Orlon Borloff, untitled collage
 
Last spring, Dangerous Minds told you about “The Devil’s Reign,” a traveling exhibit (and its companion book) of Satanic art curated by Peter H. Gilmore, author of The Satanic Scriptures, and the High Priest of the Church of Satan for fifteen years. The exhibit endeavored to explore expressions of the diabolical from many cultures, though it mostly focused on ancient deities that were repurposed as devils and demons by Christianity, and, as that’s a pretty damned (haha) fertile artistic field to harvest, a second book has been published. The Devil’s Reign II: Psychedelic Blasphemy, as the title implies, focuses on trippy and surreal expressions of the profane, as Gilmore writes in his introduction:

Blasphemy is a conscious act of rejection, showing contempt for or derision of established sacred icons. Typically it is directed at objects, people, and concepts placed on pedestals by religions. As secularism has grown, one may also deem irreverence and disgust for things held above criticism by herd culture as today’s implementation of that idea. When we dismiss what by consensus is held to be inviolable, we are blasphemers.

The 1960s spawned a movement whose intent was the expansion of the mind through the use of mind altering substances as well as meditation or sensory stimulation/deprivation techniques. Shattering what had been prior paradigms, exponents of this “counter-culture” employed non-Western sources for inspiration in creating music and visual art as a means for sharing their own inner-explorations, often fueled by drug-induced “trips.” The art in particular was characterized by bright colors, complex geometric patterning, and often employed cartoon-derived stylization to emphasize heightened sensibilities and new juxtapositions of images that embraced surrealism.

The follow-up book, like the first, is limited to 666 copies, and both are available from Howl Books, an imprint run by Florida-based tattoo artist and gallerist Andy Howl. Dangerous Minds has graciously been permitted by Howl to share a selection of images.
 

Ian Bederman, “Mushroom Cave”
 

Ramon Maiden, “Hell’s Messenger”
 
More after the jump…

Edgar Swank in cloak, two female members of the COS, Anton LaVey, Lois Murgunstrumm on the fireplace altar, and Diane LaVey.
 
The Black Pope, Anton Szandor LaVey, was, depending on who you ask, either one of the great 20th Century iconoclasts or merely a moderately successful con artist. Either way, LaVey, who founded the Church of Satan in 1966, certainly knew how to work the press—and he certainly made good copy for the tabloids. His books The Satanic Bible, The Satanic Rituals, and The Compleat Witch sold millions of copies and his church, at its height, boasted of hundreds of thousands of members (though some have challenged those numbers).

A gorgeous hardcover photography book titled California Infernal was released in May by Trapart books in an edition of 400 copies. The tome contains over 100 rare and previously unseen photographs of Satanist Anton LaVey, as well as film star Jayne Mansfield and Famous Monsters of Filmland publisher Forrest J. Ackerman.
 

 
The photos, the work of freelance paparazzo Walter Fischer, capture LaVey at home in the infamous “Black House”, the headquarters of the Church of Satan, as well as at the “Ackermansion” and Mansfield’s Hollywood “Pink Palace.”

Though some of the photos are staged for publicity, many of the most intriguing photos are candid shots of LaVey doing relatively normal stuff. My personal favorites are a series of shots of LaVey geeking out over Ackerman’s collection of horror movie ephemera.

The majority of the photos were taken in the Church of Satan’s second year of existence. Anyone with an interest in LaVey as a cultural icon or in the history of the COS, would be well-served to pick up a copy of California Infernal by following this link. It makes an excellent companion piece to the exhaustive, and also-recommended, The Church of Satan, Volume One and The Church of Satan, Volume Two by former COS member Dr. Michael Aquino.

Here’s a gallery of some of the photos published in California Infernal which Trapart Books was kind enough to share exclusively with Dangerous Minds:
 

 

LaVey and “Forry” Ackerman.
 
More after the jump…