Liberace with attitude

Hedonism and showmanship epitomised the most famous Satanist, finds Chris Hill

Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan

Infernal Wisdom from the Devil’s Den

Carl Abrahamsson

Inner Traditions 2022

Pb, 424pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781644112410

Given the scope of available candidates for the title of Devil incarnate, one finds it difficult to imagine that Anton LaVey would even get a look in! LaVey was born in Chicago in 1930, and his ascendancy to High Priest of his very own Church of Satan is the stuff of “pulp” itself. He was a talented musician (affirmed by all who knew him), but a far from dependable narrator; his fanciful tales of working the burlesque bars and seedy carnivals are recalled here with tongues firmly in cheeks. That noted, Carl Abrahamsson’s collection of interviews with friends, lovers and fellow devotees provides a very human, humorous and sympathetic account of a man born to notoriety. Neither a controlling mystic nor a heartless Darwinian, LaVey remained a gentleman and a loyal friend to all who shared his company, we discover.

More Liberace with attitude than Lucifer, LaVey offered a brand of Satanism with its roots in the hedonism that dominated post-war consumerist society. Tapping into the emergent self-help and personal growth industry, he mixed a bit of Nietzsche and some old fashioned antiauthoritarian individualism with a healthy dash of showmanship. This was a winning formula that appealed both to Hollywood stars and countercultural figures such as Jayne Mansfield and Kenneth Anger – by 1969 the San Francisco Black House was the place to be. With a run of successful titles to his name, notably The Satanic Bible (1969) and The Satanic Rituals (1972), LaVey began to attract media interest. No shrinking violet, he appeared on such primetime staples as Donahue and the

Tonight Show and featured in Time and Newsweek.

By putting magic back into popular culture LaVey helped consolidate Satanism as a legitimate philosophical discourse and weathered the Satanic panic backlash of later decades with wry aplomb. Testimony from such occult luminaries as the Crowleyan apostle Kenneth Anger, the current priestly incumbents of the Church, Peter Gilmore and Peggy Nadramia, and former partner Blanche Barton, all emphasise his enduring humanism and despair at collective hypocrisy. For a later generation of “esoterrorists” such as Genesis P Orridge (1950-2020), LaVey demonstrated how spectacle offered an antidote to quotidian reality. Abrahamsson’s documentation of a complex personality is a welcome addition to existing biographical material and contextualises his life in a mature and unsensational manner.

Regardless of what one may think of LaVey and his philosophy, he has more than earned his place in the ranks of countercultural mavericks and Abrahamsson celebrates this glorious fact.

A fascinating portrait of a major media manipulator and raconteur – everybody’s favourite Satanist.

★★★★★