Satanic 70s

During the mid-20th century, Satan sold and Mephistopheles went mainstream

In the 1960s and 1970s the West was swept by a revival of interest in all things occult and a popular obsession with the satanic and the spooky. Almost the opposite side to the ‘hippy movement’, this mainstream fascination was later given the name of ‘The Black Aquarius’ by Historian Matthew Sweet. In Britain the black magic thrillers of Dennis Wheatley were reprinted and very quickly became bestsellers. Wheatley, an author who had made his name in the 1930s, suddenly found himself selling six million copies of his books a year. Soon the Devil was at the centre of a wealth of popular media, from blockbuster films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, to even appearing as the villain in a 1971 episode of Doctor Who.

In America, the satanic obsession became even more heated. In 1966, the same year that Time magazine published their iconic ‘Is God Dead? cover, Anton Lavey (born Howard Stanton Levey) gained much publicity when he founded The Church of Satan. Lavey rejected Christian morality and the notion of family values which had dominated much of the US in the 1950s. Yet Lavey’s Satanism was different to what was initially expected. At its core, this was not the worship of a dark being, the father of lies or the Antichrist, instead it was the complete embrace of the ego. He preached that individuals should not restrict themselves and rejected what he saw as Christian hypocrisy. Lavey quickly became something of an overnight sensation and The Church of Satan an international organisation.