Dr. LaVey so profoundly called the "dark forces" which drives it on. Such people did not last long in LaVey's "Court of Satan". They correctly surmised he accorded them little respect.

I am sometimes called upon to explain what Dr. LaVey represents, as if he were a mere cipher or glyph in an obscure text needing exegesis. Since his death, one of his High Priestesses has already addressed this question by saying something about the Devil and "Jungian archetypes." This is another example of "high-brow" Satanism. There is a simpler and better answer to this question, however, as follows:

There is one spontaneous, initial thought that almost everyone who has ever heard of LaVey had the first time-or first few times-they saw him and his infernal carny pavilion. It is a thought to which every thought about him thereafter-like “Jungian archetypes"-is but a footnote, a rationalization, or justification. It is a thought which, depending on whether or not one likes or dislikes having it, one will thereafter like or dislike LaVey. It was the very same thought expressed by the multitudes in Goethe's Faust during the May Eve celebration at the peak of ceremonies when they exclaimed, "T is Satan!”

But that is not enough. People then want to know what Satan is, as if they already did not. They want to know if Satan is "real" and if so, what kind of being it is. All of a sudden prosaically-minded people who have never thought much about these things and are not equipped to do so by inclination, ability or education become amateur ontologists and metaphysicians. So a High Priestess feels it is incumbent on her to offer to them a Jungian interpretation. With this, LaVey, Satan, diabolism and all the rest are confined to two parameters, Freud and Jung, and people are ready to turn away in boredom-and have done so. They think, “Well, he's not the only one who has tapped and explosively released powerful psychological forces." At least on this much all are agreed, even his detractors. They will say, "Even a charlatan can do that.”

I must leave this for the general reader to decide for himself. For people who remember Anton LaVey, I leave it for them to decide whether or not they want to continue using Freud and Jung as the frontiers LaVey supposedly represented.

From Magdalene Graham:

Dr. LaVey is immortal because the Church of Satan will live forever. That doesn't help right now. I want to say something appropriate but all I can feel is a numbing sadness that stultifies inspiration. Of course we will continue, because we are Satanists. He gave us the incentive to put a name to what we are.

I was in my late teens when I first encountered The Satanic Bible. It was such a relief to find that someone had been able to articulate the thoughts which had troubled me. To know that I was not alone, yet to realise that I would always be, to a great extent, alone-and to draw strength from that.

There have been other leaders who left their followers notable philosophies. The difference is that they all told their adherents what to think. Dr. LaVey taught us to think for ourselves, not to accept any generally-accepted values without first asking, “Why?”

Though the only "Why?" at this moment is "Why couldn't he have lived longer?", this is part of the evolution of the Church of Satan. And that is no consolation whatsoever.

Anton Szandor LaVey: An Interim Report by Roterodamus

C'etait un bel homme d'une quarantaine d'annees, vetu en clergyman comme le diacre, grand, le visage pale avec un collier de barbe noire, le crane entierement rase.

-Roger Peyrefitte, III A.S.

From reading his classic books, devouring as many of the countless interviews with him as possible, watching the documentary films about him and listening to his beautiful music, we had expected Dr. LaVey to be the ultimate Renaissance Man, the one individual truly deserving of the title of homo universalis. When my wife and I finally met with him-some ten years after we had first cracked open The Satanic Bible-he more than lived up to our expectations. To say that spending time with the living embodiment of Nietzsche's Superman is an experience that thrilled us beyond comparison, is studied understatement. It seems as if time stood still those two nights at the Black House; they certainly were-and always will be-the most inspiring moments of our lives. Many are the situations in which I find myself recalling a particular astute comment Dr. LaVey made during our visit and am able to profit from his formidable insight again. We also were so privileged as to serve as audience to one of Herr Doktor's famed private concerts. Among the tunes with which he brightened our hearts were evocative renderings of one of my all-time favourites, Dream Lover, Meyerbeer's superbly majestic Coronation March, and, to celebrate our shared love of Laurel and Hardy movies, the fearsome Satanic anthem, Cuckoo.

I will never be game for even the smallest compromise. To me, Dr. LaVey was and still is the greatest man in recorded human history, period. He is the absolute personification of that mysterious stranger who goes by the name of Satan. I can only marvel at the infinite facets of his personality, his countless accomplishments, his awe-inspiring mastery. And, what is more, he left without compromise. Few have ever lived a life so self-evident, so consistent as has Dr. LaVey, It simply is impossible to "take up his worst and neglect his best", because there is only "best", as is evidenced by the telling fact that there never really were-and can never really be-LaVey detractors, but only "wannabee-LaVeys” and “cuddabin- LaVeys" posing as such.

Dr. LaVey passed from this world on the twenty-ninth of October in the thirty-second year of the Age of Our Lord Satan and left a void none can fill. And so we are left alone with the two tines of the bifid barb of Hell.

One is the dreadful emptiness of not having the Doctor around to teach and inspire us. No longer will he commit his razor-sharp analysis of relevant societal changes to paper, no longer will he send forth his musical magic through the ethers, no longer will he put a smile on our faces.

The other is the tine that will enable us to deal with our grief: that august creation of his called the Church of Satan-the organization whose machinations have spawned the world's most awesome religion, philosophy, magical curriculum and way of life to date: Satanism.

Dr. LaVey has always served as a guide and inspiration, both to those who rightfully call themselves Satanists and to those who have shunned the label "Satanist" yet have applied his principles to great effect--and he will never cease to do this, since Satanism is taken up out of logic rather than despair, by those who rule the world. Therefore it can never be put back in its cage again. Thus, Dr. LaVey has become immortal. However, I think it is only proper that he will one day receive the amount of credit really due to him. Thus, his name will also become immortal-for the right

reasons.

We can no longer grow under Dr. LaVey's tutelage, it is true, but we can grow by his example, and if we continue to follow the guidelines he set down as springboards to our own maturity and strength, some as high profile, public Satanists, others as Satanists working behind the scenes, yet all of us proud Citizens of the Infernal Empire, we will truly reinforce our High Priest's creation and honour him as its gifted creator.

It is not unimportant here to stop at the thought that Dr. LaVey would not want us to steep ourselves in his legacy as theologians. We should only do this objectively towards subjective ends. The truth is, we can learn so much from the Doctor's example because he learned while doing instead of did while learning.

The Exarch of Hell never divulged his plans on anything, yet if one reads between the lines of many of his statements instead of giving them the once-over, his methods and results may be conceived and his plans understood. And the momentum of the Dark Waves he set in motion can never be stopped. If we further his Grand Design, by both overt and covert machinations, we are going with a winner and will soon scorch the earth with the Black Flame of Satan. Let's all stay tuned to USF (the Ultra Satanic Frequency): Dr. LaVey's children are bound to be the next evolution of the human race-Hell-bent on getting the most out of life, even after death.

Join me now in honouring the man whose accomplishments have changed the course of history just in the nick of time, on the occasion of his lamented departure from the Scene. He is gone, but will endure until the end of time. Hall Dr. Anton Szandor LaVey! Hail Satan!

From Maurice Roy:

Dr. LaVey is a Man who has lived his life as best as one could, who spent most of his life showing us the way to freedom, to celebrate in our individuality, to indulge in our fantasies, and built a Church where man can revel in what he is, without guilt or reservation. He has provided us with the diabolical tools to accomplish the job, and now, more than ever-it is time to continue that job.

He has set foot upon the soils of Belial, on which he walked with the beasts, upon it he is now scattered and made one with;

He has looked straight into the light of Lucifer, from which his wisdom rested, within it he is now spreaded and made one with;

He has drank deeply from the murky waters of Leviathan, the source of all life, within it he is now dissolved and made one with;

He has felt the fiery flames of Satan, the origin of all his thrills and passions; within us all, the flame burns brighter than ever.

May he be immortalized as he shall always be remembered, and remain as much of an inspiration-for he always was.

A Warrior/Poet's Soul by Blanche Barton

I often pictured Dr. LaVey as a displaced 15th century Eastern European ruler, someone whose values and reactions would find more sympathy in Vlad the Impaler or Ivan the Terrible than in a man from the late 20th century. He agreed, crediting genetic resonance; perhaps he was reflecting the barbaric impulses of some long-lost ancestor. He could rage passionately, he expected people to have manners, skills and sensibilities and was constantly disappointed. He had a high pain threshold, and the charisma to lead boyars into battle. At times he became homicidal, driven by an instinct to exact immediate justice-but his higher reasoning, his creative compulsions and his fear of confinement kept him from acting upon his instincts, so he vented his wrath in the confines of his ritual chamber. Because he seemed bred for battle, he had supernatural fortitude and will to live. That is what kept him going. There were other things that helped him stave off death. He adored our son, Xerxes, and said he needed to stick around for him. He also had a delightful perversity of spirit that wanted to rob his detractors, for just one more day, of the happiness they'd feel at his death. But it was the rage within him, blind and unbound, that gave him the strength to cheat death as he did several times over the course of his life. It was that same rage, at the institutions and social conventions most humans find ourselves bound by, that led him to found the Church of Satan. He wasn't an idealistic liberator. He was just one angry man, remaking the world according to the way he thought it should be-just as any great leader does.

Dr. LaVey was also an intensely private man. He didn't want to show weakness. That's why even some of his closest friends didn't know what he was going through the last few months of his life. He was hospitalized twice in 1990 for what was termed heart failure. Then, in 1995, he survived a "sudden death" episode and was revived. He had experienced a high fever when he was younger, something probably akin to rheumatic fever though they termed it “Fever of Unknown Origin" at the time. It damaged the valves in his heart, thereby writing the script for his final years. From 1990, he was prescribed some pretty potent heart medications, including blood thinner just to keep his heart functioning properly. He was a medical "mackerel" as he liked to say. His cardiologist would have students get out their stethoscopes and listen to the fascinating MR and, over here, this excellent stenosis. In the end, the side effects of all the heavy medications weakened his entire digestive tract. He went through several episodes of life-threatening internal bleeding during those last months. The anticoagulant and other concoctions kept our High Priest alive, but I don't think his doctors expected him to live long enough for the side effects to catch up with him as severely as they did. Dr. LaVey was so determined to live that he began to be traumatically effected by the very drugs that were keeping him alive.

I sneered when, in the early morning hours of October 29th, 1997, I was told that things looked pretty hopeless, that I'd better call whoever needed to be called. He'd pulled rabbits out of his hat before, hadn't he? This would just be one more harrowing episode for both of us to look back on and complain about later, once we got safely home. But the seeds of his death were planted by the fever he contracted travelling in Europe with his uncle as a teenager. Even knowing that, he wouldn't have missed going to Europe, seeing the results of World War Two, seeing the German films and the French Foreign Legion headquarters at Bel Abis, experiencing all the other sights and smells that were to influence him for the rest of his life. He treasured those memories along with thousands of others in the magnificent tapestry of the life he'd savored.

He kept playing and writing and cursing imbeciles right up until the end. There were no deathbed conversions. He'd seen death, experienced no surprises and wasn't in the least bit afraid to die. At times he was in extraordinary pain, times when pulling a trigger would have brought great relief to him. He'd dryfire the .45 he always kept under his pillow and yell. He said he didn't want to do the deed because he didn't want Xerxes and I to have to confront the mess, but I think it was because his basic instinct was to stay alive. He lived for his son and for those who truly cared about him. He was satisfied that he'd done all that he'd wanted to in his life, written all he could, played all he could and travelled everywhere he'd wanted to go. He knew people and he knew music, blending those two elements in some of his most potent magical workings. He had absolutely no patience for hypocritical, tedious, self- righteous nincompoops. He had every confidence, from evidence he'd seen especially over the past few years, that enough strong Satanists truly understood what he was trying to say, and that they would make sure the philosophy he started would not be twisted or fade away after he was gone. Unlike many revolutionary thinkers, Dr. LaVey lived long enough to see part of what he started come to fruition. He didn't have to die unrecognized and unlamented, only to be. "discovered" 25 years after his death.

I don't anticipate receiving any revelations from Anton LaVey, though I'm sure there will plenty of others who claim to. They'll say that the Church of Satan has it all wrong, that we're diverting from the true path and that they've got the real scoop. That's been the line while the Doctor's been alive-Just imagine how the clamor will escalate since he's gone! But now all the words the Doctor could write, or speak, have been said. There won't be anymore. How we use them, and what we hear, is up to each of us. I don't feel that he left any questions unanswered in his philosophy. We are well-armed with the answers and attitudes I believe he intended.

It would be easy for us to reduce Dr. LaVey, now that he's gone, to a sort of Satanic saint, to concentrate on how much he's given us...to paint a black nimbus over his head and use his image as our Jesus Christ. But he was a much richer man than that. It would be doing him a disservice to narrow him--and, thereby to limit his philosophy-as his enemies would want him to be narrowed. Those who say he betrayed the Prince of Darkness were absolutely clueless about what and who Anton LaVey was/is and who or what the Prince of Darkness is. For those who became close to him, he created a vortex, a magical realm where everything is fraught with import. The very atmosphere became thick and heady with mystical possibility and subtext when in his presence. One of his comrades once commented that he lived a life of extremes, that everything that happened to him was dramatic. He had an incredible memory, a quick wit, an agile, complex mind-and he created a religion that was a reflection of his own dramatic, multifarious nature, reconciling apparent irreconcilables. His smuttiness and perversity were just as integral as the capes and shadows-spurred by a resentment of complacent humans, and a conviction that they needed to be offended and slapped across the face before they'll think. His sense of black humor and ironic disdain for the “human condition” was what he saw in the Romantic anti-hero-Satan-and what he found lacking in all "occult" systems he explored before founding the Church of Satan.

I've had many influences in my life-writers, philosophers or others I've admired. But we have precious few heroes, and Dr. LaVey has been a hero, an inspiration and role-model, for many of us. We don't just want to read his works and act upon them, we want to follow the example he set with his wild and inspiring life. His philosophy didn't come from some ivory tower isolation. It came from real-life observations and passionate participation. He disdained people, but he loved and admired certain persons. I am grateful for the time we had together, and though my grief will never end, I will do my best throughout my life to make good on the investment he made in me.

Out of the Past by Anton Szandor LaVey

I'm living in the past. I wouldn't have it any other way. They say you can never bring back the past. I do. I live in a museum. I'm not optimistic enough to think that any amount of crusading on my part is going to bring the past back, as I have known it. I do not delude myself. At best, I can use the tools technology provides to recreate my past. And my archaic ecstasies.

***

It's 6:30 in the morning in mid-November. I am in my elevated bed in the Red Room. It is still dark outside, but my bed chamber never sees light from the outside, anyway. High in the corner of the room, lying in my elevated bed like a spider, I listen to the rain. The shutters next to my head are pulled open, so the only thing separating me from the dripping outside world is an old pane of glass. My room is on the second level of this old dark house. I can look down its side all the way to the front wall, upwards to the third floor overhang, and downward to a passageway running outside the first floor with a doorway it its wall. It's a wonderful place to be, and here time stands still...only the rain tapping on the window a few inches from my head.

I hold in my hand, as a feely, an old gun...not a cowboy-type frontier model, but a sleek Colt .32 caliber automatic; nickel-plated with genuine mother of pearl grips. It's almost like my favorite cap pistol I had as a kid, which was designed to look like a real automatic. The gun I hold now, paradoxically, looks just like a cap pistol from the Thirties. That's fine if they are the same, at this stage of the game. Here I am, snug and warm and secure under the covers, holding my shiny silver cap pistol, in an old dark house with secret passages just like the ones in old B movies, looking out at the darkness and listening to the dripping rain.

Let me tell you something. Now I am getting old, with the activities of my life behind me as a standard for comparison. I would not wish to be anywhere else, under any other circumstances. My noir existence is volitional. I am revelling in my present state. I could not imagine a finer, more evocative setting than I now experience. I would take this rain-swept dawn, over any flight to enjoyable people or places; to languished repose in luxuriant beds in designer bedrooms; surrounded by houris stroking me like fantasies from a men's magazine. No corporate triumphs await my rising with this dawn; no ambitious meetings with influential men and women; no executive lunches or rides into the country or trying on my latest threads.

Apparently, I have a problem. It's called "satisfaction". It isn't right that I lack all ambition. What kind of a nut can find total satisfaction lying in an old bed, in an old house, filled with old things, and looking out at the rain? I'll tell you.

There once were many children who wished that they could live in an old house right out of a Bela Lugosi movie. Kids who wished their pot metal cap pistols were the real thing; who wished they could cut school and stay home for the day and read, or build airplane models. I know. I was one of them. Mine was a make-believe world with rolling thunder rather than radios in the next apartment. "I Love A Mystery" and "Lights Out" took precedence over Walter Winchell, just as my antediluvian setting now rejects any concern with the events of a world that is supposed to concern me.

While I look and listen to the early morning rain, I think of all the unfortunate people arising. from their beds to go to work and I get a tighter grip on my chrome cap gun and feel rich beyond description. I can skip going to school. I have made no appointments for this day. I don't need to wonder what the poor people are doing now, because I am rich. Old and rich. Call it "old wealth". The sights, sounds, and smells of my childhood and adolescence, I have devised secret means to maintain. Or should I say “hoard"? I have infinite riches through abdication and self- exclusion. Most gain wealth through interaction and commerce. My kind of wealth was always there. It never left me. I built upon it. Of all my endeavors in life, it was the easiest.

What Do We Do Now?... By Blanche Barton

It's been hard for me to finish this issue of The Cloven Hoof. There have been reasons, many reasons, but those reasons don't explain why I couldn't finish this. It was because, deep inside, I felt that finishing this issue would mean we were drawing a line under Dr. LaVey's life, that he was gone and our next step would be across a boundary he couldn't cross. I didn't want to leave him. I've lingered, feeling wounded and empty. But now, as the legal complications after his death are winding down, and as the emotional and physical upheaval are beginning to subside, I finally feel able to move beyond that boundary. This issue cannot contain everything he was, cover every aspect of his soul, eloquently and completely in order to do justice to our High Priest. I've resigned myself that that would be an unrealistic task. And that's why the Church of Satan will continue; not just to be a clearinghouse for truthful information about Anton LaVey and his life, but to remain a bastion of reason and romance, where the ideas the Black Pope formulated will be explored and encouraged.

Dr. LaVey described his organization as a mutual admiration society, and that's what it will remain. It is a gathering point for creative free- thinkers, a network of individualists and iconoclasts, encouraging further exploration into the murky borderlands by those few who are capable of it. I'm grateful that many of Dr. LaVey's comrades from over the years have taken the time to give us a glimpse of their experience of our High Priest. After reading through this issue, the resounding clarity and purpose of the Satanic voices contained here insure that what Dr. LaVey wrote, the truth he lived, wasn't lost on these diabolical individualists. The articles in this issue speak of strength as well as loss, firm direction and further dedication to Dr. LaVey's practices and principles.

Many people describe here how they decided on Satanism, what led them to Anton LaVey in the first place. Each individual odyssey reinforces that the Left-Hand Path is necessarily one of private terrors and challenges. The sinister way is a lonely, harsh one and should remain that way. There are guideposts here, but you must truly blaze your own trail. How we each got here is part of the myth, part of the tale-threads that intertwine to form the archetype of Satan himself. There's no one here to spoonfeed you or hold your hand. Satanists like complexity and challenges. That's what you get here. That's what stratifies us within the organization and in the larger world. Face the demons alone and conjure up the strength within you to justify your existence.

People ask, "What will happen to Dr. LaVey's belongings? What will happen to Dr. LaVey's organization?" As I write this, I still don't know. It hasn't been decided in the courts. Dr. LaVey's death left a wake of turmoil, in keeping with the dramatic life he has always lived. I prefer to remain silent about details that would be tedious, tawdry and irrelevant to the direction of the Church of Satan. To make sure his passions and convictions are adequately communicated to future generations of Satanists, not watered-down or misinterpreted, Dr. LaVey trusted me to carry on as he himself would. I've been a Satanist all my life, and a member of the Church of Satan for 22 years. He placed not only myself but a number of capable, strong, imaginative people in positions of leadership within his organization. I'm enthusiastic about being in this position at this historical fulcrum. What happens to a philosophy after the founder dies is the true test of that philosophy's viability. Will it be successfully challenged or revised? Will the main advocates fall by the wayside? Was the Church of Satan really a personality cult built around Anton LaVey's charismatic persona or is Satanism a religion that will last? We know the answers, and it will be exciting to see those answers unfold.

One of the most painful changes over the past year has been the threat that the house in which the Church of Satan was founded may come under the wrecking ball. Dr. LaVey lost the house in 1993 in a settlement with his previous companion. The house was bought by an old cohort of the High Priest's who allowed him to rent it at a greatly reduced rate until Dr. LaVey's death. It has now been slated for destruction, to clear the way for an apartment complex. We were forced to vacate but will continue to do all in our power to prevent its destruction. We have been receiving significant contributions to a fund to try to purchase and restore the house. For now, the company that owns the house hasn't set a date for actual destruction. Every week that they postpone that decision means another week we have to raise the money. We'll continue with those efforts as long as we can.

Our purpose remains the same. We are an outlet for accurate information about what Satanism is and is not. We will continue to network on the basis of interests and accomplishments in the real world. We do not want to become a haven for curiosity seekers or vampirized by occultniks. And while we can explain what Satanism is about, we won't limit ourselves to being "professional Satanists"; that isn't our identity. We must be judged by merit and ability, just as Dr. LaVey should be. He will always be our leader and our role model. As an individual, it should not be your primary role to explain and defend Satanism, since the best explanation is personification. All of us have obsessions, plans, foci and we should work harder than ever to achieve what drives us. That's the best way to explain what Satanism is and isn't-through application of our values and interests.

1997 c.e. was the strongest year the Church of Satan has yet had, in measure both of quantity and quality of new members. We don't want or need to attract new members. Our energies can best be invested in further involving the committed members we already have. There have always been Satanists; there will always be Satanists. We will continue to innovate, insult, outrage, prod, discover and inspire, whether there's a Church of Satan or not. Most of us are Satanists because we have found ourselves targeted as the chosen "enemy" all our lives. Dr. LaVey gave us a way to feel pride in our alienation and use it to our advantage. The Other will always be treated with suspicion, will always be a target. You see things differently, you react differently-you're a predator among sheep. It's up to you to decide what you're going to do with it. You can become wily, become a leader, or you can convince yourself you're a "victim", set yourself against society and be destroyed. But you will never be ignored.

From Meine Gutter Camarade, a German

WWI song, "With heart and hand I pledge you while I load my gun again, you will never be forgotten or the enemy forgiven, my good comrade..."

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