INTRODUCTION by Burton H. Wolfe
This is the original introduction, used in the 1969 first edition through 1972
INTRODUCTION by Burton H. Wolfe
In the summer of 1966, a few newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area began to take notice of
a body of Devil-worshippers headed by a former circus and carnival lion handler and organist,
Anton Szandor LaVey. Their practice of the black arts was nothing new in the world. It had traces
in voodoo cults, a Hell-Fire Club that existed in 18th-Century England, a Satanic circle led by
Aleister Crowley in England a century later, and the Black Order of Germany in the 1920's and
1930's. But two aspects of the San Francisco group made them different from their predecessors:
they were blasphemously organized into a church, the First Church of Satan, instead of the usual
coven Satanism and witchcraft lore; and they carried on their black magic openly instead of
underground.
Wedding, baptism, and funeral ceremonies dedicated to the Devil were held in the Church of
Satan, with the press invited. Rituals in the tradition of the black arts were staged at midnight in the
old dark Victorian house of LaVey, an incongruous building among all the white and yellow stucco
houses in the San Francisco neighborhood a short way from the cliffs along the Golden Gate.
Occasionally the roar of a full-grown lion that lived in the black house with the LaVey family
(Anton, 39; wife Diane, 26; and daughters Karla, 17, and Zeena, 6) reverberated through the night,
spooking the neighbors, who were already upset about living so close to Hell.
Somehow it was all terribly provocative. Besides, the Devil has always made "good copy," as
they say on the city desk. By 1967, the newspapers that were sending reporters to write about the
Church of Satan extended from San Francisco across the Pacific to Tokyo and across the Atlantic to
Paris. When a wedding or funeral was held, with a naked woman serving as altar to Satan, the
Associated Press and other wire Services were on hand to transmit the story and the scandalous
photographs to thousands of periodicals. Groups affiliated with the Church of Satan were organized
in other parts of America and in England, France, Germany, Africa, and Australia. In existence less
than a year, the Church of Satan had already proved one of its cardinal messages: the Devil is alive
highly popular with a great many people.
Anton LaVey, called "The Black Pope" by some of his followers, realized that two decades ago
when he was playing organ for carnival sideshows. "On Saturday night," he recalls, "I would see
men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was
playing the organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these
same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge
them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday night they'd be back at the carnival or some other
place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's
carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scourged by any white light religion."
Although LaVey did not realize it then—he was only eighteen—he was on his way toward
formulating a religion that would serve as the antithesis to Christianity and its Judaic heritage. It
was an old religion, older than Christianity or Judaism. But it had never been formalized, arranged
into a body of thought and ritual. That was to be LaVey's role in 20th-Century civilization.
All of LaVey's background seemed to prepare him for that role. He is the descendant of
Georgian, Roumanian, and Alsatian grandparents, including a gypsy grandma who passed on to
him the legends of vampires and witches in her native Transylvania. As early as the age of five,
LaVey was delving into Weird-Tales magazines, and books such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
and Bram Stoker's Dracula. He felt different from other children, and yet he became a ringleader,
glorying in the organization of mock military orders.
In 1942, when he was twelve years old, LaVey's fascination with toy soldiers branched off to
concern about the world war. He delved into military manuals and discovered that arsenals for the
equipment of armies and navies could be bought like groceries in a supermarket and used to
conquer masses of people. The idea took shape in his head that contrary to what the Bible said, the
earth would not be inherited by the meek, but by the strong and mighty.
After entering High School, LaVey became something of an offbeat child prodigy. He did most
of his studying outside the school, delving into music, metaphysics, and secrets of the occult. At
sixteen he became second oboist in the San Francisco Ballet Symphony Orchestra. Bored with high
school classes, he dropped out in his junior year, left home, and joined the Clyde Beatty Circus as a
cage boy, watering and feeding the lions and tigers. Animal trainer Beatty noticed that LaVey was
comfortable working with the big cats and made him an assistant trainer.
One day the circus calliope player became drunk. LaVey had taught himself to play the piano
by ear and thought he could handle the organ keyboard well enough to provide some music for the
performance that evening. It turned out that he played better and knew more music than the regular
player, so Beatty kept him on the calliope. He accompanied the "Human Cannonball," Hugo
Zachinni, and the Wallendas' high wire acts, among others.
When he was eighteen, LaVey left the circus and joined a carnival. He became assistant to a
magician, learned hypnosis, and studied more about the occult. This was a curious combination. On
the one side, he was working in an atmosphere of life at its rawest level—of earthy music; the smell
of wild animals; acts in which a second of missed timing meant accident; performances that
demanded youth and strength, and shed those who grew old like last year's clothes; a world of
physical excitement that had magical attractions. On the other side, he was working with the magic
in the dark side of the human mind.
After he married, LaVey abandoned the wondrous world of the carnival to settle into a career
better suited for a home life. He enrolled as a criminology major at the City College of San
Francisco. That led to his first conformist job—photographer for the San Francisco Police
Department. As it worked out, that job had as much to do as any other with leading him toward
Satanism.
"I saw the bloodiest, grimiest side of human nature," he recalls. "People shot by nuts, knifed by
friends, little kids splattered in the gutter by hit and run drivers. It was disgusting and depressing. I
asked myself: 'Where is God?' I came to detest the sanctimonious attitude of people toward
violence, always saying it's God's will."
He quit in disgust after three years and went back to playing the organ, this time in nightclubs,
to earn a living while he continued his studies into his life's fascination: the black arts. Once a week
he held classes in ritual magic at his home. They attracted many who were, or have since become
well known in the arts and sciences and business world. Eventually a "Magic Circle" evolved from
this group.
The major purpose of the Circle was to meet for the performance of black rituals that LaVey
had discovered. He had accumulated a library of works that described the Black Mass and other
pagan ceremonies conducted by groups such as the Knights Templar in 14th-Century France and
the Golden Dawn in 19th-Century England. The original intent of these black orders was to
blaspheme, mock the Christian church, and address themselves to the Devil as an anthropomorphic
deity that represented the reverse of God. In LaVey's view, the Devil was much more than that.
Satan represented a dark, hidden force in nature that was responsible for the workings of earthly
affairs for which science and religion had no explanation and no control.
"At first I detected this force in small ways," LaVey explains. "It might be the discovery of an
individual whose powers of wishing were so great that he could win horse races. In my case, I
found I could conjure up parking places at the last minute in front of theaters, when none should
have been there. I also discovered an ability through magic to bring reversals to enemies and gain
advantage for myself. I realized I had stumbled onto something, and I would have gone on doing it
on my own without any Magic Circle. But I also realized that for some things private magic was
weaker than mass ritual magic."
Hence, on the last night of April 1966—Walpurgisnacht, the most important festival in the lore
of magic and witchcraft—LaVey shaved his head in the tradition of ancient strongmen and
announced the formation of the Church of Satan. For proper identification as its minister, he put on
the clerical collar. Up to that collar, he almost looked holy. But the Genghis Khan shaved head, his
Mephistophelian beard, and his narrow eyes gave him the necessary demonic look for his
priesthood of the Devil's church.
"For one thing," LaVey explains, "calling it a church enabled me to follow the magic formula
of nine parts outrage to one part social respectability that is needed for success. But the main
purpose was to gather a group of like-minded individuals together for the use of their combined
energies in calling up the dark force in nature that is called Satan."
As LaVey correctly perceived, all other churches are based on worship of the spirit and denial
of the flesh. He saw the need for a church that would recapture man's body and carnal desires as
objects of celebration. "And," he adds, "since worship of fleshly things produces pleasure, there
would then be a temple of glorious indulgence that would be fun for people. All the other churches
are places of abstinence with services that people want to have over as soon as possible so they can
get out and start enjoying life again."
In the Church of Satan, LaVey initiated clever psychodramas that would enable a group of
flesh-worshippers to overcome the repressions and inhibitions fostered by the Judaeo-Christian
tradition. He knew that the old concept of a Black Mass to satirize Christian services was
outmoded. There was a revolution in the Christian church itself against orthodox rites and
traditions. It was popular to declare that "God is dead." So, the rites that he worked out, while still
maintaining the trappings of the ancient Black Mass, were changed from a negative mockery to
positive forms of celebrations: Satanic weddings, funerals devoid of sanctimonious platitudes, lust
rituals to help individuals attain their sex desires, destruction rituals to enable members of the
Satanic Church to triumph over enemies and win their goals in life.
There is no altruism or love-thy-neighbor concept in the Satanic religion, except in the sense of
helping other adherents of the Black Path to gain their desires by group energy. Satanism is a
blatantly selfish, brutal religion. It is based on the belief that man is inherently a selfish, violent
creature, that life is a Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest, that the earth will be ruled by
those who fight to win the ceaseless competition that exists in all jungles—including that of urban
societies. On that score, the Church of Satan may be justly criticized, although even its critics will
have to admit that its philosophy is based on logic and real conditions that exist in the world.
On the other hand, the great contribution to civilized thought made by the Church of Satan is its
celebration of the complete human being instead of the spirit alone. The signs are everywhere that
humanity is striving to burst the restrictive bonds of religion. It was predicted in the Bible, for that
matter, in symbolic passages that dealt with Satan chained for a thousand years, after which he
would break free and foment deviltry on the earth. Now it is happening. Sex is exploding in movies
and literature, on the streets, and in the home. People are dancing topless and bottomless. Youths
are throwing off restrictions that deny pleasure in mind and body. There is a ceaseless quest for
entertainment, gourmet foods and wines, adventure, enjoyment of the here and now. Man is no
longer willing to wait for any afterlife that promises to reward the clean, pure—translate: ascetic,
drab—spirit. There is a mood of neo-paganism and hedonism, and from it have emerged a wide
variety of intelligent individuals—doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, actors,
stockbrokers, clerks, printers, nurses (to cite just a few categories of Satanic Church members)—
who are interested in carrying the liberation of the flesh all the way to a formal religion.
In the Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey explains the philosophy of Satanism better than any of his
ancestors in the Kingdom of Darkness, and describes the various rituals and trappings that have
been devised to create a true church of flesh-worshippers. It is clear, from the interest in Satanism
that erupted in 1968 along with the fascination directed toward Ira Levin's book Rosemary's Baby,
that there are many people who would like to know how to start Satanic cults and ritualize black
magic. This book shows them how to go about it and fills that need. It is also clear that there is a
place for the formulation of teachings that constitute the antithesis to the repressive, inhibiting, antimaterial
dogma of Christianity and other antiquated religions. The Satanic Bible also fills that need.
Perhaps the most important social value of this book is its challenge to other religions: Deal
with carnal desire and the flesh in a logical, rational manner or lose the struggle not only for men's
bodies, but also their souls.