(portrait of Anton LaVey on the back of his first book, The Satanic Bible)
Anton LaVey (1930-1997) was the most prominent self-proclaimed Satanist of modern times. He established the Church of Satan using nothing more than his own personal charisma and oratorical gifts, and at the time of his death it was claimed in some quarters that the Church had acquired over ten thousand members, though the number of paying members is much lower. His books are still selling around the world in numerous foreign languages. The Church of Satan lives after him, a testimony to the appeal of his message to a significant segment of the population.
So many of the assertions surrounding LaVey's history and activities are fictitious, it is difficult to distinguish plain fact from embellishments, and truth from deliberate lies. LaVey himself was responsible for most of this confusion. He ghost wrote two biographies about his own life that are filled with colorful but unlikely details (The Devil's Avenger in 1974, which lists his business associate Burton Wolfe as its author, and the Secret Life of a Satanist in 1990, supposedly written by his mistress, Blanche Barton). LaVey continually added to his legend in media interviews over a span of three decades. Compounding the confusion are the numerous slanders uttered against LaVey by his enemies. By sifting the available records it is possible to arrive at a general understanding of this colorful and complex man, but there is little certainty regarding many of the details of his life.
Anton Szandor LaVey was born with the name Howard Stanton Levey on April 11, 1930, in Cook County, Illinois, but was raised in San Francisco. His father, Michael Levey, worked selling auto parts and real estate. The family occupied a large late-Victorian house at 6114 California Street, in the Richmond District of San Francisco. LaVey continued to dwell this house for the rest of his life.
His racial heritage is said to have been a mix of Georgian and Alsatian. He claimed that his grandmother, Cecile Luba Primokov-Coulton, was a Gypsy from Transylvania who during his boyhood would delight him with tales of vampires and demons. As with so much of LaVey's personal mythology, both claims are untrue -- his grandmother was Ukrainian, and had no Gypsy blood.
Equally false was LaVey's improbable story that in 1945, shortly after the end of the Second World War, an uncle had taken him to Germany, where he was shown secret films of the rituals of Satanic German cults. LaVey asserted that these films formed the basis for his 1972 book The Satanic Rituals, but the statement by his daughter Zeena that he spent his fifteenth year in San Francisco seems much more likely, particularly since his uncle was in McNeill Island Penitentiary at the time.
LaVey appears to have grown up in a completely normal middle-American environment. His family had no interest in the occult. LaVey himself possessed a fascination for the bizarre and dramatic from an early age. He moved from job to job as a young man, searching for his own place in the world. He claimed at various times to have worked as an artist, musician, photographer, hypnotist, and psychic, but much of his early employment history was exaggerated by him in later years.
LaVey asserted that in 1947 he ran away from home and joined the Clyde Beatty Circus as a lion tamer. Common sense would argue against an untrained seventeen-year old attaining such a position on short notice, and not surprisingly, the Clyde Beatty archives contain no record that LaVey ever worked for the circus. If he was with the circus it must have been for a short period in a very menial capacity. He is supposed to have studied criminology at San Francisco City College, but no record exists of his enrollment at this institution. He is also said to have worked as a photographer for the San Francisco Police Department in the early 1950s, but again no record of this job can be found. The claim that he apprenticed himself to a numerologist may have more merit, since this would require no academic credentials or particular talent.
He was an accomplished musician, but perhaps less gifted than he would have posterity believe. He began to study music at age five, and at 15 left Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley to play oboe professionally with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra as its youngest member. In her debunking of the LaVey myth his daughter Zeena points out that the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra did not even exist at this time, and that the local orchestra that did accompany the San Francisco Ballet during this period has no record of LaVey as a member.
LaVey was always proud to claim that he served as San Francisco's official organist at all gala civic functions, beginning during his membership with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and continuing until 1966. However, no such position with the city of San Francisco ever existed.
I would not be surprised to learn that LaVey did play oboe in an orchestra accompanying the San Francisco Ballet on one or two occasions, or that he played organ at some San Francisco civic celebration. It is unlikely that these were regular engagements, or that they qualified as gainful employment. His versatility as a musician cannot be disputed, including at it did the drums, trombone, violin and piano, in addition to the oboe, organ and calliope, but versatility is not a sign of proficiency. When synthesizers were invented, LaVey was quick to experiment with the new instrument. He seems to have been seeking novelty in his music, perhaps as a substitute for quality.
The story was invented that in 1948 he played organ at the Mayan burlesque theater in Los Angeles, where he met and became the lover of Marilyn Monroe. LaVey claimed that before her film success, Monroe had worked there as an exotic dancer. One of LaVey's most prized possessions in later years was a copy of Monroe's nude calendar photo bearing the inscription "Dear Tony, How many times have you seen this! Love, Marilyn." This tale appears to be completely false. By her own account, the calendar inscription was forged by Diane Hegarty, LaVey's second wife and the mother of his two daughters, Karla and Zeena. The Mayan Theater was never a burlesque house, and LaVey never worked there. He never even met Marilyn Monroe.
While married to his first wife, Carole, prior to founding the Church of Satan, he regularly played Wurlitzer organ at the Lost Weekend, a local bar in the Sunset District, for a salary of $29.91 a week, plus tips. As far as I have been able to determine, this was his only steady job throughout his life.
The thread connecting the tales of his early, failed attempts at employment is fantasy. LaVey was searching desperately for wonders and mysteries. He was not content to be a mere spectator, but wanted to take the leading role. His ego was enormous, his ambition boundless.
In the 1950s he founded a small study group known as the Magic Circle -- or perhaps he was only one of its members. The Magic Circle included among its ranks the underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who is remembered for uncovering the impressionistic wall murals painted by Aleister Crowley in Crowley's Abbey of Thelema on the island of Cefalu, and making a film documentary of the event. In the company of like-minded friends, LaVey undoubtedly talked about such subjects as the Golden Dawn, Crowley, Eliphas Levi, and the new witchcraft movement that was just springing up under the leadership of Gerald Gardner in England. The Magic Circle was more of a social group than a lodge of serious magicians, but it confirmed LaVey's interest in the occult. Over time, the focus of the group shifted from regular magic to black magic. LaVey embraced this as a way of getting what he wanted from the world.
The explosion of freedom that occurred in the mid-1960s furnished LaVey the opportunity to take public his personal beliefs about black magic, and his lust for publicity and spectacle, and to transform them into a money-making proposition.
In 1966 LaVey was supporting himself and his second wife, Diane, on whatever scant pay he could earn as a musician. Years before, his father had made arrangements for LaVey and his first wife, Carole, to live rent free in the family house on California Street, but even so money must have been tight. In an effort to supplement his income LaVey began exploiting his theoretical knowledge of the occult acquired at the meetings of the Magic Circle by giving weekend lectures and workshops on magic and witchcraft at his home, and charging two dollars a head.
In the summer of 1966 a newspaper article appeared about LaVey's activities, in which he was characterized as the "priest of the Devil's church." This may have given LaVey the seminal idea for his Satanic religion; or it may be that the reporter derived his description from something LaVey had said during the interview about plans to form a Satanic church.
According to legend, it was on April 30, 1966, that LaVey proclaimed the opening of the Church of Satan. He is supposed to have considered this an auspicious date since April 30 is the traditional Walpurgis Night of European witchcraft. The story goes that LaVey was forced to ritually install himself as High Priest of the Church, since he could find no one else who would perform the dread, blasphemous ritual to elevate him to this position. However, according to his daughter, Zeena, LaVey actually did not establish the Church until months later, and backdated its inception to give it a more prestigious birth date.
All the walls in his family mansion in San Francisco, which is said to have thirteen rooms, were painted black, and the ceilings red. He drew red inverted pentacles on the walls, and decorated the rooms with skulls, a coffin, daggers, demonic statues, and a plastic owl. There was also a furry, stuffed figure that LaVey claimed on questionable provenance to be a werewolf.
The myth was created by LaVey that he had bought the house independently in 1956. This is the assertion made by Blanche Barton, his mistress at the time of his death. The reality is that LaVey's father gave the house as a gift jointly to LaVey and his second wife, Diane Hegarty LaVey, in 1971. The house was claimed by LaVey to have formerly been the brothel of the infamous madam Mammy Pleasant, and to contain numerous secret passages and chambers. Zeena LaVey refutes every aspect of this rumor, and says that any secret passages or hidden rooms in the house were added by LaVey after he was given the house by his father. The house came to be known as the Black House, perhaps due to its black and purple color scheme.
He kept living tarantulas and a Nubian lion named Togare as house pets in order to foster an exotic atmosphere. Partially because of the lion, the house was surrounded with a high chain-link fence set at the top with barbed wire. LaVey contained the lion, which he had received as a cub in 1964, safely in a cage, but its roars during the night caused such an outcry from his neighbors (who apparently didn't mind the Satanic masses) that LaVey was forced to send the beast away to the San Francisco Zoo. In spite of his pretense at being a lion tamer, LaVey found the 500 pound cat more than a handful, and used an electric cattle prod to stun it into submission. He is said by Zeena to have visited Togare only twice at the zoo. Eventually the big cat passed into the care of the actress and animal rights activist Tippi Hedren, where it was well cared for until its death.
The transformation in LaVey's personal appearance was just as startling as the decor of his house. He shaved his head, adopted a sinister Mephistophelean moustache and beard, took to wearing all-black clothing and adorning himself with heavy occult jewelry. He could often be seen at night, walking the steep streets of San Francisco with his naked skull gleaming white in the moonlight and a black cape billowing behind him on the wind. Legend states that he shaved his head on April 30, 1966, the same night he is supposed to have established the Church of Satan, as part a ceremony confirming him as High Priest, but Zeena reports that he shaved off his hair in the summer of that year in response to a dare by his wife, and that the act had no special occult meaning.
The Church of Satan struggled at the beginning to find members, but was an attractive haven for bored and sophisticated individuals seeking a way to express their independence from the moral strait jacket of middleclass America. It also acted as a magnet to those looking for sexual thrills and depravity in a relatively safe setting.
The early revenues of the Church must have been small. LaVey hired himself out as a ghost-hunter, psychic investigator, and personal therapist and counselor on matters of the occult and paranormal. On Wednesday nights, he hosted seminars at the mansion on sexual glamour and love potions for apprentice witches.
In 1967 LaVey gained his first burst of widespread publicity for the Church of Satan when he performed a Satanic marriage between Judith Case, described as a socialite, and the journalist Joe Rosenthal. In the same year he administered a Satanic baptism on his first daughter, Zeena Galatea LaVey, who was three and a half years old at the time. This provoked a storm of media outrage.
LaVey boasted of having had affairs with the actresses Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. As indicated above, the first claim is highly questionable, but there is evidence as to the second. Mansfield was the Church of Satan's most famous member. She was strongly attracted to LaVey, who carried on a dominant-submissive relationship with her. One night a San Francisco police inspector paid LaVey's mansion a visit and found Jayne Mansfield stretched out naked across the top of a grand piano. LaVey later explained to the policeman about Mansfield: "She liked to be humiliated. She longed for a stern master."
Mansfield claimed to her friends and to reporters that she had no real interest in the Church of Satan, but had merely used it as the centerpiece of a publicity stunt, and furthermore than LaVey was in love with her, not the other way around. However, this seems to me to be merely an attempt by the actress to protect her public image and professional reputation.
After Mansfield's grisly death in a car crash, rumors persisted for years that the crash had been the result of her attraction to black magic and her involvement in the Church of Satan. Legend has it that Mansfield's attorney Sam Brody was concerned about her involvement with LaVey. He urged her to sever her connection with the Church of Satan, and openly mocked and reviled LaVey, who is supposed to have retaliated by placing a curse on Brody and declaring that Brody would be dead within a year. Six months later the two died in the same car accident, in which Mansfield is supposed to have been decapitated. There appears to be no basis for any aspect of this bit of urban folklore.
Another very prominent member of the Church was the singer Sammy Davis Junior, who on March 17, 1973, accepted the invitation of Church member Michael Aquino to join LaVey's congregation. He received his honorary membership on April 13, 1973, from Aquino and Karla LaVey, but did not meet LaVey himself until August of that year. It may be assumed that the role of Sammy Davis in the Church was minimal. How he reconciled his adopted Jewish faith with Satanism can only be conjectured.
In 1968 LaVey is supposed to have been paid to act as a consultant during the making of the movie Rosemary's Baby, and to have appeared in a cameo role on screen as the Devil himself. On several occasions I have tried to make out LaVey's facial features during the Satanic rape scene in the film, where Rosemary is impregnated with the Antichrist, but I have been unable to distinguish LaVey. The appearance of the Devil is so brief, if you blink you will miss it.
Zeena asserts that her father never met the director of the film, Roman Polanski, that there was no technical advisor on occult matters hired for the project, that no one connected with the film has ever mentioned the presence of LaVey on the set, and that the body double of Mia Farrow, who played Farrow's character during the Satanic rape scene, described the actor playing the Devil as "a young, very slender professional dancer," a description that did not apply to LaVey at the time. He was hired in 1968 by a San Francisco theater to appear at the local opening of the film as a publicity stunt, but this is LaVey's only connection to the film acknowledged by Zeena.
LaVey's fame reached its peak in the early 1970s after the publication in December, 1969, of his first book The Satanic Bible (New York: Avon). I have a copy of the first printing of the first edition. It is a readable and entertaining book. The cover is all black, with a pentacle containing the Satanic goat of Eliphas Levi in an inverted pentagram that is surrounded counterclockwise with the Hebrew letters L-V-I-Th-N (a rendering of the name of the great serpent of the ocean depths, Leviathan). On the back there is only the brooding, sinister, shaved head of LaVey seated in front of the same pentacle with his hands folded on the table before him, dressed in black as was his custom. With his left hand, LaVey makes the sign of the Devil by extending his index and little fingers.
The design on the front cover of the Satanic Bible is an exact copy by LaVey of the front cover design of A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural by Maurice Bessy, first published in English by Spring Books in 1964 -- two years before LaVey founded the Church of Satan. I have this book in my library. The striking image is rendered in heavy white ink on black cloth, and almost fills the cover of this large picture book. The original French edition titled Histoire en 1000 images de la magie was published in 1961. The symbol, known to Satanists as the Baphomet emblem, appeared minus the Hebrew letters in a 1931 French text by the occultist Oswald Wirth. Eliphas Levi described the head of the goat in the inverted pentagram very precisely in his Key of the Mysteries, first published in French in 1861 (see page 112 of Crowley's translation), and the head of the goat pictured in the design is derived from Levi's famous illustration of Baphomet, first published in the original French edition of Levi's Rituel de la Haute Magie in 1856 (see page 186 of the Weiser edition of Levi's Transcendental Magic). All of which disproves the myth that LaVey himself designed the Baphomet emblem and owns the rights to the use of the design.
On page 198 of the Spring edition of Bessy's book the so-called Baphomet emblem appears alongside a pentacle of similar design that shows the nude figure of Adam standing within an upright pentagram, surrounded by the Hebrew letters of Yeheshuah (IHShVH). This version of the Baphomet emblem has written around the inverted pentagram the names of the king and queen of hell in Jewish Kabbalistic mythology, Samael and Lilith. It is obvious that it formed the basis for LaVey's Baphomet emblem, minus the names. In the pentacle of the upright pentagram appear the names of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. Unfortunately, Bessy does not bother to give the sources for his illustrations (a fatal flaw of his book), but the two pentacles could be the work of Eliphas Levi, to judge by their style.
(seal of Samael alongside the seal of Adam, reproduced in Bessy's Pictorial History, 1964)
The Satanic Bible is divided into four sections based on the division of the four elements, Fire, Air, Earth and Water. They are titled, respectively, the Book of Satan, Book of Lucifer, Book of Belial, and Book of Leviathan. According to LaVey these are the four crown princes of hell (Satanic Bible, page 57). Zeena asserts that her father plagiarized the Book of Satan from an 1896 essay by Ragnar Redbeard titled Might Is Right, but I cannot verify this since I have not seen Redbeard's work.
LaVey gives his own definition of magic: "The change in situations or events in accordance with one's will, which would, using normally accepted methods, be unchangeable" (Satanic Bible, page 110). This is an adaptation of the famous definition of Aleister Crowley: "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to appear in conformity with Will" (Magick In Theory and Practice, 1929, page XII).
LaVey asserts that Satanic magic can be divided into three categories: rituals of desire, rituals of compassion, and rituals of destruction. Of prominent importance in the book are the "Nine Satanic Statements," a collection of dualistic utterances defining the nature of the Devil that Zeena claims to be paraphrases of passages in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Again, I am unable to verify this statement -- years ago I attempted to read Rand's novel, but found it to be unreadable.
The Satanic Bible is filled with inflammatory bons mots intended by LaVey to raise the hackles of the establishment, among them: "If a man smite thee on one cheek, smash him on the other!" and "Do unto others as they do unto you."
The final third of the book is occupied by Enochian and English versions of the Enochian Keys. Some of the wording in the Keys was altered by LaVey to make it support his purposes. The magical uses given by LaVey for each Key are entirely his own creation, and have no basis in Enochian magic. LaVey was strongly influenced by Aleister Crowley, and since the Enochian Keys play an important part in Crowley's magic, we may assume that LaVey derived them from this source.
The motivating factor in LaVey's brand of magic is selfish satisfaction of the desires, ambitions and impulses. Satanists are directed by LaVey to take from the world what they want, because there is no reward in heaven and no punishment in hell. They are told never to turn the other cheek, but to strike back at those who seek to hurt them. Woman are taught in LaVey's books how to use sex to manipulate men for their own purposes.
LeVay preached that there is no God, and no Satan in the commonly accepted sense. For LaVey Satan was a Jungian archetype, although according to his daughter Karla, he did believe in and worship the power of Satan. Once, when asked how he could reconcile the worship of the Devil in an organized Church of Satan with his proclaimed disbelief that Satan even exists, LaVey gave a characteristically cynical reply. He said "calling it a Church enabled me to follow the magic formula of one part outrage to nine parts social respectability that is needed for success."
LaVey enjoyed playing devil's advocate and presenting himself to the media as a crafty huckster in the P. T. Barnum mold. When the reviewer Jerry Carroll, interviewing him over dinner one night in 1986, asked LaVey if he really believed in what he taught, LaVey merely shrugged and said "it's a living." He often complained to those close to him that many of his followers were gullible fools.
In spite of this cynical exterior, after operating the Church of Satan for some years LaVey began to realize that he had tapped into a wellspring of personal empowerment. Those attracted to the Church of Satan and its teachings were disillusioned by conventional morality and the empty platitudes of Christianity. They were ready for a religion that told them they need not be ashamed of their darkest sexual impulses, but should rejoice in them; and furthermore preached that they should stop being humble and meek, and go out into the world to take what they want from others by guile or force.
LaVey came to genuinely believe that his message of aggressive self-interest was a way for individuals to achieve freedom and happiness in their lives. He saw Satan, not as the tempter of mankind, but as the spur to human self-improvement. His followers began to refer to LaVey as the Black Pope, and some of them accorded him reverential awe and fierce loyalty.
The Church of Satan was always a family business. Despite its growing international membership, LaVey continued to run it out of his home in San Francisco, and at various periods his second wife, Diane, his elder daughter, Karla, his younger daughter, Zeena, and his mistress, Blanche Barton, all served as its high priestesses. Membership in the Church could be obtained by mail order for the sum of one hundred dollars, and the effort of filling out a questionnaire. LaVey declared his desire -- indeed, his determination -- to pay taxes rather than freeload on government exemption as did other churches. It seems to me that this policy was based on the pragmatic realization that he could never convince government officials to grant the Church of Satan tax exempt status, so why not make a virtue of necessity?
LaVey spent three decades building up the Church of Satan. He gave as many interviews as he could arrange, and sometimes complained that he was not getting enough press in the San Francisco markets, the primary base for Church membership.
As a hobby, he pursued his interest in music. Pedestrians passing the Black House often heard mournful organ music spilling out from its redly-glowing windows. He released several albums of his music, one of which was titled tongue-in-cheek Satan Takes A Holiday.
He continued to write about Satanism. In all, he wrote five books. The most important are The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals, both published as Avon paperbacks. He also wrote The Devil's Notebook and The Satanic Witch. The Devil's Notebook enjoys the distinction of having been banned in Singapore in 1995, an event that undoubtedly pleased its author. Various sales figures are given for LaVey's books, but they appear to have sold between half a million and a million copies worldwide. His final book, Satan Speaks, was released in 1998, not long after his death. I bought it recently. It consists of a collection of short but readable essays on a wide variety of subjects, such as LaVey's admitted urine fetish -- he became excited when women peed their panties in front of him -- and his belief that regular bathing was unhealthy because it reduced the body's natural resistance to germs.
There were two schisms in the hereditary hierarchy of the Church. The first occurred at the time of LaVey's messy divorce settlement with his second wife Diane Hegarty LaVey, who was married to LaVey from 1962 to 1986, and served as High Priestess from 1966 to 1984. It involved LaVey's younger daughter, Zeena. As a young woman, Zeena had separated herself from the Church and spent five years trying to live a normal married life. After the failure of her marriage, she returned to her father's household and served as High Priestess from 1985 to 1990. Although she appeared in media interviews as a spokeswoman for Satanism, relations between Zeena and LaVey were not smooth. She resented his harsh treatment of her mother.
During her term as High Priestess she formed a romantic affiliation with Nikolas Schreck, a member of the Church for whom LaVey had little respect. Schreck belonged to the shock rock band Radio Werewolf, and was founder in 1984 of an organization called the Werewolf Order. He also presented himself in LaVey's circle of friends as a filmmaker and writer. It was his ambition to be made a Priest of the Church, but LaVey delayed his elevation. Zeena and Schreck married in 1988. Shreck's dissatisfaction over his progress in the Church of Satan may have prompted Zeena's decision in 1990 to renounce her family name and break away from the Church. Henceforth, she declared, she would be known as Zeena Schreck. She would refer to her father only as the "founder" of the Church of Satan.
The pair moved to Austria along with Zeena's teenage son, Stanton LaVey. There they recorded a music album, and tried to increase the membership of Schreck's Werewolf Order, both with limited success. Stanton eventually returned alone to California to be raised by his grandmother, Diane Hegarty.
In 1995 Zeena and Schreck joined the Temple of Set, an organization devoted to black magic that had been created by Lieutenant Colonel Michael A. Aquino, a former army intelligence operative and supposed psychological warfare expert at one time implicated in a child molestation investigation at the Presidio military base. Zeena had prepared the way for this union by writing to Aquino as early as the end of 1990, shortly after her split with her father. Aquino, like Schreck, had been denied advancement by LaVey and harbored a grudge against the Church. For Zeena, joining the Temple of Set was a way to strike back at LaVey while at the same time taking advantage of her prominence as LaVey's daughter and a former High Priestess of the Church of Satan to advance in the Temple of Set hierarchy.
In 1998 Zeena was recognized as a Mistress of the Order of Leviathan, an order only open to members of the Temple of Set. She received the grandiose titles of Co-director of the Scholomance Element, Co-sentinel of the Babalon Pylon, and member of the Order of the Vampyre. Schreck, for his part, became a Master of the Order of Leviathan, Grand Master of the Order of Babalon, Director of the War Element, and Kaula of the Order of the Black Tower. Say what you like about Aquino, he is not stingy with his titles.
Recently Zeena and Schreck attempted to establish a business selling occult books and memorabilia. Hell House of Hollywood promoted itself as "an emporium of weirdness." When the store fell through, they attempted unsuccessfully to transfer the business to the Internet. Links still exist to this site, but the site itself is no more.
Anton LaVey died on October 29, 1997, at St. Mary's Hospital, of pulmonary edema (heart attack). He was taken to St. Mary's, a Catholic hospital, because it was the closest available. In keeping with his love of show, his family deliberately listed the time of his death incorrectly as the morning of Halloween, two days after the fact. They kept his death secret for a week, as they said, so as not to ruin for his followers their enjoyment of the festival of Halloween. A secret Satanic funeral for LaVey, invitation only, was held in Colma, and his body was cremated. He was 67 years old at the time of his death. His ashes were not buried, but were eventually divided amongst his heirs as part of a settlement, on the assumption that they possess occult potency, and can be used for acts of Satanic magic.
Zeena had the poor taste to go on the show of the Christian radio personality Bob Larson and claim that she was responsible for her father's death. She asserted that she had placed a curse on LaVey. Well this may well be true, it is unlikely that it had any bearing on her father's heart attack.
After announcing her father's death, his daughter Karla LaVey and his companion Blanche Barton held a joint news conference for a dozen reporters to proclaim that the Church of Satan would continue under Karla's leadership as High Priestess. Karla had become High Priestess after the departure of Zeena from the Church.
Alas, this concord between Karla and Blanche was of short duration. LaVey's death precipitated the second schism within the Church. Karla and Blanche accused each other of not devoting enough energy to the daily operations of the organization, but as usual, money lay at the root of the dispute. In a handwritten will dated March 9, 1995, LaVey had left Blanche all of his "writings, artwork, property and holdings." The royalties from his books were to be held in trust for his young son, Xerxes, "unless Blanche Barton deems otherwise." In 1998, Karla took Blanche to court over the terms of the will, which it must be admitted were manifestly unfair to the daughters. Karla claimed that Blanche had exerted an "undue influence" over her father, who was "not of sound and disposing mind and was under the influence of medication." In response Blanche posted an Internet statement denying that Karla was the rightful High Priestess of the Church.
A settlement was reached in January of 1999. Zeena, Karla and Blanche agree to divide up future royalties from LaVey's books. His personal property was split between the three. For example, among other items Blanche got his bed of nails, Zeena acquired a devil-horned cap, and Karla lucked into the bogus Marilyn Monroe autographed calendar. No word of what became of the stuffed werewolf, the only personal item about which I feel idle curiosity. The Black House was not an issue, because LaVey had already lost his half interest after being forced to sell it in 1991 as part of his divorce settlement with his second wife, Diane. From that year until his death LaVey had lived on in the house at the sufferance of the new owner, his friend the real estate developer Donald Werby. The werewolf may have been sold during the disposal of the house.
Both Zeena and Karla signed away "any and all right to operate, manage or direct the operations of the nonprofit corporation known as the Church of Satan" as a part of the 1999 settlement deal with Blanche Barton, leaving Barton in complete control of the Church. In response, on Halloween of the same year Karla created her own church: "Let it be known that on this Day, Oct. 31, XXXIV Annos Satanas, Church of Satan founder, Anton LaVey's eldest daughter Karla LaVey has founded the 'First Satanic Church'." So reads an Internet announcement of this event. The name is purportedly LaVey's first choice for his Church of Satan. LaVey established his own calendar which began in 1966, the initial year of the reign of Satan, so XXXIV Annos Satanas is 1999.
From her new home in San Diego, Blanche Barton mounted an Internet campaign to save the Black House from demolition, but had no success raising the necessary $400,000 to buy the property from its current owners, who have plans to put up condominium apartments on the site. In desperation she has called upon wealthy good Samaritans to buy the house and restore it to its former glory. The stately Victorian has fallen into a terrible state of disrepair. Broken furniture and a dirty mattress litter the front yard, visible behind the high chain-link fence along with a pile of garbage. Someone had scrawled "Jesus Rulz" on the mail slot. At the end of January, 1999, the house was still standing.
Karla said of LaVey following his death: "He was a defiant, bold man, who acted on his convictions with great personal courage. Some called him the world's most dangerous man; that was because he was not afraid of the consequences of being considered evil."
In spite of his cynical pose and his low opinion of some of his Church's members, LaVey was a serious ritual magician. Blanche Barton stated: "He did believe in the devil. He believed in magic. He practiced it religiously." LaVey's devil did not have horns and a tail, but it had power over the world. On occasion he placed Satanic curses on those who vexed him. In a 1967 interview he boasted to a reporter that a year earlier he had put a curse on a bath house in San Francisco, and less than two days after the curse, it burned to the ground.
LaVey's grandson Stanton LaVey, nineteen at the time of his famous grandfather's death, painted a more intimate family picture of the Satanist: "He wasn't what people would perceive him to be. He was a sweet and caring, highly intelligent individual."
LaVey composed his own epitaph, which he confided to his daughter Karla. Speaking at the news conference immediately after his funeral, she revealed: "He said his epitaph should be 'I only regret the times I was too nice.'" In view of LaVey's history of tweaking the nose of the American people, he was probably nice more often than he was willing to publicly admit. He was not an evil man, but a man who rejected conventional morality and religion as unprofitable fictions designed to enslave fools. In his own eyes, he was a champion of truth and freedom.
Only the test of time will reveal whether his Church of Satan was supported solely by his personal magnetism, or under the management of Blanche Barton has a message that reaches into the future. Perhaps the torch will be carried onward by Karla LaVey's First Satanic Church.