The Church of Satan: what did Anton LaVey actually stand for?
If you truly were ever a vaguely alternative soul, you flirted with the work of Anton LaVey and his Church of Satan for shock value. I know I did, and when you’re 16, it feels like such a reasonable thing to do. After all, finally, you’ve found a version of religion that sounds genuinely cool.
It’s a religion that celebrates “kindness to those who deserve it.” That advocates for “justice for those who have been oppressed.” That seeks “true knowledge over self-deceit.” All stuff that (broadly speaking), people would consider positive. Then, you add a little combative atheism here and a dash of occult shock tactics there and presto, you’ve got yourself the perfect way for a stupid child like me to feel wise and edgy at a time when I was neither of those things.
I know I wasn’t alone in this. Generations of self-important teenagers discover the work of Anton LaVey and, for a moment, think they’ve found the closest thing to a spiritual calling they’re ever going to get. What they don’t realise at the time is that they’re not feeling spoken to because they’re wise beyond their years or they’re more clever or more spiritual than the rest of the rabble. They’re feeling spoken to because teenagers are arguably the target audience for the work of Anton LaVey.
So, who was LaVey? Born Howard Levey in Chicago on April 11th, 1930, what we know of his early life comes from, you guessed it, LaVey himself. So we can put all reports of him training as a big cat tamer in the circus, then becoming a generational keyboard player, then having an affair with Marilyn Monroe right in the bin where they belong. He even claimed to work for the San Francisco Police Department as a psychic investigator, whatever that means.
It’s impossible to corroborate the acts of Anton LaVey until well into the 1960s, when the reputation he was trying to cultivate began to spread. After all, it’s difficult not to notice the guy walking a tiger down Haight-Ashbury.
What was LaVey trying to spread with this nonsense?
In 1966, LaVey founded the first incarnation of the Church of Satan to capitalise on his local notoriety. This was the moment that hippy culture was first starting to sky-rocket, so all kinds of so-called alternative thinking were getting a foothold in its wake. It was built around a rejection of all religious ideals, which sounds strange for a movement literally called Satanism, but the spotty sixth former who thinks he’s clever thinks, “LaVey uses Satanism in its original Hebrew definition of ‘opponent and adversary’.”
Annoyingly enough, said spotty sixth former isn’t wrong. The fundamental idea behind LaVeyan Satanism was that mainstream culture is hypocritical and rotten to the core, maaaan, and that only by standing in opposition to it can true enlightenment and meaning be found. Sounds deep. Then you realize that everything else is just a half-baked mish-mash of Nietzche and Ayn Rand but with a few of Aleister Crowley’s leftover capes draped over it, the jizz stains hurriedly scrubbed out with a sponge.
For most people who delve into this, this is where the other shoe drops. It’s a nice little fantasy at first, a life of responsibility, reason and free thought. The Social Darwinism inherent at the core of LaVey’s philosophy hooks you in initially, then anyone with actual empathy for others checks out. At his core, Anton LaVey is no different from any other occult-minded cult leader. All their faux-philosophical claptrap leads to either you blowing Anton LaVey or you watching someone blow Anton LaVey.
Either way, you’re still just a sucker.