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| Marilyn Manson & Anton LaVey |
“There are three possibilities where Anton LaVey is concerned. The most likely is that he is a complete fake. It is also possible he is a tortured psychotic with grand delusions. The most frightening possibility, however, is that he really is the Devil incarnate – perhaps without knowing it”.1
This evaluation by journalist Larry Wright shows all the ambiguity of LaVey. With few exceptions, LaVey is at the origins of all contemporary Satanism. Both in Europe and in the United States, the claims by contemporary Satanist groups that they descend directly from 19th-century organizations, not to mention medieval witches, should be regarded as mythological. Few of these contemporary groups would exist without LaVey, and this circumstance must be recognized even before trying to reconstruct who LaVey really was.
Wright himself gave an important contribution, in 1993, to debunking a series of legends on the life of LaVey in the years before the foundation of the Church of Satan. After the death of her father, Anton’s daughter Zeena LaVey, with her husband Nikolas Schreck, struck the myth of the “Pope of Satan” with further blows.2 Previously, only two “authorized” biographies had been published: The Devil’s Avenger by Burton H. Wolfe, in 1974,3 and The Secret Life of a Satanist, by Blanche Barton (pseudonym of Sharon Densley), LaVey’s own companion, in 1990.4 Some biographical details had already been questioned by the former lieutenant of LaVey, Michael Aquino, in his voluminous history of the Church of Satan, which went through several editions between 1983 and 2013.5 Aquino’s book remains an important source on LaVey, although it was written after he broke with his former mentor, and may have reconstructed early events in the light of subsequent controversies. Another important book dealing with the Church of Satan has also been written by a member of Aquino’s Temple of Set, Stephen E. Flowers.6
The official biographies give the date of birth of “Anton Szandor LaVey” as 11 April 1930 and claim he was the son of Joseph and Augusta LaVey. Wright examined records in Chicago and concluded that the date was either April 11 or March 11, since the certificate originally indicated March and was later corrected to April following a request from Anton’s mother. The name was “Howard Stanton Levey”, son of Michael Joseph Levey (1903–1992) and Gertrude Augusta Coulton (1903–?). No LaVey resided in the American city in 1930. Wright also had the opportunity of interviewing the father of the “Black Pope”, who was still alive at the time of his research, and concluded that Anton Szandor LaVey, the Satanist, and Howard Stanton Levey, the son of Michael Joseph Levey, were one and the same.7
In the biography written by Barton, there is a photograph of LaVey near the road sign that indicates the small French village of Le Vey. Barton explained:
“Though his true name was Boehm, Ellis Island officials characteristically renamed Anton’s grandfather by his last place of residence, LeVey (France). He kept his new surname, changing the first ‘e’ to ‘a’”.8 A Transylvanian grand mother, who had reportedly passed on to LaVey gypsy forms of witchcraft, is a further invention of the official biographies. Biographers, official or otherwise, agree that when Anton was nine or ten, his parents moved to San Francisco, where his father obtained a license to sell spirits. Barton also mentioned a strange anomaly in LaVey’s anatomy, an extra vertebra, which had the form of a tail, removed around the age of twelve.9 This detail had not emerged in the 1974 biography by Wolfe, and was probably just another step in building the myth of the “Devil Incarnate”.
LaVey was described as a young introvert, who preferred reading adventure books, or spying in the girls’ changing rooms, rather than exercising or participating in sport activities.10 According to Wolfe, in 1945, at the age of fifteen, he was sent for by an uncle, who worked for the u.s. army in Germany, and joined him in Europe. There, he encountered the German horror cinema, developing a passion for movies like Metropolis and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. Official biographers claim that he also discovered in Germany secret ss movies with satanic rituals. But all this is false, his daughter Zeena replied: by interviewing relatives, she discovered that LaVey never went to Germany in his life, and that in 1945 the uncle he mentioned was in prison.11
Even more controversial is the life of LaVey in the years immediately after World War ii. It is certain that he made money by taking advantage of his good self-taught musical education. He entered the world of circus and carnival, which had fascinated him from an early age. Hundreds of articles and a few books about LaVey report his version of the facts. At the age of fifteen, he claimed, he was hired by the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra to play oboe.
At the age of seventeen, he entered the well-known circus of Clyde Beatty (1903–1965), where he supposedly worked first as a tamer and then as a musician. In 1948, he moved from circus to carnival and, at the end of the same year, to the dance and striptease clubs, working at the Mayan of Los Angeles.
There, he supposedly met a young stripper destined to become famous, Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962). Anton fell in love with her and they spent a couple of weeks living together.
Even critics of LaVey recognize his talent as an organ player and some skill with fierce animals, which he often kept in his house. Wright, however, determined that a “San Francisco Ballet Orchestra” did not exist in 1945. The city ballet worked with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, which in those years employed three oboe players, none of which was LaVey. The Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, owns the register of the Clyde Beatty Circus, which does not mention any LaVey or Levey. Minor or seasonal workers were sometimes not mentioned in the register, but if he really had an important role as a tamer or organ player, he would have been included. In Gibsonton, Florida, there is a Museum of the American Carnival, where on the contrary Wright found a trace of LaVey, apparently as a “fire-eater”, a profession the official biographies omitted to mention. The manager of the Mayan in 1948, actor Paul Valentine (1919–2006), excluded that the club housed stripteases, or that in that period either Marilyn Monroe or Howard Levey, or Anton LaVey, worked there.12
The agent of Marilyn at that time was Harry Lipton (1920–2002). Interviewed by Aquino, he denied the actress ever performed as an exotic dancer and excluded she had a relationship with LaVey. The details of Wolfe’s volume, approved or perhaps written by LaVey himself, show, according to Lipton, that the story is clearly apocryphal.13 Aquino was in daily contact with LaVey for several years, and describes him as constantly obsessed with the figure of Marilyn. Wolfe claims that “Marilyn was passive in her lovemaking, always allowing Anton to determine position and movements”, and that he eventually left her for a richer woman.14 This, however, was just wishful thinking, a desire destined to accompany LaVey for many years. Finally, in 1973, he solved the problem by magically summoning Monroe in soul and flesh, obviously naked, on the eleventh anniversary of her death, which had occurred on August 5, 1962.15 To reporters, LaVey would show the famous naked Monroe calendar, Golden Dreams, inscribed: “Dear Tony, how many times you have seen this! Love, Marilyn”.16
The second companion of the “Pope of Satan”, Diane Hegarty, later admitted having falsified the supposed autograph of the actress.17 After the imaginary interlude with Marilyn, Howard Levey changed his name into Anton LaVey. In 1948, he moved to San Francisco, where he married the fifteen-year-old Carole Lansing (1936–1975). According to the official biographies, the wedding took place in 1950.18 Wright, however, obtained a certificate showing that the wedding occurred in Reno, in Nevada, in 1951. In 1952, Karla, the first daughter of LaVey, was born. Anton later reported that, in order to avoid military service during the Korean War, he enrolled in 1951 in a course on criminology at the San Francisco City College, which he never completed. In the meantime, he had also become interested in photography.
Official biographies claim that in 1952 he was hired as a photographer by the San Francisco Police Department. Reportedly, he strengthened his cynical view of the world by photographing corpses of victims of the most atrocious violent deaths. This would be significant, if it were not for the fact that, as Wright reports, according to the San Francisco Police Department, no one named Howard or Anton LaVey or Levey ever worked for them; nor does City College have a record of his enrollment in the archives. Frank Moser, a retired police officer who was in the photo department during that time, says that LaVey was never in that department under any name. LaVey himself suggests that the records were purged by the department to avoid embarrassment, due to his successive scandalous fame. He even showed a police tag where his number was 666, a circumstance too good to be true.19
LaVey claimed that in the 1950s he was very much sought after as a wellpaid organ player, and in 1956, he managed to buy the expensive house at 6114 California Street, which he later painted entirely in black. LaVey also claimed that the house hosted a famous illegal brothel in the 19th century, with secret passages built to escape the police. Aquino, who knew the home very well, denied it was ever a brothel, dated its construction to the beginning of the 20th century, and suggested the secret passages were added by LaVey to impress his guests.20 He did not really buy the home either. It was the property of LaVey’s parents, who in 1956 allowed their son to live there with Carole. On July 9, 1971, they transferred the ownership to Anton and his new companion Diane.21
According to LaVey, he worked until 1966 as the “official organist” of the City of San Francisco. The records of his divorce from Carole, in 1960, mentions as his sole constant source of income his employment as an organ player in a night club called The Lost Weekend, together with “various infrequent affairs at the Civic Auditorium”. According to Wright, “there actually was no such position as city organist in San Francisco”.22 The divorce in 1960 was due to the appearance on the scene of a new discovery of LaVey: seventeen-year old Diane Hegarty. She would live with him until 1984, considering herself as his second wife and signing “Diane LaVey”, although there had been no legal wedding. Like the majority of LaVey’s women, Diane was a flashy, Marilyn-like blonde.
The house on California Street would become known in the Church of Satan simply as “6114” and was, without doubt, a bit strange. Besides circus, photography, music, and blondes, LaVey had another passion, magic. The origins of LaVey’s magical career are, however, even harder to reconstruct than his life before 1960. In different accounts, LaVey both affirmed and denied his debts to Crowley and Parsons. The influence of Crowley is clear in all of LaVey’s writings. He mentioned that, some years prior to 1951, he wrote to Parsons to obtain Crowley’s books,23 and that in 1951 he began to frequent the Berkeley branch of the “Church of Thelema”, i.e. the Gnostic Church of Smith and Parsons.24 The publication of the first complete biography of Aleister Crowley, The Great Beast by John Symonds (1914–2006) in 1952, persuaded LaVey that the British magus “was a druggy poseur whose greatest achievements were as a poet and mountain climber”.25 Or so he claimed later. In 1952, LaVey was only twenty-two. By the age of thirty, when he started consecrating himself to magic as his primary activity, the influence of Crowley became crucial. He learned about Crowley by somebody who had personally known Parsons: Kenneth Anger.
In the mid-1950s, LaVey was just an eccentric young Californian of a kind that still exists today. He collected torture devices, books and pamphlets on horror movies, exotic animals to keep in his house, memorabilia of famous criminals. Magic was certainly a component of this collection of weirdness, but it was not the only one. Around 1957, LaVey, under the influence of his new companion Diane, a conjurer and self-styled witch, began to understand that his love for aberrations and weirdness could become a profession. He started offering, for a fee, Friday night lectures in his home on the most curious topics: ghosts, vampires, werewolves, but also psychotic murderers, torture methods, and cannibalism.26
A standard feature of the official biographies is the description of a lecture on cannibalism. By way of practical demonstration, Diane placed on the table the body of a woman of forty-four who had died in a San Francisco hospital and was given to LaVey by a doctor friend. Diane offered it to her guests marinated “in fruit juices, Triple Sec, and grenadine; and served it with fried bananas and yams”, according to the tradition of the cannibals in the Fiji Islands.27
When the biography of Wolfe was published in 1974, some New York members of the Church of Satan became worried about being associated with cannibalism. Aquino, at that time still the faithful lieutenant of LaVey, assured them that Diane simply served animal meat after the lecture, claiming it was human. After all, nobody knew what human meat really tasted like.28
In the years between 1960 and 1965, LaVey’s lectures were attended by some regular visitors. Among these were “Baroness” Carin de Plessen (1901–1972), a Danish aristocrat, and a dentist, Cecil Evelyn Nixon (1874–1962), famous in San Francisco for his Isis automaton, one of the most perfect ever built.29 Reportedly, anthropologist Michael Harner, the future founder of contemporary Neoshamanism, was also a participant.30 With the exception of Togare, LaVey’s pet lion, the most famous guest was Kenneth Anger. Although almost the same age as LaVey (he was born in 1927), Anger was already a celebrity in Hollywood.
Child prodigy, this grandson of a cloakroom attendant had his first role in Midsummer Night’s Dream by Max Reinhardt (1873–1943) and William Dieterle (1893–1972). At the age of seventeen, he directed his first movie, Fireworks. It was short (fourteen minutes), but destined to win prizes in four movie festivals, including Cannes. In the 1950s, his interests started focusing on magic. Anger became a member of the group created by Parsons, studied Thelemic magic seriously, and even rediscovered what remained of Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema in Sicily.
In 1954, Anger directed his first Crowleyan film, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, where Cameron, the former companion of the now deceased Parsons, played the appropriate role of the “Scarlet Woman”. He obtained international success in 1963 with another short film (29 minutes), Scorpio Rising, dedicated to Parsons. In the meantime, in 1959, he had published the most gossipy book about the world of cinema, Hollywood Babylone, cautiously printed quite far away from Hollywood, in Paris.31 From the early 1960s, Anger was considering a film on the Devil. He began to shoot it in 1966, but the actor chosen for the part of Lucifer, Bobby Beausoleil, who was also his lover, ran away in stormy circumstances with the only existing copy of the unedited footage. In 1969, he managed to realize part of his project, with the short movie Invocation of my Demon Brother, which included music by Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones and LaVey in the role of Satan.
Lucifer Rising came out in a provisory version in 1970 and in a complete version in 1980. The first version included the music of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, a well-known fan of Crowley. In the final version, the music was by the orchestra of the jail where Beausoleil had been imprisoned after his involvement in the homicides instigated by Charles Manson. The differences between Invocation of my Demon Brother and Lucifer Rising were significant. For the second, where LaVey did not appear, Anger hired as a consultant Crowley’s disciple, Gerald Yorke (1901–1983), and created a decidedly more Crowleyan movie. Invocation of my Demon Brother was produced at the time of the collaboration between Anger and LaVey in the foundation of two new institutions: the Magic Circle, around 1961, and the Church of Satan, in 1966.32
The Magic Circle was created by Anger and LaVey to gather those who attended regularly the Friday night lectures in the house in California Street. They recruited some Californian celebrities, including Forrest J. Ackerman (1916–2008), a leading expert in science fiction and Hubbard’s literary agent,33 who was also the creator of the comic book character Vampirella. “Of all the Magic Circle members, the most important turned out to be Ken Anger”.34
LaVey had just had some occasional contacts with Parsons, while Anger was one of the leading experts on Crowley in the United States and was part and parcel of the small world that had gathered the inheritance of the Californian “Antichrist”. He was also attracted by the Devil and demonology. Even more than through books, it was through Anger that LaVey could encounter genuine teachings originating with Crowley and Parsons
Notes
1 Lawrence Wright, Saints & Sinners, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993, p. 121.
2 Zeena LaVey and Nikolas Schreck, Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality, 2 February 1998, available on the Web site of the First Church of Satan at the address <http://www.churchofSatan.org/ aslv.html>, last accessed on September 25, 2015.
3 Burton H. Wolfe, The Devil’s Avenger: A Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey, New York: Pyramid Books, 1974.
4 Blanche Barton, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey, Los Angeles: Feral House, 1990.
5 Michael A. Aquino, The Church of Satan, San Francisco: The Author, 1st ed., 1983, 6th ed., 2009, 7th ed. (2 vols.), 2013. The following quotes are from the 2009 edition
6 S.E. Flowers, Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices & Spiritual Heresies – From the Cult of Set to the Church of Satan, Rochester (Vermont): Inner Traditions/Bear & Co., 2012 (first ed.: Lords of the Left-Hand Path: A History of Spiritual Dissent, Smithville, Texas: Runa-Raven Press, 1997).
7 L. Wright, Saints & Sinners, cit., p. 125 and p. 155.
8 B. Barton, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey, cit., unnumbered photographic insert.
9 Ibid., pp. 22–23.
10 B.H. Wolfe, The Devil’s Avenger: A Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey, cit., p. 27
11 Z. LaVey and N. Schreck, Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality, cit., p. 2.
12 L. Wright, Saints & Sinners, cit., pp. 129–131
13 M.A. Aquino, The Church of Satan, cit., p. 7.
14 B.H. Wolfe, The Devil’s Avenger: A Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey, cit., pp. 44–46.
15 M.A. Aquino, The Church of Satan, cit., pp. 254–256.
16 L. Wright, Saints & Sinners, cit., p. 131.
17 Z. LaVey and N. Schreck, Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality, cit., p. 3.
18 I found myself Carole’s death certificate, indicating her date of birth as August 20, 1936
19 L. Wright, Saints & Sinners, cit., pp. 132, 141.
20 M.A. Aquino, The Church of Satan, cit., pp. 8–9.
21 Z. LaVey and N. Schreck, Anton LaVey: Legend and Reality, cit., p. 4.
22 L. Wright, Saints & Sinners, cit., p. 133.
23 B. Barton, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey, cit., p. 61.
24 Ibid.; B.H. Wolfe, The Devil’s Avenger: A Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey, cit., p. 53
25 B. Barton, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey, cit., p. 61. See J. Symonds, The Great Beast: The Life of Aleister Crowley, Rider, London 1951.
26 For a list see M.A. Aquino, The Church of Satan, cit., p. 11.
27 B.H. Wolfe, The Devil’s Avenger: A Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey, cit., pp. 65–66.
28 M.A. Aquino, The Church of Satan, cit., pp. 356–357.
29 See Doran Wittelsbach, Isis and Beyond: The Biography of Cecil E. Nixon, Vancouver (Washington): Bua Productions, 1997
30 See A. Dyrendal, J.R. Lewis and J.Aa. Petersen, The Invention of Satanism, cit., p. 53.
31 Kenneth Anger, Hollywood Babylone [sic], Paris: J.-J. Pauvert, 1959.
32 On Anger, see Robert A. Haller, Kenneth Anger, published as a pamphlet by Film In The Cities, St. Paul (Minnesota), and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (Minnesota) n.d. and reproduced as an article in The Equinox, vol. iii, no. 10, 1966, pp. 239–260. See also Bill Landis, Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger, New York: HarperCollins, 1995; and Deborah Allison, “Kenneth Anger”, in C. Partridge (ed.), The Occult World, cit., pp. 459–463.
33 B. Landis, Anger: The Unchauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger, cit., p. 155.
34 B.H. Wolfe, The Devil’s Avenger: A Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey, cit., p. 71
Written by Massimo Introvigne in "Satanism: A Social History", editor Marco Pasi, Brill-Leyden-Boston, 2016. Excerpts chapter 10 pp.299-306. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa
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